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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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a) created the dangerous situation by walking in front of her car

No he did not. Walking in front of you car does not represent any danger to you. And she should not be driving anywhere while the police instructs her to stop. You are fishing for excuses to justify the situation which she entered voluntarily, with clear intent to impede police work, and escalated voluntarily, operating heavy vehicle in immediate vicinity of people - while her "wife" is filming, so that was clearly intended to stir up some shit and get some propaganda pictures maybe. OK, she got what she wanted. And it's entirely, absolutely, 100% her fault - at any moment of it, starting from 12:01am that day and ending the moment she was shot, she could stop and exit the situation, and she would be alive and well. She constantly made the choices that drove her towards the ending that happened.

And you can't claim self-defence if you're unnecessarily walking in front of moving vehicles in the middle of the road.

Do you really expect somebody to buy this? It's such a low-effort BS it's embarrassing. No, it wasn't a situation of a policeman just jumping into traffic on a random street. She knew why the officers were there, there were no "moving vehicles" except her and she drove there specifically and purposely to engage the officers. The police does not owe her - a criminal - the duty to run away from her. And in the situation she was in - vehicle stopped with people surrounding it - while she was in no immediate danger - moving the vehicle in a way that endangers the people is initiation of violence, thus justifying the response. That would be true even if she was not a criminal, intentionally confronting the police officers on duty, which she was.

Walking in front of you car does not represent any danger to you.

Then why was he so afraid for his life that he shot and killed her?

And she should not be driving anywhere while the police instructs her to stop.

That being true doesn't give the police the right to kill her. The police cannot kill you for disobeying them.

You are fishing for excuses to justify the situation which she entered voluntarily,

I did not justify anything that she did. It's possible for the police to encounter someone who is doing something unjustifiable and still not have the right to kill them.

She constantly made the choices that drove her towards the ending that happened.

Let's say that she had run over the police officer and we were arguing over whether that were justified. You could say the exact same thing about the police officers actions. He went against his training and did something stupid and walked in front of a moving vehicle and didn't get out of the way when it started moving towards him. Would that justify her actions just because he did something wrong?

No, it's possible for two people to both be doing things they shouldn't be doing and to both contribute to the outcome.

She knew why the officers were there, there were no "moving vehicles" except her

You need to watch the video taken from the front. He walked in front of the car while she was backing up. People don't look forward when they back up, so it's unlikely she saw him. Then he stopped in front of her just as she was about to start driving forward.

The police does not owe her - a criminal - the duty to run away from her.

Even if she isn't allowed to drive away, the police officer legally cannot deliberately place himself in the path of her vehicle and then claim self-defence.

moving the vehicle in a way that endangers the people is initiation of violence, thus justifying the response.

This is an absurdly loose definition of violence, but even initiation of actual violence doesn't justify killing someone in self-defence if it doesn't amount to an imminent threat of severe bodily harm, and driving wrecklessly does not rise to that level.

If the police encountered someone speeding on the highway, do you think they'd be justified in shooting the driver just beause they had "initiated violence" by endangering others?

Then why was he so afraid for his life that he shot and killed her?

Are you being purposely obtuse here? You know why - because she tried to run him over with her car. It's on video. It's had been mentioned in this discussion dosens of times. How anybody engaging in good faith in this discussion could not know that?

The police cannot kill you for disobeying them.

No, it can not. It can kill you for trying to kill them. And that's what happened. You are being purposely obtuse again by making it sound like only one second of the whole event happened and other events, immediately preceding and following it, did not, while you perfectly know they did.

It's possible for the police to encounter someone who is doing something unjustifiable and still not have the right to kill them.

It is possible, in theory. In this case, however, trying to kill a police officer with her car does justify the response. We are discussing a specific event, and you keep purposely ignoring the actual circumstances of the event, while making theoretical statements.

If the police encountered someone speeding on the highway, do you think they'd be justified in shooting the driver just beause they had "initiated violence" by endangering others?

I think by this point it is clear you are not interested in discussing the particular event, but interested in extracting something like "since there could be a theoretical situation where police shooting would be wrong, the police can be wrong, therefore you just admitted the shooting is not justified!". I do not have any interest in this kind of discussion. When you are interested to discuss facts you may continue with somebody else.

Are you being purposely obtuse here? You know why - because she tried to run him over with her car. It's on video. It's had been mentioned in this discussion dosens of times. How anybody engaging in good faith in this discussion could not know that?

I don't think she was trying to run him over. If she had been, why did she turn away from him? I can understand the argument that he didn't know that at the time he started shooting, but I can't understand the argument that she actually was trying to run him over.

The question is whether his false belief that she was trying to run him over was reasonable in the moment. It can only have been reasonable for him to go against standard police procedure and walk in front of a moving vehicle if he had a very strong prior based on the circumstances that she would not try to run him over. For that strong belief to have been immediately overcome the second she started moving towards him (something he should already have known she was about to do when she started backing up), it would take an enormous amount of information to update that. I don't see what happened for him to overcome that prior. He saw the car moving, he heard his partner yelling at her to get out of the car while she kept the doors locked and backed up. He had to know she was going to drive away. He stopped when she stopped, so he knew which way the car was facing. How could it have been such a big surprise when she started moving towards her that he immediately made the decision to shoot and kill her?

It can kill you for trying to kill them.

Not necessarily. The belief that you're trying to kill them must be reasonable, what they do to try to stop you from killing them must be necessary to prevent you from doing so, they must not have provoked you, and they must have made all reasonable attempts to avoid the situation.

You are being purposely obtuse again by making it sound like only one second of the whole event happened and other events, immediately preceding and following it, did not, while you perfectly know they did.

Everything I know about what preceded the event made what he did less reasonable. For example, the fact that he knew she was uncooperative, the fact that he deliberately and recklessly put himself in harms way, and the fact that she seemed calm and not aggressive towards him. What do you think happened that supports his self-defence claim?

We are discussing a specific event, and you keep purposely ignoring the actual circumstances of the event, while making theoretical statements.

You keep making overly general statements that do not apply in many circumstances and don't apply here for the reasons I've given. It is not generally true that the police have the right to kill people who threaten their lives. Initiation of violence does not on its own justify a violent response from the police, especially not a lethal one.

I think by this point it is clear you are not interested in discussing the particular event, but interested in extracting something like "since there could be a theoretical situation where police shooting would be wrong, the police can be wrong, therefore you just admitted the shooting is not justified!". I do not have any interest in this kind of discussion. When you are interested to discuss facts you may continue with somebody else.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your argument, but you keep making general statements to support your argument without addressing the particular details that I bring up that show why those statements don't apply, which indicates you think those are generally applicable statements. But they're not. You can't just fall back on a general rule when I bring up the details of this case if you admit that they are not general rules. The reason I'm bringing up hypothetical examples is to prove that the rule doesn't generally apply. It's not to avoid talking about this particular case. I'm showing that there are exceptions and other rules that apply and explaining how they apply to this case.