...Gawd, I hate incidents like this.
York County, S.C. deputy Terrance Knox fired at Bobby Canipe after mistaking Canipe's cane for a shotgun, according to the Associated Press. Knox had pulled Canipe over for an expired tag, and the dashcam video shows Canipe pulling over quickly after Knox put on his lights and siren. Canipe then gets out of his truck, and reaches for his cane in the truck bed. Knox can be heard yelling as Canipe swings the cane and points the end of it in his direction.
What every cop understandably fears
(NOT the incident described here)
Knox ran up to Canipe after shooting him. According to the Associated Press, another officer arrived a few minutes after the shooting, and at that point Knox began to sob.
"I promise to God I thought it was a shotgun," Knox said.
...
My ancient '94 Chevy is low-slung, presumably to give it a sporty look. Getting out of it is a real challenge for me. Typically I have to open the door as wide as possible, swing my legs out (assisting my prosthetic right leg with both hands), reach back and grab my cane, prop the cane between the inside door handle and the ground, grip the steering wheel and seat back with my hands behind me, push hard to propel myself out of the car into a standing position and grab the cane before I fall over. I came close to the "fall over" part a few times before I worked out this procedure. It's reliable, but ugly... it's much harder than getting out of even a low easy chair. My point is this: when a cripple exits a car, s/he has at most a couple of seconds to locate the cane and stabilize.
There's not a lot of margin for error, and social pleasantries from a cop are unlikely to get an instant response until the cripple is stable on his/her feet. I understand that the cop is "twitchy" at the possibility of being greeted with a gun, but that doesn't change the cripple's reality in managing to comply with the cop's directive to get out of the car with hands visible.
The York County sheriff offered this bit of wisdom:
"Watch the action of the walking cane," Bryant said during a news conference Wednesday. "The question is, at the time this officer pulled the trigger, did he feel like his life was in danger? I can say this. Any reasonable officer would have felt that way. … I would have had to take the same action he did."
Right. And any reasonable cripple expects to die the moment the cop orders him/her to exit the car. It's a horrible situation.
In this case, the man with disabilities survived and is "expected to recover," whatever the hell THAT means. Next time the outcome could be different.
