It’s possible that they didn’t tase him because they suspected he was under the influence of drugs and therefore wasn’t all that dangerous as long as he was at a distance. They may well have been giving him the benefit of the doubt as to where he was going or what he was up to. Maybe they thought he was headed to the car to assume the spread eagle search position with his hands on the hood or roof. Maybe they were yelling at him not to open the door and expected that he wouldn’t. After all not too many people are going to directly defy orders like that with four or five cop guns and tasers aimed at them. Then, when he did the unexpected and reached for the door after all, the impression was that he was really determined to do them harm and so they fired.
Any number of things are possible, and one thing I’ve learned in life is that things are rarely what they seem from the outside looking in.
They did taze him, a second or two before Shelby fired her gun.
And this “trying to open the door” is unsupportable. Yes, he did move his hands downward. It does look like he might have been reaching for the handle. But the time between when he started moving his hands down and when he hit the ground is on the order of thirteen fucking seconds. If he was intent upon opening the door, do you not think he would have got it open by then?
As I said before, when someone is shouting at you, as police very often do, the first thing you hear is shouting. After that, you might start parsing the actual words. If you are on PCP, that second part is probably more difficult, especially if more than one officer is shouting.
Which is to say, when I look at the part of the video where he looks like he might be reaching for the door, he looks confused and uncoördinated, not at all cunning or particularly dangerous. The helicopter then swings starboard and the vehicle itself obscured the last seven or so seconds before Crutcher is killed. So, you can say “oh, he must have been doing threatening stuff,” but whatever, there is no way to tell. I doubt even the officers themselves could give us a consistent account, save that they all worked on it together.
I’m familiar with all those videos. Doesn’t mean that cops can shoot anyone if they lose track of their hands.
The legal standard is the one I think police need to operate by. Reasonable bellief that the suspect poses an imminent threat of grave injury or death.
Cops have no more right to use lethal force than you or me. They encounter imminent threats a lot more frequently than the average joe but if the average joe can’t shoot to kill then neither can the cop. That is one reason why cops carry around tasers because it allows them to use non-lethal force in cases where there is a threat (or a threat of a threat) but not an imminent threat of grave injury or death.
Why none of the other officers used their tasers is beyond me but if they are teaching their police officers that they should shoot to kill if there are half a dozen cops with guns trained on a suspect and several of them have tasers then the ones with guns should shoot to kill if they lose track of the suspect’s hands, then they are doing it wrong.
I MIGHT feel differently if she was alone. But even then I’d like to hear her articulate why she reasonably believed that Crutcher posed an imminent threat of grave injury or death. “I once saw a video where this one guy was able to shoot a cop that had the drop on him so I shot the suspect even though I had the drop on him with half a dozen other cops and i didn’t actually see a gun or anything but he dropped his hands and he might be like the guy in the video”
BTW, PCP might make you immune to pain but I bet your aim sucks.
Where do I say that tasers shouldn’t have been used? I am pretty sure I said that tasers should have been used and that the use of tasering was justified.
I think about a fifth of my posts is responding to people who are so fucking mad at anyone that doesn’t think we should presume cops guilty that they can’t fucking understand what they are reading anymore. If you are black then you can be forgiven for losing objectivity or rationality because, its real for you in a way that it is not real for a white liberal wracked by guilt, its not some mental exercise but if you are white, you’re a fucking tool.
BTW, what do you think of Officer Shelby getting indicted for first degree manslaughter. You seemed pretty dismissive of me when I predicted that would happen.
Unfortunately, the way our justice system works we have to make determinations of innocence or guilt based on what we can see from the outside looking in. Until we can perfect the vulcan mind meld, this will probably continue to be the case.
No, we can do something about the current problems, which are an over-reliance on deadly force and institutionalized racism. Whether or not you agree with those problems existing or being a problem doesn’t invalidate the opinions of those who are general targets of that system or those who want it changed.
This is the second or third time you have used that phrase which to me indicates that you really don’t give a shit what the facts are or what the argument is. you have made up your mind about what the facts are and you will dismiss anything inconsistent with your version of the facts as irrelevant or attribute them to a cover up or conspiracy.
SA has vacillated between saying that the shooting wasn’t justified to excusing the shooting (without actually saying the shooting was justified). She has been indicted and I think first degree manslaughter is an appropriate charge (and second degree manslaughter would be justice). If she gets off then she better come up with some facts that we don’t know yet.
Well, yes. There is a local case where cops arrested a woman for drunk and disorderly for copping an attitude with the cops and her lawyer requested the body cam footage and now those officers are under investigation.
There was another case in DC where body cam footage exonerated DC police officers for a killing during what appeared to be suicide by cop.
Body cams are on balance a good thing and we need to implement best practices and make them widespread enough that juries start to draw negative inferences when cops DON’T have body cams turned on.
Did you read the post I was responding to because your response to my post seems retarded in that context. This seems to be another example of people letting their emotions make them stupid.
Yes, ever so helpful to dismiss something said as stupid because you disagree. I’m sorry, I haven’t read every post all along, so I was simply responding to what you said. My apologies that it was not in the context of what you were thinking, but well, too bad. I was reacting to your comment. Just like the song, eh? “That’s just the way it is, some things will never change”, then you attack any thought of changing it. Brilliant. And evil, but hey, that’s on you.
I don’t disagree with what you said I just find myself on the same side as idiots.
I was responding to Starving Artist who said:
"Originally Posted by Starving Artist View Post
It’s possible that they didn’t tase him because they suspected he was under the influence of drugs and therefore wasn’t all that dangerous as long as he was at a distance. They may well have been giving him the benefit of the doubt as to where he was going or what he was up to. Maybe they thought he was headed to the car to assume the spread eagle search position with his hands on the hood or roof. Maybe they were yelling at him not to open the door and expected that he wouldn’t. After all not too many people are going to directly defy orders like that with four or five cop guns and tasers aimed at them. Then, when he did the unexpected and reached for the door after all, the impression was that he was really determined to do them harm and so they fired.
Any number of things are possible, and one thing I’ve learned in life is that things are rarely what they seem from the outside looking in."
I said that that until we can find some way of reading people’s minds we are left with objective criteria and that this means we are left with judging things based on the perspective of someone on the outside looking in. I was disagreeing with starving artist. In THAT context, your response to me was fucking retarded.
The post I was responding to was quoted in my post. You didn’t really have to go back very far. Just a line or two. Don’t worry, you have a lot of company.
While ignoring the quote that is literally within the post you were responding to. That can be chalked up to error or derp de derp brain farts. Trying to defend your retarded comment gets harder to attribute to anything other than retardedness.
No, your retardedness seems to be voluntary and not a result of the hand god dealt you.
The taser ended up being moot, as the gunfire followed hard upon.
More straw-manning. We want the police to practice due restraint. Their hair-trigger is a problem, possibly going back decades, from before there were cameras everywhere. More importantly, they seem to close ranks and protect their own when rough shit goes down. That remains a huge problem that has led many of us to stop trusting their side of the story. The case of Walter Scott would have been cut and dried, receiving near zero coverage, were it not for the video, and the other officer on the scene almost certainly would have backed up the shooter’s story, leaving the investigation no traction. How many other stories have there been that have been filed away with half an inch on the police reports on page 9? We can never be sure.
Yes, it is entirely natural for colleagues to have each others’ backs, but police work is not just any old job. When they have the official power of life and death on the streets, they need to be held to a higher standard. They must not be allowed to continue to have their own Department of Internal Affairs, or have their own testimony rank higher than any other person’s (including that nasty coke dealer). We are quick to proclaim them guilty because they have demonstrated time and again that they are often untrustworthy, irresponsible and very difficult to scrutinize.
Because you have no concept of empathy, you bleeding asshole shitbag.
I will let you know after she is tried. If she is convicted, we will be somewhat satisfied. But that seems unlikely. Officers may be charged for misbehavior, but convictions are very rare.
I am saying that we cannot possibly know what went on on the port side of that van, other than a guy is lying on the pavement with a gunshot wound to his torso and there is a bloodstain on the door of the van when the helicopter has come around again. We do not know the facts, only what the officers have told us – and at least one of them claimed stress deafness, so we cannot guess how reliable any of the others may be. The dashcam video offers nothing of value. So your claim or mine as to what actually happened and what might have been said or shouted is pure speculation. But, whatever.
Well, reasonable people can disagree, but I think that when a suspect deliberately and in contravention of police orders takes his hands out of sight he does post an imminent threat of grave injury or death.
I would disagree with this also. Police officers are under much greater threat of violence than is the average citizen due to the fact that they’re often dealing with people who’re desperate either not to get caught doing something that would send them to jail or not to be apprehended for outstanding warrants that will send them to jail. Desperate people do desperate things and trying to harm or kill cops in order to escape arrest is one of them. Cops also come in for more anger and attitude than do the average bear and this also puts them at greater for assault or murder from people who resent their authority or reputation as assholes. Thus there is an expanded set of circumstances under which the police may rightfully feel themselves to be at mortal risk. As I said before, this is one more reason why compliance is so important. It isn’t possible for citizens to know all the things that cops can consider threatening so the best and safest thing for them to do is obey the orders the police give them. If the cops say to take your hands out of your pocket or keep them in plain sight or don’t step behind the car or don’t reach into the car, they can’t be blamed if the suspect deliberately defies them and does so anyway and winds up getting shot. The average citizen isn’t likely even to find himself in a situation where he’d be at risk from someone not showing his hands; the police are with every person they confront. So it’s incorrect and unfair to draw an equivalence between the two.
I don’t know that this is correct. Tasers are not as reliably effective as guns for stopping lethal threats. Their barbs can hit obstacles in a person’s clothing or miss them altogether and then the cop is screwed. It’s been my impression that tasers are intended primarily to be a non-lethal way of subduing a suspect who’s resisting arrest rather that to serve as a substitute for firearms in the even of potential deadly threat. I could be wrong and would welcome correction from a knowledgeable source, but as of now I believe I’m correct.
I doubt seriously that they’re training them in any such way. It isn’t possible to anticipate and train for every combination of unusual circumstances that might arise on. What they do is train that if a suspect reaches into his pockets or into a car or tries to disappear behind a car or trash dumpster or other obstacle that takes him momentarily out of sight and he does this in direct contravention of their orders not to do so, they are to consider that action as a deadly threat. Crutcher’s reaching for the door and attempting to gain entry into the vehicle is why Shelby shot him, and the fact he was simultaneously tasered demonstrates that his actions were considered by both officers to have reached the point where they had become a threat and had to be stopped. There was no reason for advance training to cover the possibility that at some point in the future backup may be called and at the precise moment the suspect defies police orders and makes a threatening movement there will be six cops available to stop him, and that since five will have tasers ready everyone should coordinate on the spur of the moment to ensure that a taser-bearing cop will be the one to fire first, and if need be second, third, forth, etc. Your belief seems to be that whatever could be done that would result in the subject not being shot is unquestionably what should be done in every and all circumstances, but the police in the heat of the moment lack the benefit of 20/20 hindsight which would tell them what actions would have had the best outcome. So again, compliance is the answer. People need to be educating their kids, and teachers need to be educating their kids, and buddies need to be educating their buddies, that if a cop stops you the safest and most important thing you can do is comply with his instructions.
