Or the Daniel Shaver shooting where the guy was told to get down on his knees, keep his hands in the air, and crawl towards the officers. As he struggled with the impossibility of complying with every order, he was executed.

Better question, is having an arm free and a gun in your back pocket a justifiable reason for the police to use deadly force?

If I'm walking down the street with both arms free and a gun in my pocket, I could grab it and use it. So should the cops shoot me because my arm is free and there's a gun on me? Or do I need to do something more than just have free arms and a gun before deadly force is appropriate?

That depends...

Are you black?

That is how they do that, yes. It's their thing, it's their sport, it's what they do and it's what they join for.

This training that every traffic stop could be deadly and unloading their guns and the militarization has got to stop.

I admitted that case is prolly the most damning for cops of all these cases in the past couple years, but my main over-arching point here anyway was that there are almost always other factors/conditions/variables at play here that better explain the situation compared to race alone.

You ever play those video games where you have to shoot bad guys and not shoot the good guys? With me anyway, once in a while I'll shoot a good guy.

Cops should not be playing that game at every traffic stop.

The video game doesnt give you a chance to convince it that you really shot a bad guy.

You and others misunderstand the purpose of the original question. It is about whether we know all we need to know here. We have video from a limited POV. We don't know some key facts.

Its fun to jump to conclusions, but its better to come to the right conclusion.

I will be happy with whatever the right conclusion ends up being, and if charges should be brought based on the right conclusion, all of us that support impartial justice will support those charges. That's what justice is all about.

Nope. Wrong again.

If someone has a gun in their possession they are armed. End of story.

Totally agree.

Funny to see this on the first page of this thread.

In the Alton Sterling case the guy was tased twice. That isn't shown in the video, just the second part since he had no response to tasers the cops tried to physically take him down, he still isn't cooperating. They see a gun. One hand is clearly pinned down the other can't be seen.

What should happen in that case is a state level agency conducting an investigation. There is too much conflict of interest for the local police/DA to look into the matter. I could see an argument for a justified shooting or excessive force from watching the videos. It's just not clear, maybe the body cams will give a better picture.

I don't understand how people call this "cold blooded murder". The cops were called to investigate a guy waiving a gun and threatening people. At first try the most non violent thing possible, giving him verbal commands, the guy doesn't comply with verbal commands. Then they try the "non-lethal" taser and that doesn't work. Then they physically try to subdue him and are struggling and this guy has a gun. ONLY THEN do they pull out their guns.

I'm upset by a lot of police videos (Eric Garner was disgusting) but this video is not one of them.

The Minnesota case reminds me of this one (coincidentally an Asian cop as well)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...cing/83221906/

Two guys who were way too jumpy to be police officers. Definitely not murder but manslaughter for sure. The NYC cop was convicted of manslaughter but a judge reduced the charges. At the minimum the MN cop should be guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

What? Name one in the MN case. You don't get to play "this is the exception that proves the rule" bull**** with racially biased policing.

How are you threatened by a gun in the pocket of a handcuffed man?

A lot of these shootings come down to fear based actions by police who have very little to fear when they are wrong. If the police in the recent videos think that there was a 50% chance that they'd be going to prison than they wouldn't have killed the two individuals.

As a society we have been programmed to worship police etc. and police spend enormous amounts of resources (tax money) to keep this view popular in public perception. This allows them much wider latitude for questionable conduct.

Right now there are good cops and bad cops. The problem lies in that the individual cop can decide which one he's going to be and not the department he works for. There's not enough punishment for being a bad cop. I challenge anyone to ask a cop friend how many times in their careers have they seen a fellow cop do something wrong? Then ask how many times they've reported the officer? Then ask what happens to a cops career when he does report a fellow cop?

The next issue is police departments say they are good as a whole or a system but of course there are a few bad apples. But when a bad apple gets exposed they are the first to say that the bad apple was poorly trained and they will fix it through the system. Kind of a circle that was created by themselves and there's to judge in the aftermath of an issue.

This is the attitude that has to be tackled. Like in the UK when the police were found to be institutionally racist some decades ago.

It's not a problem of a few bad apples. The problem is a systemic one where the bad apples thrive better than the good apples.

Americans need to stand up for racial justice by demanding that policies of mass incarceration end. The police in this country are usually the beginning of a long journey for many black people through an unecessarily punitive criminal justice system. Police ruin families and communities by arresting people for crimes that they then get cruelly long sentences for, i.e. 25- life for shoplifting that they changed to burglary because they realize you have two strikes and they could put you away forever for burglary.

Maybe he can still reach into his pocket, who knows. But whether he can or not HE IS STILL ARMED.

Are you deliberately being obtuse or are you really that thick?

Erik Scott would weigh in if he wasn't dead. Oh wait, sorry, he was white so **** him.

https://pjmedia.com/blog/gunned-down...inglepage=true

1) Cops are trigger happy.
2) Cops profile by race and other means.
3) Selling this as a denial of due process instead of racism ( no matter what the root problem is ) gains you a whole bunch more support.

So I guess I'm wondering if you want to try do do something about a real problem in this county, or just scream racist and let the problem continue?

Note: Tarp man never pulled his gun and you were ok with him getting gunned down. This seems to be the same double standard people accuse me of so WTF?

Not sure what the official story is yet but I read that the taser misfired wrt Alton Sterling as opposed to it hitting him and not working. The "taser couldn't take him down!" Narrative makes him sound scarier or he was on PCP or sow thing. Still not clear why they had to taze him, still not clear why they had to shove a gun in his face.

Also he wasn't "waving a gun and threatening people" by any account, sounds more like he flashed a gun at a homeless guy who was harassing him. Do you know how often people flash guns at other people in ridiculous everyday situations in the US? I know people who have had guns flashed at them for like cutting someone off in traffic: should the cops pursue and violently apprehend all those people?

What explanation other than race is there for why this happens absurdly more often to black people than white people? Poverty gets you some of the way there but not even close to a full explanation. White people carry guns too and generally manage to not get executed in traffic stops, or during arrests, or what have you (LASJ's story excepted). To hear you tell it, any dude reaching around his waist while carrying a gun gets popped by police, which isn't even close to reality (if you're white).

I don't understand your point here. The Minny guy was not carrying drugs, was only facing a fine (if anything) for whatever traffic violation, and apparently he had a lot to fear from the policeman who would shortly shoot him dead.

Holy ****, it sounds like the wild west.

How is flashing a gun at someone not threatening behaviour?

Could you please explain how the shooting of a man -- a man who said he was armed, said he wouldn't go quietly if agents served a warrant, said he wouldn't be taken alive, said in interviews with journalists that he'd draw his firearm and shoot if authorities drew their firearms on him -- who reached into his pocket in front of armed agents at the conclusion of a high speed chase is analogous to any other situation described in this thread?

Umm, OK.