Despite the dearth of facts, there are enough to reach an immutable conclusion. Los Angeles police shot a man in the head without justification, no less avoidability. From the LA Times:

The man flagged down officers about 6:35 p.m. at Los Feliz Boulevard and Tica Drive south of Griffith Park, according to a police account. “This person extended an arm wrapped in a towel. The officer exited the vehicle and said, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun,'” LAPD Lt. John Jenal said. Then at least one officer shot the man, officials say.

After the shooting, a video was taken of the cops rolling the man over, revealing the gaping wound in his head, in order to cuff him. This aspect, caught on video, has given rise to more, and harsher, criticism than the shooting. The question of why they would risk manhandling someone who took a bullet to the head, and thus needed aid while posing no threat, to cuff him was paramount.

The response was callous but accurate:

LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith, a department spokesman, said the officers followed standard procedure in handcuffing the man when they did. At that point, Smith said, the man had not been searched and was considered a suspect. “We always do that,” Smith said. “That’s the policy … to handcuff someone in a situation like that.”

This is reverse logic. No doubt it’s true that policy requires that anyone shot and still alive must be cuffed, but the rationale is that if they were a sufficient threat as to justify the initial shooting, they remain a sufficient threat to require being cuffed. The problem with the logic is it begs the question: Because the guy was shot, he must be cuffed. But that assumes the initial shooting was justified, which is where the logic falls apart.

The unnamed victim sought police help. He flagged down the police. There was no call, no threat, no reason for the police to respond to a problem. There was just a guy in need of assistance. From Robby Soave at Reason:

It’s unclear whether the officers had any reason whatsoever to suspect that the man was dangerous. The incident occurred in broad daylight in the relatively safe neighborhood of Los Feliz. The officers were driving by when the man flagged them down, calling “police, police.”

To call it “unclear” is to fall into the same frame of reference as the police. A reasonable belief that a person presents a threat doesn’t derive from the absence of information, but from affirmative information upon which suspicion is based. In other words, it’s very clear.

The officers, having been flagged down by the man, saw a towel around his extended hand. If the frame of reference is that the man could be concealing a weapon under the towel, then it presents as an inchoate threat. A weapon wasn’t seen, but its existence wasn’t impossible, so it’s presumed to be there.

The officer exited the vehicle and said, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun,'” LAPD Lt. John Jenal said.

How does one “drop the gun” one doesn’t possess? It’s not a possibility. By presuming a weapon when none exists, an untenable scenario arises. The man cannot comply because compliance requires that the imagined scenario that exists only in the mind of the cop be real. It’s not. Neither the cop nor the man can change reality to meet the cop’s fear fantasy. There is nothing he can do at that moment but take a bullet.

The question, then, is whether the officer’s presumption, that seeing the potential for a threat, though not a threat itself, justifies the use of deadly force because of the First Rule of Policing. The answer, essentially, depends on whether one elevates the safety of the officer in the face of the theoretical potential for harm over the life of the person who has done nothing to justify such fear. In the face of ignorance of the existence of an actual threat, does the cop still get to shoot to protect himself from potential harm?

Now that it’s happened, of course, the police are busily trying to reinvent the shooting to find a basis upon which to explain it away. They are floating a relatively new flavor of excuse, suicide by cop.

Smith said investigators would explore all possibilities, including whether the man needed some type of help from police. He said investigators would also look into the man’s background to see if there were any indications the shooting was an attempted “suicide by cop.” “We don’t have any idea about this guy’s background. We just don’t know yet.”

While this raises a slightly palatable excuse for those inclined to excuse police error, it’s unfounded regardless of what they dredge up. The man did nothing to cause the officer to shoot, and an attempt to taint him by raising suicide by cop, because “we just don’t know yet,” is a red herring. Had this been suicide by cop, it would have involved the man engaging in behavior intended to draw fire against him. That didn’t happen here. As Soave explains:

Smith seems to think “suicide-by-cop”—where a person intent on ending his own life deliberately provokes the police into firing a kill shot—is a possibility here. But maybe the man simply needed some kind of assistance, and didn’t realize holding a towel would be interpreted as a threat.

Towel must now be added to the list of things a person can hold that could get him killed, along with a Wii controller. But the risk doesn’t reside in the nature of what’s in hand, but the interplay of ignorance and fear on the part of police. It wasn’t that the cop here was threatened, but that he wasn’t certain that he was safe. It’s a subtle shift, but a deadly one, and it does not justify shooting people just in case.