Brown probably justified (though with serious issues raised by the way the case was handled). Rice not justified.
I like brown rice. Wait! What was the question?
I hadn’t heard that Rice was deaf.
But just as the police could not see that the pistol was not real, because the orange plug was removed or disguised and the pistol was designed to look like a real one, I also don’t know how the police would know he was deaf just by looking at him. And I don’t know why being deaf makes it more excusable to reach for a gun when you notice the police are pointing guns at you. I would think, deaf or hearing, that suddenly grabbing at your waist where you have a gun stashed is not a good idea when the cops point their guns at you, even if you cannot hear what they are saying.
Regards,
Shodan
Perhaps a dumb question, but why don’t criminals paint the ends of their guns orange? Might make the cops a bit more reluctant to shoot them, wouldn’t it?
True.
Not that I know of -
Regards,
Shodan
So we’re supposed to believe the cop had his door open wide enough to yell through clearly, while the car was still moving? And not only that, but that he was able to yell three times in two seconds? Not plausible given the video.
Shodan, if dash cam footage is released and it shows that the cops didn’t do anything but shoot and ask questions later, will you still defend them?
What?
Most criminals want to intimidate people with their guns. Painting up real guns to look fake would defeat the purpose.
I’m not voting, because the options don’t really describe how I feel. I think both shootings may have been justified in the narrowest, most immediate sense. I’m pretty confident, however, that both resulted from incompetent (or worse) policing just prior to the shootings. Were they justified? Sort of, it depends, not really.
If you feel confident the officers involved acted incompetently, then the only logical conclusion you can come to is they were both not justified.
I’m not criticizing your opinion, I’m just saying…
Too early on the Tamir Rice for me to make a call for me… the early churn and misconceptions are still chugging along.
To a degree it’s semantics, but let me explain what I mean. The cops who shot Tamir Rice believe they’re responding to a guy waving a gun around in public, which may suggest a dangerous EDP; they’re on edge to start with. They approach in their car, shout at him to drop his weapon but he does not, get out, see him make a motion that they interpret as threatening, and, since they’re viewing this encounter through the prism of an armed standoff, a threatening motion translates to a “reasonable” fear for their own lives. Therefore, in a sense, in that one instant before they pull the trigger, the shooting may have been justified.
Unfortunately, even if that’s what happened (which would seem to be the most sympathetic interpretation of events), there were still some colossal fuck-ups. They were probably not prepared emotionally or physiologically: too amped-up, incapable of rational thought. It failed to register with them that the suspect probably wouldn’t hear or understand their order to drop his weapon if they shouted it from the car while approaching at speed. They left themselves no time to assess the situation before charging in, when it would only have taken a few seconds to recognize that the suspect was a small child and therefore less likely to be a menace. The way they initiated the encounter, especially being in such close proximity, left them no room for error. They interpreted as threatening a motion that almost certainly was not; probably it was a simple and understandable twitch. Et cetera. They weren’t ready for this, and through a series of fuck-ups put themselves is a situation that led to a shooting that was possibly “justified,” but also in error and very avoidable.
Likewise with Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. I don’t find it terribly hard to believe, given the totality of the eyewitness statements, that there was an altercation in the car involving Wilson’s gun, nor that Brown charged (or advanced upon) Wilson outside the car, precipitating a shooting that was justified at that point. However, I also would bet a large sum that Wilson needlessly acted like a dick to start their encounter, in the ways cops often do with young black males, and that this was the genesis of the confrontation. I would also wager that the shooting continued past the point when Brown was any kind of threat, and that he likely did have his hands up by the end. (However, this is a very fine line; asking someone to shoot an assailant only up until the instant he’s no longer a threat and then immediately stop, or to shoot to disable in the heat of the moment, is not entirely realistic.) And so forth. I’m assuming a lot about what happened (as we all are), but I suspect that a better police officer would have been able to avoid (or reconfigure) the confrontation that led to an unarmed man being shot to death.
By the way, if anyone’s interested in an extremely well-written account of the systemic issues that would lead to a community’s complete lack of faith in it’s police officers, I can’t recommend this Washington Post article by Radley Balko highly enough.
It’s quite long, but the whole thing is well worth your time. The main thrust is that there’s an overabundance of small, separate municipalities in the St. Louis area. The need to maintain all these courts, governments, and police departments leads to an extremely high overhead, which in turn leads to a situation in which the first priority of the police and the court system is to generate revenue from petty fines (especially traffic violations), since these municipalities and police forces are absolutely dependent on them for their survival. This leads to all sorts of serious problems for the population, creating an unusual amount of resentment.
There’s more to it than that. Seriously, it’s very interesting stuff, well-sourced and convincing.
But it’s impossible to say the shooting was justified while at the same time admitting that they 1) jumped to the wrong conclusion, 2) made no attempt to verify the reported complaint, 3) elevated the potential for violence by taking the car off the street and rolling up on an unsuspecting person, and 4) aimed and fired upon a child without even establishing that he actually had a gun, let alone a gun he intended to use on anyone.
The shooting was not justified if every action they took subsequent to the dispatcher call was flawed, unreasonable, and reckless. It would be like saying a homeowner was justified in shooting the mailman because he assumed he was an armed robber. Yeah, if we accept the premise that a mailman is indistinguishable from a robber, we can say this is justified action. But it’s ridiculous to say that.
Still waiting on a response, Shodan.
I said, ‘Both not justified.’
Am I certain? No. I do think there is prima facie a case against Darren Wilson for a prosecutor without a conflict of interest.
Both seem like reasonable cases for a manslaughter charge, and that’s why we have trials.
Tamir Rice was 12 and it depresses the hell out of me that people think that shooting was in any way justified. I was 12 and I remember what a dumb shit I was. No way I would have responded to anyone in 2 seconds, and if I was in that exact situation, I might have gotten shot pulling the gun out to show them it was fake. “Wait, see! It’s not a real gun!” But wait, I’m not black, so I’d probably have more than 2 seconds.
Also, bullshit on that they called it out three times or whatever. I ignore shit people shout at me from cars, doesn’t everyone else? And if they shouted it in the 2 seconds they leapt from the car - well I just tried it, looking at my watch. While you can say it three times in 2 seconds, it gives no time at all for the assailant to respond. It takes a couple of seconds just to understand what someone is shouting at you!
Not to mention, of course, the fact that they administered no aid and let a 12 year old bleed out on the pavement. To protect and serve? If I let myself think about it too much it infuriates me. Those cops should have their badges and their pensions removed and never be allowed to work in public service again. Oh yeah, you really kept the public safe from a menacing 12 YO. Don’t tell me 12 YOs kill either. This 12 YO was not, and it’s incumbent on the cops to find out these things, so we’re not all back to the Wild West days.
What amazes me more, frankly, is a lot of the same suspects who are all for open carry and wanting everyone to have guns that think the police were perfectly justified in shooting Tamir Rice because he might have shot someone.
I don’t know about Brown. I don’t think the actual shooting was justified, but it’s not as clear to me.
I voted “Yes” on Brown and “No” on Rice, although better decision making by Officer Wilson might have resulted in better outcome for Micheal Brown.