I haven’t written about the case of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, primarily because it seemed–as usual, judging by media accounts alone–to be a clearly justified shooting by a police officer. The social justice grievance industry did its best to stir up rage, but the facts of this case kept getting in the way, as the photo and tweet heading this article indicate. Rice’s toy gun is on the left. Consider this from Allahpundit at Hot Air:
It’s also true that the cops were never told [emphasis mine] what the police dispatcher heard when the 911 call came in about Rice, namely, that he was probably a kid and that his gun was “probably fake.” But the knock on the cops isn’t that they inexcusably mistook a gun that was obviously fake for a genuine weapon. The knock on them is that they rolled right up on Rice in their cruiser upon arriving at the park and had put a bullet in his belly within two seconds of confronting him, before they had made any reasonable attempt to gauge whether he was a true threat or not.
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer interviewed several police “experts” who, in watching the video of the encounter, believed the officers used poor tactics that contributed to Rice’s death. Their primary complaint seems to be that the officers drove too closely to Rice. I use quotation marks with “experts” not to impugn their character or qualifications–I know nothing about them–but because there are no consistent and universally accepted standards for what qualifies one to be an expert in such situations. An example:
Thomas Aveni, executive director of the Police Policy Studies Council, a research-based consultation corporation based out of New Hampshire, also questioned why the officers got so close to Tamir so quickly. He said the poor quality of the video makes it difficult to create an accurate account of what transpired, but the officers may have shouted the commands through an open window.’
If Garmback had pulled to within, say, 75 feet of Rice and told him to drop his weapon, both sides would have had time to communicate. As it is, Loehmann claims he yelled at Rice repeatedly to show him his hands as the cruiser was rolling up and saw Rice reach into his waistband. Was that a threatening gesture or Rice’s ill-timed attempt to show them the gun was fake by producing it? No one knows because the close proximity left them no time to find out. As Rice’s elbow began to come up from his waistband, Loehmann (who’d been pressured into resigning from a different police force a few years earlier due to “dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress”) had to make a snap decision whether to fire. With more distance between them, he might not have. And if Rice’s gun had been real, greater distance would have potentially saved their lives: As one of the cops quoted in the excerpt above noted, a close-range confrontation benefits the suspect because he’s probably less skilled with a gun than trained officers are. In a shootout from 75 feet, you like the odds of two cops against one criminal. From 10 feet, it’s really just a matter of who draws first.
Actually, that assumption is incorrect, and while timing is important, “who draws first” isn’t the only issue. More about that shortly.
Let me remind you: An Ohio judge, when petitioned by law to issue his opinion of whether Loehmann and Garmback should be charged criminally, recommended four separate counts for Loehmann — including murder — and negligent homicide and dereliction of duty charges for both. Even if you blanch at the idea of calling what happened here murder, why don’t the ‘very poor’ tactics support one of the lesser charges? That’s what makes this incident so hard for many people to swallow, I think. A fatal confrontation probably could have been avoided with a more cautious approach, especially considering that there were no bystanders near Rice at risk of being shot.
But that’s half the story. The other half is the fact that the county prosecutor, Timothy McGinty, extended these two cops the same exceptional courtesy that Darren Wilson received in the shooting of Michael Brown — namely, he presented all the facts to the grand jury instead of only those facts most beneficial to the prosecution’s side. That’s good procedure, as it means someone who’s likely to be found not guilty at trial can go free sooner due to lack of probable cause.
A quick review of the facts:
Tamir Rice, a black 12-year old, did not look like a common 12 year old. He weighed 195 pounds and was at least 5’7” tall. From any distance, he looked much older.
Multiple witnesses saw him playing with and pointing a gun at people in a park–security video also recorded him doing it–and made 911 calls.
At least one caller said they thought that Rice might be “a kid,” and the gun might be fake, but the dispatcher did not relay this information to the two responding officers.
The officers reasonably believed they were facing a real threat from someone who had been threatening multiple people with a real gun.
Rice, who was in a sort of covered gazebo as the officers arrived (take the Hot Air link to see a video of the incident; warning: it is less than clear), approached them, and reached for his toy gun, pulling it from his waistband.
Rice stood up and was moving toward the approaching police vehicle even before it was within 30-40 yards of him, almost certainly making him seem aggressive to the officers.
Officer Frank Garmback, the driver of the police vehicle, testified that his vehicle slid on the ground and did not stop where he intended. The shooting was in November of 2014; snow was present and the ground and grass, wet.
Officer Timothy Loehmann, who shot Rice, testified that he, as the vehicle approached, repeatedly yelled at Rice though his open window to show the officers his hands, but Rice did not, and went for the gun.
Loehmann, followed by Garmback, exited the car and Loehmann fired within two seconds.
Consider this from the Guardian:
McGinty [prosecutor] argued that Tamir’s death was caused by a ‘perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications by all involved that day’ but there was no evidence of criminal misconduct by police. The two officers believed they were responding to a ‘potential active shooter situation’ and had not been provided with crucial details of a 911 call reporting that Rice was probably a juvenile with a gun that was ‘probably fake’, McGinty said.
‘Had the officers been aware of these qualifiers, the training officer who was driving might have approached the scene with less urgency; lives may not have been put at stake,’ McGinty said. [skip]
McGinty argued on Monday that a grainy enhanced CCTV image of the moment before Loehmann opened fire showed it was ‘indisputable that Tamir was drawing his gun from his waist’. McGinty said this single image was ‘perhaps the most critical piece of evidence” in the whole case.
‘At the point where they suddenly came together, both Tamir and the rookie officer were no doubt frightened.’ McGinty said. ‘If we put ourselves in the victim’s shoes, as prosecutors and detectives try to do, it is likely that Tamir, whose size made him look much older and who had been warned that his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day, either intended to hand it over to the officers or show them it wasn’t a real gun.
‘But there was no way for the officers to know that because they saw events rapidly unfolding in front of them from a very different perspective.
ANALYSIS:
There is no doubt, based on the incontrovertible facts, that any reasonable officer in the same situation would have believed they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death. Their actions, under Ohio law, were indeed reasonable. The video, mediocre as it is, and all of the evidence, supports the officer’s statements.
There are, however, several other issues. Garmback was Loehmann’s field training officer. Loehmann was a trainee. Garmback was driving the car; it was his decisions that put both of them close to Rice.
There is no question that it is generally best to keep a safe distance from any potential criminal, and to approach them only when it is most advantageous for you. I always taught my trainees–I was a field training officer–that it is generally smart to observe an animal in its native habitat for a while before interacting with it. In that Cleveland situation, I would ideally have parked out of sight of Rice, and using the binoculars I always carried, watch him for a while.
If there was sufficient cover and/or concealment, I would have approached on foot, quietly, and kept Rice unaware of me as long as possible. I would not have confronted him without cover. I cannot tell from the video if that tactic would have been possible. Failing that, I would have approached in my vehicle, but stopped some distance away–how far would depend on a wide variety of factors present at the time–keeping my vehicle as cover between Rice and me.
The police experts are right: Garmback possibly should have used better tactics. So the officers should have been charged with murder? No.
In any situation, the issue is not–can never be–whether the officers acted absolutely perfectly, whether there was nothing that they, or the best police officer in the world, could have done differently. The issue is, and must be, whether their actions were reasonable under the circumstances as they or any reasonable police officer knew them, or should have known them, at the time.
Any other standard makes police work impossible. Who would become a police officer knowing that even if their actions were inherently reasonable, they could find themselves charged with felonies?
This factor is also present in the Freddie Gray case. The prosecutions case rests almost entirely on the idea that because the Baltimore PD had a recently changed rule that required officers to use seat belts on arrestees, the officers in that case were inherently unreasonable in not using a seatbelt on Gray. This assertion is dangerous nonsense.
The officers could not have reasonably predicted that failing to use a seatbelt on Gray would result in his death. Few, if any, Baltimore officers use seat belts on arrestees, and prior to Gray’s death, no one else, in the history of the BPD–hundreds of thousands of arrestees– had ever been injured and killed as he was. This was a potential violation of internal policy, certainly not a crime.
In the Rice case, there was no policy violated by the officers. The argument for charges is that the officer’s inadequate tactics–actually, Garmback’s–put them in a position where their only choice was to shoot Rice when he pulled his gun.
Time and distance are important to a police officer. So is training. Remember this?
…a close-range confrontation benefits the suspect because he’s probably less skilled with a gun than trained officers are. In a shootout from 75 feet, you like the odds of two cops against one criminal.
These assumptions are far from universal truths. A great many citizens are far better at tactics and shooting than police officers. There are many well-documented cases where officers and suspects emptied their guns at each other at inside-a-phone-booth ranges, and hit nothing but the surrounding scenery. In a 2012 article, I wrote about a case where two NYC officers shot and killed an armed murderer at very close range, but in the process shot and wounded nine innocent bystanders.
In a shootout from 75 feet–25 yards–most police officers wouldn’t be able to reliably hit a person. Twenty-five yards may not sound like much, until one paces it off and sees how small a human sized target appears at that range. Very little police handgun training and qualification requires shooting at 25 yards. And if two officers had shot Rice rather than one, imagine the outrage that would have provoked.
In the Rice case, I would certainly have preferred to be at least 10 yards from Rice with a police car between us. But even then, even at 25 yards, if Rice pulled his gun, as the evidence clearly shows he did, I would have been completely justified in shooting. Would I have expected him to be able, reliably, to hit me at great distance. No, but there is always such a thing as a lucky shot, and a handgun can easily be deadly out to 100 yards, perhaps more.
Could I have waiting an extra few seconds to perhaps work out another outcome? Perhaps. During my police days, I was very, very fast. I knew exactly how many fractions of a second I had in those situations, and I hit what I aimed at, but I practiced dry firing and drawing every day. Most police officers don’t have those skills. I gained them through constant, daily practice at my own expense. Most police officers practice only once or twice a year when required. But even at that distance, if Rice fired, I would have had to duck, giving him time to charge me and get into a potentially superior position that would negate any advantage of cover.
Would I have recognized Rice’s gun as a toy? Unlikely. I was and am far better acquainted with firearms that most police officers, but the circumstances of this case make that kind of positive identification–by anyone–very unlikely indeed. The law doesn’t even require that the suspect have a gun.
Once while dealing with a man determined to commit suicide by cop, the man executed a drawing stroke while reaching behind his right side. I yelled “gun” while simultaneously leaping behind nearby cover and drawing, and because of my training, had the time to recognize that the man was holding only a black billfold. His movements and the way he held the billfold and thrust it toward me looked exactly like someone pulling and pointing a handgun, which was exactly what he intended. I didn’t shoot him, but if I had, I would have been completely justified. My fellow officers were still standing still, dumbfounded by what they witnessed.
The point is, better tactics might have given the officers a potentially better outcome, but they may not. That was not a certainty upon which any reasonable police officer could depend. Without question, officers should always give themselves, through smart tactics, every opportunity possible, but things don’t always work to officer’s advantage. Sometimes, even the best tactics aren’t enough.
That doesn’t mean that the officers should not face internal discipline, and certainly, retraining. The Cleveland PD surely has cause to wonder about the wisdom of Officer Garmback continuing to train new officers. He put Officer Loehmann in the position of having to shoot.
One person alone was responsible for Tamir Rice’s death: Tamir Rice. The facts and the law support it.
Tragedy? Certainly. Could better tactics have prevented his death? Maybe. There is no way to know.
As in the Gray case, regardless of any criminal charges or department discipline, their lives, and the lives of their families, are forever changed for the worse. It’s highly unlikely they’ll be able to continue in the Cleveland PD. Their police careers may be over anywhere. They are surely going to be sued civilly, and the Obama Department of Justice will not let an opportunity to get its claws into these officers, and another major American law enforcement agency, pass.
The Cleveland PD, and officers everywhere, have lessons to learn from this case. But the most important lesson for any citizen is never to place police officers in a situation where they will have to decide, within seconds, whether you live or die. Trust me when I say that most aren’t prepared, in training or temperament, to give you the extra fractions of a second necessary to survive. Very often, the police will be right in shooting.
The protests and racial turmoil relating to this case will not soon diminish. There is too much political advantage to be exploited, and the potency–and danger–of the Ferguson Effect grows.
Great insights as always.. It seems that incidents that require retraining , new evaluation of tactics , discipline, demotion , firing ect , get tumbled into criminal charges and nothing positive ever gets learned . By the time all the fireworks are over everyone goes back to business as usual . too Too much energy spent on blame, not enough on training .
As any present-day Democrat will tell you: it’s “outrageous” that every police officer in every PD is not PERFECT in judgement and performance. That one or two or six in the entire country shoots someone out of lack of preparedness and training is “outrageous.” The police FAIL TO UNDERSTAND that they are part of the Infallible Democratic World View. When they “misbehave” and FAIL – that disrupts the Democratic Utopian World View which, as every Democrat knows, is a perfectly envisioned and crafted Plan for Heaven on Earth.
I hope this explains to you all why the Natural and Perfect Response to such failures is the complete damnation of all police and that, according to Democrat Edict: we may all now completely ignore and disregard police officers and continue to demonstrate outrage by attacking police and setting everything in sight on fire. :-)
Great victory for reason and justice against the forces of anarchy and social justice.
I expect Cleveland to continue to improve as a city while Baltimore and Ferguson collapse into enormous ghetto violent lawless slums.
We hear nothing now about the fact that the orange barrel covering indicating it was a toy was missing or taped over as was mentioned in the original media reports. Supposedly Rice had learning disabilities, but that wasn’t mentioned in the latest reports by the media. So why was he pointing a “gun” at people and if someone thought he was a kid with a toy gun, didn’t they say something to him, maybe from a distance. So who changed the toys markings on a firearm looking toy and allowed a child to carry it around in public. Yet, to may knowledge, that hasn’t been addressed. If it wasn’t Rice, who modified the toy. Someone is possibly guilty of involuntary manslaughter, IMO.
Facts are for unfeeling people. Those who “truly care” see a 12 year old child playing in the park who was gunned down by over zealous white cops. Don’t try logic on them – it doesn’t work. Only feelings matter. They know what they know and have no interest in hearing any other point of view.
I definitely do not agree with the Freddie Gray comment. It hasn’t been ascertained whether the use of seatbelt is what caused his death. It looked to me from the video as if he leg was broken and he already had a neck injury when he was being picked up by 3 officer. I say that because it looks like he wet his pants…. Baltimore police had a history of giving people rough rides ‘nickel rides’ and what not. Freddie Gray wasn’t the first person to end up with a broken neck after a van ride by Baltimore Police…
Anyway back to Tamir Rice, I don’t think the shooting is reasonable. There were no reports of shots. No One was running for their life. No One panicking. Even with the 2 details left out of the 911 call (1. he was underage 2. the gun is a toy) The caller did not report a shooting… This detail is left out of your article. You can’t save people from a shooting that didn’t occur. But 2 officers attempted to and now a 12 year old is dead, I could ditto those comments about John Crawford in Beaver Creek as well.
You comment at the end of the ‘Ferguson effect’ I could spend days saying how it’s wrong. People DO for their rights and safety need to record police stop. People DO need to hold government accountable. People DO need to demand the facts (and not the “we investigated ourselves” and found this out) about these shooting. People do need to show solidarity in times of need when a wrong is committed. If that makes some officers uncomfortable, maybe those people should find another line of work. You’re in the public doing public sector work, then you and are accountable to the public
Dear Tony:
Thanks for your comment. It is the prosecution that is claiming that failing to use a seatbelt on Gray was the direct cause of Gray’s death and was a criminal act. They do not, in fact, claim that Gray was injured–at all–until sometime between the 2nd and 4th stop during his transport in the police van, though the foremost forensic scientist in America has testified it happened between the 5th and final stops.
I am unaware of anyone else that suffered a broken neck during a BPD van transport, nor has the prosecution claimed that. If you have a link, I’d appreciate knowing that.
No one is saying that Rice was shot because he had fired a gun or was shooting anyone. That’s not the point or at issue in the case, which is why I didn’t mention it.
Regular readers know that I am indeed hard on the police when they deserve it. In Ferguson, they did not. There is no apparent evidence that they deserve condemnation in Baltimore in the Freddie Gray case. By writing about the Ferguson Effect, I condemn only irrational and unreasonable blaming of the police for doing what any reasonable and competent police officer would do. That, particularly when elevated to a national crusade, is harmful not only to all police officers, but to the public. I hope we could agree on that.
HI Mike
The first issue you missed in my post was the threat in the Tamir Rice issue. My point is there was no threat. If you rewind to the 911 call, even the caller states that. It is unreasonable to use for on someone who is not posing a theeat. That is the issue.
I cannot comment on the prosecution claims in court. I am commenting specifically on the video a bystander posted that show Freddie Gray being picked up and dragged to the van handcuffed. To me this is clearly an injured man. The pant wetting is clear medical evidence of a neck injury. I’m not sure If I agree that an ADDITIONAL injury MAY HAVE occurred between the second and fourth stops. One may jqve. Since the police did not record and watch his state during the entire van ride, well never know. IMHO this was intentional. BPD did not want clear evidnce of Freddie Gray’s state to CYA. The video recorded by a bystander shows an injured man being dragged to the the van. Paramedics should have been called after the initial arrest.
As far a the Ferguson effect, I think you need to look at what this means. It’s is the use of video to record officer stops and physicality being posted on YouTube causing them to be less aggressive. This lessened aggression some say is increasing crime. I see no evidence of this at all. As far as your comment about what happened in Ferguson, this has been argued back and fourth endlessly. Due to the lack of video, the facts will ever be known. As far as I’m concerned the “it looked lie a demon” comment in Darren Wilsons grand jury testimony tells me everything I need to know. So people should be protesting because Wilson was IMHO another agent in Ferguson targeting blacks as the DOJ stated later in their report about the Ferguson city politics.
In both Freddie Gray and Mike brown, if more bystander video was recorded, we’d have more evidence.
Dear Tony:
What matters in any police shooting is what the police knew at the time, or reasonably should have known at the time. Remember that the officers were not told that Rice was “a kid,” nor were they told that the gun might be a toy. They had every reason to believe that the adult-sized Rice had a real gun.
In the Gray case, what matter is the evidence presented in court, not anyone’s interpretation of a few seconds–or minutes–of video. The best evidence suggests that Gray was playing to the crowd, and was not injured when arrested. And we do indeed know when he was injured, via the testimony by the most experienced and expert forensic pathologist in America, and perhaps the world. You must remember that no one is followed around by a camera crew, recording every moment of their existence. The officers in the Gray case must be convicted by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. There is none.
The Brown case was so conclusive even the Holder DOJ couldn’t make racial hay with it. Unlike some think, video is not magic. Taken out of context, it is often misleading, even useless.
As to the reality of the Ferguson Effect, the experts are the police officers who, across the nation, are making plain with their words and actions that they are doing as little as possible, and staying entirely away from certain favored minority groups. The skyrocketing crime rates, particularly in major cities, reveal the effect of the officer’s reasonable inaction.
There was supposed to be a video of Gray’s transport. The van was equipped with video, but it was “malfunctioning”, as always seems to be the case when there is a death in custody. It’s interesting that when there are real penalties for the cops when the equipment is “malfunctioning” (like the Rialto CA cams) then the malfunctions all go away.
That’s absolutely wrong. Multiple suspects had settled lawsuits with BPD because they had broken necks — at least two paralyzed, one as a quadriplegic — in the last decade from being transported in BPD vans without seatbelts. Suspects were regularly seriously injured by being transported by BPD. This is likely the reason that the discretion was removed by policy from the officers. They had repeatedly shown that they could not be trusted with this discretion and that they lacked the judgment to apply it reasonably. Gray’s death was easily foreseeable, and the policy change did foresee it.
As for Rice, you are right — we can debate whether or not it was bad police work, but it wasn’t criminal. Anyone would be justified in defending themselves in that situation. Fire them for bad police work, but there’s no criminal case here (unlike Baltimore.)
Dear everlastingphelps:
Regarding the Gray case, I have heard people assert that such things happened, but I’ve yet to see any actual link or other proof of that assertion. Even if we assume that, let’s say ten people suffered neck injuries over the history of the BPD while riding in vans without seat belts, that must be analyzed in light of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered no injuries. Again, if we assume that 10, 20, or even 30 such cases exist, that surely represents much less than a single percent of the potential target population, and we are not taking into account the very significant officer safety issues involved. One does not build reasonable certainty of Gray’s–or anyone else’s death–from that.
I don’t know enough about what motivated the policy change, to comment definitively one it, but I do know police administrators and the way they think. A single freak incident is often sufficient to cause them to write policy regardless of whether it makes sense or endangers officers. We cannot read too much into that either.
It’s odd to assert that since I have linked to examples here.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html
There were no officer safety issues here. Assuming that we take Porter’s testimony as true, there is no reason that after helping gray up (CERTAINLY the time of highest risk for some sort of gun grab by Gray) that he couldn’t be belted in then — and in fact, if he has to be helped up, that indicates that he SHOULD be belted in since he can’t hold himself up.
I’m sick of the “officer safety” cult. It’s time for cops to start living up to the “hero” tag instead of “everyone goes home”. What that phrase really means is, “everyone with a badge goes home, and we will do it over a pile of dead citizens and their little dogs too.”
Dear everlastingphelps:
I am aware of that article. It speaks to two–two–such incidents in the entire history of the BPD, and we should keep in mind that settlements are often made regardless of whether officers did anything wrong.
My comments about officer safety refer to the reality of officer safety issues as a whole, which anyone making policy should be taking into account. Obviously, that’s not the case at the BPD.
I’m afraid you’re erecting a straw man over this issue. There is no conflict between officer safety issues and officers risking their lives on a daily basis. As always, where officers are in the wrong, I’m more than willing to take them to task. I have still seen no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in this case.
I’ve seen evidence that you are willing to concede when the evidence is overwhelming. I have not seen objectivity, only advocacy.
There is no evidence that there are only two cases, only that two cases are recounted here — which absolutely refutes the ‘never before’ excuse.
We know that unrestrained people break their necks in BPD vans. The fact that it doesn’t happen other places SUPPORTS the theory that this is the result of “hard rides” misconduct rather than accident, in fact. That’s not going to come in to any of the cases because it is irrelevant under the rules of evidence, and the overall rules are more important than this case.
And that’s really where th argument is about. I say that BPD should be treated like any other citizen in Baltimore — and you are angry because they ARE, rather than having pre-Magna Carta style “better than” status.
Dear everlastingphelps:
Yes, two cases were recounted in the Baltimore Sun article. I suspect, however, if there were more of that kind and severity, they would surely be mentioning them, don’t you?
My standards for evidence are very simple: probable cause for arrest, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt for filing charges and conviction. I require nothing more, or less.
You’re making an enormous leap of logic in asserting that because–as far as we know–in the entire history of the BPD, two people (3 including Freddie Gray) suffered serious neck injuries, “hard rides” were the cause of all. Few, if any prisoners have been seat belted in BPD vans, yet only 3, that we know of, have suffered that kind of injury. If “hard rides” are so common, where are the thousands of injuries we might expect from such a practice?
And you’re right, that’s not going to be part of the evidence in the Gray case, because there is no evidence whatever that happened in that case.
I’m not angry about this case at all, nor do I think anyone can find evidence of anger in my writings. The officers are being treated more severely than citizens, specifically because they are police officers. Under your standard, they would never have been charged.
So your argument is that a private citizen can force someone into the back of their van against that person’s will, drive them around for a while, and have them come out dead from a broken neck on the other side and they won’t be charged with anything?
My thinking is ,If they threw 6.4 million at Freddie and his case is so lacking in proof, who is to assume that the other injuries were induced by police or the resisting detainees. It is as much indicative of a city govt , that just doesn’t care ,as it is not their money, than of any malfeasance. Commenters have made the assertion( I can not vouch for it) that there is a scratch my back mentality between the politicos of Baltimore and the injury lawyers .,Mosby and Billy Murphy’s schenanigans come to mind.The one case that is paraded happened 10 years ago . If it was malfeasance why did it take 10 years to change the seat belt rule.
You should check your assumption — the case is not so lacking in proof, as evidenced by the hung jury. You can argue that the case is marginal, or that there’s a slim reasonable doubt that the jury missed, but to continue this “there’s no case at all” argument is akin to a rejection of the entire jury system.
I suspect that the other cases were settled because they were stronger — in that the victim survived to testify as to how the ride actually went. Here, there’s no testimony from Gray as to how he was treated.
Also, remember that the only change to the rule was, “Belt everyone in unless you think it isn’t worth it” to “belt everyone in unless you have a very specific reason not to.” The policy hasn’t been “don’t belt anyone in” for over 20 years.
It’s more akin to TV rules with your kids. Your original rule was, “no TV unless it is educational.” Then, in response to finding out what your kids had interpreted “educational” to mean, you change it to “NO TV unless I OK it as educational.” You haven’t “changed the rule”, you’ve simply made it more enforceable.
The rule has been to seat belt prisoners for over 20 years. That BPD violated the policy every time doesn’t change the policy.
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