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 am just going to stay as far away from officer friendly and his itchy trigger finger as I can.
Might or might not work.
But I will not go around making excuses for psycho cop in the interim.
Boy,I hope the day never comes when you need a cop!
Heaven save us from “scared” cops. They seem to be a bigger threat to law abiding citizens than drug dealers who for the most part kill other drug dealers.
‘I do not plan on making the bad life decisions this person made which put him in that situation, so comfort has no part in it.’
yep, purely the vic’s fault for having a couple of drinks and showing a gun to a couple of buddies...why, he practically invited the cops to ventilate him, suicide really, they had no recourse whatsoever, he was making all those ‘bad life decisions’...
No,they say he was unarmed.But that very foolish move,under the circumstances,was enough to put a "reasonable" cop in genuine fear.
I did not say it was the victim’s fault, he did not pull the trigger. But there is no use blaming everybody else when I can make sure I am not in the situation in the first place.
Actions and decisions have consequences.
And waving the gun out of the window of a hotel, just after the Las Vegas incident, was really stupid, at a Darwinian level.
You notice that not one cop has spoken out against him?
I am pointing out that there are bad cops out there and also that their co-workers know it and protect them.
Sort of like all mohammedans defend their own when they get caught killing people.
I worked in the ER of a large,"big city",hospital for years.It would take me a long time to explain to you just how foolish that statement is.
Because that was what he had been ordered to do.
I do too.
Because I flat out no longer trust them.
You be sure to tell them that as you're calling 911.And be sure to tell them how pig-like they are while you're at it.Knowing that,those cops will hurry right over to help you with the serial killer in your back yard! LOL!!!
“What planet do you live on, Planet Gestapo Boot Licker?”
Oh, I’m in for the read here.
Cops are psycho these days because they are trained to be that way.
The morning briefing is designed to establish “Us versus them” narratives and divide the cop from the rest of us.
It is designed to scare them into considering us, at least for the next shift, to be an enemy in a war.
And we reflect that image throughout our own day.
I am pretty anti-cop. Not all cops, but most. Like “It’s just the 90% of bad cops that make the other 10% look bad” sorta thing.
But I do understand with every single cop out there that they are being manipulated to hate me. To resent me. When a riot breaks out the cops are lined up not between rioters and businesses, not between rioters and the innocent - they are lined between rioters and town hall.
The government places cops in bad positions not to keep us safe, but to be their enforcers. The government is bad. They want cops to be violent, extreme and unhinged. It benefits them greatly to have footsoldiers on the ground who side with them.
It’s too much to ask for some to blindly follow orders, so instead they create an illusion where the insane orders are easily justified. It’s hypnosis.
See Post #51
Excellent. The comparison of a police officer to a rapist is perhaps more apt than you'd probably be comfortable with.
I don’t believe the shooter was the one giving the commands. Also, just for general information, I don’t believe the video was shown at the trial.
Daniel Shaver was shot on January 18, 2016. And he was not waving a gun out of the window of the hotel.
Seriously, when you’ve already succeeded in making an ass of yourself, it’s probably time to stop braying.
Just wondering - did you watch the video?
My sincere apologies, I will stop braying.
It was not the shooter doing the screaming. It was his sergeant next to him.
By the time Officer Friendly gets to your car, all interior lights on, keys on the dash, license, registration and insurance cards clearly visible, hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, window down, puzzled look on your face...
Move slowly only when told. No sudden moves!
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