COLUMBUS, Ohio — A use-of-force expert who testified for the prosecution in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin said he can’t find fault with the actions of a Columbus police officer whose fatal shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was captured Tuesday on body-camera video.

“With the caveat that I only know what is shown on the video, I don’t see any clear options or alternatives that were available to the officer,” Seth Stoughton told the Dispatch on Thursday.

Some have suggested that a different type of training for officers could lead to a non-lethal outcome in such cases, including de-escalation techniques or the use of a Taser.

But Stoughton said the incident appeared to unfold too quickly for the officer, Nicholas Reardon, to employ anything other than deadly force against the knife-wielding teenager.

The video shows Bryant, with a knife in hand, charging at one female who falls backward onto the ground at Reardon’s feet, then turning and pursuing another female, pinning her to a car parked in the driveway. Bryant appears to swing the knife toward the young woman’s upper body, prompting Reardon to fire what sounds like four shots.

“When an officer sees one person attacking another person with a weapon at close range in a way that is likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, lethal force is appropriate,” Stoughton said. “The use of a firearm is the most-reliable way to address that imminent threat.

“And let’s be clear: That sucks. That sucks for everyone involved. It’s horrible and it’s tragic, especially given this girl’s age,” he said.

Stoughton came to a different conclusion about use of force in analyzing video of Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes on a Minneapolis street on March 25, 2020.

“No reasonable officer would have believed that that was an appropriate, acceptable or reasonable use of force,” Stoughton testified on April 12 during the nationally-televised trial. “Both the knee across Mr. Floyd’s neck and the prone restraint were unreasonable, excessive, and contrary to generally accepted police practices.”

The jury convicted Chauvin of murder and manslaughter on Tuesday afternoon, a verdict that was delivered just minutes after Reardon shot Bryant in the 3100 block of Legion Lane.

Expert cautions against comparing any two cases of deadly force

Stoughton, a former police officer who teaches criminal justice at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said he can’t speak about the Chauvin case because of the potential for appeals and because the cases of three co-defendants are pending.

But he cautioned against comparing any two cases of deadly force by police.

“Facts are really important. All use-of-force cases have to be carefully assessed based on their own facts and circumstances,” said Stoughton, who is the co-author of “Evaluating Police Uses of Force.”

Assertions from experts that Reardon’s only real choice was to use lethal force ring hollow for DeRay McKesson, a co-founder of Campaign Zero, a national organization that says it promotes policy changes to “end police violence.”

“There’s no way we can hear those words without understanding how race plays into it,” McKesson said. “There’s something about her being a Black girl that makes her so inherently violent? … I can’t accept that the only choice a skilled professional can make was to shoot someone to death.”

Rashawn Ray, a University of Maryland sociology professor who has researched police/civilian relations, said cities tend to downplay de-escalation tactics and rely more heavily on use-of-force tactics.

“That’s what we saw (Tuesday) in Columbus,” Ray said. “Part of what happened is the officer had other options: He could’ve used a Taser, could’ve taken time to regroup and distance the girls who were fighting.”

Of the suggestions that a different form of training could have led Reardon to take a different approach, Stoughton said: “I don’t know what training issues they might be talking about. I don’t know what else you could possibly expect an officer in this situation to do.

“This was one of the rare situations where time truly is not on the officer’s side,” he said. “In most situations, time is to the benefit of the officer. In most situations, if the officer slows things down, things are going to go better. If an officer tries to stabilize things, in most situations, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. There are exceptions and, based on the video I’ve seen, this looks like one of those exceptions.”

He called de-escalation techniques “a very important tool. Like any tool, there are situations where it is appropriate. When someone is actively attacking someone with a knife, there is no safe opportunity to attempt de-escalation. It’s just not realistic. It’s not the appropriate tool in that circumstance.”

As for deploying a Taser, Stoughton said those devices “don’t always work,” making them a risky choice in a life-or-death situation.

Another use-of-force and police training expert, Ron Martinelli, agreed that a Taser isn’t an appropriate weapon against a person in the act of stabbing someone.

“Tasers are 60% effective,” he said. “Sixty-percent effective is not what you need to save someone’s life. Officers are not trained to use non-deadly force against someone who is posing an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to an officer or third party.”

Martinelli, a forensic criminologist and retired officer based in Texas who has been involved in police training since in the 1970s, said he didn’t want to directly address Bryant’s death because he sometimes consults with Columbus police and might be asked to review the case.

But he pushed back against the idea of an alternative form of training to give officers a non-lethal option when they find themselves in a situation involving a person in the act of stabbing someone.

“We can always improve certain aspects of training, if you give the police the time and the money they need,” he said. “But what does anyone expect a reasonably trained officer to do that’s less lethal and can be used in the milliseconds when a person is actively stabbing a third party?”

Even Fred Gittes, a veteran Columbus civil-rights attorney who has sued Columbus police officers over excessive use of force, was hard-pressed to see how a change in training would have resulted in a different outcome in Tuesday’s shooting.

“It’s great to train officers for other options, but those options have to apply,” he said.

“What I saw on the video was a young Black woman who appears to be about to stab another young Black woman up against a car,” he said. “It looked like the officer was too far away to physically grab the young woman who had the knife.”

Gittes is among the lawyers representing 26 plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit the accuses Columbus police of violating their civil rights and using excessive force against them during protests Downtown in late May and early June of 2020 in response to George Floyd’s death.

He said he’s seen “case after case of white officers taking a Black life without justification. This does not appear to be one of those cases. Here, you have an officer who could be viewed as protecting a Black life.”

Stoughton said the officer found himself in a situation “where there truly is no good option.”

“It’s a very difficult conversation to have, because no one wants officers to shoot 16-year-olds,” he said. “That would be ludicrous. But no one wants officers to rely on a weapon or tactic that might be ineffective and let someone else get stabbed to death, either.”

Despite this case not resembling many of the questionable shootings that have sparked protests in the past, Stoughton said he isn’t surprised that it has prompted protesters to take to the streets of Columbus this week.

“Protesters are not just responding to the specific facts of a specific case; protesters are responding to the reality that there have been police uses of force and shootings that shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “It’s important to keep that context in mind.”

And, Stoughton said, there are aspects of the latest shooting that are alarming.

“When an officer has to use lethal force against a 16-year-old girl, there are failures somewhere,” he said. “We may not know exactly where, but there are failures somewhere that contributed to this ultimate situation.

“The failures might be in policing or in public health or they might be economic or educational,” he said. “I don’t know exactly where those failures are. But part of what motivates protesters is the sense of deeper and more systemic failures beyond just one particular incident.”

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