Police guns down man after he tried to flee.

[Leonhard]

I suppose you're ok with letting a school shooter, still wielding a firearm, flee the scene of a school after he just killed 10 children, then?

Armed with a firearm? An escaped violent convict? In either of those cases yes.

A man running away from a DUI arrest, armed with a tazer? No. I don't find shooting him necessary or right in the slightest.

[oxmixmudd]

Ah, more insults from the neckbeard keyboard warrior who STILL hasn't made a substantial argument against anything I've said. I suppose you missed the part where the DA is under criminal investigation himself? Put on your big boy pants and let's debate this. Otherwise, I'm not here for the sole purpose of trading insults like you apparently are. I'm beginning to think parroting "but the DA said..." is the extent of your argumentative and critical thinking ability. You're welcome to prove me wrong, but you've been unable or unwilling to do so thus far.

This whole kick thing is really simple. I know at first blush what I'm saying sounds crazy, but I've watched the video over and over again and there's just no evidence of it. Do you have an actual rational argument for why that is? Because I've given multiple reasons to explain this fact, and they all point to a DA who is exaggerating the available evidence for political expediency (since you seem to find the more colloquial term 'lying' to be so outlandish, we'll soft-pedal the language). He also announced that the other officer agreed to testify against Rolfe, and the defense attorney promptly did a press release disputing that fact (which is really a minor detail to bother disputing. Why would they do that, if there was a recording of it and the DA was telling the truth? At trial, the defense team will be made out to be liars and that won't help them. On the other hand, if the DA is the one lying, it's best to get out in front of that right away...which is exactly what the defense team did.)

It's not as far fetched as it sounds. In the Trayvon Martin case the special prosecutor withheld several hundred pages of discover-able evidence from the defense team, and when IT guy found it on the printer and went public with the information, they promptly fired him. As far as I know, nothing happened to the special prosecutor for what was a blatant ethical violation and, arguably, a criminal offense. In my state intentionally withholding discover-able material is a felony. But hey, when you're a lawyer and friends with all the right people, including judges, it's a bit easier to get out of trouble.

I've literally seen this sort of thing first hand. Someone important gets investigated or charged with something, the evidence is very damning, and then BAM - the case disappears, they reach a plea deal without the victim knowing anything about it, whatever. These things happen, and an elected DA basically has carte blanche to do whatever he wants because it's so difficult to remove them. Ball's in your court, buddy.

The picture presented showing the officer kicking Brooks is from a different angle than the videos that have been made public. My explanation is simple. The kick is not visible on the videos we have. If the still from this other video is fake, it will come out. But given the taker of that video can tell us anytime they want it's fake I'm not too worried about it actually being fake.

I would not at all be surprised if that kick and those in that wendy's drive through that observed what happened did not drive the outpouring of anger that erupted from the event. If what the DA is saying is true, then it makes sense that those observing it, especially in the wake of Arbery and Floyd would have been absolutely livid.

But until more evidence comes to light, there isnt much more to say, except that I will reject the notion the DA is lying until and unless real evidence that is the case surfaces.

That is not a claim I know he's telling the truth. It is just me saying I will give him the benefit of the doubt, I choose not to go down conservative conspiracy theory rabbit holes until and unless the facts support them.

[myth]

So, hard question -- given what you know, would you have "shot the guy in the back"?

A fair question, though a hard one to answer clearly since I've never been in the exact same situation. (I'm assuming you're talking about the Atlanta case. In my school shooting scenario, I'd pump lead into that monster without a second thought, and sleep fine at night afterwards.)

So, short answer: probably not.

My short answer, though, assumes many things that might not be accurate with regard to what Officer Rolfe experienced.

(1) I'm assuming I would know for sure it was a taser he discharged right before the shooting. This is not necessarily a good assumption, because of the well-known phenomenon of auditory exclusion and because of the large bulge in Brooks' pockets Rolfe discovered during his earlier pat-down, which Brooks said was money. It could have been a small pistol in a pocket holster, wrapped in a bandanna. You know as well as I do though, that during a Terry frisk if the object is not immediately recognizable as a weapon, you can't turn that into a search. It doesn't matter what the bulge actually was, but it does matter that the officer did not know exactly what it was and had to ask. Minutes later when the subject turns and points a gun-shaped object at him while they're in a full sprint across the parking lot, it's pretty easy it imagine the officer believing that split second that it was an actual gun.

I've experienced auditory exclusion myself. We got into a fight with a drunk one night. For nearly two minutes of our fight he was screaming about how someone had killed his cousin. I didn't hear any of it, didn't recall any of that afterwards. Had no idea he'd literally been shouting it in my face while we fought. I had to be told that's what he was screaming about later by a witness. So when we assume that an officer in this situation heard his partner shout about the taser, or heard the "pop" of the taser as it deployed -- that's actually a fairly shaky assumption.

(2) If I knew for sure it was a tazer in that moment, I might have shot him. Because of the difference between the speeds of action versus re-action, I'm pretty convinced that Rolfe made decision to fire as the taser was being presented to him. It just took the rest of that time for his body to follow through on the through on the thought. If I recognized that I was about to be incapacitated by a violent person who just seriously assaulted another officer and thought I had time to react to prevent that, then yes I might well have pulled the trigger. I do NOT have a moral, ethical, or legal responsibility to allow a violent felon to seriously injure or kill me just because he decided he doesn't want to go to jail that particular day.

Speaking more about myself and knowing my own abilities, I don't actually think I'd have realized I was about to have a tazer fired at me in time to decide to draw my weapon and shoot him. So practically, I probably wouldn't even have considered the option because the discharge of the tazer would have been complete by the time I even cleared leather.

At the risk of sounding too politically incorrect here (and the risk that several of our liberal friend's heads might actually explode), I'll say what most cops think: the suspect got himself killed. His death was the consequence of the decisions he made.

In a legal use of force (which I clearly believe this was), the police are always responding to the suspect's actions. Brooks is the one who decided he did not want to be in handcuffs. Brooks decided we would fight the officers once the struggle started, Brooks decided to take the officer's tazer from him and discharge it (I'm not sure any more, but it still looks an awful lot like Brosan got whacked upside the head by his own tazer). Brooks decided to ignore lawful commands to drop the tazer, to put his hands behind his back, etc. Brooks decided to take off running. Brooks decided to turn and fire the tazer at Rofle. For our liberal friends whose heads haven't exploded quite yet, you'll notice that Brooks, at each step along the way, has decided what is going to happen and the officers are reacting to what he's done.

The standard for legality of an officer's use of force was set by the US Supreme Court in a case (Graham v. Connor (490 U.S. 386)) that happened not far from where I live. Basically, it has to be "objectively reasonable". The legal analysis of that is not what JimL or ox-whatever-his-name is,or the Wendy's drive-thru attendant, or the District Attorney, or the suspect's mother thinks is objectively reasonably. The standard is what an objectively reasonable police officer with similar training and experience, in the same situation, would have done. To quote the US Supreme Court in their Graham v. Connor ruling:

All claims that law enforcement officials have used excessive force - deadly or not - in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of a free citizen are properly analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's "objective reasonableness" standard, rather than under a substantive due process standard.

and also,

The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments - in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving - about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.

and

The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.

So, to sum it up, if enough "reasonable" police officers would have shot the guy, then it's a legal use of force. Period.

By the way, this is why an upset citizenry so often can't understand why an officer isn't charged when someone is killed. The US Supreme Court literally ruled that the benefit of hindsight and what the citizenry thinks is not to be used in reviewing a use of force scenario. Officers are tasked with using force to enforce the law, so the US Supreme Court thinks that some allowance should be made for those on the ground decisions. I heard a BBC reporter say something the other day about how more police officers should be arrested for police shootings -- but he doesn't seem to understand how high the bar is for a prosecutor to prove criminal intent, and that the legal landscape requires some benefit of the doubt be given to the officer in question. Such faulty assumptions are a big part of why we see protests after a legal uses of force -- because citizens don't actually understand how any of this works. Which is also a reason why people do get shot by the police as often as they do. Interacting with American police is actually super simple: just do what you're told and don't fight. The second you start fighting, you are the one who has escalated the situation and put your own safety at risk. Our culture of blaming everyone else for the consequences of our own actions is getting seriously out of hand.

[myth]

The picture presented showing the officer kicking Brooks is from a different angle than the videos that have been made public. My explanation is simple. The kick is not visible on the videos we have. If the still from this other video is fake, it will come out. But given the taker of that video can tell us anytime they want it's fake I'm not too worried about it actually being fake.

I would not at all be surprised if that kick and those in that wendy's drive through that observed what happened did not drive the outpouring of anger that erupted from the event. If what the DA is saying is true, then it makes sense that those observing it, especially in the wake of Arbery and Floyd would have been absolutely livid.

But until more evidence comes to light, there isnt much more to say, except that I will reject the notion the DA is lying until and unless real evidence that is the case surfaces.

That is not a claim I know he's telling the truth. It is just me saying I will give him the benefit of the doubt, I choose not to go down conservative conspiracy theory rabbit holes until and unless the facts support them.

Ok. But you do acknowledge that the photo they released of the "kick" isn't actually evidence of a kick, right? It looks to me like evidence of an officer in mid-step. I acknowledge that the video from which that still image was taken might show a kick, I'm just highly skeptical because they haven't released the video and because the evidence that SHOULD be there if Brooks was kicked.....is not there (namely, any visual observation of a kick in the Wendy's video).

I'm just curious, did you listen to the audio of the citizen shouting in the video I linked? He continued to shout many vile and untrue things. But he was seriously angry. Which I totally understand, he just watched a man get shot right in front of him. But my point is, he kept saying that Brooks didn't do ANYTHING wrong. ANYTHING. So he's either lying (if he saw the fight), or he didn't actually see the fight (or taser deployment) that lead to the shooting. Honest people can be upset about that happened, and still be totally wrong in their factual assumptions and conclusions about whether the outcome was justified.

I'm not glad that Brooks is dead. I think it's a terrible tragedy that a human being lost their life. I just also think that Brooks is responsible for his own actions, and given the facts present, Rolfe took legal action when he shot Brooks. I despise Atlanta's mayor for her handling of this incident, but her initial statement did get one thing right: there is a difference between what one legally CAN do, and what one SHOULD do. I don't have to agree that the action taken by Rofle was the best course of action to also think that what he did was legal, and neither do you.

[Cow Poke]

A fair question, though a hard one to answer clearly since I've never been in the exact same situation. (I'm assuming you're talking about the Atlanta case. In my school shooting scenario, I'd pump lead into that monster without a second thought, and sleep fine at night afterwards.)

So, short answer: probably not.

My short answer, though, assumes many things that might not be accurate with regard to what Officer Rolfe experienced.

(1) I'm assuming I would know for sure it was a taser he discharged right before the shooting. This is not necessarily a good assumption, because of the well-known phenomenon of auditory exclusion and because of the large bulge in Brooks' pockets Rolfe discovered during his earlier pat-down, which Brooks said was money. It could have been a small pistol in a pocket holster, wrapped in a bandanna. You know as well as I do though, that during a Terry frisk if the object is not immediately recognizable as a weapon, you can't turn that into a search. It doesn't matter what the bulge actually was, but it does matter that the officer did not know exactly what it was and had to ask. Minutes later when the subject turns and points a gun-shaped object at him while they're in a full sprint across the parking lot, it's pretty easy it imagine the officer believing that split second that it was an actual gun.

I've experienced auditory exclusion myself. We got into a fight with a drunk one night. For nearly two minutes of our fight he was screaming about how someone had killed his cousin. I didn't hear any of it, didn't recall any of that afterwards. Had no idea he'd literally been shouting it in my face while we fought. I had to be told that's what he was screaming about later by a witness. So when we assume that an officer in this situation heard his partner shout about the taser, or heard the "pop" of the taser as it deployed -- that's actually a fairly shaky assumption.

(2) If I knew for sure it was a tazer in that moment, I might have shot him. Because of the difference between the speeds of action versus re-action, I'm pretty convinced that Rolfe made decision to fire as the taser was being presented to him. It just took the rest of that time for his body to follow through on the through on the thought. If I recognized that I was about to be incapacitated by a violent person who just seriously assaulted another officer and thought I had time to react to prevent that, then yes I might well have pulled the trigger. I do NOT have a moral, ethical, or legal responsibility to allow a violent felon to seriously injure or kill me just because he decided he doesn't want to go to jail that particular day.

Speaking more about myself and knowing my own abilities, I don't actually think I'd have realized I was about to have a tazer fired at me in time to decide to draw my weapon and shoot him. So practically, I probably wouldn't even have considered the option because the discharge of the tazer would have been complete by the time I even cleared leather.

At the risk of sounding too politically incorrect here (and the risk that several of our liberal friend's heads might actually explode), I'll say what most cops think: the suspect got himself killed. His death was the consequence of the decisions he made.

In a legal use of force (which I clearly believe this was), the police are always responding to the suspect's actions. Brooks is the one who decided he did not want to be in handcuffs. Brooks decided we would fight the officers once the struggle started, Brooks decided to take the officer's tazer from him and discharge it (I'm not sure any more, but it still looks an awful lot like Brosan got whacked upside the head by his own tazer). Brooks decided to ignore lawful commands to drop the tazer, to put his hands behind his back, etc. Brooks decided to take off running. Brooks decided to turn and fire the tazer at Rofle. For our liberal friends whose heads haven't exploded quite yet, you'll notice that Brooks, at each step along the way, has decided what is going to happen and the officers are reacting to what he's done.

The standard for legality of an officer's use of force was set by the US Supreme Court in a case (Graham v. Connor (490 U.S. 386)) that happened not far from where I live. Basically, it has to be "objectively reasonable". The legal analysis of that is not what JimL or ox-whatever-his-name is,or the Wendy's drive-thru attendant, or the District Attorney, or the suspect's mother thinks is objectively reasonably. The standard is what an objectively reasonable police officer with similar training and experience, in the same situation, would have done. To quote the US Supreme Court in their Graham v. Connor ruling:



and also,



and



So, to sum it up, if enough "reasonable" police officers would have shot the guy, then it's a legal use of force. Period.

By the way, this is why an upset citizenry so often can't understand why an officer isn't charged when someone is killed. The US Supreme Court literally ruled that the benefit of hindsight and what the citizenry thinks is not to be used in reviewing a use of force scenario. Officers are tasked with using force to enforce the law, so the US Supreme Court thinks that some allowance should be made for those on the ground decisions. I heard a BBC reporter say something the other day about how more police officers should be arrested for police shootings -- but he doesn't seem to understand how high the bar is for a prosecutor to prove criminal intent, and that the legal landscape requires some benefit of the doubt be given to the officer in question. Such faulty assumptions are a big part of why we see protests after a legal uses of force -- because citizens don't actually understand how any of this works. Which is also a reason why people do get shot by the police as often as they do. Interacting with American police is actually super simple: just do what you're told and don't fight. The second you start fighting, you are the one who has escalated the situation and put your own safety at risk. Our culture of blaming everyone else for the consequences of our own actions is getting seriously out of hand.

Excellent - thanks for the well-thought out response. I'm pretty much right there with you, and, yeah, you've probably given the anti-cop crowd some heavy ammo to come at you.

In the beginning of your answer, when you said "I've never been in the exact same situation" -- I learned early on that you can say over and over and over "If I am ever in X situation, I will do Y", but when it comes down to it, you never really know how you're going to react when things get hot.

If a seasoned police officer can react differently than he would THINK he would --- it stands to reason that somebody with no experience at all would second-guess this til the cows come home, never really understanding all that's involved. My Quanell X thread shows how badly he got things wrong when he had an opportunity to "shoot / don't shoot".

[myth]

Armed with a firearm? An escaped violent convict? In either of those cases yes.

A man running away from a DUI arrest, armed with a tazer? No. I don't find shooting him necessary or right in the slightest.

I'm not saying you have to. You're entitled to your own opinion. But maybe don't trash talk the legal concept without considering the implications of what you're saying.

Listen, reasonable minds can differ. I realize that this case is difficult to swallow. By making the arguments I've made here, I'm asking people to separate their emotions and analyze the legality of what happened. If the mayor wanted to fire Rolfe because of his actions, that's her right to do so. I'd not be happy, but I wouldn't even argue against it. But it is a serious miscarriage of justice to criminally charge an officer in a case like this. Continuing this public lynch mentality against police officers for on-duty shootings is destructive to our entire country. We will drive the reasonable officers out of the profession because they have the entirely reasonable fear that they will spend the rest of their life in prison for doing the job correctly, if enough people (including the DA and a jury) are willing to ignore the law and act based on personal preference. This nearly happened to George Zimmerman (not a police case), and it's nearly happened many other times. The fact that convictions did not occur in those cases is a triumph of our justice system, when 12 ordinary citizens are willing to resist the bloodthirst of most of the country, the governor, and a special prosecutor, and find someone not guilty in cases where there is not enough proof of criminal intent.

[Mountain Man]

The second you start fighting, you are the one who has escalated the situation and put your own safety at risk. Our culture of blaming everyone else for the consequences of our own actions is getting seriously out of hand.

Chris Rock did a hilarious video you can find on YouTube titled "How Not To Get Your [Backside] Kicked By The Police". It actually contains some excellent advice.

[myth]

Chris Rock did a hilarious video you can find on YouTube titled "How Not To Get Your [Backside] Kicked By The Police". It actually contains some excellent advice.

Yeah, it's hilarious. And has a lot of truth in it as well.

[Littlejoe]

Ok. But you do acknowledge that the photo they released of the "kick" isn't actually evidence of a kick, right? It looks to me like evidence of an officer in mid-step. I acknowledge that the video from which that still image was taken might show a kick, I'm just highly skeptical because they haven't released the video and because the evidence that SHOULD be there if Brooks was kicked.....is not there (namely, any visual observation of a kick in the Wendy's video).

I'm just curious, did you listen to the audio of the citizen shouting in the video I linked? He continued to shout many vile and untrue things. But he was seriously angry. Which I totally understand, he just watched a man get shot right in front of him. But my point is, he kept saying that Brooks didn't do ANYTHING wrong. ANYTHING. So he's either lying (if he saw the fight), or he didn't actually see the fight (or taser deployment) that lead to the shooting. Honest people can be upset about that happened, and still be totally wrong in their factual assumptions and conclusions about whether the outcome was justified.

I'm not glad that Brooks is dead. I think it's a terrible tragedy that a human being lost their life. I just also think that Brooks is responsible for his own actions, and given the facts present, Rolfe took legal action when he shot Brooks. I despise Atlanta's mayor for her handling of this incident, but her initial statement did get one thing right: there is a difference between what one legally CAN do, and what one SHOULD do. I don't have to agree that the action taken by Rofle was the best course of action to also think that what he did was legal, and neither do you.

Ok, I'm not an Officer. But, I am hunter. By far the animals I hunt most are deer and feral hogs. I was trained that after they are down, when you walk up to them, you always poke them or nudge them with your foot in the backside to make sure they don't get a sudden burst and get up and badly hurt you. I don't know if that's a normal thing for officers but someone who has fought hard could be faking, or not seriously injured, could take the legs out and get control of the gun. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a nudge to be mistaken (or overblown) for a kick

[oxmixmudd]

Ok, I'm not an Officer. But, I am hunter. By far the animals I hunt most are deer and feral hogs. I was trained that after they are down, when you walk up to them, you always poke them or nudge them with your foot in the backside to make sure they don't get a sudden burst and get up and badly hurt you. I don't know if that's a normal thing for officers but someone who has fought hard could be faking, or not seriously injured, could take the legs out and get control of the gun. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a nudge to be mistaken (or overblown) for a kick

so now ... a mild attempt at justifying the kick ... really? you sorta kinda tried to qualify it (I bolded that so we are clear I saw it).

Are we really going to look for reasons why the officer sorta kinda maybe had a reason to go up and 'over-zealously' poke the guy that lay bleeding on the ground?

[rogue06]

Chris Rock did a hilarious video you can find on YouTube titled "How Not To Get Your [Backside] Kicked By The Police". It actually contains some excellent advice.

Most of it is basic common sense, like don't be confrontational and spoiling for a fight.

[rogue06]

so now ... a mild attempt at justifying the kick ... really? you sorta kinda tried to qualify it (I bolded that so we are clear I saw it).

Are we really going to look for reasons why the officer sorta kinda maybe had a reason to go up and 'over-zealously' poke the guy that lay bleeding on the ground?

Since you are so sure that he was kicked can you please show us the evidence that convinced you?

[JimL]

Because:
A) I wasn't there
2) I don't know what all happened "off camera"
C) I haven't really studied the situation all that much
D) I like to have all the facts before coming to a conclusion.

Even if the facts don't support any predetermined narrative.

You said that, seeing what you've seen, you wouldn't have shot him. With respect to what you've seen, why wouldn't you have shot him?

[Littlejoe]

so now ... a mild attempt at justifying the kick ... really? you sorta kinda tried to qualify it (I bolded that so we are clear I saw it).

Are we really going to look for reasons why the officer sorta kinda maybe had a reason to go up and 'over-zealously' poke the guy that lay bleeding on the ground?

yep, you read that correctly. Put up or shut up Ox. Where's your proof it even happened...much less where it happened as you laid out. I would love to see how many times you pulled the trigger and how many times you were shot in the shoot don't shoot simulation. Arm chair quarterbacks like you who have no real world experience in these things disgust me. So, I disgust you and you disgust me. I'm Ok with that.

[Mountain Man]

You said that, seeing what you've seen, you wouldn't have shot him.

Right, seeing what we've seen, from the comfort of our computer chairs, leisurely watching and rewatching videos of the encounter from multiple angles, able to calmly and rationally analyze the situation as a purely mental exercise, I don't think there's any of us who, seeing what we've seen, would have pulled the trigger.

But what we've seen isn't what the police officer saw who seconds before had been fighting with a violent suspect -- a suspect who was able to overcome two full grown men -- and who had to make literally a split second life-or-death decision when the suspect turned and pointed a weapon at him.

So, seeing what we've seen, no, I wouldn't have pulled the trigger. But seeing what the police officer saw, yes, I probably would have.