Logic lacking in Council’s nonlethal bill

This won’t take long.

Two current incidents create a portrait of why an IQ test ought to be mandatory for public office, in addition to age and citizenship requirements. Or a passing grade in logic.

The two incidents are the unfortunate death of Walter Wallace Jr. and the misplaced action of City Council in banning nonlethal weapons such as tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets, some of which may have been used improperly on protestors who illegally blocked I-676 in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the spring.

If they were used improperly, the logical thing would be to punish the bad cops and improve supervision and training. 

As you know by now, police were called by Wallace’s parents, and police radio told responding officers they would find a man with a knife threatening an elderly man and woman. That is damn serious.

They did find a man with a knife, who refused to drop it when ordered to do so. He then moved toward the two officers, who at first retreated, and then fired, killing Wallace. They were not equipped with nonlethal Tasers, something former Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey had planned to get for every officer, a plan that inexplicably dissolved when he left. 

Listen to Shaka Johnson, attorney for the Wallace family, which said it did not want the two officers charged with homicide.

“The city has failed not only the Wallace family . . . but the city has also failed those police officers,” he said. “It failed them tremendously. The only remedy the police had in that moment, for their thinking, was their service weapon. There was no less lethal option available.”

And almost at the same time this was happening, City Council was removing less lethal options from the hands of police.

Tear gas or pepper spray might not have worked in the case of the deranged Wallace, but rubber bullets might have, along with Tasers, which now probably will be distributed to officers.

The point — which will escape the bill’s sponsor, the harridan Helen Gym — is that as you remove nonlethal weapons from police, you make them more reliant on lethal force.

That is obvious to everyone except 14 of 17 members of City Council who believe in acting to make themselves feel righteous. Never mind about logic.