On the morning of May 16, a Detroit police officer
fatally shot 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in the throat
during a police raid on her home. The police were looking for a
homicide suspect.
They found him in the apartment above the one where
Stanley-Jones was shot, where he surrendered without violence. In
response, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing
cautioned last week not to put the blame squarely on
police.
Bing is right. We should also put a good deal of the blame on
him. Or, to be fair, on his predecessor, since Bing only recently
took office. We should also blame the Detroit city council and the
city's police chief. It is the politicians who set the policies
that guide the actions of police officers, and it is they who are
responsible for overseeing those officers. Even allowing for the
fact that the police and the Stanley-Jones family disagree about
what happened that morning, there were a number of bad policies
that may have directly contributed to the little girl's death.
Among them:
The use of the SWAT team.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the police say
they had information that their suspect, 34-year-old Chauncey
Owens, was armed. He was a suspect in a homicide. If Owens were on
a killing spree, knowingly fleeing police, or holed up in the house
with hostages, it may have justified using a SWAT team to apprehend
him. But it doesn't appear that Owens presented that sort of
imminent threat. Police had spotted him earlier in the day outside
of the house. It's difficult to understand why the police didn't
confront him then or the next time he left. Instead, they waited
until the middle of the night to conduct a volatile raid on a
duplex, putting everyone inside the property in jeopardy. Geoffrey
Feiger, the attorney for the Stanley-Jones family, alleges the
police weren't even aware the building was a duplex, and only
obtained a warrant for the upper apartment
after the raid.
The Stanley-Jones family says the police should have known there
were four children in the building. They say there were toys strewn
about the yard, and that a cousin warned the police shortly before
the raid after seeing police approach the house. I'm not sure it
matters if the police knew or not. If they didn't, they should
have. And if they did, they shouldn't have used the aggressive
tactics. SWAT teams are at their best when they're defusing already
violent situations, not when they're creating new ones.
There may also be a history here of Detroit turning to SWAT and
its heavy-handed tactics as the first option, rather than the last.
The same SWAT team is currently facing several lawsuits.
One of them deals with a case where the police were looking for
evidence against an armed robbery suspect. They battered their way
into a home and fired several rounds at two dogs. According to the
lawsuit, the rounds were fired near an infant. The suspect wasn't
there.
In the raid that killed Stanley-Jones, the suspect was in the
upstairs apartment. The police secured the lower apartment first.
If Owens had been heavily armed and predisposed to kill, he'd have
had plenty of warning to prepare. So the use of SWAT and
early-morning "dynamic" entry escalated the volatility and risk
associated with this arrest.
The facts also don't add up. The Detroit police first claimed
that Stanley-Jones' grandmother had an "altercation" with Officer
Joseph Weekley, who then accidentally discharged the bullet that
struck the girl. The police then claimed Weekley had incidental
contact with the grandmother. Attorney Geoffrey Feiger
now says video footage of the raid shows the bullet was fired
from outside the home, though a state police investigation
apparently
has turned up no support for that allegation.
I'm not sure it matters exactly what happened. Whether Weekley
fired out of panic or accidentally discharged his weapon, whether
he tripped over Stanley-Jones' grandmother or Stanley-Jones'
grandmother thought he was a criminal intruder and confronted him,
the panic and confusion reveal just how little margin for error
exists during these raids. And the result—Stanley-Jones'
death—shows why they should only be used as a last resort.
The use of "flashbang grenades."
Though
touted as "non-lethal," flashbang grenades have caused a number
of deaths and serious injuries. The devices set off a wave of
intense light and sound designed to stun everyone inside of a
building long enough for police to enter and secure the premises.
They're indiscriminate. Their intended effect is to cause
injury to everyone near them. That means they're effectively a form
of punishment on people who have yet to be convicted of any crime.
And that includes innocent bystanders as well as suspects. And they
are explosives, which means there is a very real risk of
injury and destruction. Flashbangs have caused second- and
third-degree burns, and ignited fires that have consumed
houses.
The night of Aiyana Stanley-Jones' death, police shot a
flashbang grenade through the window of her home. Her family says
it landed on the couch where she was sleeping, ignited the blanket
laying over her, and set off flames that began to burn the girl
just before she was shot. (The autopsy hasn't yet been
released.)
According to the Detroit Free Press, another
Detroit-area police department
is facing a lawsuit from the elderly couple Leonid and Arlene
Marmelshtein, who say police battered into their home and detonated
two of the devices during a 2004 marijuana raid. (Police found a
small amount of the drug in an adult son's sock drawer.) According
to the Free Press, a police spokesman in that case called
the use of the devices "entirely appropriate." In allowing the
lawsuit to go forward, U.S. District Judge Julian Cook disagreed,
writing, "No reasonable law enforcement officer would have
considered a confused elderly couple to be capable of producing the
kind of tense and rapidly evolving uncertain situation which would
require 10 police officers to make split-second decisions,
including the use of two flash-bang devices."
The presence of TV cameras.
It's generally a good thing to record SWAT raids on video. Video
footage can clear up any confusion or disagreement about what
really happened. Video also tends to nudge police into employing
best practices—we're all on our best behavior when we know we're
being watched. But the raid on Stanley-Jones' home was being
documented by cameras from A&E's First 48,
a show themed around the axiom that most homicide cases are solved
within 48 hours of the killing or they aren't solved at all. There
are now legitimate questions about whether the presence of the
show's cameras and producers may have pushed the police into
conducting a TV-friendly raid without first doing an appropriate
investigation of the home they were raiding.
First 48 is one of
dozens of bread-and-circus reality cop shows across cable and
network TV. Despite police assertions that SWAT raids are reserved
for the most violent of criminal suspects who require precise,
direct, and overwhelming force, there seem to be a large and
growing number of police departments who have no problem bringing
TV crews along for the ride. Or celebrities. In one infamous
mistaken raid in Denver that claimed the life of immigrant and
father-of-eight
Ismael Mena, the police had invited Colorado Rockies second
basemen Mike Lansing
along for the raid. In a mistaken 2006 child porn raid in
Virginia, police brought along
NBA star Shaquille O'Neal.
With many of these shows, the police department gets veto power
over what footage makes it on the air. So you won't be seeing
footage of many mistaken raids. That said, A&E should air the
footage of this raid to show that the violent tactics these shows
repeatedly glamorize can and do have tragic consequences. If the
network has any guts at all, it will make sure the same episode
looks at the possibility that the presence of its own cameras
contributed to the death of a little girl.
Radley Balko is a
senior editor for Reason magazine.
