A matter of black and white? Two fake guns, two different outcomes

Two incidents last week involving police officers in separate Greater Cincinnati communities – one involving a white suspect and one involving a black suspect – have attracted renewed attention to the issue of race in police confrontations.

Christopher R. Laugle pointed a toy gun at Mount Healthy police officers, who stunned him with a Taser last Tuesday night. He was arrested and sent to jail.

Just hours later in Cheviot, Paul Gaston was reaching for what turned out to be a toy gun in the waistband of his pants, Cincinnati police said. Officers shot him with their handguns. Gaston's body was sent to the morgue, and the internal investigation into the deadly shooting continues.

Laugle, 26, is white. Gaston, 37, was black.

And that distinction has spawned a fresh discussion about whether authorities are more likely to use lethal force against black men.

A column written Friday by New York Daily News senior justice writer Shaun King, who writes about race and police brutality issues, raised questions about the shootings. He argued the two incidents revealed "double standards faced by black men and white men."

"What caused police in the same city, on the same day, to determine they must use lethal force with the black man but merely take the white man into custody?" King asked.

King's column, however, includes eight key factual errors.

Nonetheless, that article was widely shared on social media channels through the weekend and seemed to be the impetus for a video release that included links to personal information of 52 Cincinnati police officers on Sunday. The group, claiming to be the "hacktivist" Anonymous Anon Verdict, released addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers of Police Chief Eliot Isaac to rank-and-file officers and some of their family members.

The group said it was releasing the information in response to the Wednesday shooting of Gaston.

A comprehensive comparison of the two fake-gun incidents is not yet possible because some details related to the Cincinnati fatal police shooting have yet to be released. The 911 calls Cincinnati police released last week in the Gaston case featured only portions of the calls; The Enquirer has requested the full version of all 911 calls and police dispatch recordings.

What is known is that police reported stark differences between the shootings. Most notably:

• Mt. Healthy officers were told from the beginning of their encounter that the gun Laugle pointed at them was a toy and fake. Cincinnati officers apparently only knew that Gaston had earlier been reported waving a gun near children. It was unclear if 911 operators were ever told it was a fake or a toy. Isaac said last week officers didn't learn Gaston had an Airsoft gun until after they fired. 

• The gun pointed at Mt. Healthy officers by Laugle was seen laying on a table with other toys. It had orange on its barrel denoting it was a fake. Orange markings have been required on the barrel of fake or toy guns since 1989. There was no such marking on the gun police said Gaston had, according to Cincinnati police Lt. Steven Saunders.
• In Laugle's case, officers were called to a home on a report of a disturbance and had been there for between 10 and 15 minutes before stunning him. In Gaston's case, it remains unclear how much time elapsed from when Cincinnati officers first confronted Gaston until they fired the fatal rounds on the 3300 block of Harrison Avenue.

According to police, five Cincinnati officers, with their firearms drawn, confronted Gaston. He was told to go to his knees and then lie down on his face. Gaston initially complied with requests, but then started to rise back up to his knees and moved his right hand toward his waist within seconds, Isaac said.

Bystanders captured the confrontation and Gaston's shooting on cell phones. Police released two of those video recordings to media during a press conference Thursday. It remained unclear Monday if there was any dash-cam video recorded.

Mt. Healthy Police Chief Vince Demasi, a former Cincinnati police officer and longtime president of its police union, called the shootings drastically different. He said Daily News columnist King did not call him nor anyone in his department for comment or facts related to the shooting.

"It is the most irresponsible thing I've ever seen,'' he said of King's story and other reports. "It's a great example of having a conclusion in your mind and then going out and making the pieces fit."

When contacted by email Monday, King said the racial distinction between the shootings concerns him.

"I'm troubled ... at how in the case where a suspect actually pointed the gun at police, he came out alive and the case where the suspect only appeared to be reaching for it, he was shot from all sides by multiple police,'' King wrote in an email. "I believe that race is very much a factor at what causes police to use lethal force. It's very much a factor at what causes them to spare one man and mow another one down.

"Officers have to act quickly and use their instincts, and what we see here is that one case police were instinctively restrained and in another not so much,'' he said. "Why is that?"

Demasi said the the answer to that question is simple and has nothing to do with race. His officers were called to a home in the 1500 block of Adams Road between 11 p.m. and 11:15 p.m on Feb. 16 on a report on a man who had been sleeping on a woman's porch and refused to leave. By the time officers arrived, that man was gone. It was only during a follow-up conversation with the woman that officers saw the gun and asked if it was a toy. She said it was and picked it up. Laugle grabbed it from her, pointed it at officers and walked toward them presumably to show them it was toy, Demasi said.

Officers repeatedly told him to put down the gun. When he kept walking toward them, at least one officer stunned him with a Taser, Demasi said. Laugle was arrested on charges of menacing and obstructing official business and was jailed.

"My guys had been there a lot longer and got to see the whole picture," the chief said. "This was not something like a gun in someone's pants or coat. Ours was not split-second decision. There's just a ton of differences."

In the Cincinnati case, officers were first called by a woman who said Gaston was waving a gun around in an area near children in Westwood. At some point later, he drove off in a pickup. It crashed into a utility pole at the corner of Boudinot and Harrison avenues.

A 911 caller, who reported the collision, said she saw a man stumble out of the truck, drop a gun and pick it up before walking down Harrison Avenue. Another call also told 911 operators that she saw something fall to the street and saw the pickup driver pick it up.

A short time later, officers confronted Gaston. When they saw him reach toward his waist, three of the five officers fired a total of nine shots, police said. It remains unclear how many times Gaston was struck.

Neither King nor Cincinnati police discussed a similar case that happened in East Price Hill five weeks earlier. In that case, two Cincinnati police officers fatally shot Robert Tenbrink, 45, after he pointed a gun at them. The gun turned out to be a BB gun. Tenbrink, who was suspected of robbing a store earlier, was white. Both officers were white.

In both Cincinnati cases, leaders of area black churches and black community outreach workers attended press conferences and voiced their support of police.

Such press conferences, which also include comments from Mayor John Cranley and City Manager Harry Black, have become routine. They often include video and audio presentations and a description of events – sometimes just hours after a shooting.

In the case of Gaston and Tenbrink, officials said they believe officers were justified in their use of force.

Geoff Alpert, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on use of lethal force, said investigations will have to determine the totality of circumstances and facts around the cases.

"If the situation was exactly the same and the only difference was race, then you can say race is a factor,'' he said. "But you need to do a threat analysis. And in all fairness to everyone, you have to understand the threat."

Factors to assess would include how much time officers had, what knowledge they had going into a situation, what a suspect was doing or saying, what police saw and who else was around, he said.

Alpert said he's not surprised by the reaction of some in the black community and the related reports on the Internet.

"These are advocacy groups," Alpert said. "They are not objective. They advocate a position. They are not looking at the facts. They already made the decision without an investigation.

"Neither the police nor these groups should do this,'' he said, suggesting instead they wait for the results of an investigation. "They both need to let it run its course before making judgments.''