President of The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, Jason Johnson, appeared Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” and said California’s attempt to curb deadly force is ill-advised.
Johnson was discussing the case of Stephon Clark who was shot back in March of 2018, after pointing a cell phone at Sacramento police officers, and committing suicide by cop.
“This is a response to the Stephon Clark case which you’ll recall involved a gentleman who ran from the police into a backyard of a home in dimly lit conditions and actually pulled out a cell phone and pointed it at the police officers as if it was a firearm,” he said.
“It was a suicide by cop. And in response to that case and all the questions about that case, which have been largely based on false narratives that have been sort of perpetuated by the media there. The legislature’s introduced this bill. It calls for police to take a much more passive approach in their use of force.”
Johnson said most people do not want to see a passive police force and claimed the current language of the law is more than reasonable.
“I think people expect their police officers to be professional. But also to follow their training and to follow the law. And that’s what happened in the Stephon Clark case,” he said.
“And I think there are some people who were displeased with the outcome and the fact that the police officers were not prosecuted. But they weren’t prosecuted because they followed the law. And so California lawmakers, some of them, want to change the law … These aren’t practical solutions for real life rapidly evolving situations that we ask our police officers to step into. These types of solutions simply won’t work. The way the law is now, the constitutional standard for police use of force is [an] objectively reasonable standard. And it’s practical. It’s applicable, it’s understandable and it works.”
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