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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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