A Texas sheriff's office released bodycam video nearly a week after deputies allegedly shot a woman, mistaking her for an intruder, after she forgot her keys and broke the glass to get into an apartment.
Now, how SHOULD have the cops handled the situation? Again, it’s SO easy to say “well, they should have done this…or that…”
Here’s the thing…I don’t have to provide the answer to this question. I am not a “trained professional” that is paid specifically to handle these kind of situations.
What I can say without a doubt is there is zero excuse for this woman being shot. If officers are not able to go through their workday without shooting an innocent person then either they shouldn’t be a cop or they shouldn’t carry a weapon. Period.
A police officer’s discomfort or cowardice does not supersede an innocent citizen’s rights.
I’ll provide an answer, then. The cops should handle it the same way the rest of us already do, which is to positively identify your target and what they’re doing before bucking off. It’s pretty easy to figure out! Even Cletus the beer-swilling deer hunter can do it. It does, however, require manning up and overcoming your paranoid little fears about every scrap of shadow being a scary oogie boogie man out to get you… Which one would hope (ha!) that a competent policeman has already been trained to do. As part of, you know, being a policeman.
If anyone can’t handle the heat, they should get the hell out of the kitchen. I hear there’s a shortage of janitors, if motherfuckers want to do some good in the world.
You know, us regular people have to do this in every situation and also have to have robotic encyclopedic knowledge of all relevant self defense and firearms laws at federal, state, county, and municipal levels at all times, plus be able to have a photographic eidetic memory to be able to recount the exact sequence of events down to the nanosecond without the slightest hint of contradiction by any outside source no matter how irrelevant, and to be able to explain to the cops, judge, and jury with airtight millimetric precision exactly why we were justified in even drawing a weapon on someone, let alone firing it, or else we’ll get prosecuted and locked up. It seems to me while private citizens are expected to always and unerringly be able to clear this incredibly high bar at the drop of a hat in any given life-threatening situation, it shouldn’t be too fucking tough for a bunch of “highly trained” policemen to be able to achieve the same performance. Right?
Here’s the thing…I don’t have to provide the answer to this question. I am not a “trained professional” that is paid specifically to handle these kind of situations.
What I can say without a doubt is there is zero excuse for this woman being shot. If officers are not able to go through their workday without shooting an innocent person then either they shouldn’t be a cop or they shouldn’t carry a weapon. Period.
A police officer’s discomfort or cowardice does not supersede an innocent citizen’s rights.
I’ll provide an answer, then. The cops should handle it the same way the rest of us already do, which is to positively identify your target and what they’re doing before bucking off. It’s pretty easy to figure out! Even Cletus the beer-swilling deer hunter can do it. It does, however, require manning up and overcoming your paranoid little fears about every scrap of shadow being a scary oogie boogie man out to get you… Which one would hope (ha!) that a competent policeman has already been trained to do. As part of, you know, being a policeman.
If anyone can’t handle the heat, they should get the hell out of the kitchen. I hear there’s a shortage of janitors, if motherfuckers want to do some good in the world.
You know, us regular people have to do this in every situation and also have to have robotic encyclopedic knowledge of all relevant self defense and firearms laws at federal, state, county, and municipal levels at all times, plus be able to have a photographic eidetic memory to be able to recount the exact sequence of events down to the nanosecond without the slightest hint of contradiction by any outside source no matter how irrelevant, and to be able to explain to the cops, judge, and jury with airtight millimetric precision exactly why we were justified in even drawing a weapon on someone, let alone firing it, or else we’ll get prosecuted and locked up. It seems to me while private citizens are expected to always and unerringly be able to clear this incredibly high bar at the drop of a hat in any given life-threatening situation, it shouldn’t be too fucking tough for a bunch of “highly trained” policemen to be able to achieve the same performance. Right?