Posted on 04/03/2018 5:47:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a police officer who shot a woman outside of her home in Tucson, Arizona in May 2010. The officer, Andrew Kisela, shot Amy Hughes after she was seen acting "erratically," hacking at a tree with a knife and arguing with her roommate.
Kisela and another police officer, Alex Garcia, heard about the report on their patrol car radio and responded. A third police officer, Lindsay Kunz, arrived on the scene on her bicycle.
All three officers drew their guns. At least twice they told Hughes to drop the knife. Viewing the record in the light most favorable to Hughes, Chadwick said “take it easy” to both Hughes and the officers. Hughes appeared calm, but she did not acknowledge the officers’ presence or drop the knife. The top bar of the chain-link fence blocked Kisela’s line of fire, so he dropped to the ground and shot Hughes four times through the fence. Then the officers jumped the fence, handcuffed Hughes, and called paramedics, who transported her to a hospital. There she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Less than a minute had transpired from the moment the officers saw Chadwick to the moment Kisela fired shots.
Hughes, they later learned, had a history of mental illness. She and Chadwick were roommates and they apparently had a disagreement over $20.
Kisela, Garcia and Kunz defended Kisela's decision to shoot, noting they believed at the time that Hughes was a threat to Chadwick. Still, Hughes sued Kisela, alleging that he had used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In their ruling Monday, the Supreme Court cited several other court cases as precedent in their acquittal of the police officer. They cited Kisela’s qualified immunity, which protects public officials from damages for civil liability as long as they did not violate an individual's "clearly established" statutory or constitutional rights, Cornell explains.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, offering a different perspective of what transpired, concluding Officer Kisela acted hastily.
"Kisela did not wait for Hughes to register, much less respond to, the officers’ rushed commands," Sotomayor insisted. "Instead, Kisela immediately and unilaterally escalated the situation."
Furthermore, he gave no advance warning that he would shoot, and "attempted no less dangerous methods to deescalate the situation."
She also disagreed with her colleagues in terms of qualified immunity. An officer is not entitled to qualified immunity, she said, if “(1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’”
Hughes, Sotomayor noted, had not committed a crime. Furthermore, when the police officers arrived on the scene, reports indicate that Hughes was standing “composed and content” during her encounter with Chadwick. With the above context, the justice came to the following conclusion.
The majority today exacerbates that troubling asymmetry. Its decision is not just wrong on the law; it also sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished. Because there is nothing right or just under the law about this, I respectfully dissent.
You can read the whole court ruling – and Sotomayor’s dissent – here.
A few years ago on the outskirts of Minneapolis there was a car chase. Couple of people in the car. They had an accident and left the scene.
It was 10 below zero.
The cops had disabled the car and it was stuck in the ditch.
Four cops from different branches surround the car.
The driver came out with a knife and would not drop it.
All four cops blasted him.
The woman picks up the knife, same thing. All four blasted her.
Of course they were cleared because they were scared.
It was 10 below zero, daylight, in the country, they had nowhere to go. Cops could have sat in their locked cruisers with the heat on and these two would have eventually surrendered or froze to death.
Instead, they were scared so they executed them.
There is a time for lethal force.
There is a time when you can just sit back and relax while you come up with a better solution.
At least read the article
Soto got this one right ...
I have seldom if ever agreed with Sotomayer.
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You shouldn’t agree with her now. She’s still the dumbest member of the court.
She was not threatening the roommate. It was not described as any sort of hostage situation.
“You shouldn’t agree with her now. She’s still the dumbest member of the court.”
You should quit giving knee jerk reactions. Read the case record, and discuss your reasoning. “I don’t like Sotomayer” says zero, zip, nada about the case at hand.
I agree. Deadly force should only be used when there is a credible threat to someone’s safety. I’m not seeing that here.
If the event happened as the article states I agree also. Bad shoot.
Crazy lady with knife, with innocent nearby. Shoot the nut.
Out of the three officers who responded, only one was identified as female, the other two were male.
The officer being sued by Hughes was Andrew Kisela.
The situation could have been handled better, but if you want to threaten people then prepare to die.
It seems Chadwick didn’t feel threatened, since there is no indication in the article that she tried to distance herself.
I agree with Sotomayor, this was rushed, trigger happy cop. He couldn’t see, so he dropped to the ground. Could he then see? And what he saw justified unprovoked, no further warning? Four shots to woman standing there calmly? Wow.
Okay, seriously, “Kisela, Garcia and Kunz defended Kisela’s decision to shoot”. When have police NOT defended their partners?!
The problem seems to be the mindset is that if you disobey the orders of a cop you become a threat that must be contained. I often wonder when people threatening to suicide are shot /!&* Seems pointless. From what I gather the police see the situations as a different equation than the casual bystander; in their world view they must diffuse threat by whatever means necessary. The incident you describe would seem to be a great time for a taser, or two.
I blame the training not the cops for some of this mindset. They are going by the “book”. The cops that have been on the streets longer seem to give more latitude, more time before escalating, in essence they have added to the “book”, exception made for the occasional bully or bad cop.
Some of the lack of flexibility also comes from the many cops a year who are blown away at traffic stops, while sitting in a police car or on domestic violence cases. These cases change the mindset of the police and the perception of what can happen or how quickly a seemingly low risk situation can escalate. The cops insulted, not served in restaurants etc permeates as well leading to an isolation and feeling of us/them, with them being violent and unpredictable.
Read the case record, and discuss your reasoning.
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Did you read it? Everybody else on the court thought it was an easy decision.
This actually calls into question the officers judgment in deciding to shoot.
I don't know of any sound doctrine that teaches someone to “wing” an opponent with gunfire. If the officer was, in fact, shooting not to kill the officer apparently did not feel anyone’s life was endangered.
Shoot to kill, or don't shoot.
It sounds like in this case there were three frightened police officers that didn't know what to do; and the three didn't have the confidence they could overcome the woman who had whacked at a tree. One of them did something that turned out to be the wrong thing.
I am not saying the decision to shoot was right or wrong. Just pointing out the sentence in the article.
He feared for the ROOMMATE’S safety not his own.
You guys want a good mental exercise to gauge whether or not one of these police shootings is OK? Just ask yourself, what if a private citizen had done the shooting. Would that private citizen be absolved equally? Would that private citizen’s actions be seen as justified by the courts? If the answer is no, then we have a a problem. If anything, cops should be held to a higher standard since they are agents of the government AND they walk around armed to the teeth with an army at their beck and call.
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