Footage of the Police Shooting of Daniel Shaver
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
1. "stand up, take cloths off, turn around" or how about just sending in bomb diffusing robots, or how about using rubber bullets...
“He invited two acquaintances to his room for drinks. There he showed them a scoped air rifle he was using to exterminate birds inside grocery stores. At one point the gun was pointed outside his hotel window, prompting a witness to notify the front desk;”
Isn’t that slightly important context? How would the police know if this was going to be an event like the Las Vegas shootings of a year later, or not? The most benign possibility is that he was a drunk guy with a firearm, and many of those situations end up with the death of the individual or others around them including police.
Were the instructions contradictory at the end? yes - I imagine even police officers who train for this regularly find it stressful. What everyone seems to assume is that there was no risk to the officer because he later was found to have left his firearms in the room - if you make that assumption as a cop during this kind of event, you or other members of the public will get shot by a gunman at some point. The guy who has disordered thinking because he is “scared” and drunk while in possession of a firearm might do more than ‘just’ move his hands when told not to - he might easily pull a gun and shoot someone too, and you have no way of knowing that beforehand in the split second when he starts to move his hands towards his pocket or waistband.
No, the most benign possibility is that he was an innocent drunk without a firearm. That's not just a possibility, that is in fact what he was.
As well, was he identified in the witness report as the person with the rifle? Did the police have any specific reason to suspect that the man rounding the corner was the man they were looking for or a specific reason to suspect he might be armed and dangerous?
As I said, the witness report you mentioned is an important aspect of how this situation escalated but I don't believe it exonerates the police officers involved in this murder.
what a waste.
There's a good chance I would have met that same fate in his shoes.
The police officer in charge (not the one that made the shots) either purposefully escalated the situation, which is murder, or was so incompetent he shouldn't be entrusted with handing out parking tickets.
That poor guy's stress levels must have gone through the roof. Additionally, he is being yelled at, asked to do this, do that - or he'll get shot.
I'd be confused and frightened like heck, too - and probably get a bullet for my trouble.
Screaming “CRAWL TOWARDS ME” after you are instructed to put hands in air is absolutely criminal; it is coaxing a cognitive dissonance state.
Think about what the officer screams, with a loaded weapon pointed at the individual, and then consider the duress and stress that individual might be under.
At one point in the video, Shaver was down on the ground with his fingers interlaced behind his head and in plain view (~13:45). In that position, his hands are far enough away from pockets and waistbands that any attempt to retrieve a weapon will be clearly noticeable. Not to mention extremely difficult for him while laying prone; to reach his waistband, he'd have to release his fingers and reposition his entire arm with his hand moving along a semi-circle path that's generally going to be pretty wide unless you're talking about something with pretty extreme flexibility (even then, your shoulder blade is going to jump up noticeably.
Shaver was compliant, and not in a position to easily threaten the officers. They had him in a perfect position for two officers to move forward, with one cuffing him/searching him while the other maintains watch with his weapon out. Instead, Officer Brailsford ordered Shaver to release his fingers, push himself up to a kneeling position, and literally start crawling (~16:25). This involved additional orders, some of which further contradicted the ones that literally came immediately before them and all of which contradicted the original ones Shaver was in compliance with.
Worse yet, forcing Shaver to crawl ensured that one of his hands would wind up being close to his waistband as he moved forward. The one thing that they wanted to avoid in the first place. There's no way not to; it's how you maintain balance while crawling and is basically automatic. That's part of why forcing a suspect to crawl isn't (as far as I'm aware) part of any police procedure. It partially obscures at least one hand while crawling, the motions involved are similar to those that would be made if a suspect were pulling out a weapon to threaten you with, and the act of crawling is awkward as hell for the suspect. And when human bodies experience awkward movements, our reflexes react. In this case, it got Shaver shot.
Those same issues also probably stressed the hell out of the other officers as well, as they now had to start judging each movement in the crawl.
Giving them a very big benefit of the doubt, Officer Brailsford presumably wanted to get him away from the open doorway so he and the others wouldn't be exposed to anyone in the room. But they could have accomplished that by having Shaver stretching his hands out in front of him while on the ground, and having three officers advance forward. Two could literally drag him out of the way with one hand each while the other covered the doorway with a weapon.
tl;dr - Brailsford had Shaver in a perfect position that greatly minimized risk to himself and the other officers. He ordered Shaver to leave that position, and in a way that increased their own risks and the tension in the hallway while making it more likely that Shaver would make a mistake while trying to comply with the contradictory orders.
But surprise, not being charged with any crime can get you executed by the state anyway