Prince George’s County, Maryland, police have struggled this week to come to grips with the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of one of their own. First, there was incredulity about an unprovoked attack on a police station by an assailant who supposedly wanted to end his own life. There was disbelief and anger that he was allegedly abetted by his two brothers who recorded the assault on their phones. “This is about nothing,” Police Chief Henry P. Stawinski III lamented. Then came the terrible discovery that it was another police officer who fired the fatal bullet in the three minutes of chaos that was Sunday’s gun battle.
Officer Jacai Colson, who would have been 29 on Thursday, is rightly being mourned as a hero. He was off-duty and in street clothes when he arrived at the police station in Landover just as alleged assailant Michael Ford started shooting wildly, hitting vehicles and pinning down officers. Officer Colson, a four-year veteran of the force, did not hesitate in responding; he was one of four officers who fired their weapons as they tried to stop the shooting.
Later investigation revealed he had been shot by a fellow officer who mistook him for an assailant. The shooting was deliberate but without malice, Stawinski said. It is a credit to the authorities whohave been forthright with the public about the details, a practice that should continue as the State’s Attorney’s Office conducts its review of the shooting. Such independent reviews are routine with police-involved shootings.
One question that officials will inevitably confront is whether race played an implicit role in the tragedy. Officer Colson was black; according to officials, the officer who shot him was white. When the question came up at a news conference, Stawinski said he was “uncomfortable with the notion” that bias would be “introduced to the conversation,” later adding, “In those split seconds when lives are in danger and officers are engaging a deadly threat, there simply isn’t time to bring any biases into it. Hindsight is a luxury that no officer has in the midst of an ambush.” An article on Vox took those comments to task for not understanding the role that subconscious bias can play in split-second decisions.
Responsibility for the death of this promising young officer falls squarely on those who instigated and abetted a mindless attack on police. Nonetheless, the department should consider whether any changes in training or department practices could make a future such calamity less likely. Averting tragedies is important not only to save lives and spare families the loss of loved ones but also to spare other officers the terrible pain of having accidently killed a fellow officer.
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