Hats off to District Attorney Michael Schrunk for how he handled the inquest into the shooting death of James Perez. The real point of the inquest (which Mr. Schrunk alluded to) was not in the jury’s predictable answers to the four questions but in the detailed description of how the paths of Mr. Perez and Officers Sery and Macomber came to intersect that day.
After digesting the reports from b!X (concluding with this one) and the Oregonian’s transcripts of testimony, most of my questions were answered. One question that plagued people was why Officer Macomber Tasered Mr. Perez for three minutes: the answer I inferred was that because one barb didn’t strike Mr. Perez, Officer Macomber wasn’t hearing the sound he expected to hear of the Taser working, and so continued to press the button, possibly realizing that something was not right, but not knowing (and possibly not having the training) to recognize just what was not right.
The inquest testimony raised one disturbing question for me that I didn’t have beforehand. Officer Sery said that he shot Mr. Perez because Mr. Perez was taking his clenched right hand out of his pocket, and he feared (incorrectly, as it turned out) that Mr. Perez was taking out a gun. But just before that, Officer Sery had told him, “I’m going to shoot, I’m going to shoot! Get your hands out!” Officer Sery then testified, “I remember just seeing the top of his hand starting to come out of his pocket, and that’s when I made the decision to shoot.”
The problem, not commented on by the Oregonian, is that when he was shot, Mr. Perez was apparently doing what Officer Sery had just told him to do. And that’s where I come back to whether Portland police officers receive adequate training. Was Officer Sery trained to tell suspects to take their hands out of their pockets, and then to fear for his life when they do? I’ve thought about this today and haven’t solved the riddle.