If you run at a cop with a butcher knife, you might get shot, and that’s on you.
Period. It gets no more complex than that. That’s the whole issue. Open and shut.
But so caustic and pervasive is the hatred of police among Rochester’s activists, politicians and press that an officer forced to fire to protect his own life was immediately crucified, and the tired folklore of racist cops and evil police culture and structural racism was wheeled out.
Here’s what happened.
About 3 o’clock yesterday morning, a man came to the entrance of the Open Door Mission on West Main Street in Rochester. That’s, obviously, well after check-in time, and in most shelters across America, if you don’t get in on time, you don’t get in. But, in most shelters across America, they are there to help, and sometimes exceptions can be made.
So they opened the door for him.
Normally, that would have led to him being asked if he was hungry, and if he was, probably there would be a sack lunch somewhere in the kitchen to hold him over to breakfast. Then, back into the darkened sleeping area to be given a bunk and a blanket, and shelter from the night.
That’s how it would normally go.
But that’s not how it went.
Instead, as the door was opened, the man bolted past the shelter worker and darted into the kitchen, cleaned and sanitized and waiting for the morning, utensils and pots and plates all in their places. Including the kitchen knives, kept in a bucket, which the man went to and immediately grabbed.
From the start, it was clear he meant to use the knives for harm, of himself or others or both. Mission staff tried to calm him, and speak to him, to disarm him, but he warned them away, with a big butcher knife in his hand, and the police were called.
As they are often called.
The Rochester Police Department, for all intents and purposes, is security at the Open Door Mission. There is a good relationship, generally, between the mission and the department, and between officers and mission guests. Sometimes people have problems, sometimes there are disputes, sometimes people are taken out of the mission. But in hundreds of instances, month after month and year after year, the mission and the guests and the officers all have one another’s backs.
It took six minutes for the first blue and white to arrive.
The man with the knives was located around a couple of corners and down the block.
He had the butcher knife in his hand, and he had been cutting himself, possibly in a suicide attempt.
That began six minutes of pleading and retreating by a growing number of Rochester police officers. They called for an officer with a Taser and for another with a bean-bag gun. In most departments, all officers have both, but in most departments, they don’t have to deal with the anti-police bigotry of Rochester’s race baiters and news readers. No, this is Rochester, and the mental health people are nowhere to be found and the Taser and the bean bag aren’t going to get here in time and the guy keeps coming at you with the bloody knife.
And so the body cam video shows the officer backing and pleading, as the man comes at him, ultimately increasing his pace and closing the distance, the officer’s breath and camera disrupted as he tries to run a few strides.
And then, well within the 21-foot distance at which a knife becomes lethal, the officer fires five times.
Some 400 feet from where the incident started.
Retreat and plead, turn a corner, retreat and plead, turn another corner, retreat and plead.
And then the guy comes at the cop with a butcher knife.
And that might get you shot. And if it does, it’s on you.
And yet, just four hours later, with no details known or reported, other than the shooting and the death, a Democrat county legislator tweeted, “I mean, were they out of pepper spray? Seriously, once again, a man in distress, needed help, and ends up dead at the hands of RPD.” A journalist tweeted, “A man with a knife outside of open door mission was killed in mere minutes. The police are only here to protect themselves and certain groups of people and they’re using our tax dollars to do it. How many more excuses are we going to accept from RPD? This is bullshit.”
The governor seems to be a serial sexual harasser of state employees, and the progressive response is don’t jump to conclusions, let’s wait for the investigation. A cop has to fire to save his life, and the progressive response is #ACAB and defund the police.
While across town, in a quiet family home, a guy who used to be one of the most beloved cops in the city lives in a world of darkness, his face carved up and his eyes cut out by a troubled man with a knife.
That’s the reality. Bad things happen. People do dangerous things. Cops have to respond.
And in this town, they get destroyed for it.
Which says a lot more about us than it does about them.