Posted on 04/23/2012 9:30:54 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Prosecutors' decision to charge a white Oklahoma police captain with felony manslaughter after he shot a fleeing black teenager in the back was made in part to prevent the kind of racial discord that erupted after high-profile shootings in Florida and Tulsa, the officer's attorney claimed Monday.
Capt. Randy Harrison was charged last week with one count of first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Dane Scott Jr., who was shot March 14 after a car chase in the Oklahoma City suburb of Del City.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindependent.com ...
Really? Just Damn.
Damned if you shoot them and damned if you run them over. Oh well.
Hard to say anything without details, but, if he shot him in the back, thats not good unless he can prove he was a fleeing felon with intent to do more harm, as in armed and dangerous.
IF - if the affidavit is true, then the second officer and any bystanders ought to bring charges, even if the shooting of Scott was justified.
Another witness says the suspect was just trying to hold his pants up as he ran away.
As an aside, at the Lakewood WA shooting of 4 police officers one of the officers made contact with the suspect and had grabbed his gun when the suspect drew a second gun from the rear waistband of his pants and then made a contact shot on the officer's head. He then placed another contact shot through the officer's eye socket after the officer was down.
Garner vs. Tennessee is the court decision which lays out the precedence for shooting at fleeing suspects. The suspect needs to pose a credible threat to either officers or the public to be a justifiable shoot. Personally, a guy that wants to fight cops and tries to pull a gun on a cop probably poses a danger to the citizenry and definitely other cops.
No doubt about it we’d all best stay out of confrontations with minorities because if we win, we lose. It would probably be a good idea for everyone to travel in pairs with video recorders. The whole country is a tinder box.
As for a cop shootin’ a fleeing suspect in the back, if that’s the case, without a good excuse and lots of witnesses, the cop was wrong.
Sounds to me like it needs to go to court.
Sounds like any given episode of "Cops".
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