Shelby not guilty

Quote:

Originally Posted by swamppapa

Wanted to thank you for tracking this.

In my opinion, this case exemplified some of the more egregious cases where black men were shot by white police officers, thereby igniting claims of racism, racial profiling, and police who were too quick to shoot.

I watched the video. I watched it several times, and in my opinion the video also exemplifies an somewhat inexplicable tendency which shows up again and again in these cases:

The victim absolutely refuses to comply with the commands of a police officer, even when the police officer is using the proper command language and behavior (as taught in training) to attempt to control the encounter.

In this case, the officer is shouting at the victim to stop moving, to turn around, to get down. But the victim, with both hands raised in the air, true, ignores the officer, moves purposefully toward his vehicle, then suddenly drops both arms and reaches through his open drivers side window - with BOTH arms - (i.e. not as if reaching for a wallet, for which you might use only one arm) - and is shot as he withdraws both arms out of the window.

The police officer is clearly in a no-win situation (again, my opinion.) If the officer does NOT fire, s/he may be taken under fire by the victim whirling around with a gun in their hand. If they DO fire, the victim may not have a gun. But the victim themselves provokes a chain of thought in the police officer's mind, because the victim completely ignores the officer entirely, walks over to the car, and then reaches through the open window using both arms.

This isn't the only case where shooting victims have ignored the police, and have subsequently been shot. You have to wonder where this utter disregard for cops comes from? Why do they completely ignore the commands of the cop, and then express utter amazement when they wind up shot?

If you don't want to be shot, then don't ignore the cops and proceed to behave in such a manner that a reasonable person would expect you might suddenly produce a weapon.

There are bad shootings, granted. And cops may be quick to suspect that black men may want to kill them. (And in some cases its because they do, and already have.) But in my opinion, this case turned out the way it should have. Do what the cop tells you to do. You want to play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. It didn't have to go down this way, and the guy who was responsible for the outcome in this case was the victim, not the cop.

JMHO. YMMV.

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Shelby not guilty