Thank you for the explanation. I can see where it makes sense when someone actually shot at someone, or tried to run them over in a car, or was known to have plans to commit mayhem. I’m not sure it applies in this instance, but certainly the police would argue it does.
I agree. I suppose we don’t know what happened prior to the video. The pertinent question is whether the cop who shot the guy in the back knew more than what we see.
Seems like a big “If” to me.
Again, I don’t see what more there could be to the video. It starts with the officers checking the perimeter and finding the suspect in the back yard. What more video could there be unless they saw the suspect through the window waving a gun around?
And if that’s the case, his partner should have already known the suspect had a gun; it wouldn’t have been necessary to repeat it later.
Finally, someone’s suggested that there’s some evidence to counter what the cop said.
But, as there is (to my knowledge) no further evidence, I can easily choose to believe neither of them, and therefor give the benefit of the doubt to the accused - that being the cop in this instance.
You’ve somehow twisted the situation to declare someone who shot someone else in the back to be the victim.
And yet we have a video of an unarmed man being shot. We have the people at the scene who found the gun in the man’s pants, between his knees and ankles. IF ONLY THERE WAS SOME OTHER EVIDENCE BESIDES, “He said, he said”!
Well, that’s the claim that needs to be disproven, if you are accusing him of a crime.
Sorry, was he unarmed, or was a gun found on him? You claimed both in your post, but they are contradictory.
Do you honestly believe that if you shove a heavy object into your trousers and start running, it won’t fall towards the bottom?
Half a point to the apologist. Let’s change unarmed to “not threatening someone with a gun”. The grammar is a bit wacky, but we’ll survive. Simply having a weapon on you is not a threat. Committing a crime is not reason enough for lethal force. Fleeing a crime is not reason enough for lethal force.
So let’s revisit - we have video of a man fleeing police, presumably after committing a crime, but not brandishing or threatening anyone with a firearm. We have the video of that same man being shot in the back. You’re stuck on semantics and “He said, he said”.
As for sticking something heavy in my trousers, there’s already something heavy there. I use a holster for my pistol on the very rare case I need to feel like a badass on my way to the range.
And I would say the cop accused the guy of waving a gun around. The guy said he wasn’t. There is no video of the guy waving a gun around, or threatening anyone with a gun. And he says he didn’t do it.
Shouldn’t you need evidence that the guy was waving and/or threatening with a gun besides the cop yelling “He’s got a gun!”?
For what purpose? If I want to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was brandishing the gun, for purposes of convicting him, then yes. But that’s not what’s being discussed - what’s being discussed is whether it was reasonable for the cop to shoot him, and if you’re accusing the cop of an unjustified shooting the burden of proof is on you to show that’s what happened. Conflicting testimony, which is consistent but not strongly supported by the evidence, does not reach that burden.
We know he had a gun. We don’t know whether he was waving it around. We have conflicting testimony from the two parties. Doesn’t seem to me there’s enough there to say either one is guilty.
People seem to think it’s a binary choice, that I have to believe one or the other. I don’t, I can decide neither is more credible, and neither story is proven to any relevant level. This isn’t about always believing cops, it’s about understanding that disbelieving someone doesn’t automatically mean that what they said is false, that they are necessaril lying, or that the opposite of what they say is true. It simply means you have no (or insufficient) evidence to believe them.
Of course, credibility can also be taken into account. Obviously, cops are inherently credible due to the nature of their job, and criminals are less credible, as they’re dishonest. Not every suspect is a criminal, so merely being a suspect doesn’t make you less credible, but that’s not relevant in this case where the guy was demonstrably an armed intruder, and has a strong reason to lie if he was wielding the weapon. But even ignoring that, there’s still no reason to think, on balance, that the cop was wrong to shoot.
It doesn’t. No one claimed it did, so I am not clear on what you are thinking, if anything.
No no no - you do it like this.
Regards,
Shodan
So that’s what your sign-off means! Thanks for the clarification, [del]moron[/del]Regards, Shodan.
If I was in a court of law, then yes, the burden of proof is on me. But, as you say, that is not what is being discussed. What is being discussed is whether it was reasonable for the cop to shoot him. If the cop says “Yeah, it was reasonable”, how about some proof that it was reasonable? If you think it was reasonable for the cop to shoot him, why do you think that? Because the guy had a gun? Shouldn’t the guy, you know, be threatening people with a gun, or waving it around or something before being shot?
Aren’t cops known to lie to suspects and such to get a confession or other information out of them? How is that inherently credible?
What if such proof doesn’t exist? Should he be penalised for defending himself just because there wasn’t a convenient camera?
Obviously, no. If you want to claim he’s done something wrong, show it. And this is analagous to a court of law, as you are claiming he’s committed a crime, or at minimum failed to do his job properly. You are not simply claiming a fact - you’re not just claiming that he shot the suspect, or the suspect wasn’t a threat, or any other such question - you are saying that he knew there was know threat (or should have known) and shot anyway. That needs a lot more proof than a simple opinion about what happened, due to the extremely serious consequences for murder. It’s not something to casually accuse someone of.
What does that have to do with the credibility of a statement? I’m registered on this board under a pseudonym, it doesn’t follow that I’m likely to lie about my name on a legal document.
If you want to claim that the guy deserved to be shot, show it. Got anything besides a cop yelling “he’s got a gun!”?
Have you maintained that **Steophan **is your real, legal name? In fact, you are honest about the fact that it ISN’T your real name. Thus, your credibility (whatever it may be) is not affected by your using a pseudonym.
If you still believe this, after the multitude of incidents in which police officers have been shown to lie, and even break the very laws they’re supposed to be upholding, then you’re not worth engaging on this topic at all.