In Columbus, the Cop Was Right to Shoot

A good number of those who have criticized the shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant have argued that the officer should have done “something else” to break up the fight. Given the circumstances, this would almost certainly not have been possible — at least, not until after Bryant had begun stabbing her victim. As far as I can see, the officer really did have just two choices: shoot, or allow an attempted murder.

In 1983, the Salt Lake City Police Department developed a test to determine how far away a knife-wielding attacker had to be before a person with a holstered gun could draw it and fire it without being hurt. The Tueller Test, as it is now known, determined that the answer was 21 feet. A Mythbusters study from 2012 confirmed the test’s thesis, concluding that if the attacker was under 20 feet away, the attacked party ended up being stabbed.

The bodycam footage from Columbus shows that Ma’Khia Bryant was well under 20 feet away from the woman at whom she was waving a large knife. Indeed, the bodycam footage shows that she was fewer than five feet away — close enough that, had she thrust her arm forward from where she was standing, the knife would have made contact. This wasn’t a “potential” stabbing, or an “imminent” stabbing; it was a stabbing in progress. As such, there was simply no time for the officer to do anything other than shoot. He could not have covered the intervening ground and tried to wrestle the knife from her hand, or kick her over, or push her away. He could not have shouted at her to desist. He could not have leaped through the air and tackled her. He could either shoot, or not shoot. Unless one thinks that it is incumbent upon police officers to prioritize the safety of people wielding knives over those they are threatening, the officer made the right call.

Could he have shot with a Taser instead of a firearm? That’s certainly a more realistic suggestion. But, as the various experts featured in the Columbus Dispatch note, Tasers are not appropriate tools to address most “lethal force” situations, and if the officer had chosen in that split-second to use his, the outcome may well have been different. There are many circumstances in which it would be a good thing for cops to deescalate; indeed, I am of the view that this is one way we could improve policing in America. But in the presence of an uplifted knife, the calculation is inevitably going to change, and it simply has to be acknowledged that any attempt to improve things for the attacker is likely to put the victim at greater risk.

A related objection I have seen bandied around is that it is unfair that Ma’Khia Bryant was killed, given that some mass shooters are brought out of their crime scenes alive. But this, too, ignores a key difference: That Bryant was in the act when she was shot. If mass shooters are in the process of shooting when the police show up, they are shot at, and, if necessary, they are killed. If, by contrast, they give themselves up, they are of course taken in custody — as opposed to the alternative, which is being summarily executed. This went down the way it did because one person attacked another, and because the person charged with protecting both of them had to make a split-second decision. As the footage shows, he made that decision in favor of the one who was not lunging forward in anger brandishing an indisputably lethal weapon. He was right.