Comparison of the Dontrell Stephens case and Tamir Rice Cases
and the Supreme Courts Guidance Regarding the Deputy and Officer’s Actions and
Use of Deadly Force
By Dr. Peter A. Barone
Dontrell Stephens was
bicycling across Haverhill Road in Palm Beach County Florida, and he was talking
to a friend on a cellphone while operating his bicycle on a public roadway. A
truck slowed as he rode against traffic. Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy
Adams Lin was watching schoolchildren waiting for a bus. He followed Stephens
to give him a traffic ticket for not bicycling properly which is a legal and legitimate
traffic violation that can be ticketed in the State of Florida. However, he
also would acknowledge he was suspicious of Stephens, whom he had not seen in
the neighborhood before that morning. He
intended to stop him, ask for identification and find out where he had come
from and where he was going. He considered frisking him. But Lin, who is of
Asian descent, denied racially profiling Stephens, who is black, and wore his
hair in long dreadlocks.
When Stephens turned
down a side road, Lin followed, stepping on the gas, turning on the siren and
then the lights following all the proper departmental and legal procedures when
affecting a traffic stop on a public roadway.
When Stephens then biked between a mailbox and a fence toward his
friend’s house, a shortcut Lin could not easily follow in his patrol car, the
deputy considered that further evidence of Stephens’ intent to flee. The dash-cam
video shows that Stephens looks back, then continues about 20 more feet to his
friend’s house, where he gets off the bike. Lin is now even more convinced that
Stephens is about to take off on foot, not because he got off the bike, but
because he put both feet over the same side to do so. The manner he stopped and
got off his bicycle was consistent with someone who had run from me in the
past, which is known as a “rolling run” where someone jumped off with both feet
on one side and just kept going. Lin exits his patrol vehicle and runs from his
car and he is out of range of the dash-cam. Stephens walks toward the deputy,
then also disappears from the dash-cam video.
The Deputy opened fire because Stephens was reaching in his back waistband with his
right hand and possibly for a gun; however, it turned out to be a
cell phone. The major issue here was that Stephens made
the dangerous decision to reach with his left hand and point the cell phone at
Deputy Lin like it was a gun precipitating the response of Deputy Lin firing
his weapon to stop a validly perceived threat. Think for a moment what the
outcome would have been if Stephens would have not acted in this manner and
never reached, pulled out and pointed the cell phone at Deputy Lin that day. An internal
investigation and the State Attorney’s Office have both cleared Lin of the
September 2013 use of force.
It was ruled as a good shoot and the Supreme Court has ruled the
following: Courts have ruled that reaching for a gun, or even what appears
to be a gun, (like a cell phone as in this particular case), after being
commanded to stop moving can give an officer a valid reason to use lethal
force.
The United States Supreme Court has clearly presented this
information in both the case of Tennessee v. Garner (1985) and Graham v Connor
(1989).
In the Tamir Rice case
he was told numerous times to stop and do not move and he then makes the
furtive movement and points the gun, with the orange tip removed, and the
officers see gun and use deadly force against what they believe is also deadly
force. Totally justifiable.
The same case results
apply here and it is tragic that it was a child; however, a child does have the
ability to exert enough trigger pull to fire a weapon and kill someone. How
many cases appear in the papers and online about a child finding a weapon in a
home and firing it killing a sibling and they were able to pull the trigger
with no issues.
References
Graham v. Connor
(1989).
Tennessee v. Garner
(1985).
