Then there’s something wrong with your eyes. The video clearly shows him with his hand at his waist, where the gun was. How you can say that’s inconsistent with him reaching for the gun I genuinely don’t understand.
The rest of your post is just goalpost-shifting.
And I don’t understand how you can see this – there was absolutely no gun-reaching in the video, and I watched it multiple times and even slowed it down.
You said the video confirmed his story – how is it goalpost shifting to point out that it did the opposite? Did you just forget?
Oh, I’m happy to assume they said something. It may have sounded like “FRZHWYRHNDSDNMV!” but I’m sure it was something.
Ah, well, now you’re magically turning Rice’s airsoft gun into a real gun. By that standard, it could have been even worse if Rice had been carrying an H-Bomb he made in shop class and covered it in ebola.
Sure, and we’re back to the best thing for the cops to do in order to ensure their safety is to just shoot Rice the moment they arrived.
It’s not established that a reach occurred.
Was Rice’s airgun pointed at them?
I reiterated the hierarchy of risk just a few posts ago. You’re just sliding from “gun in the waistband” to “shots fired at police” and either being too lazy or too stupid to distinguish them. If you truly see no difference, then why not shoot anyone who looks like they might have a gun, because within fractions of a second, a gun could appear and be fired at police and that’s HOW COPS GET KILLED!!!111!!!
I’d like to see this tested on Smapti, truth be told. Just randomly shout at him “Police! Throw down the gun!” and see if he can comply in one second, as he claims but has not supported.
(post shortened)
A good description of events would be that someone chose to point a gun at random passersby, near/at a playground. Someone considered the situation dangerous enough that it warranted a call to 9-1-1. The dispatcher sent officers to investigate a man with a gun at a playground. The officers stopped close to the suspect. According to witnesses, words may, or may not, have been exchanged. The video clearly shows whatever people think they see. Shots were fired.
Is there enough evidence to warrant a trial?
Is there enough evidence to convince an impartial jury that the officer is guilty of:
manslaughter?
reckless endangerment?
1st degree murder?
2nd degree murder?
aggravated mopery?
Or would they find insufficient evidence to convict?
Is this is one big trick question where if I describe how the legal proceedings should go, you turn around and accuse me of wanting to act as judge and jury?
No, I didn’t say the video confirmed his story, I’ve already said he was lying or mistaken. What I’ve said is the video is consistent with the shooting being in self defence. That’s not contradicted by your claim that there’s no gun reaching in the video.
Do you accept that the video shows Rice with his hand near his waistband just before he’s shot? If so, how can you claim it’s inconsistent with a claim he’s reaching for his gun?
Are you still ignoring the fact that the police were told he had a gun?
It’s not established one didn’t.
I see you still don’t understand what “imminent” means. Try looking it up. You can’t shoot someone who might have a gun. You can shoot someone who you have good reason to believe is about to shoot you. This is not a complex or subtle difference, despite what people are trying to claim here.
When you are being threatened (or believe you are) you don’t have time to carefully analyse the situation, and judge whether you have 0.42 of a second to wait before you shoot, in case you’ve been misled and he’s not actually carrying a gun. There’s even a Supreme Court judgement to that effect - “Detached Reflection Cannot Be Demanded in the Presence of an Uplifted Knife”. The cop didn’t get to rewatch the events, slowed down, with hindsight. He had to make an instant judgement, and had reason to believe the wrong one would get him killed.
I’d like to try something more relevant. Try shouting “Freeze!” or “Show your hands!” at someone, and see how many instead reach for a gun.
So have we seen this one yet?
Police body camera footage of shooting.
Now, that is what I call reaching for a gun.
Since the shooter’s story was inconsistent with the video, I think it’s reasonable to agree with Judge Adrine that the video is not consistent with the shooter’s claim of self-defense. He told a specific story about self-defense and he was lying or mistaken. I don’t believe any possible reasonable doubt is created by some story-shifting by the shooter – he had his chance to tell what really happened and blew it. There may be some other evidence that would support some new story, but the shooter hasn’t even tried to tell a new story – in my mind (and, apparently, in Judge Adrine’s mind), considering the video, the dead child, and the lying/mistaken self-defense story, I think the best way to sort all of this out is with a trial.
Based on the evidence so far, my buddy the Judge and I feel that a trial is warranted, and hopefully it will happen.
I was never ignoring that.
Ah, so that’s how you want to argue, huh? Can you prove the officer didn’t wake up that day hoping for a chance to shoot a black kid? Of course, I wouldn’t ask that seriously, because it’s a stupid tactic.
I know what it means, and I don’t believe that you actually believe that I don’t.
You’re right, it’s not a complex issue, but you’re on the wrong side of it.
Well, see, there you go. You’re starting with the assumption that he’s armed, to the point where any movement of any kind (or any movement of any kind that you claim to perceive) means it’s instantly shoot-to-kill and it would be “fucking ridiculous” otherwise. And 0.42 of a second is actually not too far removed from the amount of time between Loehmann getting out of the car and Loehmann starting to shoot.
Did he really have to make an instant judgement or was that forced by the overly energetic approach, i.e. come rushing up, boiling out, and no matter what happens, it’s going to be fast? Rice’s weapon was not “uplifted”, in any case.
If you like, but it seems to the more relevant metric is how quickly citizens can react to police intervention. According to you and Smapti, one second is enough to instantly surrender one’s weapon (if any) and assume a posture of complete compliance. Anything longer, and you deserve to be shot.
That’s pretty scary and impressive. If the guy had wanted to shoot the male officer inside the restaurant or the female officer outside, he probably could have done so. Good shoot, under the circumstances.
No, it’s not a trick question.
Was the basic description OK?
Do I need to repeat the questions?
That is a far stretch.
Being a cop is not a job, it’s a profession.It even comes with a title, Officer.
But, yes, when you agree to become a cop, you agree to risk your life to save others.
Just how that is.
All right, but if this ends with you suggesting I want to dispense with rule of law and install myself as judge and jury (and possibly executioner), well… at least it won’t be the first time I’ve been so accused on this board.
I don’t think your “basic description” is “OK”, though, on two points:
“The video clearly shows whatever people think they see.” - the video isn’t a Rorschach test.
“Shots were fired.” - true, but it’s worth specifying that only police shots were fired.
Your proposed list of outcomes omits some of the preliminaries: there is certainly enough evidence to warrant an investigation. I’m willing to speculate that there is probably enough evidence to sustain an indictment of negligent homicide, as defined by Ohio Revised Code 2903.05, possibly reckless homicide (2903.041). Beyond that, you’re asking me to predict what a jury will or should decide, when I could only speculate what I would do if I was a juror.
What I think is a reasonable minimum outcome is that Timothy Loehmann never works in law enforcement again.
He shouldn’t have to prove his innocence, his accusers should have to prove his guilt. Even in Ohio, the preponderance of evidence needs to show it wasn’t self defence. As yet, we appear to have no evidence it wasn’t self defence. I hope that the judge who ruled that this should go to trial has seen more evidence than that video…
That doesn’t follow. That just isn’t how logic works. That the video disproves one thing says nothing about whether it proves or disproves something else.
Your argument is still “he lied, so he’s guilty of something unrelated to the lying”, for some reason. His lying (if indeed he did lie) tells you nothing about whether he was justified in shooting Rice.
Liar. Try actually reading what we write, instead of inventing straw men.
If we could clearly see Rice pointing a weapon (in this case, an Airsoft gun, but a close and deliberate replica of an M1911) at the police, or drawing a weapon on the police, or even having a weapon in his hand in the presence of police, maybe… but we can’t.
What does that have to do with my point that we have no evidence that it wasn’t self defence? You are talking about things that would be evidence that it was self defence. Do you understand the difference?
All you are doing is showing that the video shows it might not be self defence. Well, so what?