assuming he was already assaulted once and second time around he doesn't stop when commanded, time to shoot. Although you'd think he could've knee-capped him.

Takedown? what's that? a wrestling move? you want a 175 pounder to "takedown" a 300 pounder?
Tazer? we know (or at least have been told) they don't carry them.
Mace - possibly, if he had it.

The cop's biggest mistake was not immediately calling for reinforcements. Get the guy surrounded.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

And the reason that is done is so the cop understands that using it is a serious thing. We give them the benefit of the doubt that they already understand that shooting a person with bullets is serious. Apparently many of them don't. And some of the public agrees. Just kill a guy and chalk it up to "getting scum off the streets".

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Are you serious? Do you think the same standard should apply to bouncers?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

the only other logical option at that point would be for the cop to turn tail and run like hell. probably a good idea in hindsight, but how many cops are going to do that? roughly none.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

How about get back in his fucking car and call for backup?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You may be right...I'm just saying it depends on the actual circumstances. Being unarmed doesn't give you total immunity from being shot. There are clearly circumstances where you lose that immunity. Whether the circumstances here justify Wilson's actions, I don't know yet. I do think it is troubling though, in a George Zimmerman/Travon Martin way, that Wilson may have provoked or aggravated the situation prior to what may have led to justified force. To me, that is what may be causing much of the outrage.

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like I said, probably the best idea in hindsight. don't know if this is what they teach in the academy. maybe it is (?)

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Id say the cops biggest mistake was shooting him 6 times..if its once, its not even a story.

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I think police forces largely lack proper training in approaching their jobs dispassionately. And I know it's hard to not take it personally when someone is motherfucking you, let alone shooting at you. But that's the job. Hitting a ninety mile an hour fastball is hard. Controlling air traffic around O'Hare is hard. A lot of jobs are hard.

For example if a guy makes an illegal right on red and refuses to stop when the cop puts his lights on behind him, the cop will without fail chase him through town at dangerous speeds, causing far more potential damage and/or injury than the original infraction. I think we should expect the cop to know when it isn't wise to do such a thing. We can't demand reason from criminals. But we sure have a right to demand it from cops.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

_________________

I tend to agree with this, but at a certain point the criminal will take advantage of this knowledge. You need to make them think you will chase/apprehend them. Or just put a red-light camera there. Just got busted for the first time with one of those...

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I think it was both of them at one time.

And with the social media tools at our disposal, public opinion is more than just opinion in our culture. People's minds are made up. And the facts really don't seem to matter. Because we don't currently have them.

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Is this serious? What planet are we on? Do cops get trained only to deal with people their size or less?


Yes, a takedown. Yes, a tazer. Yes, mace. Yes, anything but shoot the kid 6 times.

you are probably on to something with the general point that standard police training and procedures and "culture" may not be the best way to fight crime. But changing that significantly does not seem probable.

Of course, New York has supposedly had great success with their "zero tolerance" brand of policing.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

So basically, cops are just people with guns. Either shoot or run like hell because that guy is big!!

How do we know that the guy didn't call for back up?

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Even if you believe the first 4 shots were legal because the officer feared for his life then a crime was committed with the last 2 shots. Why? Because he would have had to have been on his knees or falling over. At that point an unarmed man isn't a threat.

_________________
Be well

GO BEARS!!!

if you believe that the first four shots were legal, do the last two matter? And if so, why?

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Because at that point he was no longer a threat. The officer couldn't have a reasonable fear of his safety. They were basically kill shots.

_________________
Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I don't think we are never going to know the sequence of shots and where they hit.

Do you trust Eric Holder to do a balanced investigation and arrive at what actually happened?

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Sounds like you've already made up your mind.

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I am fairly confident that the Feds will determine exactly the placement n sequence of each shot, including how far the deceased was from the shooter...forensics n ballistics are pretty damn accurate these days.

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Id say that about Holder too.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

The guy who did the autopsy said in his opinion the final 2 shots had to have been the head shots. Everyone appears to have an agenda.

_________________
Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Well, if a guy were actually "just doing his job" he could simply write down the license number of the car that refused to stop and go after the registered owner at a later time rather than endangering everyone on the street with a high speed chase. But it's always more than a job except when the cops want it to be "just doing their job". And refusing to stop for a cop becomes a personal affront that must be addressed immediately. The result of that lack of self-control might be a ridiculous chase through the streets as in my hypothetical example or it may be six shots fired at an unarmed man in anger because he told you to fuck off when you ordered him to get out of the street.

If you've ever read the Second City Cop blog, you know one of his mantras is "Police aren't above the law, but they aren't below it either." What he means is that cops should be held to the same standards as everyone else, a concept that is so wrong-headed, I don't know where to begin. A police force must be held to standards much higher than the criminals it has been hired to apprehend.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

that would never ever happen because
a) fleeing & eluding is a felony
b) not that i want to take the guilty until proven innocent tact, but someone pulled over for speeding that refuses to stop and engages the cops in a high speed chase, i'm going to take a wild guess that there's a reason they're doing it...i.e. outstanding warrants, drugs, guns, etc.

_________________
Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Then later on when that same car involved in a robbery, drive by, tbone accident that kills a young mom and her baby and it's found out that the police let them go earlier it'll be why didn't the cops stop them when they had the chance? fucking lazy donut eating scum .

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

But that's no reason to do something foolish. When cops run into trouble it's always due to poor judgment. And in their job, poor judgment can have far greater consequences than in yours or mine. Chasing a car through crowded streets is about ego as much as it's about apprehending a felon. And the same thing goes for shooting an unarmed guy because he told you to fuck off.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

They're probably more likely to t-bone someone during a high speed chase.

I guess it depends on what you expect from your police department. It sounds like you would prefer them to err on the side of being a full-fledged military unit cracking down as hard as possible. Maybe that's what most people want. I don't know.

I certainly don't think it's a good idea to have police trained that the public is their enemy. I've heard cops that I know complaining about the C.A.P.S. program. They don't want to be part of their community. For most of them, that isn't why they signed up for the job. They did it for the power, to tell you what to do, and to crack your head if you don't.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don