Shot in the neck for stealing Detergent from a Dollar Store

[magicguido]

[momta]

1. I might quibble with your assessment

He was shot because he had assaulted the clerk, ran from the cop, got tased, and then grabbed the cop's taser and cocked it during the struggle. I can see where the cop might be afraid for his safety or the safety of anyone nearby.

If it was just about the detergent I might be outraged too, but this wasn't a group of cops standing around while one of them had his knee on the guy's neck.

I think the cop probably could have disabled him rather than killed him, but this wasn't a "Breonna Taylor" or "Tamir Rice" type shooting. This was a tougher call.

[xocetaceans]

2. Not exactly...but not right either.

At 9:21 in the video, after the deputy tased the suspect and had him on the pavement, the deputy seems to set his Taser down right by the suspect. The suspect struggled with the deputy. During the struggle, the suspect took the Taser in hand. The deputy drew his gun and threatened to shoot the suspect. At 9:40 in the video, the suspect seems to have put the Taser down. It looks as if the Taser leads are wrapped around the suspect's little finger and also around the deputy's hand and gun. (The leads are visible from 9:39-9:41.)

Instead of recognizing that the suspect put down the taser and disengaging and focusing on recovering the taser, the deputy continued the struggle with the suspect. In the extended struggle, the taser moves back in front of the suspect at 9:43 - it may have been grasped or it may have been inadvertently pulled by the tangled leads. From the video's perspective, it is difficult to establish which happened. It appears that the deputy shoots the suspect at 9:44 or 9:45 in the video. At about 9:46 or 9:47 in the video, the deputy seems also to place his sidearm down on the ground next to the suspect.

One inaccuracy or euphemistically put statement in the video occurs at 12:37: "At one point during the struggle, the video shows that the sergeant lost possession of his Taser..."

If one counts setting down a Taser as losing possession of it, the statement is fine - otherwise, it is not.

"...and that the suspect appeared to gain control of the device." This part of that statement is true.

The patrol car's dash camera video starts at about 13:24 in the video. It does not reveal anything more than the setting of the incident - i.e., the approach to and eventually where the patrol car was parked when the deputy exited his vehicle.

The troubling thing about this incident is that its fatal conclusion seems entirely avoidable for at least two reasons:

• First, if the mentality of the police/sheriff's department were not the "lone ranger" sort of mentality that dictates that any officer/deputy should be able to go or can go one versus one physically with any other person, situations in which a single officer or deputy could quickly and easily lose control of the situation would not happen often. If law enforcement were more interested in safety, they would not go individually into these situations unless it were absolutely necessary to do so.
  
  
• Second, this deputy seems to have disarmed himself without having secure control of the situation on the ground. He seems literally to have placed his Taser right next to the suspect. At that point, it's anyone's guess whether the suspect would reach for the Taser. The suspect did, and the deputy ultimately killed him for it.

I would suggest that this sheriff's deputy has a severe problem with retaining control of his weapons and that that contributed to the suspect's death. (Note again that the deputy also seems to have abandoned his own sidearm on the pavement right next to the wounded/dying/dead suspect.)

Would this case be some sort of criminal negligence leading to homicide/manslaughter?