> IF the situation is exactly as described it seems that it was a bad shoot <
I watched the video a couple of times. It looked like the black guy was approaching the officer. But it didn’t look like he was charging the officer. It was more like a lurching random walk.
And from what I could tell, the bat was not being raised when the shots were fired. The black guy actually had the bat pointed at the ground.
I dunno. If this was a good shoot, it’s going take a bit to convince a jury. I think the main thing in the cop’s favor is that he first tried a taser, and it didn’t work.
I mean, this perp just doesn't seem to be begging to get shot.
Nevertheless, how can the white officer shoot a black guy armed with a bat and not give a moment's thought to the next 20 years he's going to spend in stir?
He's either a time bomb or a fricking moron.
IMHO, your post #19 has it right. Just watched the video that shows different angles (including bodycam) of the shooting. After being tased, the man does step toward the officer, but he is holding the bat downward, as you said. To me, at that point, he behaves as if he’s about to collapse after being tased. I’ve never walked in an officer’s shoes making these split-second decisions. Just giving my impression.
I watched the vids (all I could find) several times. The deceased was at the moment of the shot in no position / posture to crack the officer with the bat. And the officer appears to have had plenty of room to give ground. A 2nd officer has shown up, plus I assume store security is still close (I don’t see them at the moment of the shot, however.) Certainly no one else is at immediate risk. If no shot, 10 seconds later who knows, but that’s speculation. The deceased does more backing away from the gun than anything else. When he’s shot, he IS moving forward, sort of, but he seems to be ill-coordinately trying to get around the officer, off balance against that shelf-wall (or whatever the stores call them) he ran into.
In all these cases, I try to put myself in the shoes of the officer(s). In the Jacob Blake case, Blake has a knife (visible in one vid) & dives into a car with kids in it - yeah, I take that shot(s). Lavoy Finnicum, that kid in the hotel hallway in Vegas, this guy... No way. If the deceased had been in a position to take a swing, it’s a different story. But here... SOME risk to preserve life, even that of a perp, is part of my job. God asks it, and I think most of the public does too... There certainly seemed to still be opportunity to de-escalate, here.
Different question for anyone who knows: Drugs or no, assuming the voltage gets there (no issue of broken wires or a low battery - maintenance issues the police are responsible for), how the heck does the voltage NOT cause at least SOME involuntary muscle spasms? It’s one thing to “push through” something like that, but quite another to have NO reaction at all. Specific research, please, not just “it’s the drugs”: It seems impossible to have no reaction at all if one gets a good Taser jolt while functional enough to be walking around seconds prior. But maybe I’m wrong.