MORNING GLORY: Minnesota tragedies aren't instant replay calls you make from the couch
An officer-involved shooting is not a disputed call in an NFL game, where the announcers offer opinions on the call made on the field as various angles are played for the audience at home and the network’s in-house referee expert weighs in on what he thinks might happen while filling airtime. The officials on the field know instant replay angles have to be studied on a very constrained timeline, and that the play in question is being discussed and debated by millions as they talk among themselves. The stakes aren’t life and death, but they do involve vast sums of money and the careers of the officials, players and coaches. Sports officials are grateful for multiple angles and for input from league headquarters.
NFL camera shots are numerous and precise. That makes them very different from the collection of iPhone videos, Ring camera recordings and limited body-camera footage that circulated online after two officer-involved shootings in the Twin Cities.
Those videos were most definitely not taken by professionals. They may in fact distort the actual events that occurred. In any event, in this era of AI manipulation and selective editing, they cannot be trusted simply because you saw them in slow motion on your X feed.
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The two shootings in Minnesota occurred within seconds. Neither was planned. Unlike professional sports, the cameras were not pre-positioned. And the public has not seen everything law enforcement investigators have.
All of it is a tragedy, two tragedies in fact, neither of which is close to being definitely adjudicated under the legal standard of "reasonable force." The available video is simply not dispositive because it does not include the sworn testimony from the officers involved or the near-by pedestrians. The justice system will evaluate those actions, as it always does. It will be some time before a determination is reached and we know the decision.
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The point of this column is in a country addicted to instant replay and decisions made within minutes, the patience required for serious deliberation and adjudication has eroded. It's been worn away. We almost all watch sports. We almost all "call" pass interference when it benefits our team. Most fans think "targeting," to name just one particularly difficult to define infraction, occurred or didn’t occur based on their allegiances. And we are passionate about it. Sometimes for decades.
That is not this. That is a habit of judgment to which we have become accustomed and indeed expect, but it is a habit that does not belong here.
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No matter how many angles of either or both shootings you have studied, and no matter how many times you have watched each of them, you do not know what happened in full. If you have an opinion on either shooting that presumes to declare one or both unlawful or unjustified, you are not telling your audience of family and friends anything other than the reality that your judgment is not to be trusted. Because you are uttering conclusions based on incomplete evidence.
There’s a reason —actually dozens of them— why our criminal justice system functions methodically. It exists to protect the rights of the accused. Shootings involving suspected criminals are naturally upsetting for all of us. Snap judgments about the reasonableness of force — including officer-involved shootings — are always irresponsible.
These are not games to be watched, cheered or mourned like sporting events. Two officer-involved shootings that leave grief and sadness in their wake cannot be made better by on-line inquisitions or mob judgments by mobs from the left or the right.
Just wait. We will know in due course.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.