I think I have finally figured out why I was sent a lifetime exemption from jury duty.

After a conversation with someone, which featured a brief discussion of the Tamir Rice case, I thought I should brush up more on what happened

A couple of things are pretty much accepted at this point:

• A call was made for the police to check on the situation, because someone felt he was acting in a threatening manner.
• He was in a public park (if a similar call was made in the park near my house, I would expect the officers to approach it quickly, and fairly aggressively...when I was a kid, a report like this would have been viewed differently, but that was before 24 hour news coverage swamped us with images of events like Columbine and Sandy Hook).
• The officers were not told the gun might be an airsoft.
• Rice didn't DESERVE to die...

...but if I was reporting the case, I would be looking for answers to these questions:

Did Karmback enter Cudell Com Park from W. 99th Street?  If so, why did he choose that route?  Did he stop where he did because it was planned or did he stop there because that was where he saw Rice?

Did he mean to put Loehmann so close to Rice? 

Would this type of approach be standard procedure for officers in a similar situation? 

Were the sirens going on the car?

Did Rice hear the police car approaching?

A look at the video looks like he is truly surprised by the police car right in front of him.

If the police car entered the park from W. 99th...there should have been a fair amount of sound from a  car traveling quickly through mud or snow...and likely some clanking sounds as it transitioned from pavement at the end cul-de-sac to the park surface...If he heard the car, and if he looked in that direction, wouldn't that sound have given him a moment, just the split second that might have change everything, to contemplate that reaching for the airsoft gun would be a bad idea?

Was Tamir Rice wearing headphones?  

Rice was wearing a hoodie (perfectly understandable, it was cold and snowy...and he was playing in the park, I would wear a hoodie to park when it is cold too.)

If he was wearing headphones, and playing his music loud enough (again, no judgement on that one...if I have headphones on, I am trying to make my ears bleed even now...and again, If I am doing sprints in the park, or working on my jumper, and I am alone, the music is going, and it is loud) wouldn't that explain part of his reaction?


Was Rice waiting for someone with whom to have an airsoft war?

I remember, quite well, being a 12 year old...if I had a new airsoft gun, I would have been dying to use it...and while many are pushing the meme that the action of raising his arm into a shooting position repeatedly was in and of itself unusually aggressive, it is exactly the same move that just about every 12 year old would do with a new airsoft...or a thumb and forefinger. ( always find it slightly amusing when a hear a new Mom saying that her young man will never do any type of gun play...unless you are willing to amputate digits, they will...even then, they might just use a tree branch, broomstick, sister's Barbie, etch_   The removal of the orange safety marker is something that just about every kid would do as well, unless someone had made it very clear that removing it would put you in an unusual amount of danger if an officer approached. *

Rice was in the park for quite a while...and it would interesting to know if he was planning to meet up with someone to try out the new toys...If so (yes, I know, lots of "IFS"), and if he had the music playing...if he caught the movement of the car at the last second, his reach for the gun makes more sense...if you were preparing for an airsoft war, mentally, you would be mentally rehearsing a quick draw...

At this point, a side note is needed...I saw an article about Rice's neighborhood, and the violence in it...I think that is a non-starter...because it is either intentionally or accidentally suggesting that all of this was due to some conditioned response on Rice's part...if you live in a neighborhood where drive-bys happen, you don't automatically reach for a airsoft... if ACTUAL danger is approaching...that would just get you dead in a hurry.

Without question, no one should have been killed that day, and if there are ways to prevent things like this happening again, those lessons need to be learned and shared...but I think the rush to judgement about the entire situation is clouding the issue too much.






*Background information:

When my sister and I got our first BB gun...

We didn't have anything like an orange safety marker on our BB guns.

My Dad made it clear to us that we were never, EVER, to point that at a person.  We were told that if we had it in our hands and a officer was within sight, the gun was to be dropped and we were to walk away from it...and if we didn't follow his direction, and the officer did not kill us, he might.

To be fair, by the point I had that bb gun, I had already fired thousands of rounds of real ammo at targets, and had been given pretty extensive safety training, and seen demonstrations of what bullets did when they hit something...so Dad's instructions made perfect sense to me.

It was much later in my life (Spring 1995, at the home of one of my former students) where I intentionally pointed a gun (paintball...not a normal gun) at another person...I was horrible at it, because my brain still struggled with aiming at a person....the lessons Dad had taught over the years were still very much operational:

• Never point a gun at someone unless you have a very good reason to kill them
• The ONLY good reason to kill someone is because they are a real threat to you or your loved ones.
• If you are going to point a weapon at someone, you better be willing to shoot, and if you are willing to shoot them...kill them...if you can't do that, run (make sure the safety is on, and take the gun with you). 
•  If you shoot someone, and you don't kill them...it is likely they will be angry, and if they get the gun, you now become their threat.

This seems so different, and yet so similar.

I posted this on my facebook page back on August 15

Kind of hard to ignore the info coming out of Ferguson...way too many ifs and whys involved in this case.-If the young man reached into the car, then it is hard to consider anyone who is 6'4", 292 lbs as unarmed (I was off here…6’5. 289, according to the autopsy records)…if he didn't, then the officer is probably toast (legally) I heard several lawyers today mention that the courts consider a shoot legit if an officer is attacked and the suspect is fleeing...I wonder if that may have to be revisited?-Why didn't the PD release the information that the officer was injured earlier? I understand why they didn't release the video from the store earlier (their timing for that release was going to be criticized regardless), and the officers name being withheld makes even more sense after seeing stories about the other officer named Darren Wilson, and the hate messages he received.No matter what happens in this case, no one is going to be fully satisfied.

I wasn’t making these comments just because I have a tendency to comment on current events (I Do)…but because I remembered, pretty clearly, a case in San Diego years ago…a case, I might add, where I originally had one view…that the accused was guilty, and was about to go to prison for the rest of his life…but where my mind was changed as the evidence emerged.

The Sagon Penn case was THE topic when I returned to Point Loma in the Fall of 1985 (I had been out of school since March 15th of that year)…and I, and much of the nation (including some names I didn’t realize had been involved), followed the case until the trial.  It seemed open and shut…Penn admitted to shooting  and killing one officer, Thomas Riggs, wounding another officer,Donovan Jacobs, and shooting a female ride-along Sara Pina-Ruiz…I, like most people figured that with the confession, he was toast.

When the trial began, the city was tense (okay, we really were not that tense at Point Loma…most of us were honest enough to realize that we were pretty safe on our campus…we were not really going to get involved in this story…or so we thought) then the details began to emerge, and doubts were raised.

My first thought then was that the defense was just a normal, run-of-the-mill version of “He hit me first.”…but as more and more came out, and more testimony was shared, people began to debate the evidence that was emerging…I remember clearly having the type of argument that only a college student can have with another studen about whether or not Penn should be held responsible for shooting Pina-Ruiz (I argued that if the first shot was excused by the jury, all shots after that would have been, in a situation where you had just been forced to shoot an officer in self-defense, understandable because you would have expected to be shot by the other officer outside the car…and would have expected the person inside the car to also be armed, and thus dangerous…my argument then, as it has been in the situation in Ferguson, hinged on the word “IF”)

I don’t remember anyone who was not surprised when the first trial ended in deadlock…many were not sure if a retrial would even take place, even that decision was litigated.

It did, but not before Sagon Penn enrolled at Point Loma.

“Penn has hardly surfaced since being freed after the first trial, his father said. He enrolled at Point Loma Nazarene College, but quickly withdrew when he was greeted at the campus by a swarm of reporters. He has not returned to school or work since, Thomas Penn said.”(Source)

I knew he was there, but I never met or talked with him.  I always thought that he must have been a commuter student, but my wife, tonight, told me in that he had lived with his attorney’s family, and their daughter had been a Crusader (the proper name for a Point Loma Mascot…but I digress), thus filling in the gap I had always had about why he had chosen PLNC (this was after it stopped being PLC, and way before it became PLNU, BTW).

I do not remember anyone protesting his presence…my wife thought she remembered a few people leaving the school because he was there, but for most of us, any drama was very short-lived.

By the time of the retrial, people had taken sides…and for most, nothing was going to move them…the case was made, the decision announced…acquitted on all charges. By that point, I had come to the conclusion that while no one should have died that night, it was not beyond reasonable doubt to assume that Sagon Penn had acted in self-defense, that he had truly believe that Jacobs was going to kill him…surprisingly, it seems that even ended up being the belief of Thomas Rigg’s family members.

Even after the trial, many refused to accept the findings of the jury…many felt as though Penn had gotten away without any punishment…after spending time reading about his life after the trial, I think that is wrong…I think it haunted him.  His life did not go well after that night in 1985, he made some bad choices. I found this mention from 2000:

"I know for a fact I could have disarmed that homeless person withouttaking his life. If they want a demonstration, I could tell them how to doit.  When a police officer loses their life, there's all this mourning. Butwhen a homeless person gets killed, everyone just goes on with their lives.It's not like a roach got killed here. That's a human being.

No one would have blamed him for completely avoiding the spot light...but the idea that he would have been willing to train officers in hand to hand, to avoid shootings where possible, has a strange resonance.

I don’t think many people mourned Sagon Penn…he killed himself on July 5, 2002…Ted Williams died that day too…I knew about his death, I don’t remember any stories about Penn that day.

I cannot imagine how much Sagon Penn would have appreciated it if Donovan Jacobs or Thomas Riggs would have had a body camera that night (they didn’t exist then).  IF that night happened as the jury found, it would never have had to go to trial, his life would not have had to be dissected…he might have become a police officer, as he had once hoped. The tragedy might have still occurred (always a question if cameras are present), Thomas Riggs might still have been dead, but maybe Penn’s life could have gone in a very different direction, maybe the uncertainty wouldn’t have bred more distrust and hostility…maybe it could have served as a moment where solutions rather then recriminations were utilized.  

Body cameras were not an option in 1985…they are now.  It seems as though the most effective means of removing or reducing the tension of the “he-said/he-said confrontation” would be to make body cams mandatory…let the evidence lead where the evidence leads, but let the truth protect those who might otherwise be punished unnecessarily.

As I was doing research to make sure I didn't misrepresent anything, I discovered that someone else is looking at Ferguson in light of Penn's situation as well.

Different Time, Same Need.

I grew up in a different time, in a different place, on what sometimes feels like a different planet.  It was not an Ozzie and Harriet world, not by a long shot, but in very odd ways, it was a much simpler time.

(Source)

I do not remember my neighborhood as at all diverse, Other than my sister, I don’t remember ever seeing another white kid on my block…and I loved it.

I don’t remember life before living there, so for me it is where a vital part of my worldview was locked in place.  I knew I was different from my neighbors, and because it was the late sixties, and I was a TV junkie from the beginning (Mom and Dad got their first color TV in ’69, so I  had my own TV, with a remote when I watched the Apollo 11th landing…and I memorized the TV guide every week, which was a nice parlor trick my parents would have me demonstrate whenever Street Racers would come over for pasta before they went racing on Friday nights), I was well aware that there was a raging debate about race in America. 

My issue was, even then, that what I was seeing in the world did not match the narrative that the media was pushing.  My neighbors were just people, some smart, most normal, some not so bright.  My parents made clear to me that there were people on our street who had been deputized as part of the policing force that would guide my young life, and that some of them had been authorized to use force upon my backside if I crossed certain lines of behavior…I had zero privilege because of my uniqueness.

I saw violence in my neighborhood (one neighbor across the street shot her husband 6 times, all below the waist…apparently he had violated the vows of their marriage…I didn’t learn that she was violent because of the color of her skin…I learned that a man better be careful violating that vow…I think they got back together later)  I was attacked a few times, nothing that left a permanent mark, but violently…twice the person hitting me was yelling the word “Honky” as they did so…I didn’t learn that all black children were violent, I learned that some people do dumb things, for dumb reasons.

If I am remembering right, I believe I finally learned what the word “Honky” meant after a conversation with Kip, the son of the Aunt Anita and Uncle Reggie…he explained it, and then explained what…I am not going to use the word, meant…and explained to me why it should never be used by me…he must have been pretty convincing, because I remember then and there deciding never to use that word AT another person, ever…the only way I utter that word now is if it is in piece of literature, and it is being used to show how ignorant a character is to use it toward another person…even then, it almost physically hurts to say it.

I agree with Eric Holder (I know, shocking) there does needs to be an honest dialogue about race…problem is, how can we do that?  Growing up, the entire framework for the discussion was different.  If you needed clarification of what people were thinking, or why they thought it, you asked, if you knew an answer, you gave it. (I didn’t have many answers at the time)  The language  of the discussion was different, and because of things like the Flip Wilson Show…and watching my Father and Uncle Reggie traumatizing people with jokes based on the color of their respective skin (it was both incredibly funny and slightly frightening to watch how people reacted to their jokes), I grew up taking for granted that humor was essentially for defusing the tension inherent to discussions of race, and that at its base, it wasn’t us versus them, but rather us with them…”we” had things to work out…but since we were in it together, we could and should find solutions to the differences.

As I am watching the news today, I see the media trying to drive wedges, intent on fracturing us once again.  They seem intent on rolling back any progress that was made, not realizing or not caring who it might destroy. I am watching the media exploit the grief of a family to inflame the situation, I see them play up past historical abominations, and some legitimate concerns with excessive profiling to then profile  officers around the country. (I am in a position to be able to empathize with both sides, working with students I would not want to see hurt and having several former students who are now police officers) I see the media, if not actively encourage, at least tacitly endorse violence which they will then feature in breathless reporting which is creating the very us versus them conflict that we do not need.  

My frustration is building…it isn’t supposed to be like this.  The idealist in me hoped that we were past this.  I want peace, I want people to treat people right…I want someone to fix this problem.

But that isn’t going to happen.  It really doesn’t work that way.  If a solution is imposed by some higher authority, it will be resisted, because it is being imposed by a higher authority. The only solution to this problem is that we need to stop thinking it is going to come from somewhere else.

Toward that end, let me state that, for me, that regardless of what I see on the television, or read online, I will not embrace the hatred, and I will not allow myself to buy into any narrative that suggests that all of any group is doing anything. I cannot disengage, but I will try to stay as objective as possible, judging events individually, acknowledging that in some cases I will be wrong. I will strive to treat people right, because it is the right thing to do…period.

...and I will continue to make jokes.

A proposal

The following is a more articulated version of something I have been saying for months…and it should be stated up front, that I am both a Conservative and a believer in the positive potential of capitalism…so it is unlikely that anyone on the left will view any of this in a positive light.  

Please feel free to tell me why this would not be something that could help in the current situation.

The grand jury has yet to render a verdict, and neither side is taking a victory lap…yet.

This would be an excellent time for the President to step in and use the position of President for something truly beneficial.

The shooting in Ferguson has exposed major problems in our system.  In many places in our country, police are not trusted, and police officers are likely not feeling as though the system provides them with much protection either.

My first reaction when I heard the story was that hopefully the dashboard or body camera would confirm what really happened, that there would be no ambiguity in the case…but alas, no dash cam or body cam.  

When I read that story the first time, my immediate thought was that it was ridiculous that it costs that much to equip police cars and officers with cameras.  While I understand some of the arguments made by police officers about their privacy, I think the time has come to realize that a camera, when it catches you doing the right thing, might be the greatest device ever invented.

Cameras will not eliminate assaults on officers nor eliminate all cases of police brutality, but they will bring clarity. Anyone who is honest knows that the simple presence of a camera changes how people act.  If you know that camera is rolling, you are likely to alter your behavior if it is going to make you look bad. 

The challenge now is that the officer, suspect, and witnesses all have a very limited view of what is happening in an armed confrontation (if either the officer or the suspect is armed, it is an armed confrontation), the gun sees nothing, and the bullet, once it is fired from a gun will travel in a very specific, and very predictable path because of the laws of physics. 

$3000+ for a dash/body cam is ridiculous, a simple GoPro, is capable of gathering an incredible amount of information…but what is needed is a more affordable, and task ready set of cameras, capable of capturing usable, and reliable evidence.  The cameras would need to be durable, reliable, protected against accidental or intentional shutdown in a moment when the images are going to be needed (obviously, there will need to be times when it can be shut down…bathroom breaks, meals, phone calls with the wife…there would be more, which I think could be inferred by common sense, but would likely need to be articulated), protected against accidental or intentional erasure, night vision capable,and…this is essential, must not allow editing after a confrontation, etc.

If you were pitching a business plan in my class, I would ask you at this point…”okay, you have identified a problem…and have sketched out the beginnings of what needs to be done…but HOW would you make it happen?”  

This is where the President comes in…Michael Brown was shot on August 9, 2014…on May 28, 2014, Dr. Dre sold Beats to Apple for billions. (Good for him, by the way, wish I had come up with something like that…I know, you are probably asking, how do these things belong together?) 

  What if the President called Dr. Dre and suggested the following…If you would start a company, in Ferguson, Missouri that would do for dash/body cams what you did for headphones, we will exempt that business from any corporate tax for the next 25 years (I might argue even more years)… All but the most common sense EPA regulations will be suspended to allow the company to be completed quickly. Patent protection will be enforced to ensure the company has a legitimate chance of competing in the market (no guarantees of government purchases, but a chance to fairly compete)   My guess is that Governor Nixon would match that offer immediately.

Obvious requirements would be that hiring preference would be given to local residents in your manufacturing plant, and a portion of the money that would have gone to taxation will instead be invested into infrastructure in Ferguson. (I might even suggest that the name of the company might be Ferguson Justice Cams…although DreCams does have a certain ring)

Why Dr. Dre? It would be great if he could team up with someone in law enforcement to do this project, that would be worthy of a Hollywood movie…but movies are fantasy…anyone in law enforcement who has financial clout like Dre is going to be distrusted automatically.  

Strangely, I cannot think of anyone who would have the trust of both the left/right, black/white communities more.  He is a brilliant businessman, and because of who he is, it would be assumed (correctly, I believe) that a move like this would be as much, maybe more, about preventing violence as making money. 

It would cost taxpayers nothing to float this idea, and it could improve the economic condition of Ferguson. Those workers, once employed in the company would pay taxes to continue the improvement of the city.

For the Brown family, this might provide some sense that this tragedy might have some positive impact.  For the officer, some solace that his brother officers will not have to endure such extended scrutiny.

There would likely be some unintended consequences of this all occurring. Someone will complain that the President is wrong to make offers of tax breaks for a billionaire, there will be occasional failures of the system…some will be offended that a solution came from a capitalist, or that Dre was a rapper,or for any of number of reasons.  The President’s answer…which would be more powerful if it were given with Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, etc all standing and nodding in approval as the deal is announced, should be “Tough, it is done.”

The irony that Dr. Dre, who burst into many of our minds with “Straight Outta Compton” could play a pivotal role in reducing violence, and bringing justice (not vengeance, but justice) to both side involved in such confrontation, would make the move even more powerful.