When police shoot someone, they are shooting to end a threat to themselves or someone else. They are trained to keep shooting until that threat is ended. That training saves lives.
This wasn't "the death penalty", this was an angry, out-of-control idiot posing a danger to everyone around him and getting put down. If he'd cooperated with the police instead of trying to run them over, he'd have gotten his day of court and probably wouldn't have even gone to prison.
He didn't deserve to die, but he didn't leave the police much choice about it, either.
The double standard is amazing.
I agree that police are being trained to kill anyone who poises a threat. That is my complaint. It is NOT necessary to kill someone who poises a threat and the only option. But if so, then if someone runs into my car in road rage, or if someone is driving crazily, then any private citizen also should empty a firearm into that person to kill that person. Do you agree that EVERYONE should do so - or ONLY police?
Last year, people in a WalMart store heard a woman on the floor screaming in pain and a man fleeing from this - be chased by WalMart security.
Some customers joined the chase. That man ran to his car - and with people now beside his car - trapped between it and the cars beside his - threw his car crazily in reverse and bringing it around full throttle including aiming it towards a woman further down the parking lot - with that man taking off on that WalMart parking lot like a bat out of hell - it known the man willing to run over anyone - because he had already run over that woman when fleeing the store. One of those customers fired 3 shots into that car.
The police arrested him and threw the book at him. People on this forum raged that he was a vigilante! That he endangered everyone by shooting! YET that man 10 times more endangered people with his car than the young man in the pickup truck had.
If I saw someone stealing one of my old trucks and gave chase in my car - forgetting my cell phone like I often do - and that thief spun out... I stop behind him and shout "TURN IT OFF!" and he instead throws it into reverse backing into my car... so I shot thru the back corner of the cab of the truck with my 45acp 5 times hitting him twice in the chest? PEOPLE WOULD RAGE that I was a murderer and vigilante.
What that officer did shooting that young man was intolerable, outrageous. The young man wasn't trying to run over police nor could he have. Because he had backed into the police car... so the officer decides "I MUST KILL HIM. I HAVE NO CHOICE OR HE MIGHT DENT MY CRUISER" is truly outrageous.
When the call came in of a young man upset over his girlfriend breaking and then taking his father's old POS pickup truck in a huff to go buy cigarettes? The REAL response of the police hearing this should have been to smile and think "yeah, I did some really stupid stuff when I was that age too." And treated if for what it was. There was no reason to turn it into a MEDIUM speed chase (they called "high speed"). NO reason to shoot that young man.
They KNEW that was not a fleeing criminal. KNEW this was not a violent armed person. Nothing of him driving crazily thru town and no reason to turn this into and keep it a high speed chase. Instead, they treated it like he was an armed fleeing bank robber. All they had to do was wait for him to come back home. Nor did that old pickup truck on grass poise any danger other than another dent in a police car. They could have easily disabled the truck with their firearms, not kill the driver.
Police chases are very common. Always have been. Always will be. This NEW standard of kill every person fleeing the police because there is "danger to others" is NOT acceptable. Yet that is the growing new standard. Kill everyone who poises any potential danger to anyone. BUT ONLY POLICE may do so. Anyone else does so? That non-police is a murdering vigilante. Only police get to be killer vigilantes.
