I liked this world a lot more when I thought parental lies were limited to Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.
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Being mentally ill around cops should not be a death sentence.
If you really enjoy having your heart wrenched out, skip to the part where he calls out for his dad to come save him. His dad was a cop. I can’t tell you where it is in the video because I can’t watch it again.
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Say it with the words “There was no justification and those cops should be charged with 2nd degree murder.” and I’ll consider believing you.
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I first saw this video from people posting on BLM threads about how nobody is protesting when this white guy got executed by the cops and therefore BLM is racist.
If this kid was black, he probably would have been shot while still inside the car. It’s not to say that the cops were correct in shooting him, but it seems like they gave him a lot more time than they give other people to make their hands visible.
And even if he were wanting the cops to shoot him, the cops aren’t obligated to grant that. In fact, if it at all became apparent to them that he was trying to get killed, I would argue that it would create an even greater duty than normal on their part to specifically protect him from himself (and them as the violent weaponized people they apparently are).
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I would more say that the problem lies in the violent society that we live in. I am not normally an apologist for the cops, in fact when I read the headline for this video I was as outraged as everyone else appears to be. In this specific case I think that the police are justified in believing that the youth was armed.
Did the police act 100% appropriately? No, I think that once the young man had been shot once and was on the ground, they could have better chosen to physically restrain his hands instead of shooting him again. But that analysis is easier to do when not in the moment. As you mentioned, terrified people don’t always act like perfect little robots and I would definitely include the police in that assessment, they are also humans who in this situation probably feared for their own lives.
Once again I would like to say this is a tragedy and my heart goes out to both the family of the young man and the police involved.
If these guys and those Louisiana cops and the two from last week don’t go down, and I mean go down properly. None of this retirement bullshit. Then I straight up advocate a 1:1 policy.
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Thank you for such an insightful and well-reasoned list and for giving your own first hand knowledge of why someone might not react well to screaming idiots with big guns and small intellect. I wish you well as you wander the Earth or where ever else you might choose to go.
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I agree with you 100% I am not a fan of the police and I hated watching this.
How about waiting to see if he had a gun before shooting that first shot? I don’t think that having an arm behind the back is imminent danger. After all, the police are already pointing their weapons at the individual and have the advantage.
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I hate watching this kind of video, but I have found that you can’t trust a headline and I felt like I needed to see the video before passing judgement.
If you didn’t watch the video, please don’t comment on it.
But he’s not black! Why’d he get shot?
That is an extremely potent personal account and really throws the comments here into perspective.
Thank you so much for sharing it.
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But as I said, they’re the professionals who signed up to put their lives on the line and who are supposed to be trained well enough not to escalate these situations. (and he didn’t even match the description, so they created this situation…it never needed to happen)
A regular person is NOT supposed to be held to the same standard. People can be drunk, high, drugged, off their meds, having a bad reaction to their meds, confused, frightened, disabled or any number of other things.
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In our violent society, yes you can. This kind of thing makes me wish I had skills that were marketable outside the US, unfortunately I don’t.
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You’ve piqued my curiosity as to what would’ve been 90% appropriate.
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The trick is not to not stop once they notice you - that’s too late. The trick is to stop them first.
Police take for granted that they control situations, and they intimidate people for this control. Instead, question and search police at surprise times. Warn them not to touch their weapons. Jam their radio frequencies so that there is no backup - only you, and them. Be polite but firm.
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That’s logical thinking, but unfortunately, that’s not how cops are trained. They have it drilled into them from a very early point in their careers that any hesitation will get them killed, that it takes 1.5 seconds for a person with a knife to cover 21 feet to get close enough to stab them (in the best of scenarios of course), and the general concept that you’re justified in shooting if you at all feel like you’re in danger.
It will be necessary to fundamentally alter police training and policy if we want to curb incidents like these because even good people who join law enforcement agencies are bootcamped into fearing for their lives in every encounter they have on the job. People talk about cops getting PTSD after years on the job, but I think the job is PTSD by nature. I quit working for an agency as a dispatcher when I realized I’d become an alcoholic just from taking the calls that come in.
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