Detroit Police Chief James Elmer Craig held spoke out today via Skype to defend his policy of hit and run policing, the custom of permitting officers to strike people with vehicles and flee the scene as long as they later say that they feared for their lives. This comes a day after a patrol SUV was caught on camera driving through a crowd of peaceful protesters. In the video below you can see that the vehicle found itself surrounded by a crowd after police tried to block protesters on a major street. As protesters went around and through the roadblock they of course surrounded the vehicle. Then all of a sudden the driver started bumping into people, a few jump on the hood, others are knocked to the ground, and he or she sped off. If anyone else did this they would be charged with felony hit and run, plus assault with a deadly weapon.
Any possibility of finding out who the driver is was reduced to slim by Chief Craig defending his or her actions. According to Craig, the back window had been smashed and "they were not certain that they were not being fired upon." So, according to Craig his officers are permitted to use potentially deadly force whenever they are not certain if they are being fired upon. That is a dangerous policy that threatens to permit any cop that hears a loud noise (ex: fireworks) to start shooting and later say "I was not sure I was not being shot at." The protesters hit will most likely have to file a lawsuit and hope that the names of the officers are turned over during the discovery process, but protective orders being what they are it is entirely possible that their lawyers will be barred from disclosing that information (in such a case hopefully counsel accidentally drops a piece of paper with their names on it in public). Succeeding in such a suit will be hard now that the officers claim they thought they were being shot at. A court would probably apply qualified immunity on the grounds that slowly driving through people falls within their discretion as officers when they think they are being shot at. Then again if they really thought they were being shot at they probably would have floored it.
Sounds like somebody at the Detroit Police Department needs to get their ears checked, their minds checked, or both. Anyone, let alone a trained police officer, that mistakes the smashing of a window for a gunshot has hyper-sensitive or close to no hearing. That rationale might make sense to people that actually think that gun shots are only as loud as they are on TV, but anybody else should see right through this lie unless the officers fail their next psychological evaluations. A common symptom of schizophrenia is hearing things that are not real as if they are. Are these cops crazy?
What would be crazy would be for the people of Detroit to put up with this. This one incident is believed to be the only incident of violence in the city since the George Floyd protests began. We hope that the people of Detroit continue their peaceful demonstrations while at the same time making sure that Chief Craig hears them. To those ends we are releasing the following information from public records so that protest organizers can better plan their routes:
JAMES ELMER CRAIG
MALE
DOB: AUG-1956
AGE: 63
Recent Address History:
** **** *** **
DETROIT, MI *****
2018 - Now
Owner
**** * ******** ***
VIEW PARK, CA *****
2003 - 2019
Possible Email Addresses:
jcraig809[at]gmail.com
bigjesse55[at]aol.com