Patrick Lyoya should not be dead today.
But he is because both he and the police officer who shot him made poor choices when they encountered each other in Grand Rapids on April 4.
Similar decisions have been behind many, if not most, of the police shootings of unarmed Black men that have roiled the country for the past several years.
Now Lyoya is dead and the cop who shot him is facing a frightening future, for no good cause.
Lyoya, 26, was killed by the unnamed officer during a traffic stop that went bad in a hurry.
The officer had pulled him over for having a license plate that didn’t match the registration of the car he was driving.
Video tapes show Lyoya getting out of his car as the cop approaches and refusing to show his driver’s license when asked.
Then he made the worst choice possible. He ran.
We still don’t know what he was running from. At that point, he was a traffic violator — not a felony suspect.
But such self-destructive responses have become increasingly common in shootings involving young Black men by police. The accepted explanation is that the victims are fearful, convinced they are being targeted because of their race and likely to be injured or killed.
I accept that, but I also suspect there is more going on. It seems as if resisting police has become a form of protest, a way to demonstrate disdain for a system that has taken so many Black lives.
It’s not blaming the victim to say that is a stupid and dangerous thing to run from police, struggle with them, grab for their weapon — it’s common sense and life-saving advice.
The officer, too, seems to have learned nothing from the past shootings.
Why was it so urgent to run Lyoya down when he fled? Again, he was not a felony suspect. He was uncooperative, but he was not armed or threatening.
Wrestling a suspect one-on-one is never a good idea. Fear, and perhaps even panic, takes over and the situation is no longer fully under the officer’s control. His was also a stupid and dangerous decision.
But too often, cops allow their determination to be obeyed to cloud their judgment. Perhaps he was afraid, too. Cops have become frequent targets for violence.
Two years into the heightened awareness of police shootings, we seem no closer to figuring out how to prevent them.
One idea to consider is reducing opportunities for violent confrontations. Start by cutting way back on routine traffic stops, which too often become an excuse to profile.
Pulling over a vehicle should be reserved for behavior that endangers other drivers. For all other offenses, squad cars should be equipped with the same technology used in the cameras mounted at intersections. Tickets are issued without an interaction with an officer.
Lyoya and the cop who killed him found themselves face-to-face on the side of the road. One ran, and the other reacted. One lost his life, and the other likely ruined his. And it didn’t have to happen.
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