Discussion for article #247331
Refusal to stop = execution?
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And since when did jumping into the back of a truck become official police procedure?
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Tough DUI laws they have in Tennessee. I didnāt know it was a capital offense.
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The Cop is a cowboy and should never have been placed in a position to kill. The Supreme Court ruled ( Tennessee v. Garner ) that fleeing is not a reason to shoot. The fleeing suspect must be a danger to the cop ( has a weapon etc ) or to others in order to shoot. In this case the Officer endangered himself, shot a man that was not his initial subject and all over a simple non-violent crime.
Heāll walk. It will be ruled " all within department policy" and the Feds fix it if it gets fixed.
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Iāll bet a bunch the IA or some Judge determines it appropriate as well as killing a man for driving away.
The guy they killed was not the drunk guy. He was driving and apparently was not drunk. They were after the passenger which even here in Florida would be nothing of interest to a cop ( Can you pick up your drunk friend at a bar if he calls you in Tenn. ? ). So much for designated drivers.
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In Palm Springs once years ago and I was the designated driver and was pulled over. The police did threaten (and meant it) to arrest my friend who I was driving home from a bar for public intoxication. Fortunately they eventually let us both goā¦after an hour and a half of searching my car, etc.
I did have to insist to my male passenger to sit down, shut up and stop defending me because thatās what had the officer so riled up. The cop had me stand in my headlights on the side of the road for a ridiculous amount of time. I didnāt even end up getting a warning.
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Typically muddled AP story.
ā¦he attempted to flee a DUI stop.
Um, no. Apparently, the drunk wasnāt driving. There was no DUI involved.
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Exactly. Being a drunk passenger in a car is not āpublic intoxicationā. It is possible that the drunk was making a scene earlier as some establishment and there was a call about it. That was not in the report, though.
In most states an Officer cannot act on minor crimes based on deposition alone. They must see the offense. If the guy was causing a scene and some goody two shoes āturned in his neighborā I doubt that is sufficient to act. It might be sufficient to question the guy. Iām sure this Cop was pissed that he was not obeyed. It angered him personally so he dropped the professional aspect of what he was doing and used his official power to resolve the personal offense.
A man is dead. This Copās judgment led to a man being dead under these picayune circumstances. . His family no longer has him. If he has a wife sheās a widow. If he has kids they donāt have a father. His birthday will not be celebrated anymore and whatever dreams he had are never to be. Because some guy ( not him ) was drunk. Thatās it.
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The driver did have a weapon - his truck!
He was just trying to get a running start before mowing them all down, obvs!
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Well, he was supposedly driving drunk, Iād say that poses a danger. Both the passenger and driver were drunk (above story is not even close to updated, even though I am reading stories from yesterday that have the info), there had been a call about them being DUI. It does say it was a āDUIā stop, so that would mean the driver was alleged to be drunk (autopsy will obviously be key).
Still needs more investigation, but if this asshole was drunk and then took off when the cop jumped in the back of the pickup and he went driving off like moron, he is at fault. Iād like to know how quick he was shot, how fast the vehicle was going, if it was weaving trying to throw the cop out, etc., or if the cop just fired after two seconds. None of that info is available, Iād prefer to wait for more info (including his blood alcohol level) before judging the copās actions either way.
Depending on how drunk he was (it was a suspected DUI stop), yes, that vehicle is a weapon.
A vehicle is a deadly instrumentality. Sure, I agree that thereās something thatās hard to accept about this, but if the guy was drunk and the road was busy, like a highway or downtown, then I can see this qualifying as preventing imminent death or grievous bodily injury. If it was some hokey back road thatās not all that busy, then I think thereās more of a problem here.
What I wonāt is accept here is an excuse that the resulting chase would have been what endangered the public and risked imminent death or bodily injury. āHe saved us from the car chase that would have happened.ā Studies keep coming up as negative on whether police should engage in high speed chases at all.
Watch out for āwhat you readā when a Cop kills a man. Stories evolve quickly to support the Cop.
Butā¦who says he was drunk? He fled a DUI stop ( maybe he had pot in his car or is a "strict constructionist and disagrees with the DUI stop thing on Constitutional grounds ) but unless a sobriety test was performed the Cop had no cause to think the man drunk. āwhat you readā will support the Cop no matter how poor his judgment.
The Cop was in the back of the truck because he put himself there. The people that he works for ( and thatās actually who he works for ) buy him cars and radios to deal with situations like this. So he doesnāt have to act like a cowboy and kill members of the population heās sworn to protect and serve. Heās supposed to be doing a job for the people not on them and he had non-lethal options. In this case all rational options were non-lethal.
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Not quite. SCOTUS ruled that a policy of using deadly force on all fleeing felons is not ok, i.e., itās not enough to rely solely on the fact that the suspect is fleeing The court said that the proper rule has to include consideration of whether the fleeing suspect poses a substantial risk of serious physical harm.
Drunk people behind the wheel who intend to flee a lawful stop (in most contexts) are going to qualify under that ruleā¦although I can imagine some where they donāt.
Edit: Just saw it might have been the passenger who was drunk, not the driver? If thatās the case, then forget itā¦the cop wonāt have an excuse/justification. What the Garner decision does do is require that the cop be reasonably certain. He couldnāt just guess that the driver was drunk just because his passenger was shitfaced. Heād have to have actually observed signs that the driver was drunk.
If the cop was in the bed of the truck, he shot the driver from a range of about 24 - 36 inches, (further if an extended length truck) and probably in the back or back of the head. What sort of police training and procedure is that?
Iām familiar with the rulingā¦and I think you are way off the mark. First of allā¦how did the Cop know the man was drunk? He had not yet examined him. What he saw was a man attempting avoid a DUI stop ( legal here in Florida ). He di not smell alcohol or hear slurred speech. How could he have?
As for giving Cops the rights to make interpretations like the one you make ( the Supreme Court didnātā¦thank God ) anything could be a weapon. If Iām drunk on may balcony holding a frozen turkey I could drop it and kill someone. So I should be shot? No fucking way. I have to have intentā¦and that is particularly so if the thing being deemed a weapon is not a conventional one.
This happened because a stupid fucking cowboy of a Cop jumped into the back of a truckā¦for a presumed ( not proven ) non-violent victim-less crime. How long is too long to stop under those circumstances? This went from a routine DUI stop to a homicideā¦because of that Copās judgment.
Run the fucking tag ( a 28 & 29 its called ) and meet the assholes at home.
Wrong. Slurred speech, the smell of alcohol, bloodshot and glassy eyes, voice immodulation (loud talking), nystagmus (jerky eye movements because they canāt focus/vision swimming), etc., can all be observed while the person is still in the car, especially if the person is hammered as opposed to a ācocktail party buzz.ā The rule under Garner would not require the full sobriety test first.
You think Jethro gets a cocktail party buzz or goes whole hog?
Bottom line: weāre hearing different things and donāt have all the facts on this yet. There are entirely feasible situations in which it could have been justified, but we donāt know yet. It certainly sounds bad in light of what someone said about it being the passenger though. The cop will have to point to facts that show the driver posed a substantial risk of serious physical harm if allowed to flee in the Jethromobile and if he canāt point to the kinds of evidence I listed above (or the toxicology report disproves his claims that he observed them), then heās fuckedā¦or should be.