Without “Qualified Immunity,” Would Cops Be So Quick to Kill?

The story had a familiar beginning, but took an unexpected detour en route to an unanticipated conclusion.
Dante Price, a young black man, was trying to visit his girlfriend and infant son at the Summit Square apartment complex in Dayton, Ohio. Price was confronted by two uniformed, armed officers who told him had been banned from the property as a trespasser.
As the encounter grew heated, the officers drew their guns and ordered Price from his car. After the driver refused to comply, one of the officers contacted the Dayton PD to request backup; on the recording, his partner can be heard screaming at Price, ‘Get out of the car, now!’ Instead of exiting his vehicle and prostrating himself at the feet of the officers, Price hit the gas and attempted to flee.
The officers unloaded seventeen shots at Price, three of which struck him. The 25-year-old plowed his Cadillac into a parked car. He was dead before the paramedics arrived.
‘We got a guy trying to assault us with his vehicle,’ one of the officers reported to Dayton PD headquarters immediately after the shooting. ‘We had to fire at him. He charged us.’
Within a few hours, an internal investigation conducted by veteran police officer Ivan G. Burke concluded that the shooting of the unarmed motorist was ‘justified.’ By disobeying orders and attempting to flee, Price had caused the officers to ‘fear for their lives’ and the shooting was therefore an act of self-defense.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on January 1, 2015.