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MyTeamIsOnTheFloor

MyTeamIsOnTheFloor

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Dec 5, 2001
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So a cop in South Carolina pulls over a guy, tasers him, and then shoots him 8 times as he is running away. The cop is charged with murder.

Now if we put that same guy in a car, and have the cop chasing him in a car (maybe even shown live on helicopter TV) - and either wrecking him and killing him, or shooting him as they drive and killing him - I suspect the cop is not charged at all. Heck, I'd even go so far as to say that if this guy had jumped into his car and started to drive away and the cop shot him as he took off, and there was no chase, the cop might not be charged.

What's the meaningful difference? Is it the threat to other innocents in the pursuit (or "trying to flee in a car" case) that "justifies" lethal force?

When can/should a cop use lethal force when someone tries to flee? Does it depend on the alleged crime being investigated? "Shoot a murder suspect - let a broken taillight guy run?"

Back in my day, all police actions were approved/rejected by the courts on the grounds of police safety. Thus, a cop could search "open"/"plain sight" areas for weapons during a traffic stop, or handcuff a suspect while doing other stuff like "calling it in."

Unless I'm missing something, that element (police safety) is fading as a justification for police actions?

What say the board?
 
He fired 8 shots

Should have only taken him one or two to get the guy on the ground. I have less problem with the shooting, but eight bullets was obviously unnecessary. Also, he was recorded planting the TASR he claimed the victim grabbed. The Cop is garbage. The victim was a deadbeat, serial prisoner.

Just a sad example of humans IMO.
This post was edited on 4/8 11:31 AM by mjvcaj
 
Seriously? One or two shots in the back of an unarmed person that is


running away after a traffic stop for a broken tail light is acceptable to you, but 8 somehow crosses the line for you?

And your characterization of Mr. Scott, the victim, as a "deadbeat, serial prisoner" is also out of line, not to mention inaccurate. Apart from child support issues and traffic-related citations, his only criminal conviction was for possession of a bludgeon.

But I don't care if the man had been in prison the week before, the views expressed in your post are reprehensible. I'm biting my tongue here and resisting the urge to react even more harshly. I think you are about to see that others here will have similar opinions of your outrageous views on this brazen, and wholly unjustified murder of a man.







This post was edited on 4/8 1:38 PM by Noodle
 
The standard is very well-established


Deadly force may only be used against a fleeing suspect if there is "probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others." And that threat has to be an immediate one--i.e., police can't shoot an unarmed, fleeing murder suspect simply because they think he could kill someone else the next day or the next week if he is not apprehended.

And if you are somehow arguing that the murder of Mr. Scott was somehow justified because he was a wanted man (child support payments) fleeing from a police officer, well then..... I'll leave it to others to comment there.
 
Well, I think

a murder charge is appropriate. There's just no excuse for what that cop did.
 
How so?

First off, if you run for the Cops, you should expect to get shot at. Every time I watch one of those whacky shows at 2am on Spike TV (Cops, wildest police chases, etc.), I wonder why the Cops don't shoot them in the leg from the get go. If you flee, you are risking your own life. Mr. Scott's decision was utterly absurd.

Second, let's not act like the guy was some saint. From the NYT: "Mr. Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearings, according to The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston. He was arrested in 1987 on an assault and battery charge and convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, the newspaper reported. Mr. Scott's brother, Anthony, said he believed Mr. Scott had fled from the police on Saturday because he owed child support."

Again, I have no problem charging the officer with murder and it sounds like he may get life in prison. That is justifiable. I don't think Mr. Scott deserved to get killed and the cop clearly could have fired a single, non-fatal shot. But again, this doesn't seem to be happening with upstanding citizens. 10 arrests is quite pathetic. He bailed on his children, both physically and financially. It's hard to feel empathy for someone like that.
 
The only reason the cop is being charged at all is that

there is a video tape. Before it was released by the NYT, the police report was something to the effect that proper police procedures had been followed.

I don't know if there is more police brutality (mahem) today than there was in the past OR there are simply more people out there with phones with video capability. Either way I am disgusted by the actions of the police that have captured the headlines these last months.

And I am also disgusted by people who think it is acceptable/normal to shoot a fleing suspect no matter what his reason for fleeing. The cop could have let the guy go. They would have found him; they had his car. But no, he had to die because he was running away. And forget that business about shooting them in the legs. They never aim at the legs.
 
Police are not trained to shoot suspects in the leg, plus


most of them have more respect for human life and other people than you do. Shooting a fleeing suspect that posed absolutely no danger to the officer or the public is NEVER justified or appropriate, whether the officer shoots them once in the big toe, the leg, or the back, or 5 times in the back. NEVER. The law is crystal clear in that regard, not to mention common decency and respect for life.

And who cares what the guy's rap sheet was? That is wholly irrelevant.

As for aiming for the leg, I'm not even going to waste my time debunking that absurd suggestion. Just go to the link below and perhaps you might learn something.

https://www.pfoa.co.uk/110/shooting-to-wound
 
Do you know

if there's ever been research done on a way to stop a fleeing suspect by non-fatal means when they aren't close to an officer. For example, they shoot animals with something that puts them to sleep or something like that. I not advocating that but was just using it as example.
 
Not good to run from a cop

As slow as this guy was running, the cop was either lazy, or thought he was slower than the guy running. Unless the guy was holding a gun and threatening others, shooting him was out of line. If he stopped and charged the officer, then murder would not be an issue. It didn't happen in this case.

The cop will have to answer why chasing him and beating him with a club or using a tazer wasn't a better option. I suspect he will pay the price for his bad judgement.
 
More...

The Garner rule establishes constitutional limits on the use of deadly force, but it's still up to South Carolina law whether or not the shooting constitutes murder, correct?

goat
 
Actually, I'm Going The Other Way

I know of exactly one "safe" chase - OJ.

All the others I ever heard of/saw/watched seemed to be really, really dangerous. Many end with innocent folks getting hurt/killed in crashes with either the cops or the runner.

And while there are lots of cases of cops getting in trouble for shooting a guy who is RUNNING away, I don't remember ANY where a cop got in trouble for crashing a guy running away in a CAR, or shooting a guy who was running away in a CAR.

So my post was "why is that the deciding factor?"

If in this case, Mr. Scott had jumped in his car and tried to drive away, and the video was of the cop shooting him as he drove away, I'd bet there is a reasonable chance the cop wouldn't even be charged.

But take away the car, put Scott on his feet running, and the shooting somehow seems less justified.

Why?

"Shot in car" and "shot while running" is still "shot"?
 
A vehicle, being a dangerous implement, would help the cop

However, it doesn't guarantee that he would get off. The legal test that Noodle cited was later explicitly applied to "high speed chases" in which innocent bystanders might be in danger, but not to fleeing suspects in cars generally.

Also, it's worth noting the officer in question was charged with murder under South Carolina law. Depending on the state, an officer may be guilty of murder (or at least some form of negligent homicide) even if his actions don't rise to the level of unreasonable seizure under the 4th Amendment.

goat
 
The cop is toast

But I think the proper charge might be murder 2; not murder 1.

I think the rules for the car chase or shooting at a moving car are simlar to use of force face to face, or in this case face to back. The only difference is that the risk to the offender is less in both circumstances but the risk to the public is greater. Any serious injury or death would land the cop in similar hot water.
 
I'm also disgusted by people

who think it is acceptable/normal to shoot a fleeing suspect no matter what. But I don't know of any such people and I haven't heard anybody state that view. I think police shootings are in a huge emotional blind spot for you.

BTW, the "reason for fleeing" is irrelevant. I don't know anybody who would justify leathal force on that factor because we don't know the reasons. The justification for leathal force always centers around the reasonable beliefs of the cop involved about danger and risk based upon what he/she observes, hears and knows.


I also think your assumption that the video says it all is wrong. Forensics would establish the 8 shots in the back and that they were not fired in close proximity. They very well could establish that the offender was running away from the shooter as the shots were fired.
 
It was brought up on this very board.

During the Michael Brown thing, a number of posters argued the shooting was justified because he was a thug. And such sentiments were all over social media, and even alluded to in regular conservative mass media.

It is disgusting, I agree with you there. But it's not unheard of.
 
Perversley


Police can't use tranquillizer guns on human beings. This has something to do with administering drugs without consent. You can't believe the protocol that must be followed just to sedate unruly and violent people in custody. But bullets are okay? Go figure.

Tasers have technical issues and they don't always work, particularly on those individuals who are really whacked out on drugs or something. .
 
I never read any of that

All the comments I heard and read had to do with Brown's behavior at the scene and in the minutes prior. I never saw, read, or heard anyone claim that "thug" status was a justification for the shoot.
 
Tranq guns are extremely unreliable and dangerous.

It takes an enormous amount of expertise to figure out how much to inject into a particular animal to put it down without killing it. Even with strict guidelines and training, giving cops the okay to use tranquilizers would probably result in a lot of dead people in the long run, which would defeat the whole purpose of using them.
 
Well...

Either you have a short memory, or the sheer volume of commentary on the subject meant that you missed some of it. It was definitely out there.

Remember the photos of him supposedly throwing up gang signs? Those got a lot of traction, and speak directly to this point.
 
But no particular reason to be shot, either.

I was a pretty staunch defender, open to being persuaded otherwise by evidence, of Darren Wilson. It seemed apparent to me that Wilson was in danger and responded with necessary force to protect himself.

No, it's never a good idea to run from a cop. And I can imagine there are scenarios where cops may be justified to open fire when this happens. At first glance, this doesn't strike me as one of those scenarios.
 
you seriously cannot see the difference?

3,000+ pound speeding vehicle compared to a 50 year old unarmed man trotting away from a police officer? Which one poses any kind of danger to the officer or other people?

Also, the majority of instances I can recall where an officer shot at a suspect driving a vehicle were situations where the officer was on the hood of the car or the car was driving at the officer. There are exceptions (including the one where the mother sped away with kids in the car and the moronic officer opened fire), but not many. In part that's because any half-way intelligent police officer should also be taking into account the safety of bystanders when he opens fire on someone, not to mention the fact that not everyone fleeing in a car poses a significant threat to others simply because they drove away from a police officer.
 
Not trying to be a glib jerk...

But isn't there a major distinction between a guy running 5 mph and a guy leading a high speed chase where he is driving several tons of steel that would likely seriously hurt or kill anyone who he collided with?

I'm not saying that is the line of justification for use of deadly force (I'll let lawyers and other smart people opine on that), but in the context of a high speed chase isn't the car pretty clearly a potenial deadly weapon, and thus more analogous to an individual running away with a gun, bomb, etc.?

I think an incredibly sound argument can be made that someone leading a high speed chase is posing immediate and serious harm to others, and I'm less certain that a similar argument exists for a human being running with no weapon on him.

Maybe I'm missing something, sorry if that's the case

This post was edited on 4/8 6:12 PM by MBS Hoosier
 
of course


Almost all murder charges in the U.S. are based on state law, and I am not aware of any federal law under which the officer in this case could be charged with murder.

At the same time, I don't think there is any state in which this shooting could not, and would not, result in a murder charge against the officer under applicable state law.
 
I imagine you're probably right. The reason I mention it...

As I said to MTIOTF below, there is no doubt that a state could include as murder actions that are not actually 4th Amendment violations. The more interesting question is one we had during the Mike Brown debates: could a state legislate as justifiable the use of force that is a 4th Amendment violation? If so, a victim's family would have recourse in civil court against the officer, but I wonder if such a law would be unconstitutional, and if so, a state would then be obligated to pursue homicide charges. In other words, do you think the 4th Amendment creates a de facto minimum definition of what constitutes criminal homicide?
 
gang signs huh

okay. Wasn't his personal background all about collateral issues having nothing to do with the shooting? As you know, I only focus on important stuff.
wink.r191677.gif















This post was edited on 4/8 7:19 PM by CO. Hoosier
 
Uh huh.

Whether, whether or not you think it was important - and I agree it wasn't - it was a story, both in the conservative media and all over social media. It's a disgusting way to look at things, but it's a way that a lot of people look.
 
I don't believe you

and I think you are overstating your case. Nowhere did anybody with a scintilla of credibility "justify the shooting" because he was a thug. It certainly was not a part of the conservative media and I think I am more of an observer of that media than you.
 
Do they have to say, "I'm glad he's dead?"

They played up his supposedly thug lifestyle all over the conservative media. Even Fox News got in on it, although the even-more partisan sites, like Drudge, really went all out.

If you didn't see it, you weren't paying attention. Hell, you can Google it right now, and it's still all over the place.

It was even worse over social media. I saw a lot of really ugly things. Even from my own family members.

goat
 
Re: Well...

I think you are confusing justification and rationalization. The majority of the people you were referring to were rationalizing the end result based on the alleged character of the victim, rather than asserting that it somehow justified the shooting.

"He had it coming" is not the same thing cops have the right to shoot thugs.
 
No you don't

I'm not the one who said "the shooting was justified because he was a thug." That was you. The question is what did you mean by that? As I said, I watch and read as much "conservative" media as the next guy, including three accomplished lawyers and one lawyer commentator. I never heard or read anything like you claim.

I agree there was a side show about his background, but that really had nothing to do with anything.








This post was edited on 4/8 8:17 PM by CO. Hoosier
 
Why the sideshow?

You admit it existed. What's the point of the sideshow if not to subtly argue that he deserved to die, or had it coming to him, or something to that effect?

That's the only reason to bring it up.
 
Sorry for not believing in double standards

The guy clearly doesn't have respect for human life himself. Yet, he deserves some, despite the double digit crimes he has committed and the fact that he abandoned his children?

The guy made a dumb choice, following in line with a string of many dumb choices in his life. Forgive me for not shedding a tear for someone like that. There are far more worthy causes for my empathy.
 
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Tsarnaev

Should we let him go?
 
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