I don't need your link to a video. There was a video in the article I linked.
I can say he clearly was not a threat because he did stop at the house, he did get out, and then he lay down and didn't move a muscle. If one cop wanted to be ready with a gun, I'd still say it was a bit much. But what ended up happening was insane given the tame situation.
The fact that someone didn't open a door right away doesn't mean they are a threat, and it's intellectually dishonest to try to use claims about what a cop "could not know" to defend over-the-top behavior. Too many times have white people excused the deaths of black people by saying things like "well, the cop could not have known he did not have a gun." You cannot say that in any seriousness, unless your intention is to give the police a blank check. You can always look in hindsight at a situation and find things the cops "could not know", then use it as a defense.
What cops do know is the only reasonable measure, and when you've got someone who is laying flat on the ground you don't need to keep escalating. A guy who committed the horribly violent crime of not fully stopping at a stop sign.
And they're pointing guns everywhere because he won't get up and do the exact thing they've used as an excuse so many times: that the suspect was walking towards them and they "did not know" that he would not do anything.
It really is amazing to me the way so-called freedom loving Americans, proud of their rights, loving of their constitution, completely betray claimed principles when it comes to cops and people cops think did something wrong. Similarly, the way they'll jump into articles about prison conditions and say "who cares? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." The measure of how just and free is is how that society treats its prisoners, its suspects.
As if somehow, the concept of rights disappears the moment a cop thinks you did something wrong. Well, I say "you", but we know the other mental trickery going on: I'm not a criminal so I have rights, but they are criminals so I don't care. Which is an insult to the concept of right.
The voice of "rights for me, nothing for you." The voice of "I'm white, so this won't happen to me."
The voice of a poster who has cried oceans of dishonest tears for a white Trumpist called Flynn.
I wish you people would be honest for once: you don't care because as a white man, it would be very unlikely to happen to you. Well, unless they bust into your house after getting the address wrong on a no-knock warrant and blast you away because they thought you might be reaching for something and could not know it was not a gun.
You won't care unless it happens to you or one of your own.
