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I'm starting a new top-level regarding trigger happy Iceman meets wine mom in Minneapolis because, rather than debating the videos, I'd like to focus more on a compare and contrast to get a true culture war angle. People have made an analogy to the woman who died on Jan 6th but I don't think it lands strongly enough. Permit me to cut closer to the bone, friends.
The only fatality on Jan 6th was an unarmed woman being shot by a federal agent[1] because she was opposing what she considered an illegitimate government action. Liberals tearlessly argued this is what happens when you Fuck Around while conservatives argued she was righteously Resisting (TM).
Today the players are the same but the jerseys are flipped. Liberals cry with so, so many tears of empathy for the dead woman in the car while conservatives argue they were obstructing a legitimate state function and put the officer in danger and this is what happens when you Fuck Around.
In broad strokes it's clear neither side cares about democracy or rule of law per se. Conservative faith in rule of law evaporates when it says no to Trump and liberal empathy for the scrappy civil disobedients dries up when it's a Chud. Both sides are happy with mob violence when it's their side doing it and cry tyranny whenever they Find Out.
The big difference between them is that the bullet that hit Babbitt was extremely effective. People were trying to break down the doors, one of them got shot, they stopped and lost all steam.
The iceman shooter could've been in the fight mode due to his previous car-related experience, but what are the situations in which shooting the driver is the action that fixes everything? Again, I'm not asking if his action was legally justified (I am leaning towards "yes" as in "yes, he's going to be acquitted"), but if it was the correct one.
Let's imagine there was no question whether he could dodge the car or not, that he was right in front of the grille. What would shooting Good have improved in this situation? It wouldn't have stopped the car, it wouldn't have saved him, it wouldn't have allowed her to escape justice. It could only prevent Good from going full Carmageddon on the rest of the team, which is not what she was trying to do.
It could have minimized the time a friend of his would get dragged, if he got stuck the same way he did in the other incident.
I can agree that with perfect hindsight he shouldn't have shot her, but that argument strikes as kinda insane. How was he supposed to have perfect hindsight in the moment it was happening?
He wasn't, but the point of discussing whether what he did was optimal in hindsight is, IMO, to come up with a consensus that can be drilled into other LEOs so that they act more optimally if they ever find themselves in an analogous situation in the future. This is a high-profile case; whether the consensus emerges as "it was a good idea to shoot Good" or "in an idea world he should have jumped out of the way/whatever" can be expected to have some influence on cops' gut reactions when they find themselves in similar predicaments.
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I'm talking about perfect foresight, something that should be drilled into leos in the police academy. "Don't stand in front of the car, because there's literally nothing you can do if the driver floors it unless you have been a D1 track and field athlete. You might spend your last moments shooting the driver and you might even hit'em, but good luck explaining to Saint Peter why you shot a seventy-year-old lady with mild dementia. Yes, there are situations when spending the last moments of your life shooting at the perp trying to get away is the best course of action, but don't be a fucking dumbass cowboy and put yourself into them."
Ms. Good might have listened to her wife and floored it because her wife told her to in this particular case. In another universe she might've wanted to put the car in park to get out of the car and pressed the wrong pedal. In a third universe she was pulled out of the car when the car was in gear and she was the one holding the brake pedal. In a fourth one she was actually Basma Faheem, a recent convert to radical Islam trying to lure a federal officer into a false state of complacency and run him over.
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