There is justifiable outrage. I do not condone wanton destruction and arson, but disruptive protests work in a way that peaceful ones alone do not.
If the suspect hadn't stolen the cop's Tazer, he may very well be alive today. I cannot fault an officer for using his sidearm when someone is running off with his Tazer given the situation. A suspect running off with your piece is nightmare fuel for cops as I understand it, and in that situation, I'm willing to wager training and instinct won over political consciousness.
Point being, things went through an escalation from non-lethal to lethal in the right order. There is no reason besides wanting to be outraged to use that encounter as an example of the system gone wrong. If anyone else had done the same, I have no doubt it'd end the same way.
If we're talking about the drunk fellow in the drive-thru at least.
But isn’t that the problem though? Shouldn’t police only use deadly force in the face of an imminent objectively reasonable deadly threat?
Someone running away from you with a taser doesn’t constitute that threat.
The reason the cop shot was pure ego. Him and his buddy just had their ass handed to them, and now the guy was getting away.
Someone running away from you with a loaded incapacitating weapon, in a state of altered consciousness, unresponsive to any commands, and uncooperative with any protocols that govern interaction with authority after you just got done fighting with them, so under the influence of an adrenaline spike.
Look, I'm no fan of the calculus of interaction with the justice system getting tilted heavily in the direction of 'your life is about to be permanently ruined anyway", but goddamnit, I'm not faulting someone in those circumstances, especially when everyone involved still managed to follow protocol.
I don't believe in "tough on crime" deterrence by punishment policing as a panacea. Hell, I think incarceration is done in excess, and some of the things we tack the felony label on which just so happens to disenfranchise someone from voting for life seems a bit damn fishy. I don't even blame the guy in making a run for it given the current climate, or otherwise. Willingly giving up your agency is unnatural as all hell when you're in your right mind. In an altered state? That doesn't mean you get some sort of get out of the consequences free card, or that you can get into a violent scuffle with an armed officer, run off with his equipment, and not run the risk of things getting escalated further, especially when there are other people around. If anything, that in and of itself should be motivation enough not to let yourself get that far gone.
It isn't like I don't feel for the family, or about the circumstances. It isn't like I threw a hat in the air to celebrate the story. Quite the opposite. I wanted to see what happened to judge for myself, and well, I can't with 100% certainty say that in imagining myself as an officer with training, and regular experience with violent interactions on the streets, and having a target painted on my back due to the current political atmosphere adding to already considerable job stress that I might not have done the same thing in the heat of the moment, especially if I thought other people may be harmed given that a suspect just ran off with a piece of my equipment, and my frontal lobe hadn't yet registered my handgun was in my hands, if I didn't get things under control now.
In my case, a hypothetical one mind, it wouldn't even come from a place of ego so much as concern in terms of an imperative to minimize potential harm to bystanders.
So... I guess what I'm saying is I can entertain the reasonability of his actions. You might not. I don't expect everyone to see things like I do. Given the footage I saw curated by the media, I can accept that things escalated, but an attempt at following protocol was made, which is enough to get the officers off the hook in my book. I may not like that it did, but I've been around enough scuffles and frenzied encounters where lives are on the line to know that when stuff goes down, 90% of the rational creature takes a hike until the substance of the confrontation is resolved.
And not a damn word of this response would change given the suspect's color.
We all want to get out alive. We shouldn't have to feel like today is going to be the day. We shouldn't be locked in a fundamental struggle to just get by and be left alone. Yet... Here we are. Wish it was different. Wish it was a hell of a lot different. Wish that what ever drove him to get that incapacitated to escape from it hadn't been so bad. I wish that getting perp walked weren't something so adept at ruining your life. I wish we were all a bit more forgiving of each other in our moment's of weakness; but you can wish in one hand, and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.
The cop did what he was trained to do. His partner did what he was trained to do, the courts will do what they're going to do. Whether I wish it different or not. You can condemn him. I won't. I can't. I didn't see a fundamental breach of protocol.
EDIT: and to be clear, I tried putting myself in the victim's shoes, as difficult as that is, and I'd probably be dead too in that case if dropped in at the moment his fight or flight instinct kicked in. So make no mistake, it isn't coming from a place of "it can't happen to me." Out of my sane mind, I'm fairly certain I'd elevate my freedom above all else.
If what I've said here makes me a horrible person... I guess I'm a horrible person.
But again, this isn't a deadly threat because they're running away. If they turned around and aimed it at you, then sure, you could claim that they are a threat to you–though still not a deadly one. If you shoot someone running away from you, you're not doing it because you're threatened, you're doing it because you don't want them to get away, and that's the point that was being made.
It’s one thing if you’re running away with nuclear launch codes, but I’m skeptical that was the case here.
He didn't get shot for having a weapon in his possession; he got shot because of how the weapon ended up in his possession. I'm not saying it should be endorsed as standard operating procedure mind. However, the reaction is far from unreasonable. There seems to be a belief that there is the luxury of extensive time during which one can reason in these types of encounters, and the fact is there isn't. You react and operate on training and protocol.
It is the very reason why protocol does exist; you rehearse it ahead of time so it comes naturally without thinking. When your training involves an effective level of operant conditioning to save your life in the event you have to resort to lethal force, protocol isn't just there for the Officer's protection, but also the suspect's. If it is a mistake, it can be (or should be) resolvable afterward. If the Justice system weren't such a bureaucratic nightmare, it may not even be that big a deal. Once you depart from that protocol though, that cop is going to do exactly what they are trained to do. A) (Hopefully) Protect the Public B)Protect themselves C)Neutalize the threat as quickly as possible. Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily in a way you and I like or approve of, but IF they follow the book, we tend to grant them the benefit of a doubt. That happened. The officer's tried a peaceful arrest, the suspect escalated, stole the Tazer, Officers realized the suspect was now armed, public nearby, suspect is unresponsive and was hostile. It isn't an unreasonable escalation path at all.
You're mad if you think it's at all reasonable to give an armed, violent assailant the chance to retreat and prepare an ambush, or take a hostage. As I stated earlier, Isympathizewith the suspect for running or being afraid in the current environment. But after he lifted that Tazer, he shifted the operational calculus of the situation, knowingly or (most likely), not. Further, based on previous decisions by the DA, the precedent of a Tazerbeing a lethal weapon was well on it's way to being enshrined, so you really can't even fall back on the whole non-lethal aspect.
There was a clear attempt at peaceful arrest and detainment after the initial encounter and sobriety test. That was answered with violent resistance. Goto threat neutralization.
Unarmed suspect: No lethal force, attempt to physically subdue or disengage safely. Possession of Tazer lost. Goto suspect armed.
Non-lethal takedown: partner attempts. Tazer shot fails to connect, other Tazer in possession of suspect. Officer involved in struggle draws firearm. Fires.
I can't fault that. They were out of options.
And even if you accept, for sake of argument, that protocol should be changed. Suppose instead of a Tazer being stolen it was the officer's firearm with rubber bullets, and the officer left with a rifle at hand. The rubber bullets are still "non-lethal" right? Should they just let the suspect run off? God no. Taking the Tazer was what escalated things into deadly force territory, and even then only after the other officer made a best effort attempt at non-lethal takedown.
They did everything we, the Public, have demanded they do, in the order we demand it be done. This is undeniably a case where this officer is being targeted because of the unrest provoked by that cretin in Minneapolis, and Riot police elsewhere. Those are not his actions. He's just a cop, doing his job, in the midst of a stop gone bad. Just as the suspect was a human being who let himself get into a state in which he made some exceedingly poor decisions; one of which escalated things to the point of elevating the threat level of a situation to the point an officer felt lethal force was the last option he had.
I'm not comfortable setting a precedent for all cops, when faced with an armed assailant not to take care of business in such a manner as to bring confrontation to an end as quickly and bloodlessly as possible. Nor am I going to lock up or discipline one that tried to do things right. That we have video evidence of that trying having been done.
I don't like how it ended. If he didn't call in a meat wagon and provide first aid soon enough... Well that I can see being a problem, but that's not a crime. That's a tragedy. If he ended up exclaiming "Got him!", I don't see it as him intending to kill someone that night, I see it asadrenaline come down.
If we expect police to do their jobs, to even work for our protection, and the safety of our communities, we have to extend them the benefit of being able to accept the outcome of their discretion when it falls within the bounds we demand. This one did. It was reasonable. No question. Minneapolis wasn't. Seattle wasn't, the protests in other cities weren't but this one was a clean shoot.
I guess the DA filed the charges before the GBI completed its investigation.
Interesting times.
(At least this is what twitter says.)
It’s too bad George Floyd (a drug addict career criminal) wasn’t shot and killed by an armed homeowner when he committed his home invasion.
Both of these scum are eulogized by BLM (domestic terrorist organization).
So this justifies being killed by police, while not resisting, without a trial?
> BLM (domestic terrorist organization)
Got a source on that? Sounds almost like Fox Entertainment.