Michael Byrd is a coward

Flopping Aces ^ | 08-29-21 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

Michael Byrd is a coward.

Byrd, however, fancies himself a hero.

“Once we barricaded the doors, we were essentially trapped where we were,” Byrd said in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, speaking publicly for the first time since the riot. “There was no way to retreat. No other way to get out.

“If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” added Byrd, who gave NBC News permission to use his name after authorities had declined to release it.

He claims he warned her

He said he yelled repeatedly for them to get back. But the mob kept pressing forward, and then a lone rioter tried to climb through one of the doors.

Ashli Babbitt's family lawyer asserts otherwise

Roberts said he has interviewed several witnesses who were standing outside the Speaker’s Lobby with Babbitt, and that they'll testify they did not hear the officer issue "any kind of warning."

In fact, there were several officers and SWAT team members all around Babbitt, none of whom were especially bothered by those smashing the glass as none even attempted to stop them.

He also said video recordings his investigators have analyzed reveal that other police who were in the hallway with the officer did not react as expected before he fired. He said they seemed to be caught unaware as he opened fire. Roberts said he has lined up expert witnesses, including ex-cops and use-of-force experts, who will testify that the officers behind him in the Speaker’s Lobby would have taken cover or crouched and pulled their own weapons if they heard the lieutenant give repeated warnings he was going to shoot. Instead, Roberts said, they appeared to be casually standing or walking around in the lobby in the seconds leading up to the shooting.

Byrd said he saved Washington DC all on his own

“I know that day I saved countless lives,”

From what? An unarmed woman? A scary white unarmed 14 year Air Force veteran? What a effing hero. He had no idea whether she was armed or not.

Byrd said he had no idea whether the person he shot was carrying a weapon. It was only later that night that he found out that the rioter was a woman who was unarmed.

Byrd was cleared- by the Keystone Kapitol Kops themelves

How convenient. Cleared by your own.

Jonathan Turley had a look at all this and raised some serious issues:

At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.

The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

Got that? Killing someone out of fear, panic or poor judgment is just fine.

While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider "the facts and circumstances of each particular case," it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is "an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and ... is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight." Particularly with armed assailants, the standard governing "imminent harm" recognizes that these decisions must often be made in the most chaotic and brief encounters.

Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers. That even applies to armed suspects who fail to obey orders. Indeed, Huntsville police officer William “Ben” Darby recently was convicted for killing a suicidal man holding a gun to his own head. Despite being cleared by a police review board, Darby was prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, even though Darby said he feared for the safety of himself and fellow officers. Yet law professors and experts who have praised such prosecutions in the past have been conspicuously silent over the shooting of an unarmed woman who had officers in front of and behind her on Jan. 6.

Then Byrd destroys his own narrative:

[joma89]

Michael Byrd is a murderer and a racist.