When De-escalation Kills

There are occasions when content in the Los Angeles Times is indistinguishable from some screed on Reddit or a leaflet one might see handed out on the quad at some ultra-woke college campus. The latest example is an editorial that appeared in Friday’s edition, in which it lamented the recent deaths of three men who, the editors allege, would be alive but for the bungling of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The editorial begins by pointing out that at least a third of fatal police shootings involve people who were in “mental health crisis or impaired by substance abuse.” It is therefore unsurprising, say the editors, “that there was evidence of psychosis or other problems that affected the behavior of the two men shot dead by Los Angeles police officers, and a third who died after being repeatedly stunned by officers, in the first week of 2023.”

No, not surprising at all to anyone with even the merest familiarity with police work, which does not include the editors of the Times, who decry this as “not acceptable.” The LAPD, they say, “is supposed to be ready for these kinds of encounters, with training, tactics and procedures that diminish the chances that anyone — the suspect, the officer, bystanders — will come to harm.”

With this, the editors reveal their freshman-dorm visions of how they wish the world would be and fail to acknowledge the way it is. There is an all too common misconception, widely shared in the media, that whenever someone is injured or dies at the hands of the police, the officers must in some way have erred. “If only the police had done this instead of that, or that instead of this, the person would still be alive.”

Among the three recent deaths was that of Keenan Anderson, cousin of noted BLM grifter Patrisse Cullors. After becoming involved in a traffic accident in the Venice area, Anderson acted bizarrely and attempted to flee from police officers. He was tased and subdued but was very much alive when he was loaded into an ambulance. He died hours later at a hospital. A sample of Anderson’s blood showed the presence of marijuana and cocaine metabolites.

Most troubling to the Times editors is the death of Takar Smith, who was in his wife’s apartment in violation of a restraining order. The woman informed officers that Smith had not been taking his medication for a mental health problem. Body camera footage from the incident reveals the discussions the officers had before going to the apartment and the lengths they went to in negotiating with Smith, even after he became aggressive by threatening them with a chair.

It is true that, as the editorial points out, the officers did not attempt to summon a “SMART unit,” (Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team), in which a police officer is partnered with a mental health clinician. “[The police] should not have entered the home without a mental health worker,” says the Times.

We are told three such units were on duty across the city at the time of the incident. There of course is no way of knowing if the presence of one of them would have made for a more favorable outcome, but my experience working with them suggests it would not have. As the body camera footage shows, Smith became aggressive seconds after opening the door when the officers knocked. Faced with such behavior, a clinician accompanying the officers would have stepped back and waited while the officers dealt with the apparent threat. And it’s difficult to imagine any clinician dealing any more patiently with Smith than the officer who negotiated with him for the 15 minutes that elapsed between him opening the door and the officers’ initial use of force, which was the use of a Taser.

Which brings up a point missing from the Times editorial and the paper’s news story covering the incident. The L.A. Times, and virtually every other media outlet, have continually called for officers to be patient and practice de-escalation in this type of incident, but I would argue that, in this case, they waited too long before using force on Smith. Consider: the officers were told there was a large knife in the kitchen, yet even after Smith had picked up a chair and threatened the officers with it, he was still allowed to retreat to the kitchen where he armed himself with the knife.

Yes, there is a time to de-escalate, but this was not it. In a bygone era, before de-escalation became the default practice, as soon as Smith picked up the chair in the living room and menaced the officers with it, he would have been shot with a Taser and/or a less-lethal projectile, then swarmed and subdued by some number of the six police officers at the scene. (A sergeant was also present, but absent exigent circumstances sergeants direct uses of force rather than participate in them.) As it happened, Smith was allowed access to the knife he wielded at the officers, prompting two of them to shoot him.

The only value in having a SMART unit at the scene in this incident would have been in checking the box that they were there so as to answer the type of uninformed criticism displayed in the Times editorial. The notion that some clinician could have conjured up the magic words that would have coaxed Smith into surrendering is a dangerous fantasy.