Before the subject was eclipsed by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s use of torture, nearly everyone was talking the use of force by law enforcement officers. A grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; in New York, an officer who used a chokehold on a man who died on the scene also was not indicted. Many people lamented that no serious consideration seemed to be given to the idea that police officers could act wrongly.
But in Cortez last week, a jury ruled in favor of a defendant accused of stabbing an officer responding to a 911 call at his parents’ residence.
There are parallels between the case of Shane French and those in the news lately. A Cortez officer violated the department’s stun-gun policy, just as the New York officer violated his department’s choke-hold policy. There also are significant are points of divergence. The measures used on French were painful but not lethal. No elements of race were apparent. This seems like an instance in which the police believed they had a reason to act decisively to stop what was happening. French’s mother had called 911 to ask for help in controlling him, so the officers responding reasonably expected to encounter an out-of-control subject. He did not comply with their instructions. They believed he had a weapon.
French, who reportedly has mental-health issues, apparently believed he was protecting his parents in their home (although he had barged in uninvited), and the officers’ show of force would have bolstered that belief. So he fought harder, and the police responded with greater force — too great, some witnesses, including a former Pueblo County sheriff, testified at the trial.
This case offers many reasons for thanksgiving. Deputy District Attorney Matt Margeson asked jurors, “When is it OK to run at a police officer and stab him?” That question alone suggests that the outcome could have been far worse, and there is no doubt that in many places, it would have been. No shots were fired at French. No one died.
Cortez now gets to discuss the issue — a serious one worthy of more nuanced discussion than has yet occurred — from a position of strength. According to the jury, the police should not have burst in, and they went too far in subduing a man who had the right to defend himself, but the law-enforcement response was still tempered. The climate of shooting first and asking questions later has not reached Montezuma County. The jury decided this case on its own merits, even in the recent climate of divisive public opinion about similar cases.
Cortez does not come immediately to mind as a place where jurors would be sympathetic to a defendant accused of stabbing a police officer. It is a conservative community, and while most people support “Make My Day” laws, they generally envision law-abiding homeowners defending themselves against lawbreaking home invaders. Jurors here (as everywhere) are chosen from lists of people who have registered to vote, obtained a driver’s license or a government-issued identification card, or registered their vehicles. They are people who generally comply with the law and cooperate with authorities.
They are also people who recognize that sometimes law-enforcement personnel do make wrong choices in the heat of the moment, and a few just plain behave badly, as has happened in the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office recently. They did not “side” with anyone. Aided by a good judge, they reasoned through a complex set of facts. They they issued a verdict that will allow the community to move forward in discussing this, while many other communities are paralyzed by polarization and resentment.
