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Comment by filmfact | Hacker News Reader

But do you agree it would be a bad shooting if you subtract the taser?

Sure, of course. I'm generally against the use of force by the state, and to be clear, don't support the police shooting first and asking questions later. Unless he were really violent and might attack someone else or had a weapon, that didn't make sense. I'm a little unsure as to this situation even with the taser (I don't know whether he might have actually tased someone), but I can understand that the policeman had to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. I suppose we'll have to see if the investigation turns up any further information.

It's made even more confusing thanks to the local DA bringing charges against officers' previous use of a Tazer as application of excessive force if I recall correctly. One could chock it up to a change in the calculus of threat level determination based on that.

I agree wholeheartedly it would have been a bad shoot if the Tazer wasn't a factor. Remove the Tazer, and it would have been trivially resolvable via pursuit. Annoying to the Officers at worst, but definitely not an escalation that would have justified deadly force.

EDIT: Looking for an article to make sure I'm not conflating something else I read.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/fulton-county-da-6-apd-offi...

From what I've read elsewhere it seems like the message taken from it was that a Tazer is to be considered excessive force when used by an officer when backup is available, but it isn't necessarily an Olympic tier leap to integrate that observation with an elevation of threat level of a suspect with one.

Again, not saying I agree with it or personally buy the logic, but it is within my threshold for "Goddamnit, we didn't make unambiguously clear apparently, so henceforth... do not do it again"

And absent extenuating circumstances already listed resulting from the current political climate, I doubt I'd extend the same level of charity to an officer in nearly identical circumstances.

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