Police in St. Louis released a video of a police shooting of a disturbed, knife-armed man. They said it’s exculpatory. But I’m not sure that it is.
The mean is clearly deranged – and he taunts the police by saying “Shoot me!”. But like Ezra Klein, I’m not sure if it is exculpatory. He did not appear to be holding the knife “high”, as the police said he was, nor was he within 2-3 feet as the police said he was when he was shot. It looked like he was walking at normal speed, and not in any sort of threatening or “fighting stance”, and was much farther from the police than they said he was when he was shot. It didn’t look to me like anyone was in imminent danger. What do you think?
How close do they need to let the guy come? I stopped the video at the point the first shots were taken, he was maybe 7 feet, chest to chest from the officer, moving toward the officer. One big step and he’s sticking the knife in. He fell straight down right to the cop’s shoes.
I don’t know. I’m most disturbed by the obvious discrepancies between what the cops said and what the video shows. I’m not saying that it was definitely a bad shooting, just that it’s not as clearly exculpatory as the statement from the police.
It’s not like the police were lying. The Chief went to the press immediately after it happened with full knowledge of the video’s existence. That is why he released the statement and video at the same time. The problem with have a spokesman, even the Chief, explaining the incident second hand is that imprecise language will be picked over and used as an excuse to claim cover up and conspiracy. If I didn’t make it clear, at the time of the Chief’s press conference not only did they know about the video, the police were the ones that released it to the press. They were not hiding anything.
Bottom line if you are walking towards me or any police officer with a knife and you refuse to drop it while within 20 feet you will get shot and it will be justified every single time. And it will always be picked apart but those trained by Hollywood in police tactics.
It’s not a cover up or conspiracy – but why did the Chief say the knife was held “high”? If he had the video, then why didn’t he make sure his statement actually fit the video?
Because he is human? Maybe he got it third hand from someone else? It’s too far away to tell if the knife was held underhand or overhand (for lack of better terms overhand = blade on pinky side of the hand). Maybe it was held overhand but his arm wasn’t up so he misspoke. Regardless, he was holding a knife and they let him get pretty damn close. Arm up or down does not matter at all. He was unhinged, “yelling kill me”, holding a knife, within a few feet of the officers. You have a problem with the 2-3 foot estimate? I don’t. It certainly was no more than 4-5 feet and probably less. He fell right at the feet of the officer on the left. Easily within lunging distance. But there will be plenty of people who want the police to be able to do some ninja shit to take weapons away. This is not Hollywood it is real life.
I’m not particularly a fan of cops, let alone the “shoot first” mentality, but people tend to badly underestimate knives. Inside about 20 feet, a person with a knife constitutes a potentially lethal threat. 7’ is close enough to be really dangerous even if you already have a pistol up and aimed. (And at 3’, the pistol is more like an awkwardly shaped club that can accidentally kill bystanders.)
Something to bear in mind when evaluating situations like this.
So a crazy, knife-wielding asshole comes at the police with a knife screaming “Shoot me!” and refuses to freeze. And you think the important part of that narrative is that he was holding the knife lower than the police said, and he was actually 6 feet away instead of 2 or 3.
Didn’t you notice the part about the crazy knife-wielding asshole coming at the police with a knife and refusing to stop?
Jeez, iiandyii, it sounds like you think the police are supposed to protect and serve communities they are a part of. That maybe they should do everything possible to avoid confrontations and be prepared to deal with people who are not sober or who are mentally ill and do everything reasonably possible to avoid using force, much less deadly force. That’s crazy talk! OK, so this guy didn’t charge them, wasn’t that close to them, and wasn’t actually about to stab them. Those are just facts- details. (And why should we expect the police to keep track of facts? It’s not like they’re in charge of investigating crimes.) What matters is he disobeyed them.
What should they have done with the drunk crazy guy waving a knife around?*
Correct, he didn’t charge, he just walked straight at them. What I didn’t know is that a person has to charge at you to stab you with a knife. Thank you for fighting ignorance today.
6 feet, and moving closer doesn’t count as “that close”? This isn’t a shaving cream commercial.
That’s a fact? Your personal guess about future events counts as a fact? All you really know is that he didn’t get the chance to stab them.
*I know what I would do with the drunk belligerent knife wielding guy… Get in my car and get the fuck out of there. I don’t need to get stabbed by some asshole. If you’re OK with the cops deciding to GTFO when threatened by someone, then your idea of avoiding the use of force is OK by me.
It’s farther than they said. Why didn’t they get the facts right?
I know the police shot and killed a guy, and then said a bunch of things about the incident that were wrong. Perhaps you could save some of this argumentativeness for them?
I object to pretty much everything he says and to characterizing his writing as advice.
None of the things they got wrong were the least little bit important.
So if a crazy asshole with a knife runs at police screaming “Shoot me!” they can defend themselves, whereas if he just walks up to them fast they can’t.
Who gives a shit if they got a trivial detail wrong? You want the police out there with a fucking tape measure to calculate how close they let some shit head with a knife come before they can shoot?
No, I think I will save it for people who nitpick this petty vindictive shit after police officers put their lives on the line to stop this lunatic from killing someone else.
I took a screen capture from the video, just after the first shot was fired. Assuming the closest police officer was 5’6" to get a scale, the spacing transverse to the camera between the officer and the suspect is about 7.5 feet. If the officer is shorter or taller, he’ll be correspondingly nearer or farther away.
He looks to be walking at around 45 degrees relative to the line of sight from the camera (and the police officer is pointing at around that angle relative to the camera as well), so he would be around 10 feet away when the first shot was fired.
Caveat: I’m not sure how well YouTube audio and video are synchronized. That would obviously affect the answer.
The distance between them when shots were fired is important, as is the position of the knife.
If he was ten feet away, not “charging”, and not raising the knife, it still might have been a “good” shooting, but it’s a little disturbing that the chief got such details so wrong when it would have been easy to get them right.
If they get these details wrong when they have a video record, how accurate are they when there’s no video record?
It’s important to note that while all of the errors make the situation sound more urgent and the shooting more justified, this is an obvious coincidence. It’s surprising they didn’t say he was farther away than he really was and didn’t overstate his speed.
So, he was a few feet further away, was moving towards them, but not really fast enough to be called a “charge”, and was holding the knife low instead of high.
Wow, this is almost as big a scandal as Benghazi. I’m really glad I’m sitting down, these inaccuracies are causing me to hyperventilate.