I’d like to see a U.S.A. where mere ownership of a bunch of weapons doesn’t make people think they are above the law.
My opinion on this case is that from a legal perspective, I need to know if he was actually reaching into his pocket, obviously pulling something out, or even had partially pulled out his gun while he was on his back.
I’ve watched every video no this that’s out there and none show his right side sufficient for me to know if that was happening or not. His left hand is controlled by one of the officers so he couldn’t have been reaching for that. Why did one of the cops yell that he had a gun? Is it because he saw the gun sticking out of his pocket? Or because Sterling had actually reached into his pocket and started to withdraw it.
I don’t believe we know the police account yet, and I think there are at least a few known video sources yet to be released. I’ll wait for the full account before I say this was an illegal shooting or not.
From a perspective of “tactics” I do feel that at such close range with two police officers subduing him, it’s not unreasonable to say they probably should’ve been able to restrain him such that he was unable to get his gun, and thus shooting him wouldn’t have been necessary. But I understand that in some situations what seems like a reasonable expectation may not be the case.
In terms of preventing this going forward and did the police do anything wrong if the shooting ends up being legal, I think we need to know what happened before the video started rolling. We have no clear idea yet on how the incident started other than the store owner saying the police were “aggressive” from the get go. I’d want more information on the minutes before the confrontation turned physical before judging whether the police missed a chance at deescalation or not.
This study found the exact opposite to be true.
I don’t know where that has anything to do with anything I said. 8500 people a year are murdered by someone with a gun in the United States, are you suggesting it’s unreasonable that our police forces be armed and capable of meeting “force with force”?
I don’t know how we as a society can send people out to enforce our laws on a population with a relatively high homicide (and wounding) rate from firearms without firearms of their own.
Nothing I’ve said suggests police should be allowed to illegally shoot with impunity. But the fact that we have lots of guns and many areas of high gun crime makes it absolutely retarded to suggest our police should be unarmed as they are in Britain or other countries.
I believe Czarcasm was characterizing the homeowner with the list of firearms (not the policeman) as the one thinking himself above the law, thus necessitating that the police be armed. He’d like to see it (an ideal world?) where the cops didn’t need be packing in order to serve a warrant on said homeowner.
Ah, then I agree. I’d like that too.
And a pony.
Iceland. High gun ownership rate, coupled with almost no guns carried by police.
A homeless guy was bugging the victim for a handout. The victim indicated his gun and homeless guy leaves. Then calls 911.
Is that so outrageous in a rough part of town? Hey piss off I got a gun? Otherwise he might have been robbed
For that 5 kids don’t have a father today. 
What a fucked up world we live in. This guy was busting his ass, standing outside in 90 degree weather, selling CD’s to support his family. Trying to stay out of trouble.
All the cops had to do was spend a few minutes asking questions. Keeping the situation calm and in control. Use their training. I think this guy would have submitted to handcuffs. He had been arrested before and knew how it works.
Once they jumped the guy all hell breaks loose. Of course he’s struggling. Anybody would. That’s different from full out fighting.
I wish we had that here, too. But we don’t. We live in a country with 8500 gun homicides a year. Iceland also doesn’t have a military. There’s lots of things Iceland can do that we cannot.
Um, yes it is unreasonable. It’s brandishing to display your firearm to someone in a threatening manner, which is precisely what “showing it to a homeless panhandler to make them leave” is. It’s a serious crime.
He also had no legal right to own a firearm or possess one he was a convicted felon. A gun owner that wishes to follow the law doesn’t draw his gun unless he needs to use it for self defense, it isn’t legal to use it as a threat against someone who annoys you.
Is your argument that the cops shouldn’t have responded to the brandishing call at all? Or that when they responded and saw it was just some dude with a CD table who was like “nah man I just used my gun to scare off some bum” they should’ve been like " good day sir, who we won’t even run through the system to see if you have warrants or are a felon and thus unable to legally possess a gun, have a good night–and say hello to the kids for me."
And I actually posit that no, not everyone would physically resist being arrested. I’ve been arrested before (as a young man, on a DUI charge which I beat in court), I didn’t resist at all.
Absolutely Alton Sterling needed to be arrested. He was a felon with a gun.
I just think he would have gone quietly if he had been approached in a calm way. He wasn’t out of control waving a gun around. It was in his pocket.
Cops don’t jump every armed suspect that they encounter. They loose control of the situation by doing that.
It’s indeed possible they could’ve deescalated and taken him in calmly. But I don’t see any evidence that would allow me to determine at the moment whether or not that is true.
I’m often troubled by why people can’t wait a couple months to get the full details.
Some very positive news. Very glad Alton’s kids will be provided for. Hopefully the money will be setup only for college. So it doesn’t get wasted before they can use it.
Actress and writer Issa Rae was profoundly impacted byAlton Sterling’s murder by police on July 5. It led her to set up a campaign to raise college funds for the five children the Baton Rouge, Louisiana native left behind. The #AltonSterlingFamily Scholarship was created Wednesday, and $325,000 was raised in just 21 hours.
Did you find the study and read any of it?
Looking, but all I’ve found so far is the article I already linked.
You appear to be under the impression that the cops jumped out of their patrol car upon arrival and immediately tackled Sterling. One of the videos starts with the officer(s) yelling at him several times to get on the ground; he is tackled only after refusing to comply. At the point where the video starts, we can only speculate (for now) about how long the encounter had already been going on before it got to this point. This article says that the police body cameras became dislodged during the struggle, but they good news is that they were fully functional, so we will eventually have audio for the entire encounter and (hopefully) useful video of everything up to the moment of the take-down.
Probably because they’re acting on fear and impulse, especially when they’re in a distressing, emotionally charged situation where they’re being physically handled (and often intimidated). The theme I’m seeing, is that when acting on impulse, it’s reasonable or even justified to shoot and kill someone, but unreasonable to struggle. Said another way, a cop is afraid for his life, so he gets to kill. A civilian is afraid for his life, so he should calm down. I don’t think this perception is helpful in anything but rhetoric outside of its rehtoric, in a bigger picture, and I think we should first re-frame things in a way where we reintroduce the human element, and not so much “good guy cop vs potentially troublesome/dangerous guy”.
Then there is another layer, because the differences you initially suspended, regarding how the public perceives black people, do exist and so they begin to add further context to the situation. There is a very broken relationship between minorities and police in this country and each side owns its own part of this. Given the police are backed with more money, authority and resources, I’m fine with saying the more radical changes are easier to implement and can begin there.
I really hope they release the store video and the officers’ body cam footage soon. That might answer a lot of questions. Perhaps our impressions of this case are wrong. More information might address a lot of people’s concerns. Some people will blame the cops no matter what. But I’m willing to look at any new information that comes out.
One question for people with law enforcement backgrounds. If an officer yells “gun”, is that an immediate warning of danger? Does training dictate responding with gunfire to defend themselves?
That’s a key point in this case. There’s a big difference in yelling that a suspect has a gun in his hand vs seeing a gun in his pocket. It seems like officers would be trained to make the distinction when they yell out. I understand there isn’t time for a long conversation. 
They would need a single word to yell out if a concealed gun is seen and a different word for “gun in his hand, shoot him!”.
In the video, yelling gun! immediately resulted in the officer shooting the victim 5 times. Words mean life or death in these situations.
But “good guy cop vs potentially troublesome/dangerous guy” is the whole point of having a police force to begin with. And that’s where your comparison breaks down entirely.
Because in the same situation, a cop “calming down” possibly increases the likelihood that he gets killed, because confronting dangerous guys is part of the job. By contrast, a civilian calming down increases the likelihood that he lives, because it’s far far rarer for cops to shoot calm and compliant people than for them to shoot aggressive non-compliant ones. So yes, the only way to have a workable police system is to have a greater emphasis on civilians calming down and complying with police rather than the other way around.
Of course, there are inevitably going to be cops who abuse this. But that doesn’t change the inherent dynamic as above.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/bernd.wittenbrink/research/pdf/cpjwsk07.pdf
They were totally different. This study flashed a picture and the participants were to determine if the person did or did not have a gun. It took the cops 560 ms to determine a white suspect had a gun while it took them 552 ms for black suspects. A whopping difference of 1.5%.