Yes. Of course. A cop should approach someone who had previously been holding a gun as if they might be carrying a gun somewhere on their person. If he had been black, they would have approached him with guns drawn and ordered him to get on the ground so they could search him for weapons. Then they would have shot him when he moved.
It goes to credibility.
Doesn’t matter how incredible they are if there’s no evidence against them.
Legal guilt does not require certainty. It requires the lack of reasonable doubt. The cops were shooting out of self defense right? The same self defense right that you and I share. This is probably close enough (at least WRT negligent homicide) to make it into court if the shooter was not a cop.
I don’t think anyone believes the cops showed up with the intent to kill someone.
I’m sure they would have done if he’d reached for his gun when they approached him.
An irrational fear of young black males? Or perhaps an exaggerated fear of young black males?
As a juror, you are supposed to determine the facts. If you think the cops are lying, you can vote accordingly. The prosecution does not need to get moses to come down from the mountain with a stone tablet with stipulated facts.
Lying is not a crime they will be charged with, and I’d need hard evidence if it were to vote them guilty of it, not just a gut feeling.
Ok. And your evidence for that is…? Or is it just an assumption?
The fact that they shot a black child and lied about the circumstances, with video footage not indicating that there was something that could have reasonably caused them to fear for their life, at least in my eyes?
The reasoning has never been clear to me - cops roll up (or smash in while serving a no-knock warrant), shout in authoritative voices with the expectation that this will shock a felon into instant compliance… but if the person happens to be innocent or was asleep or otherwise distracted by thinking about non-crime matters…
“Huh, are those cops? They shouting at me? What the…?”
blam, too late.
Smapti says he carries a gun, and that it only takes a second to drop a gun, so can we assume that if he hears at any time: “POLICE, DROP THE GUN!” his gun would be on the ground in one second?
Because if not, then he’s a big fat liar.
When “false memories” are so self-serving, and so pervasive, and so clearly contradicted by the physical evidence, I’ll say take your research and shove it up your cactus hole, it’s pretty clear they’re just liars, to anyone except a cop-rimmer like yourself.
False memories? What a new low.
Next up, I was possessed by an evil spirit!
Here is the crazy thing, when you instinctively reach for the gun in the holster to throw it to the ground now you have it in your hand…
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
EDIT:I think Smapti operates from a version of the just world fallacy, in that he believes if someone has a bad encounter with police they must have done something wrong, and he can avoid such a bad encounter by doing everything right. Thus his obsession with dissecting every case posted here for some fault to find on the part of the victim. If he can find even one small fault, then the blame is on them entirely and all police action was justified.
I assume one day, assuming he has a negative encounter with police, his worldview will be shattered after he did everything right and he might learn something. Or maybe he just comes to the idea he did something wrong and he was at fault.
I’m sure that if the prosecution take your approach at trial, they’ll be guaranteed a conviction.
Of course I don’t actually believe it was false memories, I think it’s quite likely the cops were lying. But, since we have a video that shows it was a justified shooting, it doesn’t matter.
Maybe if you can actually prove they were lying, rather than just say they must be because it would benefit them, they can be convicted of lying on a police report (assuming that is a crime). Would that satisfy you? After all, it’s the only crime that appears to have actually been committed.
Or are you ignoring justice and law, and just out for revenge because someone was killed?
If the cops told him to drop the gun and it was in his waistband, he was trying to comply.
This kid stood no chance once those cops had it in their head that there was a black man with a gun. I don’t think the cops set out to kill anyone, but they were most certainly negligent and it cost a child his life.
The fuck we do.
No, justice and the rule of law is precisely what I’m out for. Not the cop-fellating perversion of it you advocate for.
Who’s claimed that the cops said that? If they have, that would change things significantly, but I’ve not seen that.
So you’d vote not guilty at a trial then? If you believed in law or justice, you’d be compelled to, based on the evidence available.
Otherwise, it’s clear that you’ve assumed that the killing was wrong, and worked backwards from there - the exact opposite of a just approach.
You know, you’re right, I may have mixed up what the officer claimed he told him to do. I still believe the officers were both too quick to act and negligent in how they handled this, but after reading some more on this case, I think some of the fault here may be with how the information was relayed to the officers by the dispatcher.
Apparently they weren’t told it was probably a youth and probably a toy.