On June 26, 2008, a 21 year old local resident who had come back to town for his younger brother's graduation was shot to death by police following a traffic stop.
Over the last two weekends this has been a subject of a few debates concerning the police, the reason for the stop (which has to date never been addressed) and of course deadly force. Some assume he was stopped for the crime of being a latino in a predominanly white town, others have postulated it was because it ocurred around closing time for local bars and he was stopped for suspicion of DWI. What no one will ever know is why he decided to run.
Rumor has it that he was told to turn the car of by an officer at the driver's door, while another officer was at the passenger door serving as back up. When he failed to comply the first officer reached into the car to shut off the ignition and the driver tried to take off in the car. While the circumstances are part speculation and part unofficial leaks, what followed is that the officer on back up fired 5 times before the car crashed through a fence and into an above ground pool. The driver was pronounced dead at the hospital which was located about a mile away.
People are rightfully angry about this event, among other reasons, it is the third officer involed shooting in less than 10 years, for a town that size in the middle of suburbia that is alarming in and of itself.
But what I find most egregious is that New Jersey has made stun guns, TASERS and the such illegal for all purposes, civiian and law enforcement. This ruling was made following a single incident in NYC about 20 years ago where a suspect said the police used a stun gun on him during an interrogation. The New Jersey State Attorney General immediately banned ownership or use of stun guns in the state.
But by removing that less than lethal device from the arsenal of weapons available to police they have reduced police to a simple choice, kill or be killed. Instead of the back up officer being able to point a taser at the driver during the stop "just in case", the officer had his right hand on the butt of his S&W 10mm service weapon. Rather than having a choice of shooting the driver with 50,000 volts delivered by the TASER the officer decided that he had to use deadly force to save his partner.
The law that took less than lethal weapons out of the hands of police officers 2 decades ago continbuted to this situation that ended one life, and permanently affcted the lives of his parents and two younger brohers, his extended family, as well as the life of the police officers involved.
Knee jerk, "feel good" legislation is often passed in response to isolated incidents such as the stun gun torture that may or may not have happened, but the results of the shortsightedness of those laws can be devestating. When you take less than less-than-lethal alternatives out of the hands of the police you have left them only with lethal weapons.
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