Textbook good shoot? you're joking right? Where was the threat that justified deadly force? They shot a man holding a cell phone. These cops had no business firing their weapons. Shooting when you can't POSITIVELY identify a weapon is 3rd degree manslaughter at the very least. Any civilian would be facing murder charges. Why do cops that have more training and do this for a living get a pass?
The officer "thought they had a gun" is NEVER an excuse for lethal force.
“The officer “thought they had a gun” is NEVER an excuse for lethal force. “
I sympathize with that position, in the abstract.
But given the totality of the circumstances in this shoot I believe any rational person would have pulled the trigger.
Absolute nonsense. From the earliest common law standards, the use of deadly force only requires a reasonable belief that one is facing imminent death or serious bodily injury. Whether for a law enforcement officer or a private citizen, the standard is never that you must “positively” identify what someone is threatening you with as a weapon, Even in Communist California.
The standard California jury instruction contains the following language:
“Defendant’s belief must have been reasonable and (he/she) must have acted only because of that belief. The defendant is only entitled to use that amount of force that a reasonable person would believe is necessary in the same situation. If the defendant used more force than was reasonable, then the [attempted] killing was not justified.
When deciding whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, consider all the circumstances as they were known to and appeared to the defendant and consider what a reasonable person in a similar situation with similar knowledge would have believed. If the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, the danger DOES NOT need to have actually existed.”
That last sentence might be hard for you, but it means that the standard is reasonable belief, not positive identification.
Here is the classic example of this:
This video isn’t used in Use of force classes for law enforcement and non-law enforcement alike. The first video looks really bad for the officers. The second and third video show what they actually saw and what they reasonably believed at the time.
The object the suspect was hold was not a gun, it was a cell phone.
The officers had no obligation to verify what it was that the suspect was holding. The belief they had was REASONABLE.
You really should stop practicing law without a license. ;)
Now, with police being targets by leftest thugs, they are even more jumpy.
How did things ever become so bad in this country? No, cops should not be killing people who are posing no verifiable threat to them or an innocent bystander, period. our police force are not supposed to be judge, jury and executioner all wrapped up into one.