The Police have to face perpetrators of crime every day.
Was this use of deadly force justified?
Police are trained to respond with deadly force if a perpetrator is brandishing or pointing a deadly weapon at them or at another.
A knife is categorized as a deadly weapon in Police training.The police are not trained to mitigate the use of force when faced with a deadly weapon.This is why all 6 officers responded as they did. They are trained to do so.
If Hall had dropped the knife, he would have been arrested.Hall wanted to close with the police or the police dog so he could stab with the knife.As a result he was shot by all six officers, and died immediately.
Is it the proper use of deadly force? According to police , it is the proper use of deadly force.However, it is unlikely that the City Council of Saginaw will agree with that conclusion.The council will not be able to reprimand the police officers involved, IF they followed police procedure ( The Police Union will not allow it.)
The answer to this situation is for the council to change police procedure, and indicate that a knife is not a deadly weapon unless the perpetrator is 5 feet away or less, ( not true, knives can be thrown.), and make a tazer response procedurally necessary.
I think the police were justified at law in the use of deadly force, it is a justified hoimicide.I do not believe the police were morally justified in this group homicide, but the upside is that not one police officer or the police dog was slashed with Hall’s knife in an attempt to subdue Hall and arrest him.
The Saginaw City Council must address the moral issue.It will not go away.
Outstanding post. It’s much more understandable now. I would see the city council change the distance to 20 feet from your 5 feet, but classify knives non-deadly-weapons outside that range. If the perp approaches inside the 20 feet perimeter, it becomes a deadly-force justification.
Would be neat if some inventer created a laser perimeter-designator. A laser spins in some fashion to actually indicate, on the ground, a given perimeter. Would be useful in all manners of situations, my proposed city-council-law amendment included.