It all comes down to
"The two officers, B.B Hanlon and Arpie Hoeppner, were searching around the home with their flashlights when Waller emerged from his home armed with a handgun, investigating who was walking around his property with flashlights.
Police radio transmissions obtained by NBC DFW captured what happened next:
“The guy came out with a gun and wouldn’t put the gun down,’ Officer Hanlon said. ‘He pointed it at Hoeppner, Hoeppner fired,” Hanlon said.
Both of the officers claim they identified themselves as police officers and told Waller to drop his firearm. They claim he instead lifted his firearm and pointed it at them. The police department is claiming the man was shot in self-defense."
If these claims are true and the officers were wearing uniforms identifying themselves as LEO's, then the shooting will probably be found justified. It's certainly tragic. Just yesterday I responded to an incident where a homeowner pointed a gun at and detained a prowler at her residence and people have the absolute right to defend their property. But if confronted with LEO's in full uniform who give an order to drop the firearm and you instead raise it and point it at the officers, the officers have no choice but to fire. A classic "lawful but awful" situation.
On many occasions, during hot foot pursuit of a subject and/or running with K9, I have traipsed through various properties, to catch the bad guy, and it's always a concern that god I hope I don't get shot by some homeowner who sees a guy running through his yard at o dark 30. Uniforms SHOULD clearly identify the officer as a LEO and that includes markings on the back, which many conventional uniforms don't have. My agencies standard uniform DOES have reflective letters on the back identifying the wearer as a LEO and our union had to fight to get our agency to agree to put it on the uniforms.
People who call this an execution are assuming that the above claims I quoted are false. That's fine. Some people reflexively disbelieve the police. However, it's pretty clear from court cases that juries do tend to believe cops and give them ample benefit of the doubt. Consider as an example, the Amadou Diallo shooting, another tragedy. Granted, the powers that be, due to politics OVERCHARGED and charged the officers with murder vs. manslaughter (much like the Zimmerman case) but the jury still had the option of finding them guilty of manslaughter. Instead they were acquitted. Lots of other examples like that, but it shows that while you may not give cops the benefit of the doubt and may reflexively distrust their narrative, the public (as confirmed by gallup polls) by a large margin tends to respect them and give them that benefit of the doubt.
Regardless, a man is dead who should not have died, and that's a tragedy
