Friday, December 8, 2017

I can't defend this police officer, this is outrageous...




I am typically for giving the benefit of doubt to the police (recognizing how at risk they can be doing their jobs), but Officer Philip Michael Brasford should have been convicted of reckless manslaughter (at a minimum). Of course, perhaps the jury heard something else at trial or the prosecution screwed up (second degree murder is a lot tougher to prove). I am having a hard time understanding how the jury acquits on manslaughter from what is shown in this video.

The video shows how inadequate and confusing these police instructions were. This is just horrible. Brasford was fired after this incident, so even his department was not supporting him on this.

EBL: When Murder Is Less Wrong Than Sexual Harassment, What is happening in the Justine Damond shooting?

Patterico tries to explain why this shooting was justified (partially). I do get that the officer did not want to move down by the door of the hotel room, hence the reason for the suspect's crawl to the police.  But the cops had time to defuse this situation. Officer Brasford was not alone, his supervisor was with him. Whether the cop was afraid or not does not justify the shooting.  I would have voted to convict for manslaughter (although I do not know how the case was presented to the jury, and even Patterico--despite his prosecution background--does not probably know).  
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1 comment:

  1. LelandDecember 8, 2017 at 1:03 PM

    Wow. That is disturbing. If he was in the military; that would be a war crime. The guy has clearly surrendered. I get the officer's defense would be perfidy, but I'm not seeing it in the video. Without a doubt in my mind, the officer's statements throughout were overly belligerent to someone that immediately complied to what I would consider an odd and confusing situation.

    I like to give more benefits to officers, but there isn't any to give based on this video. None. Not even the notion that a pellet gun was later found. The guy is on the ground. The only way he could have been less of a threat was to have turned around to lay on the ground, which would have been against the officer's explicit orders. Had the officer told him to turn around, lay on the ground, cross his legs, and put his hands behind his back; the other officer could have easily neutralized the threat with a pair of handcuffs.

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