On Nov. 22, 2014, two Cleveland, Ohio, police officers were called to investigate a “man with a gun” in the park.

The caller told dispatch there was a juvenile in the park flashing a toy gun. The juvenile was later identified as 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Police were only told by dispatch there was an active shooter in the park.

Police officers arrived at the park and as they stopped, opened their car doors, Tamir was shot and killed.

The film of the shooting showed the police arrived at the scene, and Timothy Loehmann fired his weapon within 2 seconds.

On Dec. 28, 2015, the grand jury impaneled by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, following his recommendation, determined the two police officers should not be charged with the death of Rice.

In his statement, McGinty said, “To charge police ... the State must be able to show the officers acted outside the constitutional boundaries set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States. Simply put ... human error, mistakes and miscommunication ... did not indicate criminal conduct by police.”

Here is the problem, McGinty is totally correct.

Police accountability in use-of-force is not governed or defined by mistake, incompetence or stupidity.

Police use-of-force is governed, as far as criminal and civil liability is concerned, by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ... ”

The operative word in the phrase is unreasonable. Think of reasonable as acting normally or as expected under the circumstances.

The Supreme Court held in Tennessee v. Garner (1985) and Graham v. Connor (1989) that police use of deadly and non-deadly use of force is a seizure and thus only governed under the Fourth Amendment.

The court held that police only violate the Fourth Amendment if they act unreasonably.

In subsequent cases, the Supreme Court has held that the legal question is the level of force used, under the totality of the circumstances and facts known to the officer at the time, viewed from the perspective of the officer, reasonable.

The court has also made clear that Fourth Amendment analysis is not subject to hindsight and does not consider whether the officer was in fact right or wrong in assessing the situation.

In cases of ambiguity, the officer gets the benefit of the doubt.

In his statement, McGinty said, “On close examination ... recent enhancement of the surveillance video ... it is now indisputable that Tamir was drawing his gun from his waist as the police car slid toward him and Officer Loehmann exited the vehicle ... [I]t is likely that Tamir ... either intended to hand it to the officers or to show them it wasn’t a real gun.

“But there was no way for the officers to know that because they saw the events rapidly unfolding in front of them from a very different perspective.”

McGinty is totally correct.

Assuming McGinty is correct regarding what the video shows, the shooting was clearly self defense.

Self-defense is allowed if the use of deadly force was reasonable, under the totality of the circumstances, to prevent death or great injury.

The legal issue is assessed from the shooters perspective. The legal question is whether a reasonable person in that situation: 1) would have perceived the danger as life threatening and 2) would have used the deadly force used by the shooter.

In regard to police shootings, the court has held it does not matter if in fact there was a danger or police incompetence helped create the danger.

The Fourth Amendment only requires that at the moment deadly force was used, the perception of danger and the reaction to it was reasonable.

In his statement, McGinty said, “Minutes before, they had been assigned to respond to a Code One report of a guy pointing a gun at people ... [T]he police were prepared to face a possible active shooter in a neighborhood with history of violence ... Officer Loehmann had just seen Tamir put an object into his waist ... A moment later, as the car slid toward him, Tamir drew the replica gun from his waist and the officer fired.

“Believing he was about to be shot was a mistaken - yet reasonable- belief given the high-stress circumstances and his police training. He had reason to fear for his life.”

Again, McGinty is totally correct.

Fourth Amendment analysis and its conclusion does not address or consider historical racism by police or the social issue and policy debates involved in the dynamics of race and criminal justice.

The law under the Fourth Amendment regarding police use of force is very narrow and so is its protection.

Fourth Amendment analysis does not focus on the injury sustained by the person shot or the motive of the officer.

A Fourth Amendment inquiry only seeks to determine if the police, without the help of hindsight, acted reasonably at a specific moment in time.

Federal criminal civil rights law in police shootings is even more restrictive because it requires proof the police intentionally and knowingly acted to violate the civil rights of the person killed.

As I explain to my students, not every moral wrong is a legal wrong and not every moral wrong has a legal remedy.

Don’t confuse what the law requires with what justice should demand.

What is lawful may always not be just and what is just may not always be required by the law.

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Editor’s note: Dr. Arthur H. Garrison is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Kutztown University.