Somebody tried to swat me last week and trust me, you have no idea how your body will react to being surprised by hostile police officers.
I don’t even know if the kid had enough time to fully register the fact that it was a cop. Some guy walks up to his car, opens it up, and demands he get out. Then there’s a gun involved. Kid is just there eating a burger and this happens out of the blue, I don’t think it can be expected that he reacts in a calm and well-reasoned manner. Especially when bullets are flying three seconds after the door was opened by someone outside the car.
I don’t believe qualified immunity has any bearing on criminal liability.
Damn, son.
Cops didn’t waste any time framing the kid.
Ah yes “hitting” = brushing against him.
Not a defense in any sort of way, don’t dogpile me, but moving vehicles have long been considered assault with deadly weapon by cops. Right or wrong, that part is at least consistent based on the last 30 years of televised police reality shows. Back in the 90s on Cops I recall a few episodes where the officer didn’t even get brushed, but was beside the car when they started maneuvering and everyone unloaded on the driver.
Sure, but if a cop approaches a car unannounced, stands in the car’s path, then scares the driver, this is on them
Oh sure,
But like in this case, the cop basically ambushed the driver, and he reacted quickly probably before he even knew what was even going on. The cop literally walks up and says “get out of the car”.
If someone approached me while I was eating in a parking lot and opened my door, my first reaction would be to freak out and try and get away.
I am pretty sure police are taught to announce themselves before-hand.
It is pretty obvious, especially in the fact that he was fired, that the police department did not agree that this was an “assault” case with a car.
Like I said, passing no judgement on right or wrong, just a historical observation. For this particular one, the cops have lights, a siren, and a radio. Why would I aggressively surprise someone I think is doing wrong in a car where they could likely have access to weapons right there, rather than whoop the siren and turn on the lights so they will 100% know I’m a cop before they have a chance to do something rash? And if they do, radio the rest of the gang in blue and handle it from there.
@JonRowe Exactly, my first thought is going to be fight or flight well before my brain can kick in and start identifying who the person is or making value judgement on whether he is who he says he is.
Those boots aren’t going to lick themselves.
“As the officer attempted to gather information from witnesses, he noticed a vehicle that had evaded him the day before as the officer attempted a stop because the registered license plate did not match the actual vehicle,”
The officer, believing the car was stolen, called “for cover” but approached the vehicle before other officers arrived, she said. Campos said the officer “abruptly” opened the driver’s door and ordered Cantu to get out.
Dude was probably pissed this kid got away from him the prior day and he reacted very badly to non instant compliance.
This one isn’t even 24 hours old, nutjob trying to pretend to be a cop and harassing people on the road.
One of the posters said it could have been a local constable.
Huh, TIL. I remember once I was driving in a frisky manner, 45 or so in a 35, and some geezer in a beat-up old Ranger pulled up next to me at the light and started flapping a high-viz vest and pointing to some label on his jacket, yelling at me to slow down. Sorry pops, it’s 4 lanes wide, no pedestrians or visual barriers to hide pedestrians (or even houses, on my side of the road it’s a golf course hedge and fence, well away from the lanes), and ten over has been the rule of thumb for at least 20 years. Unfortunately I did not have a sick horse at that time.
I’m basically here as well. There isn’t any ‘reform the police’ plan that doesn’t ultimately rely on the leadership and the rank and file of the police to execute the reform plan, and the entire hierarchy is rotten, broken and corrupt. You have to start over, from scratch, with a non-authoritarian view of what you want police to do, and build that organization from the ground up. This current gang? Defund and disband those motherfuckers. Probably the entire lot should be barred from ever serving in any real public safety organization.
I think the “defund the police” slogan is useful to counter to the knee-jerk liberal response to police violence, which is to give them more money. I wish the administration’s plan to federally fund 100k more officers was politically unpalatable. You don’t fix this problem by giving the perpetrators even more power.
On the one hand, it’s true that the kid put the car in reverse and it’s probably true that some part of the car — the door? — rubbed against the cop as the car backed up. On the other hand, no reasonable person would conclude that the cop was at all endangered by the car backing up — he was beside the car, not behind it — and the use of state deadly force as a response is nothing short of a social calamity. What the actual fuck do cops think they’re supposed to be doing for society?
Well, you could fix it by giving them 20% more money and 100% more oversight. The post-9/11 mindset is the poison at the bottom of the well, I suspect, and making a strong push against that would go a long way to toning down the existing culture and starting a new one without tearing everything down. Lack of policing during a shakeup, I’m not such a fan after the last two years of pandemic non-enforcement.
I guess I don’t know what 100% more oversight means. Who will watch the cops, how? What will that look like?