[mitchellberry]

You watched the entire video?

It's 5 minutes of conflicting instructions and repeated death threats by a man heavily covered in tattoos carrying an assualt rifle with the words "you're f*ed" engraved on it.

How were the multiple police officers incapable of handcuffing the clearly compliant crying victim in 5 whole mins? Am amazed anyone watching that could possibly defend it.

[riffraff]

I looked at the video and I was expecting some semi-threatening move, like suddenly standing up or something. Nope, just randomly shoot the guy. This is insane.

Also, how was not the behaviour "stay on the ground, and my colleague will come and handcuff you ASAP". Where the hell are _other_ cops?

[eeZah7Ux]

> I was expecting some semi-threatening move

Hold on. An unarmed person standing up an even yelling or walking towards the cop it's still clearly not a serious threat and would not justify shooting in most "first" countries!

Let's not normalize the idea of "extreme self defence".

[riffraff]

I didn't mean to imply it'd be "justified" in a legal or moral sense to shoot someone because one feels threatened.

But I can imagine being scared shitless and pulling the trigger because of a sudden perceived threat, which is why this video felt shocking to me.

I obviously don't see why the shooter thought shooting was reasonable, but I also cannot imagine why he felt so threatened to be forced to shoot.

[aquadrop]

Yes, that's absolutely insane, I don't have words to describe how insane it is and all that was acquitted... And what's worse, they are all (policemen) on it. One guy shouts moronic commands, another one kills a man for nothing. They have "I'm your God and I decide what happens"-complex. That monster who shot the guy should have been disarmed and handcuffed on the spot for a murder, and get a life sentence. All that "I was afraid for my life" for anything BS should stop, cops are so afraid for their lives they're going to kill everyone for it. And everybody acts like it's normal there, and in the end it's all ok, keep going. Thank god I don't need to go to USA, because I'm afraid I can meet such moronic cops accidentally there.

[coredog64]

You're missing the context of the encounter.

Police were called when someone saw an occupant of the hotel room brandishing a weapon. The responders don't just walk up and cuff the man and woman because they are not sure if these are the armed people and are trying to stay out of a theoretical field of fire from the room.

That's not to say this isn't an awful video to watch. The officers scared the guy so much that it was impossible for him to comply.

[revelation]

How is that the context? Police are called to scenes where someone has believed to have seen a gun all the time. 99% of time, it is not. 99.9999% of time, they are not looking to shoot police with it.

"theoretical field of fire" it's not a war zone. It's time to acknowledge that part of the job description of a police officer is that you can do everything right and still be shot by a maniac. That's no different to any of us.

[emodendroket]

He also repeatedly gave contradictory or difficult-to-follow instructions.

[indubitable]

There's a lengthy line between condemn and condone. One of the police shootings I find completely and absolutely condemnable is that of Charles Kinsey in Florida [1]. And that was perhaps a nervous breakdown of the officer. Apparently when asked why he shot his immediate response was, "I don't know." In this (Daniel Shaver) video, I think you have to consider the context. If this was a normal scenario and this guy was being arrested for e.g. drunken disorderly/theft or something of the sort, then I think murder charges would be completely in order here. However, that's not the context. Let's say you receive multiple reports of a person pointing a rifle outside a hotel window. How are you going to perceive the situation? I find it difficult to imagine many scenarios other than somebody planning to engage in murder or possibly terrorism. The best case scenario would a mentally disturbed individual who is armed and likely dangerous.

Did you notice how the officer was constantly tucking himself around the corner? He had no way of knowing whether there were more individuals waiting to ambush the officers. And that is a perfectly justifiable fear given the context of this situation. And the victim in this case reached behind his back multiple times, even after being told precisely not to. He could have been reaching for a weapon or it could have been something for more dangerous - imagine he was reaching for a detonator. It's easy to condemn the police officer, but at the same time this shooting took multiple unbelievably provocative actions on part of the victim to reach this point: point rifle outside hotel room apparently in vicinity of other hotel guests, decide to reach around back when specifically told to keep hands visible, repeat that mistake and reach even more directly towards your waist. I obviously can't condone the act, but on the other hand I also can't entirely condemn it either. It's an extremely unfortunate scenario.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqLd-lEFqsM

[maxerickson]

Imagined scenarios shouldn't ever be used to justify lethal force. That's all there is to say.

Police probably shouldn't ever fire their weapons first...

Of course that would make being an officer slightly more physically dangerous, but only slightly. Most never have cause to fire their weapons in the line of duty anyway.

[davemp]

This is just fantasy. Sure in nice places where you likely live this may work. These areas are not where police homicides tend to happen though.

Some areas of the USA are actually very dangerous. In these areas there is a much higher likelihood of suspects being harmed and dangerous.

You’re basically asking other humans to implement a sound system (where false negatives mean they die) in an area with relatively high event rates. This doesn’t give me any moral clarity.

In cushy neighborhoods sure police officers likely do implement a complete system and no one gets shot. That’s much easier to justify based on basic probabilities.

[maxerickson]

(where false negatives mean they die)

This study finds a substantial difference in high crime areas, but still most officers never discharge their weapon in the line of duty:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-loo...

About one-in-five officers (22%) in areas with at least six and but fewer than 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2015 have ever fired their service weapon. By contrast, about a third (32%) of officers who work in areas with a lower violent crime rate have discharged their gun. In areas where the violent crime rate is 10 or more, 28% of officers have fired their weapon. However, that proportion is not significantly different from the share that works in communities with fewer than six or six to fewer than 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents.

Maybe the best way to stop them firing first is to not let them carry a firearm.

[davemp]

I’m not convinced that firing a weapon is that useful of a statistic.

[revelation]

This is not all how this is handled by sane police forces. Only in the US do they keep stumbling into these "extremely unfortunate scenarios", do they, and therein lies the blame.

[indubitable]

You have to keep in mind when looking at data is that the US, relative to the countries you're probably comparing it to, is very large. So you need to look at rates of events - and not quantity of events. How often did other police forces need to respond to something at all analogous to an individual pointing a rifle out the window of a hotel in populated areas and then repeatedly trying to reach behind his waist even after instructed not do so? Perhaps most importantly, violent crime in the US is much more common than other places in the developed world. So that changes the probability determination for what's probably going on in any given event.

We can look at this this on a national level where we're already in pretty bad shape with a murder rate of 4.9 [1] compared to less than 1 for most of Europe. But where things get really insane is when you start breaking it down to where these events are often happening. Crime, especially violent crime, in the US is very centralized into a number of relatively small areas. For instance these [2] are the crime data for Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown was killed. In the year Michael Brown was killed, their homicide rate was double the US average. It's now skyrocketed to 42.8. To give some context to that 42.8 the murder rate in Mexico is 16.35. In Columbia it's 26.5. There are actually only 5 nations with a murder rate higher than Ferguson. And you'll find that these extreme rates of violence tend correlate pretty well to areas where the reported police violence is also coming from.

So the point here is that comparing how the police function in countries with little to no reason to expect extremely dangerous scenarios (or outcomes) to countries where such expectations are perfectly justified is not really logical. Here's an interesting thought experiment. Swap the police force of [less dangerous nation] with the police force of the US. Would you expect the behavior of the US police force in the now much more safe nation to change? What of the police from the safer nation now placed in a nation where people randomly killing police is actually a thing?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[2] - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Ferguson-Missouri.html

[makepanic]

Just a small note, the person that shouts the instructions is Sgt. Charles Langley but the shooter is Philip “Mitch” Brailsford.

via https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...

[ryanlol]

Someone ought to make a website naming, shaming and tracking these people.

Maybe the courts wont punish them, but it shouldn’t be very hard to ensure that the label of MURDERER will follow them for life.

[southphillyman]

Due to the complexities of race and politics in this country your idea could have the opposite effect. Two specific examples come to mind: The multiple successful fundraising efforts by George Zimmerman. (Not sure of the legalities of citizens arrest but I believe he was effectively acting as law enforcement as a neighborhood watch member) A recent FOP (Fratenal Order of Police) fundraiser in Philadelphia for a officer who had been fired for shooting an unarmed man in the back. There is a significant population of people in this country who will support police either because they believe the victim should have been killed regardless of circumstances or simply because they blindly support the police and always give them the benefit of the doubt

[mitchellberry]

Seen people demanding the names of jurors on various forums.

This is the antithesis of modern justice. Despite my personal feelings about their decision, jurors should never have to fear public opinion.

[ryanlol]

Jurors? Of course not. I'm talking about the police officers killing defenseless people.

Cops should very much have to fear the public opinion, it is their job to serve the public.

[mitchellberry]

Yeah fair call, just don't like the blame game that seems to escalate in cases like this.

Police should certainly worry about general opinion. They are public servants.

[emodendroket]

What effect will that even have on them if police departments don't care?

[ryanlol]

It's definitely not much, but having the first google result for someones name point to a dossier with ideally:

* Name, DoB

* Some decent photos for easy identification

* Footage of them murdering someone, pages like this without solid evidence don't seem like a good thing.

* Collection of news articles, court documents

* Contact information (social media, home address(es), phone numbers)

* Employers contact information

it's not nothing.

Hopefully it'll at least hurt their future employment prospects a little, maybe make it harder for them to find a place to rent. At the very least it'll be easier for their neighbors to find out that they're living next to a killer.

Best case scenario they'll waste a lot of their time and money trying to get the site taken down via legal means. From experience I would expect many of these folks to drive themselves crazy trying to do that, generating further source material and drawing even more attention to their past.

The somewhat unlikely worst case scenario is that it simply doesn't bother them at all.

[emodendroket]

> The somewhat unlikely worst case scenario is that it simply doesn't bother them at all.

People ask George Zimmerman for his autograph.

[ryanlol]

People try to shoot George Zimmerman in the head.