UPDATE: Cop shoots, kills teen after he skips out on check at IHOP

[Martin_Hyde]

@Mindfield

How, in your opinion, was an officer justified for deliberately jumping in front of a moving vehicle and firing at it in an attempt to stop it and killing a kid in response to a dine `n dash?

That’s not exactly how the incident is described in the report. One of the passengers in the car even said in her statement to the prosecutor’s office that she screamed at the driver to “stop, you’re going to kill that cop.”

[Martin_Hyde]

@Weirddave

What a load of crap. If I was considering being a police officer, that’s one jurisdiction that I wouldn’t apply to. The chief is hanging his officer out to dry simply because of all the naysayers and whiners. The cop stepped out into the parking lot to flag down the car (and why is it OK for cops to dart in front of my car on the highway to give me a ticket, but not ok for cops to step into a parking lot to flag down the car of a CRIMINAL fleeing the scene of a crime? Oh, right, speeding tickets = money for the state), the CRIMINAL driving the car stepped on the gas and raced his car towards the cop in an attempt to kill him. My only regret here is that it was a passenger who got hit, it should have been the driver.

Yeah, from all my readings of the incident I’ve never read a version that claims the officer leaped forward to intercept the path of an already moving vehicle and as he leaped through the air riddled the car with bullets.

All the accounts I’ve seen indicate the officer had just ran outside the restaurant to confront the thieves and then suddenly they were trying to run him over, because where he was standing was the quickest route out of the parking lot.

[Martin_Hyde]

@saoirse

The Police Chief has determined that that is not the case. He hasn’t read the other thread, though.

This is from the report of S. Randolph Sengel, Commonwealth Attorney who investigated the case:

Two starkly different accounts of these events have emerged from this investigation. The first, supported by later accounts of passengers in the jeep, suggests that Stowe began firing on the vehicle from a distance and location in which he was in no imminent danger, implying he fired in order to prevent the escape of persons he suspected of committing the misdemeanor offense of failing to pay a restaurant check. The second, supported by other witnesses in the parking lot, original statements from the passengers in the jeep, and Officer Stowe’s account, and corroborated by the physical evidence and forensic findings, suggests that Stowe began firing from a position in which it appeared to him that he was about to be run over, after the vehicle suddenly swerved toward him and as it was nearly upon him.

I fail to see how the Police Chief’s opinion about what happened and his actions which seem incredibly political in nature trumps eye witness testimony of disinterested third parties, the initial testimony of the very perpetrators of the crime, and the forensic and scientific evidence from the scene of the incident.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Lemur866

It happens all the time that psycho drivers have innocent people in their cars…their kids in the backseat, a kidnap victim, their buddies who didn’t know the driver was gonna go psycho. Which is why shooting into a moving vehicle is unjustified, even to stop a psycho driver.

Untrue, every department in the country spells out some situations where shooting into a moving vehicle is indeed justified, both legally and procedurally.

[Martin_Hyde]

@nyctea scandiaca

I have been to the IHOP parking lot in question. It’s just not big enough for a car to be able to accelerate to 35 mph unless the car was some expensive sportscar that could do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds. And the cop’s claim that he had nowhere to move and that he had to shoot is just not possible.

The commonwealth’s attorney, multiple witnesses, and forensic evidence disagree.

I can’t really see any reason for your continued crusade against Officer Stowe other than you live in the area, got all teary eyed when you saw pictures of Aaron Brown on the local news and his parents crying about it and decided that no matter the circumstances, the man responsible is a monster. But unfortunately your emotional garbage has no place here, the forensic evidence has shown that Officer Stowe was confronted with a vehicle which suddenly swerved towards him, and that he was justified in shooting. The fact that some imbecile police chief feels otherwise is all but irrelevant. To me forensic evidence produced after a lengthy cohesive investigation trumps the police chief big time.

[Idle_Thoughts]

All caught up now, Martin Hyde? Will you sleep better tonight now?

[Martin_Hyde]

A few more interesting notes from the prosecutor’s report:

Officer Stowe had worked this same detail on many occasions, and previously dealt with customers who left without paying. He indicated in this case he engaged in his usual practice of signaling a departing vehicle to stop. In doing so, he positioned himself in the middle of the roadway. The travel lanes between the two rows of marked parking spaces on the west side of the lot at the south end are a total of 23 feet in width. Stowe’s assumption of a post at the midpoint of this roadway would allow enough room for the vehicle to pass on his left in the appropriate lane of travel. There is no basis to conclude that Stowe acted recklessly or put himself at unnecessary risk in doing so. His actions were that of a reasonable officer under the circumstances.

The totality of the evidence supports the conclusion that Stowe commenced firing at the jeep at close range under reasonable apprehension that he was about to be struck. His own account of events is corroborated by the initial statements of the driver of the jeep and several passengers. The driver clearly stated that he swerved to his left in an attempt to go around Stowe, as Stowe was moving in the same direction (to Smith’s left) to get out of the way. The angle at which the jeep hi the pick up truck (35 degrees) establishes that it was traveling to its left. This confluence of movements would have placed Stowe directly in the path of the oncoming jeep. When interviewed by police, the driver indicated his belief that from his perspective at the wheel, Stowe’s apprehension of being hit was reasonable. Passenger Breklyn Paulitzky recounted how she exclaimed to Smith, or at least thought to herself, “Oh my God you are going to kill this cop, stop!”. She said it appeared to her that Smith might strike the officer as he moved in the same direction when the car swerved. Passenger Christopher Walters stated that when Smith swerved the jeep, “it looked like he was steering almost straight into him,” and that the officer fired “from point blank range right in front of us.”

And

In the period of time it took him to draw and fire his weapon he was obviously moving as quickly as he could to get out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. As he did so, he believed that the jeep was following his movements, as described: “as I was moving away and the front of the vehicle, the front of the vehicle kept turning and coming toward me, and it wasn’t slowing down, it was apparent he was just trying to run me over. He wasn’t slowing down. He kept turning in the direction that I was moving.”

Under the circumstances as they appeared to him, Stowe’s apprehensions for his safety were reasonable. When it became apparent to Stowe that the jeep was not going to stop and he began to move to his right, that is the point at which the jeep turned to its left. The driver said he did so not with the intent to strike Stowe, but to drive to the left around him so as to escape. Regardless of the driver’s intent, it was certainly reasonable for Stowe to perceive this change in direction toward him, coupled with acceleration, as evidence of the driver’s intent to hit him, and he fired at the jeep in response. Even if he was able to flee from the path of the jeep as he first saw it coming toward him, it appeared to him that the driver continued to alter his course and follow him.

S. Randolph Stengel’s overview of the investigation details the following aspects of the investigation:

-The scene was processed by the Alexandria Police Department Crime Scene Investigation Unit
-Numerous photographs were taken, including aerial photographs with the assistance of a Fairfax County Police helicopter.
-Evidence was collected and the scene diagramed.
-An experienced mechanic examined the vehicle
-Julian J. Mason, a firearms expert employed by the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, to reconstruct specific aspects of the incident, including bullet trajectory patterns and distance of fire.
-The Fairfax County’s Police Department’s accident reconstruction unit used their expertise to reconstruct the events of the vehicle’s movements through the parking lot. Specifically they employed the services of Fairfax County Police Detective James J. Banachoski to reconstruct the accident, Banachoski is a 16 year veteran of the department and 8 year veteran of the accident reconstruction division. He has 800 hours of specialized training in the field of crash reconstruction.
-He consulted with experts in the field of firearms training and the use of force by law enforcement officers
-Conducted a study of the literature related to use of force and shooting reaction time
-Consulted with prosecutors from other jurisdictions across the country who have reviewed similar cases
-The entire case was also reviewed further by a team of experienced prosecutors in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office

I’m curious as to what experts the police chief employed to justify his actions that apparently trump all of the other experts I’ve listed. Because it looks like to me he feels his simple opinion as a police chief trumps mountains of forensic evidence compiled by experts and even experts in the use of force and police policies on the use of force.

In choosing to suspend Officer Stowe he did so for violation of a policy which the chief himself viewed as vague and needing revision.

[Martin_Hyde]

Man, some of the stuff from the WaPo article is great:

Alexandria already prohibited officers from standing in the path of a moving vehicle in a “high-risk” situation. Stowe, Bartlett said, “felt this wasn’t a high-risk situation.” The chief disagreed and clarified the rule to indicate that officers may never stand in front of a moving vehicle except during routine traffic control.

Baker ruled that Stowe “unreasonably placed himself in a position that allowed the situation to elevate to a level of high risk as he attempted to stop the fleeing vehicle.”

What? That’s bullshit. Unless Baker is contesting the evidence as presented by the Commonwealth’s Attorney and dozens of forensic experts, Officer Stowe did not place himself in front of a moving vehicle. He was standing on another “lane” within the parking lot, and according to Stengel if the vehicle had continued moving in the appropriate “lane” its path never would have converged with Stowe.

Alexandria also already prohibited firing at moving vehicles except when absolutely necessary, Bartlett said. That policy has been spelled out in more detail, so that shooting at or from a vehicle should occur as “a last resort,” Bartlett said, “in the most extreme and exceptional circumstances when required to avoid the immediate and foreseeable danger of death or serious injury to police officers or other individuals.”

Again, all of the evidence at hand suggests that a reasonable person would feel they were in imminent danger in the situation in which Officer Stowe was in.

Before releasing his statement, Baker met yesterday morning with Brown’s parents, who live in Springfield. The Browns’ attorney, Patrick A. Malone, said Baker apologized to the family for their son’s death.

This isn’t politicking, at all.

Aaron Brown was a recent graduate of Annandale High School and was attending Northern Virginia Community College. In their statement, his parents said their son “would not have died if Officer Stowe had followed his police department’s rules. He should not have put himself in front of a moving vehicle and should not have fired into a vehicle which he knew contained innocent passengers.”

These parents seem about as dumb as their son, the forensic evidence clearly shows the Officer did not place himself in front a moving vehicle, the driver of the vehicle did that.

[Lissa]

Woah, now hold on there Martin. It seems like you are trying to confuse everybody with the facts. Let’s not let those pesky little details get in the way of emotion.

[Martin_Hyde]

My opinion is this incident is probably caused by the common driving error that many people make which leads to auto accidents.

You’re driving down a two-lane road, say at night with low visibility. Suddenly you go round a corner and another car is hurtling toward you into your lane, you swerve to the left to try and get into the other lane to avoid a head on collision. Of course, the driver of the other vehicle has already started to do the same, the sudden appearance of your car has quickly alerted the driver to the fact they are on the wrong side of the road and so they naturally swerve back towards their lane…only to meet your car head on. It’s a natural reaction to try and move your car to “open pavement” when you fear a head on collision like this is going to happen, but most driving experts and auto safety types advoce always swerving to the right, the vast majority of the time running off the road is a lot safer than a head on collision (obviously if swerving right throws you off a 300 foot cliff that isn’t one of those cases.)

I think the driver for whatever reason thought the officer was moving right, so he swerved left to get by him, but the officer was already moving to the left back towards the IHOP when he realized the car wasn’t going to stop…then the next thing the cop sees is a car hurtling towards him despite him trying to get out of the way. In his mind the first thing he thinks is, “holy shit, they’re actually trying to kill me” once that has gone through his head he reasonably feels as though he is in a life or death situation and someone is trying to use a car as a lethal weapon against him, so he pulls out his gun to try and kill the driver.

To me that seems to fall perfectly in line with the stated policy, he didn’t put himself recklessly or needlessly in danger, he in fact was trying to avoid danger. Granted, if he hadn’t gone outside at all none of this would ever happen, but as a police officer I think he has some responsibilities here. Certainly his responsibilities don’t extend to riddling the car with bullets to try and stop it from escaping, but that just simply wasn’t what he did. He went outside to try and flag down the car, probably because most of the time when he does this the car stops when the driver realize a cop has caught them doing a dine & dash (and possibly sometimes you have an absentminded person who actually just forgot to pay.) But he didn’t position himself in front of the vehicle, he positioned himself off to the side of what would have been its normal path, but then it swerved, and continued to move in the direction of the officer as the officer moved, I can’t imagine what you’d think other than someone was trying to kill you in a situation like that. Shooting into a car is a bad way to stop someone from murdering you with one. But if you’re on foot, and someone is trying to run you down, you’re already in a very bad situation, because while you can try to run away, a car is a lot faster than a person.

[Steve_MB]

@Fear Itself

See, here is where your logic breaks down. Your whole self defense argument is based on the assumption that the cop couldn’t get out of the way, he was hemmed in, and about to die. But, somehow, in this teeny-tiny parking lot that offered no escape to the cop, the approaching car has room to swerve away?

In a less serious context, I’d insert a few donut jokes here.