Nah, they don’t take up room for very long.
I’ve watched it from the two angles that are out there, just to fill in for anyone who won’t (or can’t) watch:
The cops wrestle him to the ground from a standing (but pushed over the hood of a vehicle) position, during which he is tasered. They then wrestle with him and are able to get him on his back, one officer appears to have immobilized his left arm such that he could do nothing with it. While in this position, his right arm isn’t clearly shown from either angle. It looks like it “could” be pinned under his own body, but again, isn’t clear. One officer yells gun, and you also hear a panicked yell that is semi-unintelligible that sounds like “he’s going for the gun” (but you cannot clearly see the right side of the suspect’s body and one of the cops is largely obscured by the other. At this point they both have guns drawn, fire multiple times into him and he dies.
There’s certainly no “red flag” moment where it’s obvious to me, he was going for his gun. But because one half of his body isn’t really seen in either angle I’ve watched, I’d say it’s at least “possible” he was pulling a gun with his right hand.
Who goes for his gun while several officers are pointing theirs at them, and while at least one is sitting on top of you, pinning you down?
I’m trying to picture a scenario were it wouldn’t have taken the guy a minute, just to dig into his pocket, and another to actually pull it out.
It’s a little unclear from your first sentence that he is tasered and then wrestled to the ground. The tasered man was tackled, thrown over a car, and knelt on by two policemen.
Later in the video they pull a gun from Alton’s pocket.
Interestingly, one of the officers was involved in another fatal shooting. I wonder how many decent cops face that situation repeatedly.
It’s not unclear from what I’ve said, I intentionally used the most neutral terms possible because I was trying to relay the events of the video for someone who wasn’t comfortable seeing a violent film, not in presenting a certain narrative.
I wanted to clarify how you presented the sequence of events. I wanted to make sure it was clear a gun was pulled from Alton Sterling’s pocket while he died. These are important details, presented neutrally, presented with no more violence then you conveyed, and they do not service a particular narrative.
Falcon Heights police shoot man in passenger seat of car; girlfriend and child unhurt. The ma shot died later at a hospital. Everything from moments after the shooting happened were broadcast live on Facebook.
That is more traumatizing then most horror movies I’ve seen.
So weird. This guy points a shotgun at passing drivers. Threatens cops with it when they approach, then pulls a handgun and fires at them. Arrested without injury.
To be fair, he really doesn’t need to take it out if he can aim it sufficiently from within his pocket. (Note: I haven’t watched the video)
White guy, coincidentally.
In that case I think the cop literally had no time to shoot the white guy with the shotgun/pistol. He had to grab the shotgun to keep from being shot by it and the next thing he knows he’s having to grab the pistol coming from the other hand.
That guy was definitely asking to get shot, fwiw.
Why didn’t they just pull up and start shooting, like they did with Tamir Rice? We know, based on the justifications put forth on this board and the ultimate legal ruling on that case, that would have been perfectly reasonable, even if they had only suspected a gun.
So your complaint is that the police didn’t shoot him without trying non-lethal tactics first?
Well it’s legal for me to get drunk at work and pass out, but it’s not wise.
Cleveland paid out $6m to the family of Tamir Rice, and while quick research is unclear on whatever happened to officer Loehmann who shot Tamir, the last I heard he was under an “administrative review”, so it seems likely he could lose his job.
Also, he previously had a job in Independence, Ohio where the police department noted he was unfit to be a police officer and were moving to fire him. He resigned instead. When Cleveland hired him they declined to bother reviewing his personnel file from Independence.
With that in mind I’m not sure it’s not obvious why someone wouldn’t emulate an unfit cop who was pushed out of one job, potentially will be fired from another, and cost his employer $6m.
More an observation that an adult white man with multiple real guns gets taken into custody while an African American kid with a toy gun gets shot dead before the squad car comes to a complete stop.
I mean blacks are far more likely than whites to die at police hands, I think they’re something like 35% of police shooting victims versus 12-13% of the population. But the majority of people killed by police are white people, so it isn’t like cops never shoot whites, either.
I don’t think we can meaningfully compare anecdotal level data to try to make broader explanations.
No, I’m being sarcastic. I think it’s appalling that thousands of words are expended on convoluted justifications on this board when an unarmed black man gets killed by the police, when police are obviously capable of handling these incidents differently.
Although I cringe at agreeing with BobLibDem on something, I do think this bears repeating:
Now, Martin Hyde does a good job of explaining why this happens:
I understand that it is their training. I just have to question if this is the training we want our police to receive? Yeah, I understand they are trained to believe it is not really that reasonable to expect most people to be trained to “only shoot as many times as necessary”, but, you know, they don’t have to be trained to think like that. Why not train them to not engage someone who may be armed (which, of course, is anyone) if they are not an active threat? Time after time, we see the police killing someone when there is no active threat? Yeah, I know, they are trained not to wait until an active threat develops, but why? In this case, the police had superior numbers (two to one) and superior force. Why wasn’t that enough?
Now, I am not saying the guy selling CDs had done no wrong, I suspect he had. However, there has to be ways of handling such situations without resorting to multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Why can’t we train our police in those methods instead of the “dead men tell no tales” methods.
Yes. I think the police should shoot everyone with a gun, no questions asked. At least that would be consistent.