The Tymar Crawford case has been a glorified case of “shenanigans”. While this South Park reference is funny, the concept is not. Shenanigans, trickery, in legalese, is misfeasance. According to Wikipedia, “generally, a civil defendant will be liable for misfeasance (in public office) if the defendant owed a duty of care toward the plaintiff, the defendant breached that duty of care by improperly performing a legal act, and the improper performance resulted in harm to the plaintiff“. That misfeasance is on the part of the State Attorney Bill Eddins. He set up a kangaroo grand jury to take the burden off of his shoulders in publicly announcing that no one would be holding Daniel Siemen accountable, legally, criminally for his actions ie “breach of duty of care” or “breach of public trust” to establish there is “nothing (criminal) to see here”.
Eddins claims that the officer was operating in the moment of the incidence and us looking at it in hindsight doesn’t do it justice. But what I see is a bad traffic stop ending in unnecessary lethal force. What I mean by that is the premise that they used to engage Crawford was not procedure, policy or legal probable cause for the stop, thus a bad stop cannot end with a good shoot.
According to the 1st two pages of the Grand Jury report, the PPD officers saw Crawford roll by and they recognized it was him driving. They remembered he had a history of narcotics, violence and weapons charges and that he possibly had a suspended driver’s license but that couldn’t be confirmed. So they claimed, they both smelled “fresh marijuana” as he drove by. This is laughable especially because of the change in laws regarding marijuana. There was no reason for the stop ergo there was no reason for anything that resulted beyond.
FDLE believed Siemen would be charged. How does Bill Eddins prevent that? He obfuscating the facts of the shoot. Nothing happens in a vacuum and judging the acts of a cop in midst of such a conflict isn’t fair, but judging the acts that escalated to this conflict can be judged and calculated. If every action ripples into history, the choice to pursue Crawford without a reason, becomes the central flawed premise in the theater of shit.
Once that threshold was crossed, the fate of it all can be predicted and a life was lost. Regardless of what you think of Crawford, if being black and having a record was not a reason to be stopped even adding in the possibility of suspended license and possible the smell of marijuana, neither of which could be known for a certainty prior to the stop, then you must concede he would still be alive had that choice to enter into such questionable actions by the officers. The lack of thinking through the consequences of stopping someone they believed had a violent streak for such a bullshit charge would have been calculated since LEO’s are supposed to be trained on such things. The truth is this decision could have resulted in more innocent people being hurt in the escalation of events that such training should have considered, had any consideration had been done.
Fact is one bad choice down a wrong path ended with the death of a young black man. That bell cannot be unrung. God have mercy on Pensacola!
Conjuring Justice 