3138

“The rapist’s actions were obviously wrong, but she did leave her drink unattended for a moment, which was pretty dumb.”

3139

Jesus Christ, Timex. I get that you want to argue on just about every single thing posted on this board but you’re seriously going to fault a kid eating a burger in a car for his response to someone ripping open his car door and saying “Get out of the car” with a gun pointed at them? (EDIT - looks like the cop gave him 1 second to respond before pulling out the gun and firing so that’s my bad. He didn’t have the gun pointed at him when he opened the car door and said that.)

3140

lol, well yeah, kids do dumb things.

Again, I didn’t point out that action as a justification for the cop. While lots of folks seem to have missed it, I actually explicitly stated that it wasn’t.

3141

It’s amazing to see someone who is a grown adult clearly making poor and irrational decisions about criticizing the potentially irrational decisions of a startled teenager. Talk about “should know better”.

3142

The cop didn’t have his gun pointed at him until after he drove away.

3143

What thought process goes into your decisions about picking hills to die on?

3144

Yeah, I caught that and edited it real quick above. But you mean “slowly backed up”, not “drove away”. Because he tried to kill the kid as he was slowly backing up.

3145

Is there any context at all as to why he felt the need to order the kid out of the car? Like was the car identified as a suspected getaway car for a murder or something? Because otherwise that kid is just any kid, like a kid from my wife’s English class, just eating a burger in a parking lot of a fast food place. And almost killed for not obeying the almighty cop’s decree that he should exit his car. No knock on the window, no friendly, “Hey, I’m a police officer and I have a question for you.” Nope, just an order, then a death sentence when he didn’t immediately obey in the 100% correct manner. Fuck that cop.

3146

Apologies for multiposting but answered my own question. The cop incorrectly thought the kid had evaded him the night before. The cop was 100% wrong and decided to try to kill this kid for some godforsaken fucking reason.

3147

If you note, I actually said exactly this in the first post there that Soapy replied “bullshit” to.

3148

Yeah, but then you immediately switch to the typical “Well the kid shouldn’t have reacted that way” position, which is just victim blaming. I imagine none of us would have reacted 100% correctly (whatever that might entail) to someone ripping open their car door while they’re sitting there eating a burger. I would probably think I’m getting carjacked personally.

3149

One of the problems here is that police tactics do need to account for people panicking and behaving irrationally because that IS going to happen when the police confront people with violence. In theory, police should be getting trained on how to avoid those situations and manage them when they arise.

One of the things I get very frustrated with is how a panic or fear response by a subject of police attention gets interpreted as “resistance” and then met with increased violence. Right now my overall level of trust in police judgment on that issue is very low. Now, maybe that’s b/c we mostly see the bad cases where things go badly, but in many of these confrontations I feel like the police are failing miserably to manage the situation.

In this case, the police officer provoked this entire thing with the sudden opening of the car door. The idea that the kid would then panic and put the car in reverse is entirely foreseeable.

3150

All I said was that he did a dumb thing that I actually didn’t notice the first time I watched the video.

I guess I am in fact technically blaming him for doing a dumb thing, even though I’ve stated numerous times that the cop is the one to blame.

In my mind, doing a dumb thing is dumb, but it doesn’t mean that the outcome of the situation is your fault… but I think most folks here seem to think that any error means you share fault, so pointing out errors means attributing blame.

3151

xQEbuwS

3152

I mean, it’s possible you decided to parachute drop into a discussion of how batshit crazy it is that yet another cop damn near murdered some people for no good reason at all and go out of your way to call the kid who nearly got murdered by said unhinged cop dumb for trying to get the fuck away from the crazy cop purely because you are incapable of seeing anyone, anywhere, at any time, do something even slightly irrational without immediately commenting on it, but if so, man, existence must be rough for you.

3153

I think maybe some of you guys didn’t actually see my initial response to the stuff and are imagining a much more pro cop response than I gave.

3154

One more thing: I do not believe this teen should be charged with any crime, either assault on an officer, or evading police, because the officer did not approach in a controlled manner and did not give him time to react in a calm manner. The officer startled him, gave him a single second, and then pulled his weapon. In my view the panic response of putting the car in gear and trying to get away, in the swift passage of time, and in context, is entirely justified. The police officer did NOT control the situation in the way he should have so I view the charges against the kid as entirely unsupported.

The charges should be dropped ASAP.

Note - As a practical matter, what’s probably going on here is an ugly use of “prosecutorial discretion” for civil litigation purposes. I have heard that in these scenarios, the counties/cities will often offer to drop criminal charges in order to settle the inevitable police shooting lawsuit for a lower value. I really really hate this sort of thing. I consider it an abuse of the prosecutorial power.

3155

This is almost certainly the case. San Antonio can be expected to pay large sums to both of the teens families and are trying to get ahead of it by charging them. They’re out to protect themselves and not us.

3156

No, we all saw it.

3157

What’s super rich is the police department scrambling: “This guy was a dumbass and we fired him.” “There’s no way it’s the training.” “Bad apples you know” (Hey idiots, bad apples spoil the bunch.)

And then they charge the kid and don’t arrest the cop. Actions speak louder than words. Police are a cancer and should be defunded.