I see that there has been another shooting, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The basic video is below, and I'll warn you that it is graphic.
What you don't see is the context. We don't know what the perp said to the cops, or what led them to believe that he was a threat. However, this shooting matches my training. Depending on the circumstances, I night have done the same thing, and I can recall a couple of training scenarios where the instructors would have passed a trainee in this scenario.
If a suspect tells you that he is going to the car and get a gun, then you don't let him get back in the car. I don't know the circumstances that led those two officers to chase him around the car with their weapons drawn, but it seems that there has been some escalation. Some threat, some indication that the encounter was about to become lethal.
We'll learn more as the days pass by, but this very well may have been a shooting done by the book.
4 comments:
From what I've read, the following had occurred:
- Taser deployed, but no effective
- subject refused to drop the knife in his hand
- subject had said he had a gun in his car, and that he was going to get it
- subject was shot reaching into the car
If the last two are true, definitely a justified shooting
Yep, ugly and stupid on the perp's part.
I was going to say that the police seemed to have no justification for shooting this young man, then saw that he MAY have had a knife. OK, even if he did have a knife, I see no reason why a cop could not have knocked him down and subdued him before he got to his car. If their roles had been reversed, a citizen would probably have been judged to be not justified in escalating the conflict to the use of firearms. In most cases, the cops are justified when they use force, but in this instance that does not appear to be true. I would like to see the body cams of the officers who shot him before I can make up my mind, but it appears that the police have once again created a problem for themselves unnecessarily.
And we will probably see another round of riots in other cities. This does not bode well for our country.
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