Posted on 12/13/2017 4:42:22 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The jurors who acquitted Philip Brailsford of second-degree murder last week were told to judge him based on "how a reasonable officer would act, versus a regular person with no police training," as The Arizona Republic put it. That distinction was crucial, because a "regular person" would never get away with shooting an unarmed man who was crawling on the floor, sobbing and begging for his life.
Like other recent cases in which jurors failed to hold police officers accountable for the unnecessary use of deadly force, Brailsford's acquittal shows that cops benefit from a double standard. Unlike ordinary citizens, they can kill with impunity as long as they say they were afraid, whether or not their fear was justified.
Daniel Shaver got drunk and did something stupid. But he did not deserve or need to die for it.
On January 18, 2016, Shaver, who was 26 and lived in Granbury, Texas, was staying at a La Quinta Inn in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb, while working on a job for his father-in-law's pest control company. After inviting two other hotel guests to his room for a drink, he showed them an air rifle he used for work, at one point sticking it out a window to demonstrate the scope's range.
Alarmed by the rifle's silhouette, a couple who had been using the hotel's hot tub informed the staff. That's how Brailsford and five other Mesa officers ended up confronting Shaver in a fifth-floor hallway.
The bodycam video of the encounter, which was not publicly released until after the verdict, shows that Shaver, who according to the autopsy had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal threshold for driving under the influence, was confused by the strange and contradictory orders that Sgt. Charles Langley barked at him. Instead of simply handcuffing Shaver as he lay face down with his hands behind his head, under the guns of three officers, Langley inexplicably told the terrified and intoxicated man to crawl toward him.
While crawling, eyes on the floor, Shaver paused and reached toward his waistband, apparently to pull up the athletic shorts that had slipped down as he moved. That is when Brailsford fired five rounds from his AR-15 rifle.
"He could have easily and quickly drawn a weapon down on us and fired without aiming," Brailsford said later. Yet neither of the other two officers who had guns drawn on Shaver perceived the threat that Brailsford did.
One of those officers testified that he would not fire based purely on the "draw stroke" Brailsford thought he saw. He would also consider the context, such as whether a suspect is belligerent and threatening or, like Shaver, compliant, apologetic and tearful.
Brailsford said he was trained to ignore context. "We're not trained necessarily to pay attention to what a suspect is saying," he testified. "We're supposed to watch their actions and what they do with their hands."
The jury apparently accepted the counterintuitive argument that police, because of their special training, are apt to be less careful with guns than the average citizen would be. A similar dispensation seemed to be at work last June, when Minnesota jurors acquitted former St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez of manslaughter after he panicked during a traffic stop and shot a driver who was reaching for his license.
Even more astonishing was the failure of South Carolina jurors to reach a verdict in the trial of former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who shot an unarmed motorist in the back as he ran away. Last May, five months after that mistrial, Slager signed a federal plea agreement in which he admitted the shooting was not justified.
All three of these officers said they were afraid, but that is not enough to justify the use of deadly force. When juries fail to ask whether police have good reason to fear the people they kill, regular people have good reason to fear police.
I love your “card” to cops! You should sell them.
It’s a damned shame you have to quiver in fear just because a cop is approaching your car. Your instructions prove that cops are out of freaking control.
I’m not in fear, I’m being polite.
well he's not supposed to be in my lane...
so he stays there in his proper lane and gets killed by the oncoming vehicle...
people do silly things, and stupid things..
but you can avoid it....
cops shouldn't be in the business of killing people because of that...
are they or are they not TRAINED to protect the citizenry....
you are very wrong on this and I pity our country...
as for that arse who pretended to be Robocop, I hope he suffers a long time for murdering this poor slob...
I would bet he'll be dead himself or will shoot somebody else before its all over....
I believe you. And they are in very bad form/taste. But it does not answer my question. Were they to desensitize LEO’s or to put them in situations where they were uncomfortable and the call wasn’t an easy black or white call?
I train regularly with threat targets and they mostly depict nasty dudes with a gun that you would not think twice about shooting in a real situation. What would you do if faced with the pregnant white woman pointing a gun at you? It might make me want to react differently, find cover, and reassess, rather than just start shooting. Maybe she was just carjacked and is extremely upset and afraid of anyone at that moment. What’s the right answer? Hard to say until you are faced with it.
I’d still like to hear from any LEO’s as to what the purpose of those targets really was.
And if a serial killer is in my back yard the cops will be no help at all except at filling out reports and probably arresting me for shooting he, she or it.
If I had all the trust in the world they still would not be any help.
You might notice there are no blacks in this entire series.
Even worse: " I going to give a series of commands. Fail to follow them exactly, my collegue will shoot you"
Now you have two people who may make a mistake in listening.
Oh, I noticed. Like I said, I am suspicious, but I do see an actual training value to these, assuming they are used properly and not just to desensitize LEO’s to shooting what would normally be seen as the law abiding segment of society.
I keep asking for a Freeper LEO to chime in with a professional opinion. I know we have some.
Is it too much to expect trained law enforcement officers to use the same level of discretion that the government requires from untrained citizens who end up in the same kind of situations? Sometimes the "rules of engagement" cause civilians to die too, but that is a risk we all take for the benefit of society.
There is nothing at all analogous to the car scenario and what happened.
I can do something about the car in my lane, I can get out of the lane, honk, flash my lights, etc.
If the cops are there with guns drawn, there is nothing I can reasonably do until the guns are holstered. Anything else is bravado and possibly death by cop.
As for being trained to protect the citizenry, wasn’t there a Supreme Court case stating that they were NOT there to protect the citizens?
Do you have links for this story?
It’s a sick world. It’s not okay.
However, I will say that at least is *those* targets, the threat is *actually* brandishing a weapon.
They’re not reaching for a wallet or trying to pull up their gym shorts.
Good point.
We agree—Seems allowing Cops to decide if a shooting was justified be like allowing the Legislature to decide what laws are justified—or the Courts to decide what the Constitution is.
Strangely like all those home invasion/alarm advertisements.
Do not Screw with cops with guns.
Their lives are on the line
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