CLUELESS POLICE CRITIC

Bellaire is a small mostly white middle-class city surrounded by the City of Houston. Late one night in 2008, Bellaire police officers were following an SUV driven by a black man. The officers ran a computer check and the license plate number came back as stolen. The SUV turned into a private driveway and the officers made the driver get down on the ground.

Sgt. Jeff Cotton, a 10-year veteran of the department, arrived at the scene. When the driver got up off the ground, Cotton saw him reach into the waistband of his trousers. Thinking he was reaching for a weapon and fearing for his life, Cotton shot the man. It turned out that the man, who survived, was unarmed. The driveway was at his parents’ house and the SUV as not stolen.

There was an immediate outcry by the wounded man’s parents and by ‘community activists’ that their son had been a victim of racial profiling and that the Ballaire PD regularly practiced racial profiling. Because of the uproar, the Harris County District Attorney’s office charged Cotton with Aggravated Assault by a Peace Officer, a serious felony.

Last week a jury acquitted Sgt. Cotton. This created the expected shit-storm of protests by black preachers and other ‘community activists.’ Several protest demonstrations were held and the outrage is still simmering. A bunch of letters to the Houston Chronicle condemned the verdict and Sgt. Cotton’s shooting of an unarmed black man. Here is what one letter writer wrote:

“The assertion that Bellaire police sergeant Jeff Cotton fired in self-defense is bull. One shot is self-defense. Not three. How long did it take him to unsnap his gun from his holster? By the time he got his gun out, Cotton should have known Robert Tolan wasn’t reaching for anything in his waistband.”

That letter writer is a clueless police critic. It is obvious that his only knowledge of police work comes from watching too many cop shows on TV and at the movies. It is absolutely absurd for this imbecile to think that by the time Cotton got his gun out, he should have known the man wasn’t reaching for anything in his waistband. The sequence of facing sudden death and drawing a weapon all takes place in just a split second.

You can be absolutely sure of one thing - if that letter writer had a gun while perceiving an immediate threat to his life, he would have shot at whoever presented that threat, and he would not have stopped shooting until his gun was empty. And any police officer, who believes that he is facing an immediate threat to his life while exposed out in the open, should keep on firing his weapon until he was damn sure his life was no longer in danger. Had he fired only one shot and missed ….. well, you get the idea.

I’m sure that Sgt. Cotton went to work every day hoping he would not have to shoot anybody, black, white or whatever color. And would he knowingly shoot an unarmed man? Of course not! Did the officers resort to racial profiling? Probably. But when they see a black man driving a car at 2:30 a.m. in an almost all-white neighborhood, it’s just plain good police work to run a check on the driver.