Courts grapple with ‘ reasonable’ force
Standard determined by what police officers perceive, not what the public sees
WASHINGTON — To many who saw the video of a New York police officer applying a chokehold to Eric Garner before he died, the decision about whether to charge the officer was an easy call. They were shocked that a grand jury in New York failed to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo, particularly since the officer was white and Garner was black.
But it’s not what’s on a video that matters so much under the law. Nor is it even whether the officer did or did not harbour racial prejudice. It’s what was going through the mind of the cop in the few seconds when he chose to use force that counts and whether his decision was “reasonable” under the circumstances at that time, not with the benefit of hindsight.
And “reasonable” is defined not by what the general public may think but what police officers in a similar situation would think.
That’s what the U. S. Supreme Court has said. And that’s among the reasons it’s so hard to bring charges against cops when they use force — even lethal force.
All this gives police considerable leeway and if they testify before the grand jury, as Pantaleo did in this case, considerable potential sway since they have the opportunity to describe why what they did seemed necessary.
The case that gave rise to the court’s “reasonableness” standard — and ultimately had such impact on cases such as Michael Brown’s in Ferguson, Missouri, and Garner’s in New York — involved a man named Dethorne Graham, a diabetic with low blood sugar thought to be drunk when stopped by police in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1984. Police thought he looked suspicious, followed him and stopped the car in which he was riding. Other officers arrived.
Graham got out of the car and passed out. A cop rolled him over and handcuffed Graham while his friend pleaded for police to get Graham some sugar. Graham regained consciousness and asked the officers to check his wallet for a diabetic decal that he carried. In response, one of them told him to “shut up” and shoved his face against the hood of the car. They threw Graham headfirst into the police car. Graham’s foot was broken and his shoulder injured.
Graham sued the police, alleging excessive force. He lost.
He appealed his case to the Supreme Court. The court’s 1989 ruling in Graham v. Connor spelled out a legal standard that shaped how juries weigh evidence when considering charges of excessive force.
“The question is whether the officers’ actions are ‘ objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to their underlying intent or motivation,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the opinion.
“The ‘ reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/ 20 vision of hindsight,” Rehnquist explained in the opinion. “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split- second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
The word “objective” is important. It means a jury can’t take into account an officer’s subjective beliefs, including his prejudices and biases, when deciding if his actions were reasonable or not.