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

The moment you start driving drunk to the point you might pass out while driving, you are danger to public safety and I expect law enforcement to reign you in and detain you. This wasn't a fake 20 dollar bill the cops were called over for. It would be irresponsible of the officers to let him run off.

 

You don't kill people because of your belief that he probably hoped he was grabbing a gun. Especially when you know later that it wasn't a gun. A LEO should go with the facts they have not what they guess he was probably wanting to do when the incident started.

 

Dangerous to the officer, possibly. Life-Threatening? No. Dangerous to others? Not really. Yes, look at his priors. He didn't violently attack people he didn't know or were random pedestrians on the street. Wake up, dude.

 

Let me ask you this. If you have a open carry, and some random stranger comes up to you and you see them whipping out a taser where they look like they are about to use it on you what would you do?

The reason the open carry part is important because it makes you guess whether the person with the taser is looking to take your firearm. Cops essentially open carry as we all know they are armed. Tasers lock up people. You become defenseless when you are tased. That means your weapon is free for the person who just tased you to pick up. Would you take that risk of not knowing the intent of the individual given that context?

I'm just trying to point out that "a taser isn't a deadly weapon" isnt such an open and shut argument due to the nature of tasers and what they can do (render someone defenseless).

I just don't think cops are going to ever place themselves in a position where they are completely defenseless. It's not within their nature.

 

He was definitely a danger to others. He drove **** faced to get Wendys dude.

 

The only reason to switch was to change from potentially stunning him to killing him. So it's clear his intent at that point was to kill him given that he was running away. Is there any alternative?

 

Violently attacking people you know isn't much better.

But his priors are irellevent. I don't want to fall into that trap of justifying actions because of priors.

 

The reason I mention ego, is knowing the humiliation and the jokes he'd be receiving from fellow officers for the rest of his career.

Oh I've mentioned training in this thread, I'm in total agreement with you on that.

Part of that training is ascertaining if your life or the life of others, or immenent serious bodily injury to yourself or others is present to lawfully use deadly force.

A suspect running away from you turning and discharging a taser with your fellow officer steps away wouldn't be.

Besides, he switched to his firearm, and fired it after the taser was deployed.

 

I'm conflicted because if what @Duncan McDonuts is saying is true than the officer had no choice but to use his firearm. I have to examine the video more closely. I'm not sure exactly how tasers operate but I'm assuming they have one "shot" where after it's used, you have to "repack" it. These are probably incorrect terms but I assume you get the gist. You don't have multiple consecutive shots with a taser.

So if the officer who shot Brooks already had his taser spent, it is basically useless. But then again, the officer was still pointing his taser at Brooks while chasing him. Why would he point a spent taser at Brooks? Show of force?

 

And that's why I said, the punishment for these officer's for not being able to successfully arrest him is a foot chase. There have been many foot chases that have later hours. So, yes I'm in agreement that he needed to be apprehended.

 

Justified is a strong word. I wouldn't encourage the shooting by other LEOs in the future. This is a great moment for education (as morbid as that may be). This is likely a scenario that is rarely simulated in training, I mean how often do suspects steal and taze officers? In a wordly sense, examined in a vacuum...imagine if you had a robot trained to do law enforcement...then no, I wouldn't say an unsuccessful taser attempt merits the suspect losing his life. But the cop is human and reacting in a split second. Brooks turns and discharges something his direction. We all have the benefit of being removed form the situation and saying "it's just a taser! He missed! It was just stolen; the officer knows that's the only weapon he had!" etc. But Brooks acted in a very alarming way; stole a "weapon", overpowered both officers, fired the taser which produced a flash as seen in the video.

An officer-civilian interaction is far different from two civilians. The situation requires submission by the civilian. The officers wear distinctive uniforms and its well known that they have authority to arrest. That's why it's 10x more alarming when a civilian completely disregards this authority and turns violent towards the officer. My opinion is that all of these things are simultaneously going through the cop's mind and he's reacting to a highly volatile threat who, while he was running away, was still ballsy enough to fire a weapon capable of incapacitating him. This is unprecedented territory but I think a defense attorney can easily show how a human cop could reasonably feel the need to draw and use his pistol. Not ideal and training will have to be tailored for situations like this, but in this instance....yes; justifiable.

 

I'm down for punishment in terms of employment for failing to do your job properly. Murder charges are an entirely different thing in this context.

 

If my buddy was a few feet away from me and he was armed and his lawful duty was to protect me, no, my life wouldn't be in any danger.

 

"Maybe It’s Time To Privatize The Police":

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/18/maybe-its-time-to-privatize-the-police/

excerpt:

On Wednesday Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe was formally charge with felony murder in the killing of Rayshard Brooks. While evading arrest after having assaulted Rolfe and his partner, Brooks points a Taser at Rolfe and fires. At that point, and exactly that point Rolfe takes out his gun and shoots. If this act of self-defense by a cop is felony murder, then we need to take a hard look at what the police are in today’s American society and what we wish them to be.

Traditionally the badge gives law enforcement officers wider latitude than it gives a regular citizen in using violence to prevent crime and physical harm. We offer this wider latitude because when police use violence they do so on behalf of society, not in furtherance of their own individual interests. We understand that the chaotic nature of crime will inevitably put police in untenable situations and since most of us don’t want to deal with crime ourselves, we offer legal support, as well as good pay and benefits to those willing to do the job for us.

But in the case of Rolfe, the Atlanta District Attorney Paul Howard does not appear to give the police officer any wider latitude based on his job, much the opposite in fact. The DA has almost nothing to say about the fact that Brooks resisted arrest, attacked police, stole a weapon and fired it at them. At one point Howard referred to Brooks’ behavior as “jovial.” The message is that Brooks’ actions were irrelevant to the situation. Rolfe should have been counting Taser shots and known in those split seconds that the person firing a weapon at him actually posed no threat.

If this is the new standard, if we are not going to give police wider latitude, if we are going to strip them of qualified immunity, then we are basically treating them like anyone else with a gun. That being the case it makes more sense for us to consider the privatization of the police than to pretend they are officers of the government with special protections. If we demand that police enter dangerous situations but tell them if something goes wrong its all on them, not on the society they serve, then police are in an impossible position.​

more at the link

 

Time stamps at 0:44 and 1:37. At 0:44, you can hear Rolfe's taser deploy and see the wires. At 1:37, you can see Rolfe point his taser at Brooks and shoot Brooks twice. I've read newer tasers can have 2-3 shots per cartridge.

Edit: After rewatching and turning up my volume, you hear 3 pops from Rolfe's taser.

 

I mean it's easy to say that now but like @Jayzers_100 said, in the moment are you coming to have that run through your mind or are you going to just have tunnel vision and see a man turning around to fire a weapon at you?

 

The tasers they had have three shots. If it was only one shot than as soon as Brooks fired he wouldn't be a threat anymore anyway. So either way it doesn't make sense for him to switch from Taser to gun.

It's hard to make a case that a man fleeing arrest on foot for a DWI armed with a taser is a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on anyone.

 

Eh. I disagree with that. I definitely can see a man who is willing to tackle armed officers and steal their taser and before that was driving drunk as being a danger to society if left to run away.

 

Officer #2 had expended his taser cartridge (which was ineffective at stopping Brooks) before pulling out his firearm.

Officer #2 kept pointing the taser at Brooks because the cables were still attached to Brooks as he ran after him (pulling the taser away would likely either detach the prongs or rip the taser from the officer's hands).

I largely agree with you that if Brooks had not fired the stolen taser he would be alive today.

 

A police officer's job is to be able to determine when lethal force is lawful no matter what the scenario, that's why it is going over and over and over again, well at least at the academy I attended. And yes, they tell you that scenarios may happen that you may have never thought of. That is why after many years away from the academy, I still know when lethal force is lawful.

If the officer is unable to think quickly on his feet, especially with the powers given to him, he's in the wrong career.