The line above makes vel a 12-bit quantity (st->rx[] is u8). The
intention is to sign-extend vel using bit 11 as the sign bit. But
because of C's promotion rules "vel = (vel << 4) >> 4;" is actually a
no-op, since vel is promoted to int before the inner
shift. sign_extend32 works equally well for 8 and 16 bits types, so
use that.