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Police Shooting Incident

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RationalBiker

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** Warning - Videos Contain Images of a person being shot **

In light of a couple of thread discussing the use of force, I thought I would offer a couple of videos from a police incident (not my jurisdiction) from a couple of years ago.

While I'm guessing there may be some debate as to whether the incident is 'justifiable', one of the reasons it is necessary to show both videos of the same incident is that either of these videos viewed independently would likely lead to different conclusions as to whether or not the police use of force was justifiable. That said, I would prefer you to view them in the order of the links. This may (or may not) make you question what you see the next time you see a news cast with video proclaiming police brutality.

Video #1

Video #2

Let me know what you think. The videos require a player that can handle window media files. I have noticed some players have difficulty with the sound (probably a codec issue).

[Edit - Added warning to title and body of message - RB]

Edited by RationalBiker
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That was neat, man, thanks!

In video 1, I didn't even see a gun on the perp, whereas I clearly saw one in video 2. Not only that, but in video 2 you can see him wave it at the officer.

Clearly some level of force is justified in video 2. There is the fact that he's walking away when they drop him. But then, you can see moments ago he had just waved his gun at the officer, so I'd say drop him. The only questions I really have are how many shots it takes to drop a guy and where on his body do you have to shoot him. I didn't see anything that jumped out me as horrible, though. To borrow from County of Sacramento v. Lewis, that didn't shock my judicial conscience.

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The only questions I really have are how many shots it takes to drop a guy and where on his body do you have to shoot him.

We are taught to shot "center mass" and to fire 2-3 shots then reassess. As he keeps walking, it's clear they haven't "stopped the threat" by the second or third shot.

** Spoilers for those who haven't viewed the videos yet **

If you noticed in video #2, it appears that when the suspect and officer were standing right in front of the camera, the officer fired at the suspect point blank towards his face. It's unclear to me, but it appears he misses. Without specifically knowing, I suspect the suspect was under the influence of some serious narcotics, perhaps meth or something.

To answer psychotrope's question; I'm not 100% certain it's a gun and I don't have facts of that shooting incident distinct from the video other than it is my understanding that the shooting was deemed justifiable.

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The evidence in those two tapes is not clear to me at all. Tape #1 makes it look like an unjustified shooting, and tape #2 shows (and here the wording matters) that it is reasonable to believe that the officer had reason to believe that his or his partner's life was in danger. We're dealing with whether the officer's drew a reasonable conclusion (regardless of whether there was any gun), and we need reasonable evidence that they drew a reasonable conclusion. It is not clear and uncontested evidence, but it is sufficient.

What I saw in the second tape seconds before the shot looked enough like the guy brandishing a weapon that it is just silly to say that you can't rationally that as a threatening gesture. A threat is there on tape #2 at 23:33::52-3 and another, possibly a gun, is there at 57. The underlying question is, or should be, where lies the burden of proof? The accusation in this case would be that the officers committed a wrong; in my opinion, the evidence does not even support a "preponderance of evidence" conviction for such a charge: the tape contributes nothing to support a conviction for excess force. To put it another way, what part of "Stop" and an orchestra of police sirens was hard for that joker to understand?

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This might sound ridiculous to you, but I would have liked a warning something like, "Someone's going to get shot and you're going to see it." I hadn't thought about it until those videos, but I've never seen an actual person shot before, only in the movies. It was jarring and it bothered me (they fired many shots), and that man was certainly dead on the scene.

Besides that, I feel they were justified in shooting him given the circumstances presented by the second video. All I got from the first one was a guy walking away, then getting blown away for it.

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Interesting. At 23.33.47 (using the time stamp on the video) on the first clip, when the subject turns around and the officer ducks, right before they drop him, you can see what appears to be a shell casing fly, possibly from the subject's gun or maybe from the officer's gun. Also, on the first clip, which had sound (I couldn't hear any sound in the second clip) it sounds like some doors slam, then a couple shots are fired, before the subject even enters the screen. These shots would have occured while all the people were outside the range of view of the second clip as well, so it seems to me like some shots were exchanged before the shooting we saw. I froze the view of the subject brandishing whatever it was, and from what I could see, it looked a lot like a gun. You can clearly see a shiny nickle-plated looking slide to a small automatic, and the subject was holding it just like someone would a gun, both when pointing it, and when walking away with it at his side (if you look closely, you can see something in his hand as he is walking away, before he spins on the officer, that looks like a gun) Even if it turned out not be in fact have been a gun, it looked enough like one, and the subject's behavior was such that any sane person would have to deem the officer's actions justifiable. In fact, I am impressed by the restraint of the officer on the right who had his gun out and was holding the subject's clothes from behind while the subject pointed the gun at the other officer for the first time. If he had pressed his own gun against the back of the subject's head right there and pulled the trigger, I still wouldn't think he had done anything wrong (though I am pretty certain that would violate many police rules).

Mike.

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This might sound ridiculous to you, but I would have liked a warning something like, "Someone's going to get shot and you're going to see it."

My apologies. In retrospect, I guess stating "police use of force" was too vague. Sometimes when you see stuff like this all the time, you forget that other people have not. I'll edit it to provide such a warning.

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Well that was very interesting. During the first tape I thought for sure that it was unjustified, maybe even an execution (I don't know if murder would apply here because he was risking others lives by driving like a nut). The second tape is quite shocking though. It looks like the suspect pulls his weapon but doesn't shoot.

If the officer did shoot directly at the guys head and miss I have to say that even at that point it seemed justified. The guy had a gun pointed at another officer so I can see why he was shooting. It's interesting in that it looks like the second officer keeps trying to mace the suspect even while the first officer is firing.

All in all I think this is a great example of why you shouldn't get involved with any drugs to begin with. Your right though probably a lot of officers get blamed for things that really arn't thier fault.

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I am not sure I would call the shooting unjustifiable, but I would question whether the shooting was necessary.

From what I can tell, the suspect starts moving away from the officer on the right with the gun in his hand (this is when the two are basically touching each other) and the officer draws down on the suspect but doesn't shoot. The suspect starts increasing the distance between him and both officers, and then waves his gun in the direction of the officer on the left, at which point the officer on the right starts unloading on the suspect until he is down.

The only question I have is why the officer on the right didn't try tackling or using other physical means against the suspect when he was so close to him, and saw that he had a gun and was a real threat? It seems that the officer could have tackled the suspect and thus prevented the shooting, because at that time it seemed as though the officer didn't think the mere fact the suspect was armed was immediate reason to shoot.

A big missing piece of information is the sound, however. What the suspect and the officers said at the time could have a big impact on whether the shooting was justifiable and what changed the officer's opinion on the danger-level of the suspect from the start of the video to the moment the officer decided to pull the trigger.

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I am not sure I would call the shooting unjustifiable, but I would question whether the shooting was necessary.

Police officers are typically not trained to tackle suspects with guns or knives. That is a good way for police officers to die in the line of duty. Police officers are trained to meet the level of force they encounter with at least equal or greater force.

We have the luxury of sitting behind our computer screens right now in our comfortable chairs where we can spend time analyzing these videos frame by frame. This is what is called in the policing community (and perhaps others) as "Monday morning quarterbacking".

The actual participants at the time of the shooting on the other hand, have mere seconds to make such judgement calls. Not only that, but the are also having loads of adrenaline pumped into their bodies at that moment. Their vision sometimes narrows (sometimes referred to as 'tunnel vision') as they become overly-focused on a very small portion of what is actually going on around them and they start to become slightly oxygen-deprived by the irregular breathing that can be caused by intense excitement or stress. Training can help an officer overcome these challenges to some degree, but there's no training like facing the real thing.

Granted, a review of incidents most definitely should be conducted, but as David and Matt said, the review is going to be looking for the reasonability of the actions by the officers, and the courts will look at what "shocks the conscience". I am generally on the side that says these officers actions were reasonable and they do not "shock the conscience."

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The only question I have is why the officer on the right didn't try tackling or using other physical means against the suspect when he was so close to him, and saw that he had a gun and was a real threat?

Because that's a great way to get killed.

Oh, I see RationalBiker already said that.

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I am not sure I would call the shooting unjustifiable, but I would question whether the shooting was necessary.
In order to determine that, you need to complete the sentence: "necessary in order to ___". The correct answer, I argue, is "subdue the perp without risking the lives of the officers", and given that, trying to karate-chop him into submission is not a rational alternative. Guns have a higher level of certainty of resolution attached with them, whereas we've probably all seen videos of 5 cops piled up on one guy who still manages to wriggle free. Because getting shot to death can have an extremely serious consequence on your life and because it is regrettably common for cops to be killed in the line of duty, when faced with an actual threat of being shot in the next quarter-second, you absolutely should shoot the guy who is trying to kill you.

The notion "necessity" is defined relative to a knowledge context and the surrounding facts of reality: shooting is necessary if the fact is that your life is being threatened. It doesn't matter that the guy was so hopped up that he couldn't hit the broad side of the barn -- he could still kill someone with sheer dumb luck. It doesn't matter what he had in his hand -- the fact is that he clearly threatened the cops, even if he threatening-tool was something ineffective like a lollipop. Until they perfect Jedi mind control, there simply is no non-violent means of controlling what the evicence of your senses tells you is a rampaging murderer, bent on ending your life in the next second.

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