As mentioned earlier in the thread, the original crime is somewhat irrelevant. If you steal a loaf of bread and are confronted by a police officer because of it, that police officer may/probably will use deadly force if you pose a threat to that officer’s life. For example, if you brandish a knife, threaten/gesture to use it and are in a position to do so (weapon, actions and opportunity), the police officer has no duty to retreat in this situation just because the original crime was shoplifting.
At least that’s the case on a federal level - local jurisdictions may have specific guidance that counter that, but I’ll bet that’s not the norm.
I have always (probably wrongly) been under the impression that I (a cit or rent a cop) couldn’t use deadly force if someone was stealing stuff from me but not physically threatening me. So, in reality; if I throw myself in front of escaping thieves, no matter how minor the crime, I do get to use deadly force against them? To take it to the extreme: Someone steals a stick of gum from me, the thief then jumps into an SUV and attempts a get-away, I jump in front of the SUV, I get to shoot them? Cool YEE-HAA I live in the wild west!!
No, I’m taking it up with you. You are the one who is apparently defending the cop’s judgement, and I would like to know your opinion.
Let’s take your worst case scenario: the yoots threatened him on the way to their vehicle, he knew they had been drinking and smoking pot, the vehicle was moving, the driver attempted to run him down, he couldn’t dive out of the way.
How is emptying his gun into the vehicle going to reduce the threat?
Actually, no. I’ve been saying all along that no one knows enough to call for the cop’s head, and that’s what I’m having the problem with. I don’t know if what the cop did was wrong, because I don’t know the situation completely enough to make that judgement. Neither does the OP, and neither do you.
Again, I don’t know. I haven’t been through the training cops have. I’d be inclined to think there’s a reason they have a policy of shooting when a scenario like this occurs, but I don’t know exactly what it is or how it works. In a scenario like this, AND if the police department has a policy of shooting, I’d say the fault lies with the department if anyone.
I don’t know any more about this than the rest of you, BUT there is something wrong when a stack of pancakes is worth a life. This bears formal investigation.
Reasonable? Sure I think it’s reasonable to shoot someone in the FUCKING HEAD if they have pot and semi digested pancakes in their system. :dubious: But these evil kids tried to run that poor cop over you say. Wellllllllllll, he escalated the situation by running in front of their car and pulling a weapon for reasons unknown. Clearly pancakes couldn’t be that important to him? I mean doughnuts maybe, but pancakes? At IHOP?
Stupid pig went rambo over grand theft pancakes and now he’s going to the slammer. Fuck him. Oh wait…I think Bubba will be taking care of that.
I have no reason to believe a dead driver could do otherwise. Besides, we have already established in this worst case scenario that there wasn’t even room in this teeny, tiny parking lot for the cop to dodge out of the way, much less a full sized SUV; therefore, it had no choice but to go straight ahead.
Problem with this is that if the cop wounds or kills the driver, the changing trajectory of the car is just as likely to veer towards the officer as away from him. Even if he doesn’t hit anything except the car, the panic of being shot at could simply cause the driver to duck and hit the gas, again with a decent possibility of heading straight for the guy on foot.
But, as i’ve said a few times, i think that where the cop showed poorest judgement was putting himself in a dangerous situation (i.e., trying to stop the car, rather than calling in the license plate) when the only thing at stake was $26 worth of IHOP pancakes.
Whatever crime the kids committed is completely irrelevant.
The cop may have acted inappropriately, he may not have. As usual the SDMB, bastion of criminality and anti-authority that it is jumps on the anti-cop bandwagon before there’s even remotely enough evidence out there to say one way or another what truly happened let alone talk about the justifications for what happened.
We have to live in a society where there is law and order. I don’t care if the kids are stealing $50,000 or $26, I don’t want to live in a sociey where thieves think they have the right to steal stuff and just walk away, simply because trying to stop them might involve an ugly situation. The thieves caused this situation, not the cops. They could have refrained from being thieves and that stupid fool of a kid wouldn’t be dead. But they chose to be thieves, and criminals shouldn’t be allowed a pass just because stopping them is ugly. Criminals are a plague on society, and in all likelihood this officer, whether his life was in danger or not, performed a valuable service by shooting that criminal.
It sounds extreme to me too. Henceforth, all infractions no matter how minor, will be punishable by death. This includes littering, jaywalking, fudging on taxes, everything. The law is the law. All criminals must die.
It would sound extreme—hell, it would sound pathological—coming from any poster who had previously demonstrated evidence of reason, humanity, and intelligence.
YEE-HAA I live in the wild west!!