12 Shots To Minneapolis' Reputation

Last week, six Minneapolis police officers were cleared of any wrongdoing in the shooting of a Somalian man, Abu K. Jeilani. The man was reportedly mentally ill, and was walking down the street wielding a machete and a crowbar. When police officers pulled to the side of the road to try and talk to him, he apparently told officers, "Come get me."

Six officers surrounded him. According to the Hennepin County Sheriff's office, officers tried to use a stun gun on him six times, to no effect. Naturally, the officers then fired a total of 13 bullets, hitting Jeilani 12 times. I can see how that would be a normal day for the wonderful police force of Minneapolis.

Were officers justified in their actions? To a point, yes. They tried to talk to him, tried to stun him, and were left with no choice. But why so many shots? Police Chief Robert Olson said five officers fired twice and a sixth officer fired three times.

Does it take two shots to disable a man with a large knife? Clearly, an attacker will be knocked back by one shot. Two shots might knock a man down for good. Three shots is meant to kill, no matter what the shooter may claim.

A similar stand-off took place on June 8, in the county my newspaper covers. A resident of Brownsville, Minn., had been served with divorce papers, and came home stinking drunk the following day to find his wife moving her things out of the house.

He pulled out a shotgun and aimed it at her. Luckily, she was able to get across the street and call the police. When the sheriff's department arrived, the man was sitting on his porch with the shotgun. They told him to drop the weapon. The man went inside his home, exchanging the shotgun for a deer rifle with a scope.

A few moments later, the man raised the rifle and appeared to aim the weapon. It was unsure whether he was aiming at officers or not, but they took no chances, and ended up shooting him. Not only did the man have a gun, he had a gun with a scope aimed at officers.

So did our county's finest fire 12 round into him? No. One officer fired once, hitting the man in the left shoulder. That was the end of the stand-off.

So why is it that six officers in Hennepin County can't communicate together and take a man with a large knife alive, when the same amount of officers in a much smaller county can with a man aiming a rifle at them? Something doesn't add up.

It's classic big-city policing methods: keep firing until the problem goes away. Jeilani could have been taken alive quite easily. It was bad leadership and even worse officer training that killed Jeilani.

Unfortunately, ignorant juries in the Twin Cities full of blindly patriotic local yokels continue to let irresponsible officers go without punishment, simply because they've never had the good fortune to see how good police officers would handle the situation. All they know is what history tells them is right.

As Fred Bruno, the attorney representing the officers, said in the June 21 edition of the Star Tribune, "It was a textbook response to a mentally ill person who presented a danger to the community."

For the God-awful police officers in Minneapolis, I guess it was.