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I mean, running from the cops shouldn't be a death sentence, but trying to run them over should be. Not hard to make the distinction.
Cops should be willing to take some risks to serve and protect the public. Which most cops are, because they have a sense of civic responsibility to the town they live in. That's the problem with having masked federal agents roaming the country shoving random people into the back of a van. They don't know anyone in the neighborhood they're supposedly "policing", and they begin to see the people as pests getting in the way of meeting their monthly deportation quota.
It is not reasonable to tell them that one of the risks they have to assume is not being allowed to defend themselves from being murdered.
Words have meanings. There is nothing random about identifying people who have broken a specific law and sending them back to the specific countries they are citizens of.
Even under the most charitable assumptions for the police, there was at most a small chance she was trying to run him over. I don't think it's unreasonable to say the police cannot always kill someone just because they think the person might be trying to kill them. I also think the police have a duty to avoid unnecessarily creating situations where they don't know whether someone is about to kill them if they're going to respond to that uncertainty by killing someone.
She literally hit him with her car. It's on video. You can just watch it. There's three different angles in the top post. He's folded over on the hood. I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of people to refuse to believe their own eyes.
Now, I will grant that with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that she was probably a) distracted by the officer at her window, and thus unaware of the officer in front of her car, and b) she was likely attempting to flee rather than actually kill anybody
But this is hindsight. This is information we can gather by looking at the video from the comfort of our phones and laptops and replaying the footage until it makes sense.
A person can be reasonable in believing something, even if that thing is not true, if the information available in that moment led them to believe that thing. It is not a felony to not be omniscient.
What are you trying to say with the word "might"? It's already not legal for anyone, including police officers, anywhere in the US, to use lethal force if you suspect your life is in danger, with low probability. It is settled case law that the use of lethal force requires that a person should reasonably believe, with the information available to them, that their life is in danger. This is a higher standard than "might," and it is definitely met when you are a police officer and a criminal suspect hits you with their car.
The person who was shot drove herself over 500 miles from Missouri to Minneapolis, used her car to barricade a street against federal law enforcement (a federal crime), and tried to escape when they tried to arrest her, striking one of them.
Which of these decisions were the cops responsible for? How did the cops "create" this situation? I would be amazed if any law enforcement officer had told her to do any of these things!
What on earth are you talking about here?
It looked more to me like he leaned towards the car. But even if you're right, he didn't get run over even though he was hit. Why not? Why is he folded over the hood and sidestepping instead of getting caught under the car? Because the car was going in a different direction. That is the key fact here. He planted his feet as she drove towards him and only started to move out of the way at the very last second. Then he walked away seemingly totally fine. Why would he have done that if there was a risk of him getting run over? He could see which direction her wheel were turned in. He could see where the car was going. Yet he stayed where he was and it worked out for him. It seems to me he knew exactly what he was doing and did not think he was about to be run over, or else he would have gotten out of the way.
It's not hindsight. It's his job. If he is going to stand in front of large vehicles and shoot their drivers, he needs to be able to quickly assess the situation. The whole scene was right in front of him. He could see her and the other officer. He knew what was going on. And if he is going to be carrying a gun and given special leeway to enforce the law with it, he needs to be held to a high standard for situational awareness, and if he felt at all not up to the task at any moment, he needed to take steps to reduce the danger he was putting himself and others in.
This is the problem with so many of these arguments defending police killings. The police are professionals who should know how to handle these types of situations and who deliberately put themselves and others into dangerous situations. They have a lot of control over the situation. They often don't need to be where they put themselves and don't need to have taken the actions that led them to the situation where they felt the need to use deadly force.
They're responsible for all reasonably foreseeable outcomes of the situations that they create. Yes, they sometimes need to quickly respond to what criminals are doing and they don't always have the option of just walking away. But they're supposed to know how to steer situations towards a reasonable outcome. Standing in front of cars when you don't know how to react to the car driving towards you is not something they should be doing.
This is like excusing a doctor from a killing a patient on the operating table because he cut open a patient without knowing how to sew him back up. Yes, of course, if you randomly find someone with his guts hanging out, you shouldn't get in trouble for not helping him, nor is it the doctor's fault that the patient is in need of the surgery in the first place. But when the doctor decides he is going to be the hero and do life saving surgery, he is responsible once he cuts the patient open. He is supposed to know what to do and if he doesn't, he needs to leave the patient alone and either find someone else to do the surgery or provide a different treatment.
He's responsible for standing in front of the vehicle. The doctor isn't responsible for the person getting sick, but he doesn't need to cut him open if he can't do that without killing the patient.
Look, exactly nothing from your wall of text matters here.
It is legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force. That's it. It doesn't matter where he stands, or how omniscient he is, or what he coulda-woulda-shoulda done according to a monday morning quarterback on the internet with the benefit of hindsight. She drove a car into him. That is assault with a deadly weapon. He is legally entitled to respond with lethal force. Case closed.
It's not legally permissible to respond to an assault with a deadly weapon with lethal force if there is no threat to bodily harm. Nor is it necessarily permissible if you provoked the situation. I can't run onto the tarmac of an airport and start shooting down landing aircraft with artillery because of my, at that point, reasonable fear that a plane landing on top of me is a danger to my life. It doesn't matter if I don't have time to get out of the way by the time the plane is about to land. It's my fault for putting myself in that situation. There are limits to what I can do to create a dangerous situation for myself that leave lethal force as the only option to save my life.
He knew or should have known that, if a car was driving towards him, he would shoot and kill the driver, yet chose to stand in front of a moving car. Then when the car did appear to be driving towards him, he failed to take the opportunity to get out of the way and instead stood his ground, drew his weapon, and then leaned towards the car as it turned away and fired at the moment the car brushed past him. Then he fired two more shots as the car drove away from him.
Even if we grant that the car was a deadly threat, how does that excuse firing twice after it was no longer a threat? How can even the first shot be justified when he knew or should have known that the killing not have stopped the car?
You have a right to kill someone if it is necessary to protect yourself. If shooting her didn't help him, then he had no right to do it.
Assault with a deadly weapon is by definition a threat of bodily harm! That's what the word "deadly" means!
Placing someone under arrest is not grounds for that person to assault a police officer, no matter how much that person feels they have been provoked, because police are legally entitled to arrest lawbreakers.
Correct, the law permits you to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Landing an aircraft is not an offense. Intentionally driving a car into a police officer is an offense.
The car did not move until he had already been in front of it for several seconds, and he was seen by the driver (thanks to new footage released today). He did not place himself in front of a moving vehicle. You are straight-up lying here.
Because he is a human being and human beings do not process information instantly. The three shots were all fired within half a second, well within the amount of time it actually takes a human being to process a change in the situation. He stopped firing when he realized the threat had passed. Courts do not require independent legal justification for multiple shots within a small amount of time for this reason, the three shots would be treated as a single event in court because to a human being, they are.
Because the law says you are permitted to use lethal force to resist an offense you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. It does not say "unless a guy on the internet with the ability to watch the video in slow motion thinks it wouldn't have helped anyway." The law does not require you to spend what you reasonably believe may be your last moments on earth basing your decision to resist your death on whether it in retrospect might be futile or not. It permits you to resist by whatever means are available to you.
No, you a permitted to kill someone to resist an offense which you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. The wording matters quite a bit.
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