How about tasers, folks? Was there at any attempt at using less than lethal force before they took a man's life?
Doncha know? LA cops use tasers as compliance assurance devices. They would never risk even a beating if they could just shoot someone. Which begs the question, of course, what the hell we train them for, since a citizen could do the same thing. There is nothing in place to non-lethally subdue violent but nonlethal perpetrators, which seems like one of the few reasons for police to even exist. If we're just going to shoot everyone who makes a scene, why need police? Armed citizens could fill that roll just fine.
I've seen it repeatedly posted here that a BG attempting to take your gun (especially after he has already assaulted you or others) warrants the reasonable belief that you are in grave danger. I'd shoot the guy. The police should have no less right to defend themselves than we do.
This is a disingenuous argument. A police officer has a multitude of means at his disposal that a citizen may not have. He has alternate weapons, restraint training, and backup. And he initiates confrontation.
The police officer should be subject to greater scrutiny. Was the gun grab easily repelled, or was it an ongoing life-or-death struggle until the officer managed to get a shot off? This makes all the difference in my mind.
The difference is that police choose to initiate confrontations armed with handguns. This is exactly the reason I advocate disarmed police. What reason does the cop have for a gun against a naked dude? So he can use its presence as an excuse to claim potentially lethal force on the part of the naked guy in order to shoot him? Wouldn't it be sufficient to approach the naked dude with taser, OC, handcuffs, backup, so as to prevent anything lethal from being brought into play? Shouldn't the object of these professionals be to preserve life?
Its ridiculous to expect that level of training and preparedness from Joe Blow, but not from Frank Policeman.
Now, before people respond, "yeah well what reason have YOU for carrying a gun? HUH??" I would point out that I do not carry a gun in my professional capacity. I carry it in my daily life for unknown and unpredictable attempts to victimize my person. In the same way that nobody would blink twice at an insane asylum guard being prohibited (as a condition of employment) from bringing guns into sterile areas, it's reasonable to ask why police bring firearms into situations where they are never in a million years going to be needed, like when apprehending a naked dude.
I mean, even if we assume police
need to generally be armed to defend against the unpredictable (an argument I by no means accept), if the officer cared, a life could have been saved by having a nearby officer hold his lethal implements before moving in to subdue this character, since he
did know ahead of time what he was getting into. In this instance, the only function the firearm served was an excuse to claim potentially lethal force and shoot the guy.
Now, I don't want to blame the individual officer just yet. This is an instance of a culture gone wrong, and of the wrong training and the wrong mindset being used on a massive scale. This is a bigger problem than a single cop.