jon, you seem to have a totally wrong idea of what I'm trying to say. Point is, I'm not trying to say/argue anything.

I just posted a piece of news. Nothing else. Not trying to prove a point.

quote:

I don't think that means what you think it means.

You're probably right... What is a homicide? An unlawful death?

In any case, please consider responding to the rest of what I wrote, rather than this one point, since any interpretation of the significance of the homicide ruling doesn't change the rest of what I wrote.

SK - you're missing the salient point - he shot at the cop.

Had he been just running away, even after stealing the cops taser and assaulting the officers, I would agree that the shot would have been an unnecessary use of force.

But he shot at the cop. That changed everything. That is the reason he is dead now.

Homicide, according to Google:

quote:

the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.

Jon, what am I missing?

Also, unlike WTG, I guess I am trying to argue something, namely that the depiction of what happened as unlawful use of force is appropriate.

quote:

he shot at the cop

Where does it say that Rayshard Brooks shot at the cop?

Unless you mean with the taser?

Yes with the taser.


I need to address the 'violent and dangerous' comment.

He assaulted two officers. THat's enough. No taser required, that makes you violent and dangerous.

Homicide doesn't mean unlawful. It means died at the hands of another person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Sums it up.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local...oNf30ffg5lH8CET3sVI/

It sums up something - namely the disingenuous reaction of people who want to make this something it wasn't.

quote:

That column was scheduled to appear Monday. But I had written it before the chaotic police killing in south Atlanta of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man shot as he ran away, trying to escape a DUI arrest.

I'm sorry, you cannot elide over the one salient fact here. The man aimed a weapon at the cop and fired.


If you want to defend that, then defend it. But to pretend it didn't happen and paint this as another Walter Scott case is a lie.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
jon, you seem to have a totally wrong idea of what I'm trying to say. Point is, I'm not trying to say/argue anything.

I just posted a piece of news. Nothing else. Not trying to prove a point.

It wasn't news. Everybody has known since Saturday that the cop shot him. THat's why it seemed to me that you posted it thinking it made some point that it didn't make.

Ok, so the question of how to interpret homicide maybe is worth setting aside for now. I am not sure that wiki is necessarily any better than Google, what would be helpful would be to know how the Georgia medical examiner's office defines it. But "death caused by another person" is pretty neutral, so I'm happy to say that ruling doesn't make the point I initially implied it did. So let's put that detail aside.

The more pressing question is our interpretation of the behavior of Rayshard Brooks and how possession of a taser should be viewed. Are you saying we should view the taser like a lethal weapon? Because that's not how it's depicted.

Did he "assault" the officers? Or was he trying to get away? There doesn't seem to be anything to suggest that he was actively trying to harm either officer, he was trying to get away. He was originally suspected of dui but not actually driving. There was nothing in the earlier parts of the interaction to suggest he would be dangerous to others.

He only became "violent" when they tried to handcuff him, at which point he tried to get away.

He grabbed one officer's taser, and so Brooks was "armed" with a taser. He had a taser and tried to shoot it, but he was actively running away from the officer. And he was ultimately shot in the back.

I don't think you and I are going to agree on how to interpret this, because here's how I am thinking about it: When is use of lethal force justified? When the officer's life is threatened. If a taser is not a lethal weapon, then in this case, the officer's life was not threatened.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

I'm sorry, you cannot elide over the one salient fact here. The man aimed a weapon at the cop and fired.


If you want to defend that, then defend it. But to pretend it didn't happen and paint this as another Walter Scott case is a lie.

I posted the AJC opinion piece because I thought it had a lot of good points about changes that need to be made to the system. You seem to be focused on something altogether different.

I never thought I'd say this in a discussion with you jon, but I give up. Clearly either I am unable to communicate my thoughts or you are stuck in believing that I'm focusing on something that I'm not. Either way, not much point in continuing, at least for me.

Something I haven't seen addressed in this thread:

It appears that there is a race of people in America that systematically have received different responses from police...

Imagine, if you will that any contact with a person in uniform is seen as a potential kidnap and/or murder about to happen. Videos and witnesses for generations document that 'going peacefully' is just as likely to end up in a kidnap or murder for this group of people. Do you 'go quietly' to slaughter, or fight for your life??

If you lived your whole life as part of that group, do you think your response to any contact with police might cause you to behave in unpredictable ways?

BTW, I am just now reading the AJC article WTG linked, it includes this comment:

quote:

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said he’ll conduct an “intense” investigation. This month, he charged Atlanta cops with aggravated assault for using a “deadly weapon” — a Taser — against two black college students. Rolfe’s attorneys will no doubt argue Brooks wielded the same deadly weapon.

So obviously, we can't have it both ways, tasers either are or they aren't deadly weapons, we can't alter that definition when the parameters change.

This is something I'll keep thinking about, but to take another quote from that article:

quote:

Bullets in the back are hard to reconcile.

Ron, I missed your comment when I posted mine.
This:

quote:

any contact with a person in uniform is seen as a potential kidnap and/or murder about to happen. Videos and witnesses for generations document that 'going peacefully' is just as likely to end up in a kidnap or murder for this group of people. Do you 'go quietly' to slaughter, or fight for your life??

If you lived your whole life as part of that group, do you think your response to any contact with police might cause you to behave in unpredictable ways?

has been in the back of my mind the entire time I've been posting in this thread.

Rayshard Brooks was trying to get away from a situation that most surely terrified him: being arrested and taken into custody by police. The whole "come quietly and you won't get hurt" thing does not ring true for Black Americans. We can't really understand what happened to Rayshard Brooks without that piece of it.

quote:

Did he "assault" the officers? Or was he trying to get away? There doesn't seem to be anything to suggest that he was actively trying to harm either officer, he was trying to get away. He was originally suspected of dui but not actually driving. There was nothing in the earlier parts of the interaction to suggest he would be dangerous to others.

He certainly assaulted them, and he clearly wanted to get away.

I don't see where you're going with the 'earlier part of the interaction' argument. You're basically arguing that he wasn't violent before he was violent. What does that argument get you? I mean, Ted Bundy wasn't a serial killer until he started murdering all those coeds.

I know I'm being flip here (and of course I'm not comparing Brooks to Ted Bundy). I just don't know where that argument is going.

quote:

The more pressing question is our interpretation of the behavior of Rayshard Brooks and how possession of a taser should be viewed. Are you saying we should view the taser like a lethal weapon? Because that's not how it's depicted.

No. My point isn't that the taser is a lethal weapon, though it appears they sometimes can be.

Really the point is what limits we place on a cop's ability to escalate force in the face of escalating force being applied to him.

Do cops have to take a taze? I mean, should that be our policy? I'm no expert, but it seems to me that we've traditionally allowed cops to escalate force to whatever point necessary to subdue their attacker *if* they or another person are facing imminent threat of death or severe injury.


Can it really be our policy that cops must accept an assault that leads to their own incapacitation?