Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

A recent battle in California shows how hard it is to get meaningful police reform passed at the state level, even in a “liberal” state. In 2019, the California legislature proposed a new law amending the language about when police could use deadly force. The old standard said police had to “reasonably” believe deadly force was necessary, which is the same standard set by Graham v. Connor. The proposed legislation changed that standard to “no reasonable alternatives.” That language would have been an improvement, though it’s still not the best. I favor a straight-up objective standard for cops. Their actions should be reasonable with 20/20 hindsight. They should look reasonable on a camera phone. They should appear reasonable to a crowd gathering around asking what the cops are doing. If the cop believes a person has a weapon, that person better damn sure objectively have a weapon. “Oops” is not a good enough answer from agents of the state who shoot Black people armed with cell phones. And if the cop is objectively wrong or unreasonable, they should be prosecuted. We have a sliding scale of homicides and all other types of crimes, and there’s no reason we can’t apply such a thing to various levels of police violence. Maybe a cop who shoots “Hulk Hogan” after a fight catches a manslaughter charge, while a cop who shoots an unarmed man seven times in the back, as a Wisconsin police officer did to Jacob Blake, gets charged with attempted murder? Or maybe a cop who uses his g...