He was beaten for not taking his hands out of his pockets. If he had taken his hands out of his pockets, he would almost certainly have been shot, on the groun

He was beaten for not taking his hands out of his pockets. If he had taken his hands out of his pockets, he would almost certainly have been shot, on the grounds that the officer feared there was a weapon. Not being in the courtroom, I didn't hear the testimony. Sometimes, with stories like this, there are factors that are left out of the headlines. Like that story last week, about a white man exonerated for killing a black man, which often left out that the black man had been behaving erratically and violently. Still... I can't help but be struck by the damned-if-you-do, damned-of-you-don't situation here. There is a saying that if you have a problem, and you call the police, you now have two problems. The cops were called out for something that absolutely did not merit police intervention, and became much, much worse because of it.