BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY SEPT. 6, 2017) — Pittsfield Police Officer Chris Colello has now shot two suspects in the line of duty in the past seven years. The latest involves the fatal shooting of a man that the district attorney’s office says charged Colollo while carrying a knife. A  large question involved in this legal gunplay: Was the shooting justified?

The facts seem clear:

• Police responded to a domestic disturbance.
• They say they encountered a drunk man carrying a knife.
• They ordered the man to drop the knife.
• Police say that the man charged.
• Police put seven bullets into the man.

Immediate questions:

• Why seven bullets?
• An old street fighting rule is “flee a knife, charge a gun” on the logic that you can’t outrun a bullet. Why didn’t police respond in this way?
• Is there a video of this killing? THE PLANET‘s sources say yes.
• If so, should the film be released to the public? THE PLANET says yes, in the interest of transparency. Our sources, which include police personnel speaking with condition of anonymity, say that claiming the victim “charged” the police is “highly subject to interpretation.”
• How will the public obtain an accurate, truthful account of the event?

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Society requires safe streets and a police force to help provide them. Police must be granted wide but nonetheless limited latitude in the enforcement required in service of that directive. At the same time, citizens must have the assurance that its police officers exercise proper restraint, using only that degree of force required for the containment of the situation.

It sounds simple, but of course it is anything but. Police calls often involve incredible amounts of stress, adrenaline, and emotion. Actions must sometimes be taken — that is, decisions made — hastily. While no amount of training can fully prepare all-too-human officers for every situation that groans under the oppressive weight of these factors, citizens have the right to expect that the professionalism of its public safety officials will provide reasonable safeguards, even guarantees, that rash actions will not rule over reasoned response.

As usual, Pittsfield public officials have not been as transparent as they need to be. Mayor Linda Tyer did not call a press conference with acting police chief Michael Wynn, where questions could be asked. That should have been done immediately. Granted, the killing makes mockery of the mayor’s tired fiction of a “vibrant” Pittsfield, but is it too much to ask the city’s chief executive to perform her duty in a case such as this? Moreover, not one councilor commented officially, on the record. The onus here is on council president Peter Marchetti, but like Tyer, Marchetti has remained silent. The best explanation for this is that both are too cozy with the PPD leadership to respond appropriately to citizens. Are they both hearing “their master’s voice?”If there’s a better explanation, we would like to hear it. THE PLANET invites the mayor, the council president, and for that matter District Attorney David Capeless to provide it either for posting to this blog or by appearing on PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION.

This is where Tyer has consistently fanned. Her past response to serious public-safety issues has been to punt, either to ignore the situation in favor of her “vibrant” fixation or to save reaction until she has enough time to talk it over with her kitchen cabinet and then make a safe, staged, scripted public appearance. The previous time, she called an open press conference at city hall with a lineup of every department head, councilors, Judge Crater, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, conveying the message, accurate or not, that she was too scared to do it alone with Wynn. Like her predecessor, Tyer does not react in real time to crises, which is when citizens need her the most. In situations of gravity such as a killing-by-cop rather than ribbon-cutting photo ops, Tyer she acts afraid of her own judgments to lead.

Not good enough.

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Until proven otherwise, THE PLANET takes the restrained view that trust must be invested in the police generally and Colollo specifically. We will assume for the moment that he acted reasonably against a serious threat to his life. With that said, the incident requires investigation. We assume Wynn will order an internal probe. All well and good, but citizens need more, since they believe they cannot trust “official” Pittsfield. The findings must be credible, and we need to ask if the police administration can be trusted to properly and justly police itself.

Police sources speak of a “divided department” under Wynn, hopelessly split along political lines. Citizens must be assured that Colello will be found innocent or guilty not based on whether he is a political “in” or “out” but on the basis of the dispassionate truth.

That is a question we now pose to you, our readers, and to the community at large: Can the city be trusted to investigate itself? If not, what person or persons, office or offices, would you trust to find justice here?

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“And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water” — Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLI.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.