The death of Patrick Lyoya: does this story sound familiar?
A white police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been charged with second-degree murder for shooting Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old black man he had stopped for a traffic violation. The father of the dead man says, “We strongly believed there was no justice in America, until today,” he said. Attorney Ben Crump, ubiquitous spokesman in these cases, remarks that he’s “encouraged” by the police officer’s arrest:
“While the road to justice for Patrick and his family has just begun, this decision is a crucial step in the right direction,” Crump said. “Officer Schurr must be held accountable for his decision to pursue an unarmed Patrick, ultimately shooting him in the back of the head and killing him – for nothing more than a traffic stop.”
Ben Crump is a continual liar and race-mongering rabble rouser. In case after case, he gets in early and speaks often, quoted in the MSM as though he’s stating the facts of the case truthfully. In this case he’s setting the scene for the American people, and he knows that the sooner and more unequivocally he speaks the better, and that the media will help him out in setting out a narrative that will be hard to correct in the future and will hopefully taint the jury pool.
So here we have the usual “unarmed” black man, cruelly murdered in cold blood for “nothing more than a traffic stop.” Isn’t that a story that should make your blood boil?
Except that in the hearing a different story was told, and this one appears to be backed up by video evidence:
Schurr’s attorneys said in a motion for bond the officer saw the Nissan Lyoya was driving “moving suspiciously slowly and thought it matched the description of a recently reported stolen vehicle.” He “ran” the car’s plate and realized it didn’t match the car, which led him to believe the car might be stolen.
That’s already not just a traffic stop, it’s a special kind of traffic stop – for possible stolen car as well as possible driving while impaired.
Next:
Michigan State Police Det. Sgt. Aaron Tubergen, whose agency investigated the shooting, said in a court document supporting the arrest warrant Lyoya tried to get away from Schurr after the officer asked for his license and traveled about 30 feet from the car before being tackled to the ground.
Oh, so Lyoya fled? More [emphasis mine]:
There was a physical altercation, with Schurr demanding Lyoya, “stop fighting, stop resisting,” according to a transcript of Tubergen’s testimony Thursday morning to the judge who signed off on the second-degree murder charge and the warrant.
Tubergen said Schurr deployed his Taser twice [although it didn’t contact Lyoya]. After Lyoya gained control of the Taser, Schurr made “many commands” for him to drop the device and a physical altercation followed with both men on the ground.
The officer was on top of Lyoya’s back — the Black man prone on the ground — when Schurr “lost complete control of the Taser.” Lyoya had “complete control of the Taser” at that point.
Oh, so Lyoya got the taser, which means he could use it to tase Schurr and disable him, and then grab his weapon and shoot him or someone else? That seems to me to put Schurr in valid fear for his life. And that’s when Schurr shot him in the back of the head:
“It appears that Patrick was then on his hands and knees. Again, Officer Schurr was on his back,” the detective sergeant said, according to the transcript. “Officer Schurr pulled his duty firearm from its holster and then fired one round into the back of Patrick’s head, causing his body to go limp.”
Tubergen told the Kent County judge he interviewed law enforcement, reviewed body camera footage, dash camera video, residential security video from the neighborhood and a cellphone video recorded by a witness.
More facts may come out – probably will come out – that could modify this account. They might exonerate Schurr further, or they might point more to his guilt. But there is little question that Schurr did not suddenly and for no reason kill Lyoya in a routine traffic stop.
Also:
Lyoya had three outstanding warrants at the time he fled Schurr, and an autopsy revealed his blood-alcohol concentration was more than three times the legal limit.
Warrants for what? Here’s a bit more about that:
According to an account in MLive, Lyoya had a revoked license and outstanding warrant for his arrest when he was pulled over. He also had an arrest warrant issued April 1 for a domestic violence charge at the time of the traffic stop.
More:
Lyoya’s death prompted calls by some for Grand Rapids police to curtail police stops for routine violations, following the lead of Lansing police who no longer pull motorists over for minor violations such as a cracked taillight or ornament hanging from a mirror.
Which has zero to do with this case or this traffic stop, which was not for a mirror ornament.
Much more at the link, such as:
A 2020 national study of more than 100 million traffic stops found that Black drivers were 20 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers relative to their share of the residential population. Black drivers also were 1.5 times more likely to be searched than white drivers, though they were less likely to be carrying drugs or guns.
Is it possible, just possible, that black drivers might be committing more traffic violations? Is it possible they are searched because – like Lyoya and so many others in these incidents – a check shows they have outstanding warrants or have no license? And those guns the white people are carrying in greater numbers – are they legal? Just curious.
Second-degree murder carries a possible life sentence in Michigan. And the activist community has already said that Schurr must be convicted and put away for life.
[NOTE: Lyoya does not appear to have been a citizen, although that’s not very clear. His family came here from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2014, when he would have been about 18 years old.]
We have seen how this will go it won’t be good. The Discredited BLM which has always been just a shakedown organization from the beginning will use it again if they don’t get their way and the railroading of another officer.
Crump is indeed a liar of the worst sort, and BLM is without question a shakedown operation, but Crump has made tens of millions from his race-hustling “ambulance-chasing”, and no-one is likely to he held accountable for the multitudinous misdeeds or the financially fraudulent misbehavior of BLM. It is also noteworthy that leftists seem completely unconcerned that the officer had every right to stop the vehicle, that Lyoya (who had a criminal record) resisted arrest and caused the tragedy through his own refusal to comply with lawful orders, and that the autopsy revealed him to have been drunk on that morning, but why should facts, evidence, reason, and logic matter to the left when a narrative can be advanced for monetary gain and ideological advantage?
So tragic for so many reasons. One takeaway is Tasers seem to be a factor in situations escalating to a fatal outcomes. With cops mistaking their Taser for a gun or the perps not being controlled by the Taser or the cop losing the Taser.
It appears that a man who does not want to be controlled is very difficult to control. Cooler heads need to come together and decide a better way that minimizes the risk to law enforcement and minimizes these outcomes where multiple lives are ruined.
The officer needed backup. He had the car. He had a passenger on the car who could identify the driver.
If you watch the video, it is shocking when the officer pulls out his gun and shoots Patrick. You can’t see the taser. It looks like the officer couldn’t control Patrick so he shot him.
The taser could provide mitigation or explanation, but the video looks bad.
Amadeus 48:
I have no doubt it’s shocking. I wish it hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t have happened, of course, if Lyoya hadn’t fled, resisted, and tried to get the taser. If he’d gotten it and tased the officer, he could easily have killed him after taking his weapon.
That’s why I said that further evidence will either tend to exonerate the officer or support the idea that he is guilty. I don’t know which it will be. But the rush to judgment as well as the outright lies from Crump et al taint jury pools and make justice less and less likely.
I don’t want to see anyone put away for life who doesn’t deserve it.
Invisible Sun:
Tasers are used with the idea of keeping situations from becoming fatal. Most of the time they do just that. You are correct that there are some situations where they seem to do the opposite.
I seem to recall that tasers got popular when cases such as the Rodney King case made police departments turn away from batons. I also think that with more female cops, tasers were easier for them to deal with than batons, because they lacked the physical strength in many cases to subdue a perp with a baton.
If you’ve ever watched any lengthy struggle between cops and perps, you’ll note that cops are restricted to grabbing and yelling.
Saw fifteen minutes of two cops trying to get a guy out of his car. Yell, grab, pull. Guy got a few seconds free, retrieved a gun, killed one cop and wounded the other.
I’ve done judo–sort of like wrestling in pajamas, but you can choke–and what we called Ju jitsu but was actually scientific dirty fighting including multiple opponents, knives, so forth, lethal and crippling techniques.
Then I had the Infantry stuff.
Far as I can tell, the least dangerous–judo–allows far more moves, more techniques than cops are allowed.
Haul off, which is to say wind up good and strong and drive a fist into somebody’s belly. First, bad optics. Second…bad optics. Third, guy goes down hard…bad optics. Sixth grade playground combatives. And, if Crump is lucky, serious internal injuries.
Rodney King killed the baton–bad optics.
Jacob Blake shook off two taser hits, outfought seven cops and led a parade of cops around his car with control being somebody had one hand on his tee shirt.
If you cut out the middle techniques, you either let the guy go or you kill him. And the middle techniques are cut out.
Do we want the police to enforce the law? If we do, then it should be common knowledge among all citizens, especially those with a criminal bent, that resisting arrest can result in bodily harm, up to death. After an officer tussles with a perp and tells him to quit resisting, the situation has become one of the suspect’s own making. Even when the suspect is unarmed, if he escapes arrest, will he be easier to arrest when they find him again? And how many people may be endangered ort victimized while the suspect is on the loose? If police can’t arrest people, criminal chaos will be the norm.
It is time to quit coddling criminals, no matter their ethnicity. If they resist arrest, the police are in the right, no matter what it takes to make the arrest. Period! If the authorities won’t back their police, it won’t be long before they won’t be able to recruit new policemen. That’s very nearly the case in Seattle now. Very hard to get police recruits.
“The father of the dead man says, “We strongly believed there was no justice in America, until today,”
Implication: anything less than conviction is proof of injustice.
That father’s attitude led to the death of his son. The father has his son’s blood on his hands. But like all those who reject personal responsibility for their choices and actions, he blames anyone but himself.
I’ve often read that African and Carribean black people don’t tend to fall into the pathologies of urban American ones. Not necessarily it seems.
JJ. You know this. I know this. But the mob and the non-thinkers and the virtue-signalers don’t, or they do and don’t care.
Should say I live about thirty miles away and it’s frequently on the news.
What will happen, even with an acquittal, is a pulling back of LE activity in the black community. Some things are worth your job, or even your life, depending on who you are and what you’re thinking. But to be jailed, or tried expensively and acquitted but blacklisted, in order to satisfy the predictable mob is…not worth it.
So it will happen and crimes will go up in the black community and, likely, in bordering white areas.
As sure as night follows day and try explaining that to a virtue-signaler.
Amadeus 48,
“the officer is repeatedly heard saying, “Stop,” and, “Stop resisting.”
“The video shows Lyoya getting up and standing, the officer drawing and then deploying a Taser. Winstrom told reporters the Taser was deployed twice during the confrontation but the prongs didn’t hit Lyoya.”
“Let go of the Taser,” the officer is heard saying on his body cam video.
After the officer says, “Let go of the Taser,” the two continue to wrestle on the front lawn of an unidentified residence. Roughly 90 seconds later, the officer is heard yelling, “Let go of the Taser,” followed by, “Drop the taser.”
Three seconds later the cops shoots Lyoya.
The recordings clearly reveal that with Lyoya’s seizure of the taser, the cop had both just cause and no alternative but the use of deadly force.
Not only was his life in danger but Lyoya’s behavior revealed himself to be an active danger to the public.
PostModern Liberalism is a social cancer. Literally, not figuratively.
I just like to point out something similar to what you describe happened here in Massachusetts. The cop was stunned by a rock, had his gun stolen and he was shot and killed. So it’s reasonable to me that he was in fear for his life.
“The Talk” 2022:
1. Don’t break the law, or do something to cause the police to stop you.
2. If you are stopped for any reason, do not resist arrest or disobey the officer’s orders.
JJ nailed it: “It is time to quit coddling criminals, no matter their ethnicity.”
It’s time to bring back tough, fair, non-political law and order.
IIRC, Heather MacDonald reported on a Study of drivers on NJ Turnpike using cameras showed that black drivers were more likely to speed.
“Driving while black” is a slanderous lie.
Police officers of all races are slower to pull their guns and more hesitant to shoot if the perp is a person of color. Which is exactly what we should expect in the current environment.
One more topic where liberals demonstrate a shocking inability to reason or exercise logic. The list is incredibly long.
The lack of rationality is exacerbated by hatred. The Left isn’t interested in justice in this case. Not interested in reasonable law enforcement.
They want blood. Because they hate.
Just as they really kinda want to see a Supreme Court justice killed. They even brag about refusing to provide sufficient protection.
“It appears that a man who does not want to be controlled is very difficult to control.”
A 60 pound CHILD who does not want to be controlled is very difficult to control.
It often takes four adults to keep one from hurting him/herself in the OR or PACU. Spend an overnight in a city ER if you want to see what it takes to deal with adults who are not in their right minds–drugs, psychosis, escaping arrest, whatever.
Why I said not a word or even formed an opinion re: Chauvin until details came in, especially based on that single view video.
What this LEO has going for him is the western Michigan jury pool.
If he was in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac, Saginaw, Ann Arbor, he’d be toast.
If you watch the video, the officer’s actions are shocking when he shoots Lyoya. The officer was on top of Lyoya, who was face down on the ground underneath him. While they were still struggling, the officer was in the dominant position, and then he shot Lyoya in the back of the head. I think it is going to be very tough for the officer to show that he was fear for his life or in fear of great bodily harm.
If Lyoya had run away, the cop still had the car and the passenger–there could have been a warrant for Lyoya’s arrest.
I agree Crump is a cynical, disgusting, self-interested demagogue. I also agree that Lyoya was ignoring the officer’s commands and was trying to run away. I support law and order. I think George Floyd died from a drug overdose, not from Officer Chauvin’s knee. But take a look at the video in this case and ask yourself, would you want this to happen to your father, or husband, or brother, or son?
I think this was a bad shoot, although I want to hear more about the taser.
I don’t think the officer ever truly gave Lyoya a warning that the officer was going to use deadly force (something like “drop the taser or I’ll shoot you” or “stop resisting or I’ll shoot you”), although I’ll be interested to hear more on that. That is what I think is so shocking about the officer’s actions at the end. Also, I’ll be interested as to what the department rules are on using deadly force, and how the officer was trained on the issue.
I want to be clear that I am open to hearing more about this, but I think this is a very problematic use of deadly force by the police officer. I know Neo is highlighting the attempt to taint the jury by Crump, but a quick look at the videos, which have been available for weeks, makes me wonder what that cop was thinking.
Except none of your relatives would do something that stupid thats what they should have done with lloyd they had already condemned chauvin and shoot the phones while you’re at it
amadeus Not all shootings are preceded by warnings. Depends on the time the cop thinks he has.
Can we apply to this kind of tactical nightmare any lessons acquired from capturing wild animals? What about a weighted net? What about super-sticky (but removable) foam? Some material to immobilize or degrade motion, from a short distance (5-10 feet) away?
I know the Ben Crumps will have a hundred lucrative ripostes –“my client suffered not just PTSD from the foaming but…cancer! We have a sample of exactly 4 people (all retaining me BTW) who will testify to their terrible cancers!” Etc. But still, isn’t it worth a look?
Here’s another thought about better tactical management (inspired by Amadeus 48’s remarks at 10:01): What if cops had a standard script (like the Miranda warnings) that they read to every driver or suspect whom they stopped?
“You must obey my commands. If you do not, you may die. Here’s the sequence:
(1) I tell you to do something or stop doing something. If you disobey I may shoot you.
(2) I tell you again to do or stop doing something and I deploy a taser which is designed to PUT YOU ON YOUR ASS. If you continue to disobey I may shoot you.
(3) I tell you again to do or stop doing something and you disobey, or you grab at my taser or gun, I WILL SHOOT YOU DEAD.
Are we clear?”
Amadeus 48: “If Lyoya had run away, the cop still had the car and the passenger–there could have been a warrant for Lyoya’s arrest.”
Will Lyoya be easier to arrest the next time? Therre were already arrest warrants out on him. This person was a criminal. We hire tough men and train them to keep this sort of person from victimizing society at large. When you see the video, you are judging the perp as if he was a normal citizen – like your brother or father, husband, or son. You have to ask yourself if anyone you know would violently resist arrest. Lyoya was a criminal who knew he was wanted. He didn’t want to go back to jail. Few criminals do. He took the chance. He lost. Instead of this being a criminal case against the officer, it should be an example to suspects of how not to act when they encounter law enforcement.
The majority of crimes are committed by a small subset of people who are seemingly unreformable. When they are removed to prisons, crime statistics go down and society is much safer. This fact was demonstrated in the 1990s when three strikes laws were put into effect. The so-called new ideas of no cash bail, decriminalizing drugs, releasing prisoners from “too lengthy” sentences, decriminalizing property theft, accusing the police of brutality, and more soft on crime measures have led to the upswing in crime that is underway. Anti-social thugs of all ethnicities are not our friends and deserve no pity.
Owen—
Thanks. When you lay it out like that, it surely highlights the tactical strangeness of these interactions. If Lyoya was pounding the officer’s head on the pavement (like Trayvon Martin) we could all see that deadly force would be justified. If Lyoya had whipped out a glock, you could see it. If Lyoya had the taser in hand and was threatening the officer with it, yes. If Lyoya whipped out a knife like the guy in Racine, yes. But you can see that they were wrestling as the officer was trying to detain Lyoya. The cop was on top. Lyoya was face down on the ground. The cop with no warning whipped out his pistol and shot Lyoya in the back of the head.
Take a look at the tape and see what you think.
The majority of crimes are committed by a small subset of people who are seemingly unreformable. When they are removed to prisons, crime statistics go down and society is much safer. This fact was demonstrated in the 1990s when three strikes laws were put into effect.
We have ‘three strikes’ laws because state legislators are too dull to compose proper sentencing formulae. It shouldn’t be too difficult to do so, but it was too difficult for them.
I note that New York was among the most successful states in suppressing crime. While increases in prison capacity were part of the mix, politicians were more circumspect than other states in this respect and concentrated on increasing police manpower, improving time on task, and improving deployment patterns and tactics.
JJ— I fundamentally agree with your points. But if we have a police force that treats everyone like a habitual criminal, none of us are going to like that. The officer didn’t know any of the things that we all know now. Obviously, Lyoya’s judgment was impaired by the alcohol he had drunk. He was driving a car that appeared to be stolen. He ran. He fought the officer. He tried to get the taser. He struggled when he should have submitted. Bystanders yelled at him to stop resisting. But was the officer justified in killing him? That is what a bullet to the back of the head means.
I look forward to hearing what the rules are and how the officer was trained.
As I said above, I think Chauvin got railroaded in Minneapolis. Here in Chicago, when Jason Van Dyke shot Laquon McDonald 16 times, he turned the mayor, the police department, and the city upside down. He testified, and the story he told did not match up well with what anyone could see on the dashboard tape.
We still have a lot to learn about what Schurr thought was going on. I am with Neo in her criticism of Crump. But I really wonder about this one.
Police tasers have a max two shot capacity.
Not cool to shoot an unarmed man.
Not my circus or monkeys, just cowboy rules.
I’m agreeing with Amadeus here. My first reaction when reading the post was, I know we’re tired of hearing “why didn’t you just shoot him in the leg?” but this really does sound like a case where you can argue the officer had the opportunity to do something less likely to cause death than shooting him in the back of the head. Resisting arrest or fleeing from a cop is always a stupid thing to do, but this could have ended much less tragically.
Neal. Couple of items wrt tasers. See Jacob Blake, shook off two hits and out fought seven cops. Lots of reports of tasers failing, and occasionally killing.
If the hit doesn’t incapacitate the guy, there are several possibilities; thick clothing, improper set of the prongs, failure to discharge, the guy’s body just doesn’t…freak out or whatever.
But the possibility of failure to discharge allows for the possibility of a charge left in the weapon.
As I said earlier, of the options open to Shurr in hand to hand combat, most are foreclosed. He could have–likely happen in a bar fight–ram Lyoya’s face into the pavement repeatedly until compliance or unconsciousness occur. But he can’t, and imagine the yummy optics.
He is in danger of great bodily harm against a fit man if he restricts his moves to those allowed by the department, unless he elects to let the guy get away. Cops are not infrequently killed by their own guns when in combat with a fit man.
So whether Lyoya had a live taser is one thing; that Shurr might have thought he did is another, and whether it makes an ounce of difference is a third.