Shot while cuffed and prone - justification?

Could you shoot someone in the back in front of two police officers and not end up in the back of a police cruiser?

For me it looks like negligent discharge. Breaking rules #2 and #3 specifically.

Obviously justifiable. Mr. Grant was not cuffed, resisted being cuffed, and pulled a .22 caliber handgun from his waistband just before being shot.

Or not.

I can’t see what happened, if anything, that caused the officer to fire. I would certainly want to hear from him why he fired before I decided that the shooting was unjustified. I will say that I saw nothing on the video that seemed to provide a justifcation.

An accidental discharge isn’t a crime.

How do you know that he hasn’t been questioned?

How would you expect him to react after realising he has just screwed his career good and proper? A cop’s job is their life, usually.

Of course. It couldn’t be because he’s distraught over shooting and killing a fellow human being, it has to be because he might lose his job.

I’m dropping out of this thread and let the kangaroo court take over.

However, an accidental discharge causing death is a crime. (Though it’s not murder, as some in this thread are suggesting).

Could be. Doesn’t have to be. If it was caused by his previously undiagnosed neurological condition, it’s not a crime. If it was caused by his wilfull or gross negligence, then it probably is.

Well, exactly. And that seems to argue for an accidental discharge. (Are you suggesting he would throw his career away on purpose?)

Obviously not. But that doesn’t mean he did not do it deliberately, and immediately realise the magnitude of his actions. Anyone who wants to believe his first thoughts were for the victim and not for himself, feel free.

It isn’t a crime? It is if I do it, isn’t it? My understanding was that if I accidentally fire my gun and kill my wife, they arrested me for involuntary manslaughter? You know the law far better than I, and I bow to superior knowledge, but it just seems wrong to me.

And I question how accidental something can be when he clearly stood up, drew his pistol and aimed it at the suspects back. The only thing I can come up with is that he thought he was firing a taser, but the look, feel, weight and grip of every taser I’ve ever seen is dramatically different from a standard police issue sidearm.

As for how I know he hasn’t been questioned, I take that from this article admittedly one day old:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/05/BAK61540MH.DTL&tsp=1

Looking at the video closely I do not think the guy was handcuffed yet. At first I thought so and I think at some point he put his hands behind his back presumably to enable the officers to handcuff him. Then the officers semi-stand him up (on his knees) and are either frisking him or working to pull his hands behind his back to be cuffed. At 1:20 or so you see the one officer move his hand back to his waist for what I guess is to get a weapon. At 1:23 you see the gun in his hand and the suspect back on the ground and at 1:25/1:26 he fires. Seems a long time between drawing and firing (was not a draw/fire in one fast motion).

Here’s the thing though. After the guy is shot the officers are moving about and you see his arm flop out to the side. So either the officers took the cuffs off (did not seem they had time) or he was not cuffed to begin with. Watch a little more and you see the suspect’s hands moving about uncuffed.

Dunno…if the suspect was pulling a weapon then fine. The officer acted appropriately I think (or near enough). If there was no weapon then at best the officer negligently discharged his weapon and killed someone.

Still murder.

He didn’t appear cuffed to me. I initially thought so, but after a closer look, he’s clearly not cuffed or tied. But that doesn’t mean he’s not restrained. The 2nd cop has his knee on the shoulder blade or lower neck region. He’s not going anywhere. And his arms are both behind his back, more or less, with the first cop apparently trying to cuff or frisk him. He doesn’t seem to be cooperating overly much, but he also doesn’t seem very threatening. The 2nd cop gets off him just prior to the gun shot, and the suspect doesn’t lunge upward or anything. He remains laying down.

The obvious answer is to stay the hell out of Oakland - very possibly the worst city in the US.

If you point a gun at someone and squeeze the trigger it’s not an accident in the general sense of the term. At best the officer squeezed the trigger in the excitement of the event. He may not have intended to shoot but he is certainly responsible for the negligence. He may have thought he pulled out a taser with the intent to shoot. Who knows.

While there was some scuffling involved, the shooting was after-the-fact. Unfortunately it was a poor video which did not give a clear view of what took place but IMO the officer appeared to have committed involuntary manslaughter.

Not to defend the officer but did you notice who didn’t get shot or man-handled? The guy on the right who didn’t agitate the situation. The job of dealing with a group of people who were fighting is not an easy one. If anyone has ever watched “Cops” you see time and time again that people are willing to keep fighting in front of police. The police are already primed for this kind of behavior. Mouthing off to an officer makes it worse and getting into a scuffle with an officer automatically jacks up the situation to the point that someone is going to get hurt. It’s a recipe for disaster.

It depends on the circumstances of the accident.

If your firing of the gun was due to reckless behavior or criminal negligence, then it may be a crime. But suppose you were just about to clean your gun when you were hit with the first epileptic seizure of your life? There’s nothing negligent about that; it would be a tragedy but not a crime. Of course, whether or not you had a seizure would be a question of fact to be sorted about, but assuming that’s what happened, it’s not a crime.

If you were practicing juggling your loaded, cocked pistols and one went off, killing your wife, then, yes, it would be a crime.

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Thanks for that info – I had not read that.

But were a police officer to happen upon the scene, he wouldn’t necessarily know which it was. Isn’t the point of argument here (from Roulette’s post, I mean) not whether a crime was comitted but whether grounds for arrest were met? That accidental discharge is not a crime in some situations doesn’t answer the question of why the officer wasn’t arrested, unless it was clear to the other officers at the scene that it most certainly had been an accidental discharge, and most certainly not a criminal act.

I can’t speak for the kind of socialism Olentzero may prefer but in the one I see - no. A libertarian socialist society has no need for police and would not have them. Police imply a hierarchy and that is anathema to many forms of socialism. Anti-social behaviour can be dealt with in different ways

Adding. Like the OP I see murder. I see no reason whatsoever for an armed man to be holding a weapon on someone who is not a threat to begin with. The people held in custody seemed in no way threatening to anyone at all.