Man falls after police shoot him. (Image source: Monterey Herald)
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TheBlaze posted a story earlier this week concerning a video of California police fatally shooting a man who was waving around garden shears.
Police were responding to a call about a man who reportedly exposed himself to a woman, tried to break into her house, and attempted to kill her dog
Video captures police shooting a man and then a teen who witnessed it yelling “Why the f*** did you guys shoot him?”
Man falls after police shoot him. (Image source: Monterey Herald)
Here's what some readers of TheBlaze had to say about the issue:
TepeyacAt no time did I see a police officer’s life being threatened by shears. Shoot him in the freaking leg for crying out loud! This was murder most foul!
Watched the video again…did you happen to see the woman, baby on her hip, running TOWARD the altercation? WOW… just WOW.
Collectively, we have become a nation of “stupid is as stupid does."
When I consider the context (broke in, exposed himself, tried to kill a dog), I don’t see suicide by cop. I see whacked out on drugs, which tells me he probably wanted to kill the cops, not the other way around.
“this individual pulled the gardening shears and actually attacked the officers with the gardening shears.”
WTF?
At what point did THAT happen?
Answer: never.
Videotaping cops shouldn’t just be “permitted”… it should be “mandatory.”
This is difficult to watch. However, it is part and parcel of the nihilistic society we have allowed ourselves to become.
Just few observations — or some will say armchair quarterbacking and some will say less-benign things.
The video is incomplete.
The lighter-skinned law-enforcement employee actually is the one who closed the distance, placing himself within the effective range of the shears. This is not what is taught.
The pair of law-enforcement employees did not work as a team to prevent the suspect/victim from moving to the busy intersection.
From the video it's unclear which employee engaged the suspect/victim first. If the lighter-skinned employee engaged first he actually placed in the line of fire people in the intersection and the shops.
Firing a total of four rounds — a double tap Zulu, and then a coup de grace — at that distance, is in my view, uncalled for and constitutes an execution.
An unfortunate aspect of arming law-enforcement employees with semi-automatic handguns and automatic rifles is a lack of trigger control and fire discipline.
Regardless of how this plays out, the basic tactical movements of the law-enforcement employees will not be subject to internal review since this will roll as a “good shoot” but for those who know, the training officer of the department better do some retraining pronto or be fired.
Two cops with guns pointed at you tell you to drop your weapon. You decide NOT to drop it. What did you expect? If he didn’t know that he was in grave danger, then that just proves that he was not in the right frame of mind.
Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter now, as he is dead. If you want to survive, do what you are told, and file suit or charges later. It’s better to be tried by 12 that carried by 6.
Not taking a side, but simply saying the man could be alive today if he had only dropped the weapon.
By the way, the pop you hear in the beginning of the video (0:07) is the taser being deployed. Taser didn’t work.
Sorry, that guy was retreating. Taser didn’t work? B.S. 3 cops 1 taser. What? Did all 3 not work? 3 cops can’t overpower one guy without killing him? Bullcrap. Couldn’t they get another taser? Kill first, yeah…little value for human life here when stupid cops killed a man. Our society is going to hell in a hand-basket. Dear God help us. If it was suicide by cop why was he retreating? When did he lunge? I missed it? Sorry this killing was unjustified. They had other options, but the cops were trigger happy. What the hell is wrong with people? You think unloading a clip in a guy who is retreating is OK? Last option? BS! Well see what our Maker says about that one day. Go ahead and vote it down, I don’t care. Hope the cop who shot first can sleep well at night.
Those two cops are cowards — and killers. TWO cops against a whack-job with shears? If they couldn’t take him down (once their taser “did not work”) and cuff him, they need to find a new line of work. They were afraid to rush him because they might get cut. Instead they shot and killed him. Bad, bad form!
“There’s some split-second decisions that have to be made by the officer.”
I am getting so sick of hearing this excuse. Police are given carte blanche to gun down citizens if they might get boo-boos.
I am not going to say the cops were wrong for shooting this guy without more info. One aspect of the official response does bother me though. I believe tasers are standard equipment for most cops now, and the report said the taser didn’t work. There were 2 cops — so what happened to the second taser?
The garden shears were CLEARLY waving about wildly in the dude's hand. The cops can’t win here. If a 5-year-old kid turns the corner and walks into garden-shear guy, then what? Does the dude kill the kid? Who knows? Anything could have been wrong with the dude, but the cop didn’t have time to get a couch and psychoanalyze him. Cop haters will be cop haters, no changing that.
At no time did I see this man attack the officers. What I did see is a man continually backing away with his hands in the air looking afraid of the two thugs pointing guns in his face. It is hard to go off just a video, but just from what I see the cops shoot a frightened unarmed man. Too many times now we see cops just tired of dealing with the situation and ending it the “easy way." I cannot stress this enough; there is a real problem with the way our police officers are being trained, and vetted.
The cops gave that guy a ton of chances. He had garden shears and could easily harm them or an innocent bystander. They tried to taser him, tried to talk him down, and before letting him proceed to a street where more people were they had to shoot. I wouldn’t expect them to spar with him using their batons; garden shears can be pretty deadly if you run somebody through with 'em.
It's a sad day for all concerned. To serve and protect comes in all shapes and sizes. As our first choice of defense, police officers have to respond to so many different and sometimes difficult situations. They are often required to make split-second decisions based on limited and often conflicting information. As shown in this tape, I’m sure if these two officers had the opportunity to relive it again, they may have made a wiser and more professional choice. In a tense standoff with a complete stranger, no amount of training can predict want an individual may do. Anytime a death occurs at the hands of law enforcement a full independent inquiry should be mandatory. Police officers are human, and they do make mistakes — sometimes fatal ones.
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