I think I figured out why the officers had him crawl - he was down on the floor in front of two doors on the right hand side of the hall, one of which could be opened without the officers being able to see it. It could have been used to ambush the officers if they approached the guy on the floor. You can see the door at 17:25. Wasn’t very well handled by the cops, though.
However - his mistake was quickly sweeping his hand back toward his waist (why? No idea) with multiple guns trained on him. That’s an automatic game over, unfortunately for him. IMHO this is unfortunately a justified (if barely) shooting simply because of that.
Not justified. At all. This cop should be on death row.
(why? No idea
Look at his shorts at the time.
This guy was drinking, had a pellat gun he used for work, someone called it in after seeing it through the window, and likely scared out of his mind.
If I were in a similar situation, even sober, I am not sure I would be able to obey the cop simply because I would be paralyzed in absolute fear.
Hands up, hands behind head, cross legs, kneel, crawl...and five guns trained on an unarmed man ...WTH! Why did they even call them out into the hallway? Seriously an even more confined space? Why did they not treat the woman the same way? What was she saying at the time this was going on?
Looked to me like he stumbled a little and tried to steady himself. And that is a reflex - in spite of the cop earlier ordering him to just fall on his face if he stumbles. You can’t stop all reflex actions.
We expected higher performance from soldiers in Afghanistan. Heck, they could have largely cleared it up just by calling the room in question and asking what was going on!
Yes, cops sometimes need to take some chances. So do soldiers. And judgment. And judgment should have told him this guy was very low threat, that he was trying to comply.
I’m generally very pro-cop. But the way the cop was acting went totally against everything I believe a good cop should do. It is like the Jose Guerena shooting in Tucson a while back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIUnEWYdPnI
Jose Guerena was more likely to be a threat than this guy was...but the behavior of the cops was totally out of control, firing over 70 bullets, hitting 5 houses...
I’ve seen people online discussing training for CCW. Going to ‘force on force’ training, and learning to use the trigger reset of their striker fired pistols to shoot a target faster. Since I’m more of a revolver guy, I don’t have a “trigger rest”. I also accept I may be killed in some tense situations if I don’t shoot immediately - but that is part of the price of being a man.
I’ve only pulled a gun in self-defense once. And I hesitated just a moment, and that was enough that the situation changed and I ended up walking away without shooting. I was in my early 20s, so younger at the time than this cop was. But then, I also didn’t have “YOU’RE F[****]D” engraved on my gun case.
To this day, I support what the cops did to Rodney King. But there are too many cases where ninja cops seem to be looking for an excuse to shoot. I’m glad this cop was fired, but there needs to be SOME penalty paid for shooting an unarmed man who was crying and trying to comply.
Crawling was pulling his pants down. He tried to pull them up.