Photo: iStockphoto
I don’t care that Brendan Burns is dead.
It really doesn’t bother me.
I apologize to his family for that, and I will have to do some soul searching about it, but it’s the truth. I’m not crying in my beer about this guy being gone.
But I am bothered by how it happened. Bothered because his last minutes seem to have included a couple of miscues by police, one of which might have killed him unlawfully and the other of which led to the circumstance that killed him.
Brendan Burns was a bad guy. An intentional hit and run after a road rage incident a few years ago, a couple of shotgun slugs into a Monroe Avenue smoke shop Friday night, a couple more shotgun slugs into some Brighton grampa’s car Monday morning after another road rage incident, several upset neighbors and some women who called him a stalker. Brendan Burns was bad news.
And an American citizen in a society governed by law.
And that’s what I care about.
Various headshrinkers over various months would have me think that’s because I had a chaotic childhood and crave order and structure. It might also be because Lincoln was close when he said that it is the law that makes us free. Actually, it is God who makes us free and the law that keeps us free.
And the law, rules, professionalism and common sense are the guard rails that keep our society on track.
But back to Brendan Burns.
Minutes after he died, someone told me that a video showed him shooting at a police officer at near point-blank range. I assumed that was correct. When I later saw the video on my phone, and heard the voice of the man who took it saying that Brendan Burns had fired at a pursuing officer, I was affirmed in my assumption.
But that’s not what the video shows.
In the video, two men run from right to left, one chasing the other, on a sidewalk. The man in front is Brendan Burns; the man in back is a law enforcement officer. He is wearing a jacket with a long word across the back. It may be “SHERIFF” or “DEPUTY.” At a certain point, the lead man turns his right shoulder briefly to the right, toward the street. At about that point and shortly thereafter, the following man fires a pistol he holds in his outstretched hands. They are just over one sidewalk square apart when the officer fires.
At a press conference Monday evening, the sheriff and police chief said Brendan Burns had brandished a hunting knife at one or more officers at some point before the end of the incident. They also said that an officer had fired his weapon.
This was presumably that incident.
And if a knife was brandished, it is not visible in the video. The turn in the bad guy’s upper body doesn’t seem threatening. It looks more like he is looking back to see where the officer is, or glancing over to see if the street is clear, as he shortly thereafter darts into and across the street.
But not before the officer discharges his handgun twice at the fleeing man’s back.
It is hard to see that as a justified use of deadly force. Brendan Burns is running from the officer for all he’s worth. Even if he had a knife and even if he brandished it in a threatening fashion at the officer, he was not a threat to the officer by virtue of the fact that he was sprinting away from the officer.
And he was not running toward any other individual. He was not an imminent threat to any other officers or citizens.
And the cop tried to shoot him in the back.
That’s a poor decision. Fortunately, it was matched by poor tactical proficiency, as the officer missed at very close range with both rounds. Maybe sometimes God pushes rounds onto a target, and maybe sometimes he pushes them off a target.
Either way, that did send two taxpayer-supplied rounds screaming toward Park Avenue. It also spared the officer involved a possible prison sentence.
And, because Brendan Burns was white, it spared Rochester a fair amount of burning and looting.
But it does leave a video of a moment that went poorly.
At some point after this, Brendan Burns doubled back to where the foot pursuit had commenced, opened up the car which police had been staking out, recovered a bag, and drew a shotgun from it.
That’s the second thing.
How did the car come to be unsecured? How did, in this police operation, a vehicle which had been used in a road rage incident involving a shotgun that very morning, get left there unattended by officers? In the tunnel vision of apprehending their suspect, it seems the officers on this detail all ran off after him, and left his deadly weapon unguarded and accessible.
In the old cowboy and Indian movies, you always leave a guard with the wagons, because the Indians might circle back and catch you by surprise.
And that’s what happened Monday afternoon.
Because the car was unsecured and the bad guy was not outrun and the logical possibility of him circling back was not considered, a guy who had a hunting knife was all of a sudden a guy with a shotgun.
That put officers in danger, and it ultimately cost Brendan Burns his life.
There were two miscues. One could have left him in a pile, and the other did leave him in a pile.
I love the police. I support them in their dangerous duty. But this one got off the rails.
I also recognize that I am more critical of the police in the death of this white man than I can ever remember being critical of the police in the death of a black man. I don’t believe that has anything to do with the color of anybody’s skin. I hope I am right, and will search my soul to see.
None of us who sit on our asses all day can begin to recognize the stresses of law enforcement, or the complexity of the split-second decisions of momentous import which police officers make every day. In the incident I have described above, police officers were earnestly trying to bring to ground a man who had twice in recent days in two jurisdictions threatened his community by the illegal and rageful discharge of a firearm. He was a threat, a potentially deadly threat, and catching up such a person is never going to be quick, easy or clean.
And sometimes mistakes will be made, and lessons can be learned.
And that’s the takeaway here.
Lessons can be learned.
And the good guys can get back at it, protecting the rest of us from those who choose evil.