The Denver Postjim spencer
Police defend the indefensible
Friday, May 07, 2004 -
You saw it 18 days ago on a sign at a rally protesting the suspension of James Turney, the Denver cop who killed a disabled, knife-toting teenager named Paul Childs.
"Tell us what Turney should have done?" the sign implored. You heard it last week after an angry police union met with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. "I just want to know what was wrong with what Turney did," an officer told a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News. "I'll tell you one thing, if someone is stupid enough to pull a knife on me, I'll kill them." You felt it Tuesday in the police defense of Taser abuse outlined in this newspaper. From March 2003 to March 2004, Denver's finest often fired 50,000-volt electrified Taser barbs into unarmed people, some who weren't charged with crimes and 16 who were already handcuffed. Most Denver police officers do a hard job well. But reaction to Turney's suspension and to Taser use screams for an attitude adjustment. There's a difference between public service and self-service. The cops cling to the notion that it is OK to protect themselves by shocking handcuffed people or those who represent no serious threat. They insist that Turney properly shot Childs within a few seconds of seeing him, even though the teenager never tried to stab Turney, even though Turney had three officers with drawn guns backing him up. Any cop would've made the same call, a Denver officer told me. "This (what Turney did) is not a mistake," he said. "Paul Childs made a decision not to drop his knife. We are the guardians of the city. But when we give an order, we don't just do it for power and control. I have a family I want to go home to at night." So did Helen Childs, who watched her son take four slugs at close range. Many cops and their supporters blame Helen Childs for calling police to disarm her son because she couldn't. They blame her for expecting police to settle things without taking her son's life. Police apply the same reasoning to using Tasers on rowdy, unarmed suspects. It's the difference, the cops will tell you, between a risky physical struggle with a suspect and the application of nonlethal force - a few seconds of electroshock therapy to avoid weeks spent nursing bumps and bruises. The cops boil it down to loyalties: Question police actions, and you must be anti-cop. In other words, it's about good guys versus bad guys. Police still don't see that it can be about respecting tough choices, but remembering who works for whom. That's why tasing abuses get exposed. It's why they must be addressed. That's why guys like Turney deserve to be fired. That's why the Denver City Charter should change if the Civil Service Commission reinstates Turney in an upcoming appeal. That's why if Turney's punishment stands, Denver will have a valuable new standard for police discipline. The litmus test for police needs to change. Questions don't equal betrayal. As police officers kill disabled teenagers, as they tase the innocent, the old "us" and "them" distinctions disappear. As police violence enters gray areas, it gets harder to figure out who "they" are. For the record, you don't fire Tasers at handcuffed suspects or unarmed people who haven't committed crimes. For the record, Jim Turney should have taken a step back from Paul Childs, closed the security door between them and gotten more information before pulling the trigger. For the record, police serve and protect citizens; citizens don't serve and protect police. Those are answers to the protest signs, the words and the statistics of the past few weeks. But as long as the cops and their supporters keep asking, public safety in Denver will remain questionable. Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at jspencer@denverpost.com or 303-820-1771.
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