REVERSE RIGHTS
Hit & Run

He had more than two weeks to think it over. To get his story straight
with his colleagues, if he wanted to. To replay the details with his
lawyer. To flesh out the story so it would protect him from the law.
Finally, North Branford cop Michael Breen filled out an official
police report last Thursday explaining why he shot a woman to death
July 13.

Usually, if a cop merely collars a shoplifter, he files the report
that day. Maybe the next.

But somehow it seems OK to people in Greater New Haven that a cop
could wait so long to craft his version of why he took a life.

After all, cops have rights, too, don't they?

After all, cops have one of society's most dangerous jobs, and
occasionally they have to kill, don't they?

Of course they do. When a cop must kill, it can devastate him
psychologically, maybe for life. That cop deserves our sympathy.
Police in general deserve our gratitude for risking their lives to
keep us safe.

But that's only part of the story.

The public has a right to know, too.

Police, employees of our government entrusted with state power to
kill, have responsibilities, too.

The spate of killings by cops in Connecticut--five since
December--cries out for closer scrutiny of government's use of force.
It doesn't cry out for excuses for fortifying the Blue Wall of
Silence, such as "Don't cops have rights just like ordinary suspects?"

That's too simplistic an equation.

In real life, ordinary suspects aren't treated with the deference
shown to cops who kill. Suspects are leaned on to talk. Cops can wait
'til they're ready.

"The cops want to interview [suspects] as soon as they can, without a
lawyer, before they can think about giving a full statement or finding
some friends to support them," notes Joseph McNamara, retired police
chief of San Jose, Calif.

Sure, cops read arrestees their Miranda rights: the right to remain
silent, to avoid self-incrimination, to consult a lawyer.

In real life, cops sometimes mumble that Miranda warning so the
arrestee doesn't understand, McNamara notes. Even when cops enunciate
like Joe Friday, they try their best to get suspects to sing.

McNamara's no liberal. He's a fellow at the arch-conservative Hoover
Institution. He believes this trend toward cops waiting to report on
their killings, though, is an "open wound."

"You live in a free society. A police officer takes a human life, and
it's secret. There's something wrong there," McNamara says.

No one denies an officer's right to consult a lawyer. But under the
terms of the U.S. Supreme Court's so-called "Reverse Miranda"
decision, a police chief may order a cop to file a report right after
a shooting, according to McNamara; but the chief may not bring
criminal charges against the cop based on that initial report. The
chief may fire the officer based on the report.

That's fair. Police chiefs in Connecticut are making a mistake by
passing up that bargain.

You can thank Jack Kelly in part for this trend. When officers kill in
Connecticut, they call Kelly to represent them. "He talks to me first.
The investigators can wait," Kelly says. "These arguments [about
delay] are nonsensical. The way this politically correct state of ours
is going these days, the first thing I'd want to do is get a lawyer."

Any cop who shoots is "guaranteed" to face a state and federal
investigation as well as a civil suit, Kelly claims. (Not true on the
lawsuit.) That's why he gives that advice.

His idea of a "politically correct" Connecticut reaction defies
belief. Now Republican Gov. John Rowland can be tarred with the
debate-stifling epithet of "PC" just because he has reacted to the
killings by seeking to address the concerns of a reasonably concerned
public? Just because he wondered why a Hartford cop had to shoot an
unarmed boy/alleged mugger in the back, then reportedly pressured
witnesses to lie about it?

Waterbury's law-and-order top prosecutor--who once worked for
Kelly--is "PC" because he brought murder charges against a New Milford
cop who shot to death an unarmed man at point-blank range?

All shootings are different. Breen's North Branford killing of
Victoria Cooper is different from East Haven Officer Robert
Flodquist's 1997 shooting of Malik Jones after a reckless car chase:
At least according to the official version, Breen had a good reason to
make a stop, and one of the people he stopped was fleeing with drugs.
It's not Breen's fault that he's an infantryman in an insane,
unwinnable war on drugs. Breen (unlike Flodquist, another Kelly
client) didn't run up to a car, smash the window, and then fire
inside, at least according to the official version. It's too early to
rush to judgment against him.

It's not too early to demand scrutiny. As in the Flodquist case, the
official version does raise troubling questions: Did an officer really
have to shoot through a car's side window? Was he really in danger if
he could shoot from that angle? Did he reasonably believe he was?

It would benefit not just the public, but Breen and police in general,
if we had a less crafted, more credible initial report from the
officer himself to help address that question.

E-mail: pbass@newhavenadvocate.com