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I'm pretty late to the party on discussing the Ashli Babbitt shooting, but I now get my chance, because the Trump administration is going to pay $5 million to her family. (Archived link.)
I once discussed January 6th with a conservative in real life, and his stance was that the Ashli Babbitt shooting was an example of police brutality. He said that she was issued no warnings at all before being shot, and she wasn't directly threatening anyone's life. Taking a look at the footage, I don't know how she would have been warned at a volume that she could hear, and any of the police with rifles would have been jeopardizing their own safety and the safety of the other officers to lower their rifles and physically restrain her. I think the barricaded door and the cops with guns trained on the entrance should have been enough to signal that breaking through would be a bad idea. Given all these circumstances, I think that awarding $5 million to her family is
a stupid thing to do. Add it to the pile of other conflict-theory-esque actions that make this presidency a seriously mixed bag for me.regrettable. Sometimes settlements are the cheapest thing for suits.I took a look at the video, and I can count 6 uniformed and heavily armed police just standing around right next to where Ashli is about to climb through the window. (undoubtedly there were more out of the frame of the video) Meanwhile the agent who did the shooting was hiding behind the barricade and probably not visible to most of the rioters. https://files.catbox.moe/8p11px.jpg
Of course, seconds after the shooting, those exact same police came in and took full control of the situation.
Most charitably, the police gave up on trying to take control of the situation, and just let the rioters riot. This is despite the fact that they were equipped with full riot gear and assault rifles, and were able to take over immediately after the shooting. Less charitably, they were ordered to stand down for some reason or another, possibly with the idea that the riot would burn itself out if not provoked more.
Of course this doesn't fully excuse the rioters for fucking around. But if you are doing dirty literally right in front of a heavily armed and equipped squad of police, and they are just milling around and watching you, it's understandable that you might expect that whatever you're doing is not going to get you shot.
The picture of the gun poking out from the doorway tells the tale of the discomfort with this shoot to me -- cops 'get away' with shooting people at times where there's at least a nominal case to be made for self-defence, and this is not that.
It just looks so chickenshit -- step out into the hallway, square up, present your weapon and say "stop or I'll shoot" and I don't think anyone's complaining if Babbit keeps trying to climb through the door (which she might have!) and gets the bullet.
Officer safety is a thing, but at least this much risk tolerance is expected of any beat cop confronting an aggressive individual -- however violent the riot may or may not have been, it was clearly not a warzone, and Byrd was not a soldier.
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