Police officers need to be willing to get shot at first before they decide to respond with lethal force. This is probably the bottom line for me, this is the test that needs to be applied in determining who's right vs. wrong...for me.
Agreed that police should take some risk, considering they are covered with armor, as much as they want to wear. But in this case that is not the issue. The guy and the lady cop had been interacting for some time before other police arrived. At no time when she was alone with him did she feel the need to shoot him. So the most threatening activity he engaged in was probably caught on video.
The police officer cant be blamed on the incident but my question is did she the weapon or because the suspect was reaching for something she thought it was a weapon?
First we can't hear the video sound. This big guy was threatening the police. Also not visible in the window in the car. I know that in such cases as the video is usually the suspect lay on the pavement. Why he went to the window of the car? There are so many questions.
When a person is outside their vehicle the police always say "get back in your vehicle". That is almost certainly what he was told, even though the car was in the middle of the road, because the police were not responding rationally. The guy knew from the beginning, as soon as the lady cop arrived, that he was going to at least get a beating and possibly get shot, no matter what he did. He could have just laid down on the ground with his hands in the air, that would have led to a rough arrest, a beating and resisting arrest charges. He could have followed the various contradictory commands the officers yelled at him, and that too would usually result in a beating, resisting arrest charges etc. You can look at the lady cop and kind of see that she wants to be "the good guy" even if it means creating "the bad guy", and the male cops at the scene, down to the last one, were disgusting.
... If your too scared to confront bad guys then why would you be a cop? duh.
Most people do not become cops "to confront bad guys" or "to protect and serve" or whatever. They become cops because the pay is often much more than they could earn in any other job that is available to them, they get a feeling of power and "being respected" that they typically did not get before they were cops, etc.
There is also a lot of pressure in society for men to pretend they are women and women to pretend they are men. A small lady like that is not going to have much success in a physical altercation with most 'criminals', so she pretty much has to lean on her gun unless she wants to get black and blue regularly. A male cop, with a vest, in that situation, if he thought the guy was dangerous, would not need to draw his gun so early.
... It seems to me that in order to survive all criminals or suspects in a crime should strictly follow the instructions of cops, and not to provoke them.
He was following orders exactly. He had his hands up and was going to his car, as he probably had been instructed.
A person should not strictly follow the instructions of anybody, including cops, unless their instructions etc are proper. Cops are no different than anybody else, except that they are a little more dangerous than most people, and a little less civilized.
Cops are famous for abusing people who "follow their instructions". You can find plenty of videos of cops pounding somebody who is defenseless and not resisting, while the cops shout "stop resisting". Much more common when there is no video present.
As a general rule a person should cooperate with anybody who is doing their job, whether bank teller, cop, grocery cashier etc. But amongst all occupations the one you should be most careful about obeying are cops. They abuse that 'tendency to cooperate' more than any other group.
You can see on the video the guy is trying to cooperate but there is literally nothing he can do, no cooperation he can offer, that can end well. So should he have tried harder to cooperate? What should he have done? There have been several cases recently of black people face down on the pavement being shot in the back by police. Absurdly the police almost always claim in those situations that the person, face down on the ground, looked like they were reaching for a gun. Usually it is a black person but here is an example of a white person getting "helped" by cops
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsXPtXuHOg Lady cop in this case too. She zaps the living fuck out of him with a taser then shoots him.
Cops should have waited for him to pull out a weapon before killing the guy. For all they know he could have had a medical condition and he was going for his meds.
It seems like cops are too scared and just shoot "just in case" .. well I think the cop in this video who shot him should be fired. If your too scared to confront bad guys then why would you be a cop? duh.
Now consider this please:
He stops in the middle of a road and endangers other drivers and himself.
He doesn't respond to questions and commands, looks like on drugs.
If he wanted to go for his meds there were many ways of showing it.
I think the officer had the right to shoot, but he could at make the shot non-lethal. He could aim at a leg or a shoulder.
What did the guy do, aside from being black, that gave the officer a justification to shoot?
His car may have broken down where there wasn't much shoulder to pull over. He is old enough that he could have been stymied by the transmission, i.e., not easy to push the car without figuring out various safety mechanisms that did not exist when he was stealing cars as a kid.
Whether he was on drugs are not, the police were going to find drugs in his car. Whether the drugs were his or not is for lawyers to sort out.
And as for "endangers other drivers" etc, good grief. If your car breaks down or you fall on the sidewalk and block pedestrians, putting them in danger, should others shoot you? How about of you drive with bad tires, running the risk of a blowout that could endanger others? Should they shoot you then?
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