Dexter Reed Is Another Bogus Martyr

By Rich Lowry

Friday, April 12, 2024

 

The Dexter Reed case shows how it’s possible to get an anti-police narrative going in almost any circumstance.

 

This wasn’t an unarmed man in an encounter that went desperately wrong. There wasn’t a suspicion he had a weapon that proved, after the dust settled, to be tragically mistaken. The police didn’t even fire first.

 

At a traffic stop in Chicago, the 26-year-old Reed pulled a gun and fired on officers before getting killed in return fire.

 

The first rule during traffic stops — and other interactions with officers — is to do what the police ask, but really, the more fundamental rule is not to shoot at the police.

 

This hasn’t kept the media from getting a news cycle going about the cops firing 96 rounds after the shoot-out began, often with misleading headlines, and advocacy groups agitating about supposedly gratuitous traffic stops.

 

Of less interest to these parties is why Reed would shoot at the cops in the first place, and his prior gun charges, which it is almost impossible to find reference to in news reports.

 

(An exception is this dispatch from NBC 5 News Chicago, which notes, “Cook County court records showed Reed was out on pretrial release after being charged in 2023 with three counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and one count of possession of a firearm with a revoked FOID [Firearms Owner Identification] card. He had appeared in court in person days before the shooting and was next scheduled for a status hearing in April.”)

 

CBS in Chicago had a clueless headline, “Why did Dexter Reed traffic stop, shootout with Chicago Police escalate so rapidly?”

 

Well, shootouts don’t usually escalate slowly.

 

The police tactics weren’t ideal in this incident. It is odd that they cut off Reed’s car from the front rather than pulling him over and approaching from behind, which is standard practice and safer, and once the shooting began, there was potential for cross fire.

 

The stop, for not wearing a seat belt, does look pretextual. Clearly, the police thought Reed was a potentially bad guy with contraband in his car — and they were right.

 

Reed didn’t follow the explicit directions of police to roll his windows down and unlock his doors.

 

Traffic stops are always potentially dangerous for police, as we were reminded by the brutal murder of New York City police officer Jonathan Diller a few weeks ago. When a driver doesn’t obey orders, it instantly raises the question whether he is just stupidly noncompliant or whether something worse is afoot.

 

Reed had tinted windows, so putting his window up meant that he couldn’t be clearly seen. The cops reacted so dramatically, pulling their guns, because this meant he potentially represented a threat — and, again, they were right.

 

The person who created this situation by repeatedly carrying an illegal gun, by having one in his car during this stop, and, most of all, by drawing and firing his weapon was Dexter Reed.

 

His sister — who deserves slack given her grief — says “he was scared.” The normal way to react if you are scared of cops, though, is to do what they say, perhaps reluctantly or trepidatiously, not to precipitate a gunfight that you are certain to lose.

 

Once Reed fired at the police, he represented a mortal threat. He hit one officer, and reports suggest he fired every round he had. It was only a matter of luck that he didn’t kill one of them.

 

The cops were fully justified in firing back, in fact it was the only thing to do. When a situation gets that chaotic and confused, and when adrenaline is flowing, it is unrealistic to expect the police to carefully allocate their shots as if they were at a gun range.

 

Some critics point out that Reed came out of the car without his gun. But that almost certainly wasn’t clear in the moment.

 

Meanwhile, if shooting back at an armed assailant is excessive force, as some have suggested, what are the cops supposed to do when they are fired upon? Duck and cover?

 

It’s easy after the fact to flyspeck from the safety of a desk, keyboard, or podium every aspect of what officers do in an incredibly high-pressure, life-and-death situation, when they may not be fully aware of how many times they are firing, and every second — and perhaps every round — matters.

 

What everyone is right about is that Dexter Reed’s death was, indeed, preventable. All it took was his not trying to kill the officers who asked him to step out of his car.