Don't Carry Guns, Don't Run From the Cops, and if You Do, Expect to Be Treated Roughly

So here we are again. An armed suspect runs from the police only to be pursued, subdued, disarmed, and arrested. In a sane world, the officers would be lauded for their efforts. Alas, the world is far from sane, and few portions of it are farther from sanity than Chicago and its surrounding communities. So, instead of being praised for removing an armed criminal from the streets, the officers find themselves villainized for using what the uninformed or willfully blind perceive as excessive force. The incident was captured on police and bystander cameras, and when the footage hit social media and the television news, it inspired indignation among those predisposed to or professionally reliant on outrage.

The suspect in this case, 17-year-old Hadi Abuatelah, was injured but not killed, as he well might have been, yet despite the fact that he remains alive to reoffend in the future (as he surely will), his arrest has engendered cries of “justice for Hadi.”

The incident occurred Wednesday in Oak Lawn, Ill., a suburb adjacent to Chicago’s Southwest Side, when police stopped a car for having a cracked windshield and an improperly displayed license plate. A police dashboard camera shows Abuatelah exit the back seat of the car and an officer begin to search him. A bag slung over his shoulder rests at his right hip, and he turns slightly so as to keep the bag away from the officer’s reach, a sure warning sign that something is amiss. Abuatelah then breaks and runs, and the dash camera in another police car shows him clutching the bag as he crosses a street shortly before being tackled.

Yes, the subduing, disarming, and arresting did not come about without the use of force, which at first blush may seem troubling until you learn Abuatelah’s bag contained a loaded semi-automatic pistol. He refused to release his grip on the bag even after being tackled, thus bringing about the pummeling he took to his head and body. It is the pummeling that has put so many knickers in a knot.

“Officers are allowed to use force to some degree,” said Zaid Abdallah, an attorney hired by Abuatelah’s family, “but they’re not allowed to use excessive force. And this was extremely excessive and savage and malicious.”

Bilge. I don’t know how or when the expectation arose that an armed and fleeing suspect has the right to an injury-free apprehension regardless of his level of resistance, but anyone entertaining such an expectation is sadly misguided. I would argue that the injuries Abuatelah suffered from being punched are preferable to those he would have experienced by being shot, which he might have been.

To his great credit, Oak Lawn police chief Daniel Vittorio defended his officers. “Were they supposed to wait for him to pull [the gun] out?” he asked. Thank you, Chief. Would that there were more like you.

Attorney Abdallah tried to minimize Abuatelah’s actions. “I can tell you for sure the firearm was never brandished,” he said, “the firearm was never pointed.”

And therefore, what? Why did Abuatelah have a gun in the first place? Why didn’t he leave it in the car as he got out? Why didn’t he drop it as he ran? None of these questions will be asked of Abuatelah lest the answers impede the effort to turn him into a victim. We will soon be hearing what a good kid he was and all the usual nonsense one hears when some young thug gets lumped up while resisting arrest.

When Abuatelah returns to the streets with another gun – and given the state of the justice system in Cook County, who doubts that he will? – the only question is whether it will be him or someone else who ends up dead on the sidewalk.