Do we really give police officers this much authority to use physical force?

Perhaps it is only appropriate that on the first day of activity in the criminal trial of police officer Jason Van Dyke, attention was brought to the concept that the alleged criminal activity was captured on video.

Serving and protecting us? Or harassment?

Let’s be honest – if that video from a police officer’s own camera didn’t exist, it’s very likely that there would be no trial and Van Dyke would have spent the past four years continuing to work his beat and be one of the officers allegedly enforcing the laws for the people of Chicago.

WHEN OPENING STATEMENTS were made Monday at the Criminal Courts building (Judge Vincent Gaughan ultimately rejected all notions of moving the trial outside of Chicago), special prosecutor Joseph McMahon emphasized the video and the number of shots (16) from his pistol that Van Dyke fired into the body of Laquan McDonald.

In a touch of hamming things up a bit, McMahon literally pounded his fist on a lectern to do a count-down of each shot, and even emphasized the point when the eighth shot was fired – so as to imply that Van Dyke wasn’t even close to finishing his gunfire at that point.

Almost as though he thinks (and wants the jury to believe) that everything else is irrelevant, and we all ought to just issue the “guilty” verdict right now – saving us all time and hassle by carting Van Dyke off to prison right now.

But the legal process instead will be spending the next few weeks trying to establish whether there was any justification for the police officer’s actions.

WHICH ACTUALLY MADE another remark McMahon made all the more interesting.

He tried to summarize the incident of Oct. 20, 2014 (the night McDonald died) as one where Van Dyke saw, “a black boy (McDonald was 17) walking down a street with a chain-link fence with the audacity to ignore the police.”

But the reality is that we do give police significant authority to stop people. While they’re supposed to have “probable cause” to justify their actions, the reality is that it really doesn’t take much to give a cop the ability to question someone they find suspicious.

Trying to walk away from the police can be construed as resisting arrest. And if McDonald really was carrying a knife (as has been reported), that may well make this an “open-and-shut” case of a police officer being justified in using force – which would make the case one of justifiable homicide.

NOT THE “MURDER” that many have spent the past few years decrying the death of McDonald as being.

Now I’m not in the courtroom to see any of this. I don’t doubt that the jury is going to manage to offend some people – no matter how they choose to interpret any of this. I don’t expect anyone will be satisfied by the ultimate outcome of this trial.

I suspect the eventual verdict will offend the beliefs of everybody who wants to think this is a clear-cut case.

In reality, there is only one definitive “fact,” Jason Van Dyke did fire 16 shots from his weapon that killed Laquan McDonald.

THE REST OF the story? We’re going to get an up-close lesson as to just how much force police are allowed to use in the act of doing their jobs; which amount to that old cliché about “serving and protecting” the public.

On the one hand, we wouldn’t be issuing police officers those pistols and other countless weapons if we didn’t expect there would be circumstances upon which they would have to use them.

Then again, we do need to have some sense of restraint – otherwise our “protectors” would be nothing more than the official city-sponsored goon squad. Certainly not something anybody with sense would want to see.

Where is the “line” between force and abuse? That question really is the key to comprehending everything that we’ll see and hear during the trial’s coming weeks.

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