As Chris Rock said in his hilarious video, ‘How not to get your a$$ kicked by the pOlice.” If you run, the cops are bringing an a$$ kicking with them. Or, in this case, after she backed into his car, narrowly missing him and pumping up his adrenalin even further, firearm discharge in your general direction.
No, I don't think the cop was right to do what he did, but mitigating circumstances as I understand them warrants him finding another job, but not prison time.
And I rarely find myself coming to the defense of cops. It's usually the opposite. And I am only defending up to a point for a simple reason: being a man, I know the heart of man. You take your life into your own hands when you attack one with deadly force and he has been given limited authority to do what most people wouldn't be allowed to do.
“No, I don’t think the cop was right to do what he did, but mitigating circumstances as I understand them warrants him finding another job, but not prison time.”
In this circumstance, I agree. I don’t think being a police officer should give one any special protection against prosecution. Yet, if someone just tried to back over me in their car, intentionally, would I, as a private citizen, feel threatened enough to shoot at them? Probably.
So, if I think any reasonable private citizen would be justified firing in self defense, I can’t rightly condemn a police officer for doing so.
This is different from that case a few weeks back, where the person led police on a chase, then, after exiting the vehicle, the police shot him down. In this case, the person was still behind the wheel, and whether they were going forward or back, that essentially meant they were still armed and dangerous.