Having followed and researched Police Officer Jared Gosper’s murder of Sra. Amelia Baca, I was puzzled by Third Judicial District Attorney Gerald M. Byers’s op-ed (accessible to subscribers only) “Peace Officer use of deadly force” (21 July Sun News). What prompted it? What is its purpose? Why now? Why 15 months after LCPD Officer Jared Gosper murdered Sra. Amelia Baca? Why not when he needed to explain his decision to avoid a decision on charging Gosper?
Byers’s op-ed neither answers nor even addresses any of these obvious questions. And it mentions no specific cases, only general decisions. It relies entirely on judicial citations about a limited range of circumstances justifying the police use of deadly force. It never asks about the limitations of those circumstances.
First, Byers’s op-ed asserts that the officer may use deadly force in making an arrest for a felony. Does the officer always know that he is making an arrest for a felony? If not, what justifies its use? Is a person behaving erratically, possibly shouting threats, possibly holding a tool or a weapon, committing a felony or suffering from a mental condition? Given imperfect knowledge in different or dynamic situations, is the officer’s judgment to use deadly force appropriate or wise? Byers should know better than to assume that the officer’s judgment about felonies or danger is unaffected by the race, religion, ethnicity, or gender of the person.
Second, Byers’s op-ed asserts that the officer may use deadly force in defending himself. But what if he is not attacked? What if there is no showing of an attack? Byers cites an opinion that “An officer does not need to wait until he sees the glint of steel before he can act to protect his safety.” This opinion says nothing about what the officer either needs to wait for or has to see. The result is that the officer can resort to things invisible to the naked eye, to usually unimpeachable reports that he thought himself in danger, to justify a use of deadly force. The usual: “I thought…blah, blah, blah. Byers should know that such testimony clears most police who have killed a person.
Third, Byers’s op-ed asserts that the officer, necessarily the “aggressor,” may use deadly force to make an arrest for a felony. Is the need to make an arrest for a felony, many minor or non-violent, worth the taking of a life, especially if the person flees?
Byers’s concluding paragraph, quoted in full, allows a diversity of perspectives.
No person, police or private citizen, is perfect; but judges and legislators chosen by (“we”) the people have declared the law on government use of deadly force. While this overview is certainly not exhaustive, or completely definitive, it hopefully informs the discussions of many well-meaning people from differing perspectives on police use of deadly force.
That is, the standard in such discussions is the prevailing law. Byers is right that his “overview is certainly not exhaustive, or completely definitive.” It is not sensitive to the limitations of the law, as legislated or adjudicated.
Byers’s penultimate paragraph, quoted in full, is a plea, not about understanding the law, but about sympathizing with the officer.
Each police-citizen encounter is fact specific, and police training incorporates these and other standards to facilitate the safe application of the law. Sometimes risk to an Officer’s safety develops in much less time than it took to read this sentence. The resultant use of force is analyzed from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer.
This op-ed makes me wonder what happens to people like Byers when they become prosecutors or court attorneys that they have so little regard for citizens. The bland assertion that “police training incorporates these and other standards to facilitate the safe application of the law” is at odds with recent incidents of police murders in Las Cruces.
Indeed, this assertion raises questions about Byers’s decision-making. His op-ed seems an exercise in whitewashing his performance in the Baca case. He received a multi-agency task-force report on Baca’s murder; he promised a decision to charge or not charge Gosper within a few days, but he failed to fulfill his promise. Instead, he sent the case to the NM Attorney General, where it has languished under both Hector Balderas and Raúl Torrez. Byers’s handling of the Baca case undermines his op-ed. First, he found the “standards” for the police use of deadly force inapplicable in the Baca case. But, then, he was unwilling to regard the reasons for their inapplicability grounds for charging the murderer. Given his botch-up, I think it is fair to say that “(“we”) the people” have chosen some judges, some legislators, and, yes, some district attorneys unwisely.
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