Posted on 12/15/2017 1:05:08 PM PST by JP1201
The jurors who acquitted Philip Brailsford of second-degree murder last week were told to judge him based on "how a reasonable officer would act, versus a regular person with no police training," as The Arizona Republic put it. That distinction was crucial, because a "regular person" would never get away with shooting an unarmed man who was crawling on the floor, sobbing, and begging for his life.
Like other recent cases in which jurors failed to hold police officers accountable for the unnecessary use of deadly force, Brailsford's acquittal shows that cops benefit from a double standard. Unlike ordinary citizens, they can kill with impunity as long as they say they were afraid, whether or not their fear was justified.
Daniel Shaver got drunk and did something stupid. But he did not deserve or need to die for it.
On January 18, 2016, Shaver, who was 26 and lived in Granbury, Texas, was staying at a La Quinta Inn in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb, while working on a job for his father-in-law's pest control company. After inviting two other hotel guests to his room for a drink, he showed them an air rifle he used for work, at one point sticking it out a window to demonstrate the scope's range.
Alarmed by the rifle's silhouette, a couple who had been using the hotel's hot tub informed the staff. That's how Brailsford and five other Mesa officers ended up confronting Shaver in a fifth-floor hallway.
The bodycam video of the encounter, which was not publicly released until after the verdict, shows that Shaver, who according to the autopsy had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal threshold for driving under the influence, was confused by the strange and contradictory orders that Sgt. Charles Langley barked at him. Instead of simply handcuffing Shaver as he lay face down with his hands behind his head, under the guns of three officers, Langley inexplicably told the terrified and intoxicated man to crawl toward him.
While crawling, eyes on the floor, Shaver paused and reached toward his waistband, apparently to pull up the athletic shorts that had slipped down as he moved. That is when Brailsford fired five rounds from his AR-15 rifle.
"He could have easily and quickly drawn a weapon down on us and fired without aiming," Brailsford said later. Yet neither of the other two officers who had guns drawn on Shaver perceived the threat that Brailsford did.
One of those officers testified that he would not fire based purely on the "draw stroke" Brailsford thought he saw. He would also consider the context, such as whether a suspect is belligerent and threatening or, like Shaver, compliant, apologetic, and tearful.
Brailsford said he was trained to ignore context. "We're not trained necessarily to pay attention to what a suspect is saying," he testified. "We're supposed to watch their actions and what they do with their hands."
The jury apparently accepted the counterintuitive argument that police, because of their special training, are apt to be less careful with guns than the average citizen would be. A similar dispensation seemed to be at work last June, when Minnesota jurors acquitted former St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez of manslaughter after he panicked during a traffic stop and shot a driver who was reaching for his license.
Even more astonishing was the failure of South Carolina jurors to reach a verdict in the trial of former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who shot an unarmed motorist in the back as he ran away. Last May, five months after that mistrial, Slager signed a federal plea agreement in which he admitted the shooting was not justified.
All three of these officers said they were afraid, but that is not enough to justify the use of deadly force. When juries fail to ask whether police have good reason to fear the people they kill, regular people have good reason to fear police.
Problem is that cops are scared of everything: blacks, whites, hispanics, kids, women, old people, people who don’t comply, people who comply, crime victims, mentally ill, dogs, people selling stuff without a permit, etc.
I’d almost rather take my chance with the bad guy than the cops...
I saw the video, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever watched. It makes you think that at any time, out of the blue, the cops could show up, terrorize you at gunpoint then shoot you dead without consequence for themselves.
I must have missed the trial of the MN Somali cop.
Lowering psychological screening standards should fix that.
Only an idiot would say a cop is scarier than a criminal.
Cops who need prison, get prison.
Behind all of this, sedition.
If he could speak, do you think the dead victim would agree?
“Problem is that cops are scared of everything: blacks, whites, hispanics, kids, women, old people, people who don’t comply, people who comply, crime victims, mentally ill, dogs, people selling stuff without a permit, etc.”
That statement is complete bull $%^t! Don’t equate a trigger happy @$$hole cop with with the more than 95% of dedicated officers.
‘Consequences’?
Heck they get vacation and an entire industry circling the wagons around them.
I trust unleashed pit bulls more.
As another Freeper put it:
When i was young, cops were had a duty to make us feel safe
Now its our duty to make the cops feel safe
Don’t forget people who do comply to crazy requests.
Bump
So, do the 5% “trigger happy aXXhole cops” have a sign on them so we can tell which ones they are?
I watched the video.
I learned that when ordered to my knees by a LEO, go flat on my face and do not move.
That will be the last order I follow.
No “Simon says games for me.”
If the knuckle dragging badge money cannot keep his burger hook off the bang switch, my family will never have to work again.
Seems like the technique of asking him to crawl was stupid and dangerous Wouldn’t shorts or what not coming down and somebody reaching for their waist be common enough to be anticipated by people that write the standards on how to apprehend a suspect?
When I was a kid it was the policeman’s job to make the citizen feel safe.
When did that turn around?
We have the police wrongly shooting people now on a weekly basis. This needs to stop NOW. There are many culprits that have lead us to this point. One is the notion that "officer safety" is paramount when it is in fact second to the safety of the public. While we never want to have an officer killed in the line of duty the fact remains this is going to happen but what must NEVER happen is an officer killing a citizen in any situation where deadly force was not the last and only option to protect the life of the officer or another civilian. I want to emphasize I did not say "justified" but rather the LAST AND ONLY OPTION. Even a man with a gun that has knowingly committed a robbery can not be shot unless that man has a weapon at the ready or in the process to be ready to fire. Simply lifting his shirt and starting to pull out what appears to be a firearm is still a NO SHOOT situation, as the suspect may be taking the firearm out to drop it on the ground and surrender, the object may not be a firearm at all and many other possibilities.
This is a long drawn out subject but in short we need to get back to the police being "peace officers" not "law enforcers". In the end the people are the boss not the police and its time the boss put his foot down.
Any cop that doesn’t report those trigger happy a-holes is just as much a part of the problem.
Don’t give me that ‘95 percent are good; for EVERY homicidal trigger happy jerk there must be a dozen cops who know the score but put the ‘thin blue line’ between them and “civilians” as a higher priority.
any cop is guilty of whatever activities, attitudes or incompetence they do not go to their supervisors and report.
Yeah... I’ll still take my chances with the criminals. At least I know where I stand when faced with a criminal as opposed a cop.
The most dangerous act a person can do in this country is interact with a cop.
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