Body cam captures cop shooting motorist in head, murder charges follow | Hacker News Reader

Body cam captures cop shooting motorist in head, murder charges follow

arstechnica.com

9 pointsmanglav6 comments

Please do not editorialize the titles of stories you submit to Hacker News. The submitted title ("Body Cam Captures Murder") does not say the same thing as the article title.

It wasn't murder. I watched the entire video. The officer was very nice to the person he stopped, I didn't detect any attitude, etc.

After the final time he asked for his license, the guy drove off and tried to run the officer over. He shot in self defense.

The officer did nothing wrong. He defended himself and it's sad that someone had to lose a life in the process.

It's also sad that we have to keep defending criminal behavior in attempt to fit this narrative that cops are racist.

The only result will be more innocent people getting hurt or killed when officers stop being able to actually do their job.

Also watched the video, that description is not accurate.

The officer attempts to open the driver's door. The driver holds onto the door with his left hand to keep it shut while starting the ignition with his right. The officer yells "stop", leans into the car to grab the driver by the shirt / seatbelt with his left hand and immediately shoots the driver with his right hand.

The whole escalation is very fast. It's less than three seconds between the driver starting the ignition and the officer firing. Based on where the officer is standing there's no way he could have been injured by the car.

You weren't there, so you can only judge by a video..just like me. However, there were witnesses that said that the he tried to run over the cop.

By "witnesses," do you mean other cops? Other cops that surely have no potential conflicts of interest? The "witnesses" that claim the officer was "run over" are at least a level, if not two, removed from the person who put such a thing in writing.

Here's the police report. Excuse the Gawker links, they are the first result on Google images:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--aE5jr2zd...

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--_4cLZnsk...

What would it take for you to be persuaded that some police officers are racist?

What would it take for you to accept that "institutional racism" is a thing, and that police departments are probably institutionally racist?

Or let's ignore the race stuff. Let's just talk about use of force.

What would it take to persuade you that police probably need training in human interaction and de-escalation? Or that police officers often use too much force?

Even if this guy was criminal, did he deserve to be shot in the head?

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