Washington Metropolitan Police shot and killed 34-year-old Miriam Carey on Thursday. Carey was driving a black Infiniti when she was approached by Secret Service officers as she neared a barrier close to the White House. She then made “an erratic three-point turn, striking the barrier and backing up into an officer before driving away,” according to CNN. It was at this point that police began firing shots at the unarmed woman.
Carey led police on a chase that ended in her death on Capitol Hill. Her 1-year-old daughter who was in the back seat was not harmed. According to later reports, Carey was being treated for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her family denies these allegations, but they said she was diagnosed with postpartum depression and psychosis after the birth of her daughter.
Carey’s death is reminiscent of Jonathan Ferrell just a few weeks ago in Charlotte. After he was involved in a serious car accident on the morning of Sept. 14, Ferrell ran to the nearest house for help. The woman who answered the door reportedly expected to see her husband, but when she didn’t recognize the man, she closed the door and called 911. When the woman refused to let him in, Ferrell ran toward police, possibly seeking their assistance. Officer Randall Kerrick fired his weapon 12 times, killing Ferrell. Police charged Kerrick with voluntary manslaughter, saying his shooting was “excessive” and that Kerrick “did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter.”
Despite the fact that police killed unarmed civilians in both cases, the Capital Police involved in Carey’s death will not face the same consequences as Kerrick. Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the officers acted within commonly accepted use-of-force policies.
Washington police had several reasons to be cautious. Just a few weeks ago, Aaron Alexis killed 12 workers in the Navy Yard and injured eight others. And due to the government shutdown, Washington was more vulnerable than usual, as there have been fewer police on patrol, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Knowing what we know now— that Carey was unarmed and that she had her 1-year-old daughter in the car—it’s easy to say that police shouldn’t have killed Carey. But given her behavior and the situation in Washington, D.C., the police at least had reason to be suspicious of her intentions. “We can’t Monday-morning quarterback the officers based on information that comes out later,” Richard Weinblatt said in a column for CNN. “We can only look at what a reasonable officer knew or should have known, and did or should have done, in a given situation.”
Weinblatt, a former police chief and dean of the School of Public and Social Services at Ivy Tech Community College, said, “Pending the final facts, it appears that all three prongs of the ‘objective reasonableness’ standard were present.”
I wish the officers could have stopped Carey without killing her, and I wish there was a good argument for shooting to wound rather than to kill. In a more ideal (but by no means the most ideal) situation, police would have shot Carey in the arm or leg. But aiming for and successfully striking a person’s limbs is extremely difficult, especially when that persion is in a moving vehicle. Moreover, this method for stopping criminals has other issues.
The limbs contain many major arteries. As Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute, said, “A suspect who’s hit there can bleed out in seconds if one of the major arteries is severed, so again shooting just to wound may not result in just wounding.”
Lewinski also said that if an officer did manage to wound a suspect, then the suspect’s “ability to threaten lives hasn’t necessarily been stopped.”
Police killed unarmed civilians in the cases of both Carey and Ferrell. Killing innocent people will never be ok and neither the Ferrell family nor the Carey family should forgive the police for the death of their loved ones. But at least in the case of Carey, unlike in the case of Ferrell, the police were clearly promoting the safety of other civilians and not just the safety of themselves.
