Quote:
Originally Posted by Pio1980
So you are totally buying the LEOs story?
I might change my mind but right now it looks to me like a cop used to abusing his authority and creating a tragedy with his ego. One might assume such disregard for ethical practice is accepted as normal in the Ferguson pd.
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(sigh)
No.
I, actually, don't 100% buy
anyone's story, ever. It's not that people are inherently evil, or dishonest, or subversive... What people are is fallible, with agendas even they might not know, and eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable for a variety of reasons that bear nothing related to malice.
Which is why, in instances such as these, I try to deal in data. Unless you believe the data is wrong or has been tampered with, we know that the entire altercation occurred within a thirty-five foot (~2 car lengths of a 2013 Ford Taurus) linear progression with at least one shot being fired (hitting the kid) while he was in the car. Some folks say the kid was pulled in. Others say he assaulted the officer to get there. It really doesn't matter as the prior is being lawfully detained and the other is an unlawful assault. The bottom line is the kid was at one point in the car which traveled a whole two car lengths throughout the incident.
Do you have any idea how fast things must have occurred? Nobody is going to remember detail and it will all be a blur. Do you know what occurs when things are a blur? You fall back onto training. The training, is this: if your life is perceived as in danger, you win. Now. It does NOT matter what got you to this point and your subjective argument at the time is the only one that matters. (Being wrong sucks. Being dead because you hesitated is worse.)
That's the trump card, across the board. Many believe it blows but that's reality. If someone doesn't wish to be caught up in reality, they should stay out of the damned road or at least move when a cruiser -- or ANY OTHER CAR -- attempts to travel down it. Had that occurred, none of this happens. Nobody is forced to make a decision. Everybody makes it home.
Choices.
Folks can decry the officer's decision to use deadly force once thinking he was in danger but it was at least one based in (presumably) a college degree, police academy, experience, ongoing training, observation, etc. I lament more the kid's decision. He just couldn't be bothered to get out of the road, even when instructed to by someone specifically empowered to make certain it occurred.
(sigh)
What this reminds me of is the scene in my favorite movie, Apocalypse Now, when they stop the sampan and wind up shooting everyone because they were hiding a puppy. It's absolutely horrid, they didn't -- strictly -- have to make the stop and it all went wrong.
But it was their job.
Getting this kid out of the street was the officer's
job. If his intent was to grease the kid he could of just done it first thing. He didn't. I'm willing to buy this as no intent for anyone to die. Something changed along the way, he got scared. That didn't happen in a vacuum.
Unless you're willing to believe that it did, at least the first shot is righteous. Maybe he didn't have to metaphorically take out the rest of the sampan but that's training, too. Once you've identified an immediate danger to you (and, thus, the public at large) meeting the threshold to use deadly force, you do not stop until the danger is neutralized. Running, even if away, is NOT neutralized.
That's your JOB. It's not complex. By observation you either live with it, drink too much, escape before you're locked in or become cynical. Sometimes, more than one at the same time.
But that's The Job.
I went back to school to avoid this sort of thing.
