Man with rifle run down on street
The man run down, 36-year-old Mario Valencia, survived the February 19 incident; he was taken to the University of Arizona Medical Center in serious condition but was released just two days later and is now in jail facing 15 charges.
He had allegedly committed a string of crimes that day, according to police, including robbing a convenience store in his underpants, setting fire to a church, entering a home unlawfully, stealing a car and taking a .30-.30 rifle from a Walmart. He also took ammunition for the rifle.
Video from the first officer on the scene’s dashcam shows the man walking down a Marana, Arizona street (near Tucson) with his back to the cruiser. He has just fired a bullet into the air and had earlier called out he was going to commit suicide. This first officer seems content to slowly follow Valencia, he tells others to stay back and references the rifle, saying the suspect shot into the air and is “definitely loaded.”
In charges the second cruiser, driven by Officer Michael Rapiejko. Officer Rapiejko clearly recognizes that someone cannot be permitted to walk down a street firing off a rifle so he, well, he does the right thing and keeps driving at Valencia. He drives right into him, and at a pretty good clip, too.
“Jesus Christ,” the first officer can be heard saying into his radio. “Man down.” Man down and that residential area now safe again.
Lawyer blames police
There will be those that call this an excessive use of force. One is the lawyer for Mr. Valencia, who has taken great umbrage at the police chief’s assertion that not only was the general public and the officers kept safe that day, but that Valencia’s life may have been saved given his threat of suicide.
Michelle Cohen-Metzger, Valenica’s lawyer, is having none of that and is throwing accusations at the police of excessive use of force. She said that her poor client was “clearly suicidal, clearly in crisis” and needed some understanding.
“I find it ludicrous to say that we’re saving this man’s life who’s suicidal by almost killing him,” Cohen-Metzger said. “Everything in the video seems to point towards an obvious excessive use of force. It is miraculous that my client isn’t dead.”
Cohen-Metzger used the words “almost dead,” obviously because her client is still alive. He spent only two days in hospital and is now there to petition the state to pay her fees. He might have shot up the neighbourhood instead of himself, yes, but he might have shot himself. Further, the officers could have used even more deadly force and shot him.
“My client’s back was turned and the officer drove right into him,” she also insisted. “It isn’t that dissimilar to a police officer shooting a fleeing suspect in the back.”
Officer Rapiejko was on paid administrative duty after the incident but has been exonerated of wrongdoing and is back on regular duty. That decision was correct and this case is completely different from that of Walter Scott in South Carolina, shot in the back by an officer last week, which Cohen-Metzger references.
Mr. Scott did not have a weapon and had not committed a string of offences, was not violent and presented no threat. That officer was in the wrong and has been charged with murder, and rightly-so. In this case, the officer was totally in the right.
Police: protecting the public
Clearly Cohen-Metzger, and anybody else who would argue excessive force, has attended too many peace rallies. It’s not always possible for police to avoid force. The man had a gun, which he’d fired. It was a residential street. What if a child walked out of a nearby home? Can you be certain that he would not have shot that child?
The officer did not ask for any of this, and while Mr. Valencia may have been in crisis, the officer had no manner of knowing what behaviour that crisis might manifest. He just knew that the man had a rifle and had shot it and was on the lamb.
Where was this person’s family, were they in his life, helping him? Was he under medical care? How did he come to this terrible moment? There may be blame to place upon his family or the lack of funds for proper medical assistance, maybe.
But the police can’t bother with that. They have that potential child to care for, and one another to watch over, too. In this case the words of the officer’s police chief ring true.
“If we are going to choose between maybe we’ll let him go a little bit farther and see what happens,” Marana Police Chief Terry Rozema told CNN. “Or we’re going to take him out now and eliminate any opportunity he has to hurt somebody, you’re going to err on the side of, in favor of the innocent people. Without a doubt.
“This officer made a split-second decision, and in retrospect, when all the dust clears, I think we look at this and say, ‘yeah, there’s things we can learn from this’ but the entire community is safe, all the officers are safe. Even the suspect is safe.”
Sometimes keeping a community safe is not pretty.
