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If you draw a firearm in the presence of a police officer you won't have the opportunity to use it as a club against him before he fills you with holes, and no jury on the planet would convict him. It's impossible to use a gun as a club against someone without first passing through a condition in which they would have reasonable cause to believe you might shoot them with it. Which seems a bit relevant here - All notions that Good's car did not pose a deadly threat are based on hindsight. The only information available to the officer at that moment was the fact that a car was accelerating toward him. There is zero legal obligation for him to wait until he has the benefit of hindsight to decide whether to shoot!
It does not matter how fast the car is moving, because you can fall under the wheel and be crushed no matter how fast or slow it's moving.
Okay, so, how exactly did the cop in question escalate the situation, especially unreasonably? He is just walking around the car and filming it. He doesn't say a word. Folks are saying his colleague escalated the situation by aggressively approaching the vehicle, but how does that weigh on the guilt of the shooter? It's absurd to suggest that you can violently escalate anything just by standing somewhere without saying anything.
Maybe it won't immediately stop the car, but it will prevent them from backing up and trying again. Again, with the benefit of hindsight we know she didn't intend to do that, but also again, you're not required to wait until you have the benefit of hindsight to deal with a threat you perceive in the moment.
The other theory at play is that it is legal for a police officer to shoot a fleeing felon if they reasonably believe their flight poses a danger to the community. This substack post goes over this theory in great detail, with many, many citations from case law, many of which are 9-0 or 8-1 supreme court decisions.
You're right. It was a bad example. The point is that it is possible in principle to use what can be a deadly weapon in a way that isn't a threat of severe bodily harm. Comparison to guns are bad because guns are specifically for killing people. If someone pulls out a gun on a police officer or uses it in any way to attack him, that can reasonably be interpreted as as threat on his life.
A car is nothing like that. 99.99% of the time it is not being used a weapon.
That isn't the only information available to him. He has the prior that virtually all cars are used for transportation, not killing. He has the fact that she was not exhibiting any threatening behaviour towards him. He has the fact that she was turning the car away from him and that he was clear of the car by the time he shot. He has the fact that he should have been aware that she did not know where he was going to position himself once she had stopped reversing and that the initial direction of her car was intended to facilitate her escape, not to hit him. The only piece of information that he had to support the idea that she was trying to kill him was the fact that she made a quick decisions after only seeing him there for a split second to start her drive in his direction. I don't think that's sufficient evidence on its own to support his belief. And it is especially weak considering that by the time he took his shots, she was turned away from him.
It does, because it dramatically reduces the risk. Someone walking down the sidwalk might have a bomb hidden inside his jacket. That doesn't justify killing him. The police do not have the right to eliminate all possible threats to their lives.
By standing in front of the vehicle, and by pulling out his gun.
The threat has to be imminent. You can't shoot someone because of speculation about what they might do in the future. It's far safer to wait and see what actually will happen. If there is so much uncertainty about whether that initial movement forward was an attempt on his life, then it's much wiser to wait a moment and confirm that before attempting to stop a hypothetical second attempt.
You don't have to wait until you have the benefit of hindsight, but you do have to be conservative and only shoot when the threat rises to sufficient level and you do have to wait until the threat is immediate. You also have to take other options to get out of harms way if they are available to you.
I'll have a read later, but that goes against everything I've read about the relevant law.
A gun is not being used as a deadly weapon when it is shot at the range.
I can agree that deadly weapons are only deadly weapons when they are deadly. But that circles back to StableOutshoot's original point, which is that the car here is a deadly weapon being used in assault. If the car was stationary, for example, then it's not a deadly weapon. It doesn't matter that 99.99% of the time it wasn't used as a deadly weapon, if we're in the 0.01% scenario where it is in fact a deadly weapon.
If you're arguing that it was a deadly weapon but there was no threat to bodily harm, that just sounds like an incoherent, confused statement. Either it's a deadly weapon or it isn't, and if it is a deadly weapon, then that implies that it is a threat of bodily harm. So either it's both a deadly weapon and a threat of bodily harm, or neither. We don't go around calling everything in the world a deadly weapon just because it could be used as one.
This is the sort of argument that makes sense when considering which traffic policies to implement, not in a life-or-death self-defense scenario. It also just doesn't matter. He has the prior that someone driving at him means he's about to be seriously injured or die.
Doesn't matter. Many non-compliant criminals have become deadly threats to officers despite showing no aggression or threatening behavior.
No, he doesn't have any of those things. You're only saying those with hindsight and with assuming humans have faster reaction times than they actually do.
No, he doesn't have to think that she was trying to kill him. No officer has ever been required to argue that someone was trying to kill them, though it certainly doesn't hurt their self-defense claim. They just have to argue that someone was an imminent deadly threat. Intentions do not matter here.
When a robber pulls a gun on you, you have the prior that most robbers only use guns as intimidation tools. But you are not required to be able to justify the idea that he is trying to kill you. You are allowed to just shoot him.
The risk of falling under the wheels and getting crushed? Slow speed only reduces that risk if the driver is going to put their foot on the brake and stop, and the ICE officer has no way of knowing that she is going to do that. In fact, she was actually accelerating quickly and only moved little or not much at all because of the ice.
If he's fleeing or escaping, then it justifies shooting to stop him from fleeing since he is a deadly threat to others, per Tennessee v. Garner.
He pulled out his gun because she was an immediate deadly threat to him. And I fail to see how standing in front of the vehicle unjustifiably escalates the situation. She does not have the right to flee, after all.
No, it's not. That is a very bad tactical mistake. Thankfully, the law does not force you to wait in order to be sure that you have legal standing to defend yourself from a first attempt on your life.
This is just bad advice or easily misinterpreted. "Waiting" here implies that you know that there is a deadly threat but... you just can't do anything about it yet? Did you ever think through how a self-defender would actually perceive a situation as it unfolds? Either they see a deadly threat or they don't. If they do see a deadly threat, they are allowed to use deadly force as quickly as possible, until it is no longer a threat. There's no scenario in which the self-defender would think to wait just in case it's not a deadly threat. If a self-defender does wait, it's only for tactical reasons (e.g. waiting for the robber with the gun to turn his head away, so they can draw their own gun before the robber has a chance to realize they've done so).
Based on what? Officers have no duty to retreat, and even in states with such a duty to retreat for private citizens, you're only required to retreat if it can be done in complete safety.
My point is that that is not reasonable. He should have know that it was far more likely that she was just trying to drive away.
It doesn't matter. You keep trying to argue this as though the police have the right to assume the worst and respond accordingly. They don't.
Her behaviour was evidence of being non-threatening. He doesn't need abssolute proof that she wouldn't have hurt him in order to not be justified in killing him. No police officer ever has that. You cannot pull someone over for speeding and shoot them in the head just because sometimes people who get pulled over for speeding are dangerous.
You absolutely have to justify it. It's just very easy to justify. Someone driving a car in your general direction is not remotely similar in how threatening it is.
No, the risk of being killed by being hit by the car.
There has to be an actual risk to others. It can't just be hypothetical or else that would always justify shooting fleeing suspects, which we know is not allowed.
She does have the right to flee without being shot. He does not have the right to make it so that she cannot flee without creating a sufficient threat to him that he would be justified in shooting her.
It unjustifiably escalated the situation because she died as a result when he could have not gotten in the way. You say he pulled out his gun because she was a threat. He pulled out the gun before she started driving forward. If she was a threat with him standing there, why wasn't the alternative, what he is trained to do, of standing somewhere where she would not have been a threat, have been better?
It being a bad tactical mistake doesn't make the alternative justifiable. The police cannot take all precautions to protect themselves regardless of the risk to others. If that means that standing in front of a moving vehicle is too dangerous, then he always has the option of following the standard police practice and not doing that.
It isn't a bad tactical mistake anyway, because as we saw, he did not succeed in stopping the car.
Right. There is much less leeway when you created the dangerous situation for yourself unnecessarily. In order for him to stand in front of a moving car, he had to have a much higher bar for determining that there was a threat.
It's not binary. There are always low probability deadly threats everywhere. Their probabilities rise and fall continuously. He needed to wait until it reached a certain level before killing her.
That's what they're already doing 99.999999% of the time.
They absolutely do have a duty to retreat in some situations.
With him in her path? That means he was about to be seriously injured. In fact, he suffered internal bleeding as a result of the collision.
That is not what I am saying. My point was that her "non-threatening" behavior doesn't matter, when she in fact exhibited behavior that threatened the life and bodily integrity of Jonathan Ross, and was an imminent deadly threat to him.
Conversely, a man can be the most deranged person in the world. He can murder 50 people and shoot off bullets into the neighborhood. He can lead officers on a high-speed chase and crash several innocent bystanders. He can exhibit a motherload of threatening behaviors, is what I'm saying. However, if at the end of the chase he gives up, gets out of his car, puts his hands up and lets the officers cuff him? There is no way that the police are allowed to shoot him. Ever.
You have to justify that the robber was a deadly threat to you. You don't have to justify that he was trying to kill you, but it doesn't hurt your case to do so. You seem to think intentions (from all parties involved) matter more than they really do.
"General direction" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. I would use "general direction" to describe being maybe 10 to 20 feet away from a car. I would not use it to describe literally being next to it.
On a purely physical/biological/medical level, maybe. But on a legal/moral level? What I said still applies. He doesn't have to calculate what kind of injury he could be suffering before he can respond to a deadly threat. It doesn't matter if it that means it was less likely that he would die, the level of risk was already too high, because it's a deadly threat.
You said someone walking down the sidewalk might have a bomb hidden underneath his jacket. You need to clarify how much the police know in this situation. It's your hypothetical example after all.
If they don't know anything at all and have no reason to suspect him in particular over any other person walking down the sidewalk, then they aren't allowed to do anything, not even detain him.
If they have a reasonable suspicion that he has a hidden bomb, then per Terry v. Ohio, they are allowed to at least detain him at gunpoint and search him. If he flees rather than letting himself be searched, then Tennessee v. Garner applies.
No, she doesn't have the right to flee, period. Now, an officer may or may not have the right to shoot a fleeing suspect, but that's a separate discussion.
On what grounds? And anyway, it's not clear that he even intended to do that.
Self-defense does not operate on continuous probabilities. No self-defender is ever thinking "what is the probability of a deadly threat?" I mean, seriously, have you thought through what would go through a self-defender's mind in a scenario?
Let's say you're a clerk and a guy walks in your store. He's wearing a hoodie, a face mask and sunglasses. Well, it's a bit suspicious, but he's not a deadly threat. Then he walks over to the counter, maybe puts some cigarettes and beer on there. Okay, still not a deadly threat. And now let's say he pulls out a gun and points it at you. Now he is a deadly threat, and you are justified to shoot him.
There is no point where you as the clerk is going to think "he is a deadly threat, but I have to wait because... the probability hasn't risen enough yet?" At each moment, you'll either think "not a deadly threat" or "deadly threat." You may have suspicions from his hoodie and mask, you may even pay more attention to him, but until he pulls out the gun he is not a deadly threat, and you cannot pull out your own gun either.
Put simply, it's bad advice or easily misinterpreted advice to put "waiting" and "deadly threat" in the same sentence (with regards to the legalities).
Because 99.9% of the time there is no deadly threat that they can see. It wouldn't even register in their mind. When there is a deadly threat, often that's the first time they think about something being a deadly threat. At that point, there's no legal reason to wait, and it's bad advice to talk about being sure that you have legal standing or whatever before acting on a deadly threat.
Which ones? Which laws say this?
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Sure, but 99.99% of the time, a screwdriver is not a weapon, but when somebody raised one over their head at me and I drew a firearm to defend myself, I received exactly zero legal scrutiny about my decision to do so. It's actually not all that ambiguous that something has become a weapon, so don't pretend that it is.
My dude, my guy, my person. He was literally impacted by the vehicle and would have needed to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. The trajectory of the vehicle went directly through where he was standing. The car was accelerated in his direction. The position of his body and her vehicle were coincident. When you are struck by a vehicle you have been exposed to death or great bodily harm. Cars are normally not weapons? Doesn't matter, this car is impacting his body. The wheels are turned in some direction or another? Doesn't matter, it didn't steer the car away from his body. She didn't have intent? Okay, her lack of intentional control of her vehicle caused it to impact his body. There is no way you can slice this where she has not committed an offense which has exposed this officer to death or great bodily harm.
He didn't pull out his gun until the car was already accelerating toward him. Try again.
What do you mean it can't be ambiguous? Are you saying that you are absolutely certain Renee Good tried to run Jonathan Ross over with her car?
How do you know that?
I don't know what you intended to say here, but taken literally, it's obviously not true. You can be hit by a car a low speed and not be harmed.
I am absolutely certain that Jonathan Ross had, at that moment, a reasonable belief that he was exposed to death or bodily harm. Good's intent, in hindsight, has no bearing on this.
Because people recorded it and put the footage on the internet.
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