He did not RESPOND CORRECTLY, which is the point. A judge could sentence a man to serve 10 years behind bars. The man who was convicted by that judge could RESPOND by trying to strangle his lawyer. Though still a RESPONSE, it is not the correct one.
The police didn’t ask for identification, they asked Diallo to raise his hands.
I would rather have police officers firing upon citizens who refuse to raise their hands(and quickly turn pointing an object at them)AND not second guessing whether or not that object the citizen points at them is a wallet or a gun.
Those of you who want to debate the correctness of the verdict, or the cause of the shooting, I suggest using the thread established for that purpose.
I want to correct something Little Nemo said above. He asserted that the principle I was discussing in my prior post was called ‘indemnification’. That is not correct; indemnification is a principle that exists both in and out of government; it has nothing to do with the principle of exempting safety workers from being held negligent. Neither the workers, nor the governmental body that employs them can be held liable for such negligence. For the workers, they are covered by the doctrine of ‘privilege’ or ‘immunity’; for the state, the issue is one of sovereign immunity, not waived.
There is a lot of talk in legal circles about modifying the doctrine of sovereign immunity for cases like the Diallo killing; so far, it remains only talk.
I do have to wonder what the reaction on this board would be if Diallo had of had a gun, and the police hesitated so as to determine if it were a wallet or not and one or more of the police officers had of been killed. I find this especially interesting since it is my intention to become a police officer myself once I finish transitioning my dojo over to my senior instructor.
Is it a tragedy that Diallo got shot? Sure. But he presented a potentially life threatening scenario to the police officers, who are trained to fire under those circumstance. I would have. No doubt about it. It is easy to be an armchair quarterback under the circumstances. You might consider reading “Stress Fire” by Massad Ayoob for a detailed discussion on what it is like to be in a shoot/no shoot situation.
And I’m a little puzzled by the dwelling on the 41 shots. It’s like people don’t object so much to the fact that the cops shot and killed him, as they do to the fact that they shot him a LOT. I’ve never considered that the issue. Assuming everything else was the same and the poor man still died, what would be an acceptable number of shots – 30? 20? 10? I think a lot of people don’t realize how fast a gun fires; it doesn’t take much time to fire off 15 shots (the most, I think, fired by any one officer). And the cops I know are specifically instructed that IF they determine deadly force is appropriate, they are to continue firing until they are confident the danger to them (or others) is over, or until their gun is empty.
I believe Mr. Diallo’s mother has indicated that she is exploring the possibility of filing a civil suit against the City.
As far as immunity or indemnification is concerned, the individual officers may be protected by either. DSY says:
This, however, ignores the fact that many govermental bodies have waived their right to sovereign immunity for their wrongful acts. My state, for example, has waived its right to sovereign immunity, both on its own behalf AND on the behalf of its employees. It has, however, passed a statute agreeing to indemnify those employees for any damages arising out of the course and scope of their employment. Therefore, here at least, the individual officers WOULD be indemnified by the City or State. I have no idea how this would work in New York, but maybe it is this type of waiver of sovereignty and consequent indemnification that Nemo was talking about.
Jodi, I doubt your state has waived its sovereign immunity completely; for instance, I suspect that you can’t sue it for the claimed negligent acts of its fire fighters or police officers. It was this exception that I initially discussed in my first post.
Please let me know if in your state a city can be sued for negligent but lawful acts of its police… that would be the Diallo case.
