^ this. If anyone other than a cop did this, we’d be calling for the death penalty.
anyone else and we’d be wondering why they approached this guy instead of leaving it for the cops.
I think that when cops do things like this, the crime should be treated as more severe given the fact that they are police.
Sorry that is not the way our justice system works. Cops have the same rights as anyone else.
I didn’t say anything about revoking their rights. I think that it should be a more severe crime to murder someone while on duty as a police officer than otherwise. Even if the crime itself isn’t handled differently, it’s still more fucked up when cops do this since they’re in positions of trust and authority. It’s like how it is slightly more twisted when a parent abuses their own child than it is when just any evil adult abuses a child. They’re perverting the way things are supposed to be.
You make a good point.
They shouldn’t be cut any slack at all for this shit.
No. They should be held to a higher standard.
Why are you responding to yourself?
You quoted it like it was something you said.
oops! I have now corrected that.
No slack? what about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Do you really honestly know beyond a reasonable doubt that the cop didn’t think the guy was reaching for a gun?
I don’t care if the cop thought he was reaching for a gun.
With that unreasonable statement, I see no reason to discuss this further.
If he saw this guy as being that dangerous then he shouldn’t have given him so much time to reach for a gun. Rather than harassing him, he should’ve arrested him right away. At best it’s criminal incompetence and manslaughter.
That is what they were trying to do, arrest him, I think. I don’t know exactly how things got to the point there were at the beginning of the video. But they clearly thought he could be armed and probably thought it was too dangerous to just approach him and arrest him. I am not in agreement with how they proceeded, I do not know why they couldn’t have ordered the guy to lay flat and search him that way and then arrest him.
EDIT: I know most of them won’t do that, but that’s the mindset amongst many people. “Oh, he was unarmed, but it looked like he could’ve been reaching for a gun. Better safe than sorry.”
You make a good point, but consider this: what if the cop in question were a family member of yours? You might then prefer the “better safe than sorry” approach.
I probably would, but I would also prefer that my cop family member opt for a taser or stun-gun in a situation where he’s got an apparently unarmed suspect held at gunpoint.
His explanation doesn’t apply here. The suspect wasn’t doing anything when he was murdered so the fear that a taser would have been ineffective isn’t important. They could have jumped on him and had time.
Actually he was doing somthing, he was reaching behind his back and for all they knew, he had a gun.
The cop shouldn’t have let it get to that point.
What should they have done? approach a suspect that could have been armed and try to arrest him and risk getting shot? I am not expert and I have no training so I don’t know what exact steps should be taken in arresting a suspect in situation and also again we don’t know the events that occurred before the video began.
And given the context of that situation, there’s reason to make that conclusion, just as Jeebus explained. I don’t get why cops have to be given such extreme benefits of the doubt.
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it is how our justice system works: the defendant gets the benefit of the doubt.
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the average untrained citizen does not understand everything about police work. Sometimes they may do something that does not make sense to the untrained person but makes perfect sense to the trained person.
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watching a video again and again and again and perhaps in slow motion and being able to think all day about what the cop should have done while being safe and calm is not the same as the cop himself watching events fold out in real time having make decisions in split seconds with adrenaline pumping and heart beating and knowing if he makes a mistake he could get shot or another cop could get shot and having only one chance to get it right. Remember when that guy put his hand behind his back, the cop couldn’t just stop the video like we can and ponder what he should do before he hits play again.