Let me say from the start that I am not saying what this cop did was justifiable. Nor, am I saying it wasn’t. Like most controversial police shootings, it isn’t as cut and dry as many believe. That’s what makes it controversial.The sad truth is that most people get their understanding of police shootings from TV and movies. One shot stops, blood exploding everywhere, bodies flying backwards after being hit, cowboys shooting the gun out of the hand of the villain, etc.The reality is that there is often no blood immediately visible (especially with handguns), people who are hit by gunfire may not react at all even after multiple hits that ultimately prove fatal and hitting a moving target of any size can be difficult. Especially when the shooter is in fear for his life or that of another.
When I trained in the early 80s there was no instruction given on how many shots to fire in combat. The shooting was all marksmanship and zero combat shooting that I recall. Some years later, “double tap” became the mantra. The theory was that too many officers were firing a single shot, either missing or not stopping the suspect and then being shot by the bad guy. Double-tap was “Shoot twice and evaluate for effectiveness”. Over time, this evolved into “Shoot until the threat is stopped”. I have never heard anyone ever training “Shoot to kill” but this seems to be a commonly held belief in the general public.
When shooting to stop a perceived threat, an officer will likely pull the trigger as fast as he can until he believes that he is no longer in danger. With a little training and a semi-automatic handgun, almost anyone can get off three or four shots in a second. Given that there is a lag time between perception and action of up to a second (and sometimes more), it is not unexpected that an officer will fire several rounds after the suspect has gone down or ceased to be a threat. Some may hit the suspect in the back or top of the head. Multiple that effect by two or three officers and suddenly it appears that a dozen or more unnecessary shots were fired into a suspect who was already down. Technically, this might be true, but physiology and human behavior almost guarantee it. This is one reason why including the word “necessary” in policies, while sounding good, is fraught with problems. If it turns out that a gun pointed by suspect wasn’t loaded, it wasn’t really “necessary” to shoot him, was it? Or, if the officer fires three more shots while he is processing what he is seeing (suspect going down) and then acting upon it (stopping shooting), were those shots really “necessary”. Who decides? Social media? CNN? Fox News?
As far as “rules of engagement” - they are set by the U.S. Supreme Court. An officer may use reasonable force to accomplish his goals. The circumstances as perceived by the officer, not social media or talking heads, are of paramount importance.
From the case Graham vs Connor - © The Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” inquiry is whether the officers’ actions are “objectively reasonable” in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to their underlying intent or motivation. The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and its calculus must embody an allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation. Pp. [490 U. S. 396]"
The majority opinion also specifically warns against judging with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
Other cases have reiterated that the question is “Was, at the moment the force was used, it reasonably necessary?”. Consistent with Graham, courts do not want get in to second-guessing the tactics employed as Dinsdale does in his post. For every person who says the cops should have backed off or waited there will be another who says they should have just wrestled him down (which, apparently, they had already tried to do).
Police use of force is not a simple topic to understand and I believe that few people want to delve into . the complexities. Fewer still have ever been in a life and death situation and have a difficult time understanding how the human animal behaves when their actions may determine who lives and who may not. Snap judgments based on uninformed blather from various “news” sources seems to be the rule and not the exception. I hear it from my own pro-police friends.
Fortunately, a jury in a courtroom is, basically, forced into a better understanding of what took place in a given incident. That is why, in cases like that of Terrence Crutcher, juries acquit when the public has already convicted. Its not because some sort of fix is in. Its because its about the only place where the law and the reality of deadly force encounters are explained to people who are obliged to listen.
FWIW, based on what has been released so far, I predict an acquittal in the Rayshard Brooks case. It appears to me to be a justified shooting.