If You Take An Officer's Taser In Fight With The Officer That You Started, You Deserve Getting Shot

There is no correlation between race and violent crime when adjusted for socio economics. You want to end crime, end poverty. It's that simple.

You trying to spin data saying blacks are more violent that other races is in fact racism.

 

The cops also would of been aware that he was violent as they ran his license plate when they pulled up and saw his record.

 

Atlanta DA is Mike Nifong redux

 

If Tasers are lethal weapons than why are police using them on unarmed individuals?

 

lethality is a spectrum

 

Tell that to the family of victims

 

I do think manslaughter would have been the correct charge, and a jury can be left to decide. I agree the outcome very likely would have been an acquittal even on a lesser charge. The murder charge feel like it is a) to score political points and/or b) to try to leverage a plea deal.

Part of me feels bad for the officer, but I still feel he has to be held accountable.

 

Apparently, the DA is a **** show. First, he filed charges before the GBI finished their investigation. Even the GBI called him out for it.

Secondly, he says tasers are less lethal in this case when he called them lethal weapons when those students were pulled from their car. No consistency there.

Thirdly, he's being investigated by the GBI for embezzlement and sexual harassment. This ties into his weak poll numbers where he's fighting for incumbency so these charges reek of politics.

Even the Atlanta subreddit has low opinions of this DA and is defending the cop. Reddit leans anti-cop, especially with current events, but they're on his side.

 

I think that's Dwight Howard's uncle.

 

The DA is trying to get re-elected. That's his motivation. It's selfish because his actions alone are helping discredit the calls for reform and giving ammo to right wing pundits.

 

DA's usually argue they are non-lethal while defenses argue they are lethal, so that is kind of interesting.

 

I agree with you that this isn't a great case for the BLM movement to foster change. The officers did things by-the-book in my opinion. You can't fire a weapon at police and expect not to get shot. It doesn't matter he was "fleeing", he turned to shoot.

 

It's not against the law to be armed. Call in armed backup if you think the situation could/will escalate.

I get you're playing devil's advocate here, but you're edge-casing this to death.

1) Ideally your unarmed force is extremely physically capable and well trained. Overpowering or escaping these individuals is unlikely.

2) Anyone can be "potentially armed". You can't approach every situation like you're going to get into a gun fight. That's unrealistic and leads to this toxic police culture we've cultivated. Don't want to put your life on the line? Go find another line of work. And yes, pay cops (especially the unarmed) more for taking that risk and taking on the extra responsibility.

3) Call for backup.

None of this is relevant to my point, but I do agree this would not be much of news in any other climate.

This is pretty much it. Much like education and teachers, less funding isn't the answer for the police and cops. It's practically the opposite. We need more money into recruitment, training, and oversight (i.e. independent monitoring and adjudication) and less into pew pew bang bang toys.

In this world we get what we pay for. "Starve the beast" conservative dogma doesn't work when you're talking about essential public services.

 

I think they should have gone with manslaughter.

Even then I am not sure the officer is criminally negligent here. He can argue that when the man fired the taser at him he felt justified in using his weapon. The big question is why did he simply let him run away and get him later?

Either way, it's not clear.

 

Whether the cops actions were justifiable is debatable I believe. He actively switched from taser to firearm. I don't know why he felt compelled he needed to that?

But pressing these charges before any sort of Inquisitory investigation is the part I have major concerns with. It shows that the DA is just doing this for appearance purposes regardless of the merits of the case.

And it is going to bite him and his county in the ass if the officer is aquited because of pursuing a unrealistic charge because that's going to create an even larger mess in terms of protests and riots.

 

I think the bigger question is why he felt compelled to switch from taser to firearm.

 

You can hear and see Officer Rolfe shoot his taser at Brooks after they get up from the ground. It clearly was ineffective at incapacitating Brooks. After expending a cartridge and being ineffective, Rolfe's taser is pretty useless. Brooks has a fully loaded taser that he can use against Rolfe to take another weapon in his attempt to run away.

 

If a taser is a deadly weapon, why is it required to be tased for certification to use one? While being tased during this process, would it be fine for an officer to start shooting at his instructor?

Why not follow the same guidelines with firearms since they are both "lethal?"

No, no all LE are perfect, but there was two of them. The punishment for not having the proper skills or experience to successfully arrest this man is having to chase him down not shoot him down.

Being thrown to the ground, stealing their weapon, or drunk driving does not constitute a death sentence. Just a bruised ego.

The could haves are irrelevant when the trigger is pulled. For instance, I could say he would've started playing a tambourine.

 

Potential is irrelevant. He could've potentially turned himself in within the hour, he could've went to McDonald's since he was obviously hungry. He could've potentially ran to a park to go to sleep as he was obviously tired. He could've potentially pooped on your car's door handle.

 

I think you might be a little unfair to the officers here in this specific instance and are automatically jumping to "ego" here. This specific incident to me says more about police training. You are leaving out the part that Brooks turned his body around to aim a taser at a officer.

Now I do believe racial bias is prevelant in many law enforcement communties especially who they recruit but I'm going to be honest. As a South Asian looking man where cops don't automatically see me as a threat like black folks I still believe I would have bullet holes through me if I tried to do that same manuever.

If the victim here just continued to run away with the taser but never turned around to aim it at an officer, I doubt the officer would unload rounds into him.

Drunk driving shouldn't be a death sentences but at the same time I expect law enforcement personel to arrest and detain people caught drunk driving especially to the point where they pass out while driving. They are a danger to the public.

I think the damning part of this is the officer switching from taser to firearm but @Duncan McDonuts stated that the officer who fired the shots had a taser that was already used so it was ineffective. I need to see the video again because I remember the officer still pointing his taser at Brooks while he was chasing him right before Brooks turned around which to me implies the taser was not spent because why point a used up taser at someone?