The $10 burglary that changed the rules for police shootings
A landmark Supreme Court case
On October 3, 1974, Edward Eugene Garner broke into an unoccupied house on Vollintine Avenue in North Memphis, Tennessee. Mrs. Daisey Bell Statts, who lived next door, heard the sound of glass breaking and called police.
Two officers responded. While Officer Leslie Wright radioed the dispatcher to say they were at the scene, his partner Elton Hymon went to the back of the house, carrying a flashlight with five D-cell batteries in his right hand and a revolver in his left hand. A door slammed. Hymon saw someone running and heard a sound coming from the chain link fence in the backyard.
The events that night — following a routine burglary — would change the rules governing when police in America may use deadly force, thanks to a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even though the facts were very different in the ICE’s agent’s killing of Renee Good last week in Minneapolis — for one thing, she was not a suspect — some of the same reasoning may apply…
