Tag Archives: WorldNews

1872 Law Gives Police a License to Kill

By Dan Walters, CALmatters

Penal Code Section 196, enacted in 1872 when California was the nation’s sparsely populated westernmost frontier, declares that a police officer may lawfully kill someone while “arresting persons charged with felony, and who are fleeing from justice or resisting such arrest.”

Similar laws in other states have been overturned by the courts, but California’s remains intact, described in a legislative report as “the single oldest unamended law enforcement use of force statute in the country.”

In practice, it is the basic reason why California’s police officers are almost never prosecuted when they kill someone, even when the circumstances indicate that deadly force was not needed.

Last Saturday, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert declared that two police officers who, a year earlier, had fired a barrage of bullets at the shadowy figure of Stephon Clark, will not be prosecuted. The two “acted lawfully under the circumstances,” Schubert said.

Three days later, Attorney General Xavier Becerra agreed, saying, “Based on our review of the facts and evidence, in relation to the law, I’m here to announce today that our investigation has concluded that no criminal charges against the officers involved in the shooting can be sustained.”

It turned out that Clark, a much-troubled young man who had been vandalizing cars in a South Sacramento neighborhood, was wielding a cell phone, not a gun. Moreover, just eight of the 20 rounds fired at Clark hit their target, which meant those other bullets could have easily killed someone in a neighboring home.

Had a civilian done what those two officers did – fired multiple rounds blindly at an indistinct figure in a backyard – he or she would almost certainly be prosecuted, at least for manslaughter if not for murder.

Knowing your target, firing only to protect oneself or another from death or great bodily harm and using minimum force to end the threat are drummed into civilian gun owners during firearms training.

California’s police shoot and kill more people than those of any other state – 162 in 2017 – and, according to a legislative bill analysis, “Of the 15 police departments with the highest per capita rates of police killings in the nation, five are in California: Bakersfield, Stockton, Long Beach, Santa Ana and San Bernardino. Police in Kern County have killed more people per capita than in any other US county.”

The legislative analysis was for Assembly Bill 931, which Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a San Diego Democrat, carried last year to change the legal standard for police use of deadly force.

Instead of the virtually unlimited legal protection that Penal Code Section 196 and other laws give police, Weber’s bill would allow justified shootings “to defend against a threat of imminent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person,” with few exceptions.

That’s similar to the justified homicide laws governing civilians. Law enforcement organizations bitterly opposed the measure, saying it would put the lives of cops in jeopardy, and Weber’s bill died in the Senate.

She’s back this year with an almost identical measure, Assembly Bill 392, and the Stephon Clark episode, occurring as it did just a few miles from the Capitol, seems to give it a much better chance of passage. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg are among those calling for revising California’s use-of-force law.

Police work can be very dangerous, to be certain, and most officers are very reluctant to shoot people. However, we are seeing far too many cases of shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later.

That might have been acceptable in 1872 California. It can’t be in the 21st century.


Dan Walters is an opinion columnist for CALmatters, where this commentary first appeared.

Image: Assemblymember Shirley Weber announces AB 392.

Furore over European parliament president’s Mussolini comments

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like an Il Duce! Fascist!

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Antonio Tajani widely rebuked for saying fascist dictator had done positive things for Italy

The president of the European parliament is under fire for downplaying the crimes of Benito Mussolini, after he said Italy’s fascist dictator had done positive things for the country.

Antonio Tajani, a close ally of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, told Italian radio that Mussolini had a good track record on developing infrastructure:“I’m not a fascist, I have never been a fascist and I don’t share [Mussolini’s] political thought, but if we must be honest, he built roads, bridges, buildings,” he said. “He reclaimed many parts of our Italy.”

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‘Weak’ Modi ‘scared’ of China’s Xi: Rahul Gandhi

Taking a dig at the Prime Minister, Rahul said that Narendra Modi has failed to take a firm stand against China. On Wednesday, China kept chief Masood Azhar under its protective wings, vetoing a fourth attempt to declare him a global terrorist. “Weak Modi is scared of Xi. Not a word comes out of his mouth when China acts against India,” he tweeted.

What’s wrong with wearing a crop top on a plane?

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Thomas Cook cabin crew telling an air passenger to put on more clothes or be thrown off smacks of sexism and hypocrisy

Another day, another example of an airline feeling it is OK to tell women and girls how to dress. You might think there were more pressing things to be getting on with – flying the planes, for instance – but there is, apparently, always an opportunity to shame female passengers over their outfit choices.

Emily O’Connor had boarded a Birmingham-to-Tenerife flight this week when the Thomas Cook cabin crew asked her to cover up the crop top she was wearing – or she would be removed from the plane. O’Connor tweeted about the incident (10,000 retweets so far) and said she’d been left “shaken and upset”. To add to her experience, the airline even announced the whole debacle over the loudspeaker. Because, sure, that’s a perfectly proportionate course of action. When O’Connor stood up and asked if anyone else cared that she was wearing what she later described as a top from Zara’s summer range (others have called it a bralet), nobody did. She eventually borrowed a jacket.

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Samantha Bee: ‘I’m not saying Tucker Carlson’s a white supremacist. No, sorry, yes I am’

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Late-night hosts looked at Tucker Carlson, the tactics in the college admissions scam, and Paul Manafort’s second sentencing

On Wednesday’s Full Frontal, Samantha Bee did not mince her words, laying into the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose sexist and racist comments on women and Muslims resurfaced over the weekend.

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