the cop was obviously concerned that the driver might be armed, and flipped out in a bad split second "decision" that was driven by self-preservation. it was unjustified, but humans are not logic machines.

1) he should not have put his hand in the car. he didn't even ask him to leave the car.
2) because people in situations like this act on adrenaline rather than logic, the proper protocol for a cop in this situation should be to approach the car with non-lethal weapons. even with the error of reaching in, something like a taser in this circumstance would not have killed this person.

i've been over this before: humans are not god-like, rational, logic machines; we are not homo economicus, and we are especially prone to the suspension of thought in situations such as this. instead of letting this happen over and over and blaming it on the cop for making the wrong choice, we need to understand that the root of the problem is the scenario. no amount of training can fix this. the best, most ideal cop would have reacted the same way.

this cop did not make a conscious choice to shoot this person. this cop made a bad choice to enter the car, and then was subconsciously driven to shoot by a hormonal reaction of self-defense in the midst of a conflict.

the only way to stop police shootings is to take away their guns.

there's a broad, social epiphany underlying this. it flies in the face of our justice system, our concepts of economics, our perception of free will, our mainstream philosophical positions (if you want to call them that...) and ultimately the remnants of our dominant protestant religion.

but, we need to do this.

we are not in complete control. we're relatively advanced - for primates. but we're still very primitive creatures.

if i was defending the officer, i would argue against the existence of a mens rea. this is not murder. but, the law remains unlikely to let him off with less than involuntary manslaughter.

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+deathtokoalas Stop making excuses for the cop. You are talking as if the cop was a victim of humanity's imperfections, ignoring the fact that not only did he make a concious decision to draw his gun and fire at an unarmed man, he also tried to lie about it later.

His lies are proof that he knew he was in the wrong and it says a lot about his character to shamelessly try and place the blame on his murdered victim. 

deathtokoalas
+Smoke i'm not placing the blame on the person he accidentally shot, i'm pointing out that nobody is to blame in this situation - excluding the initial error, but it's not the same thing. and, yes - our society is barbaric in terms of it's enforcement of retribution. it needs to place blame in situations where no blame can be assigned. it needs a zero sum game.

this man is not guilty of any crime, but he will pay a steep price to uphold unscientific concepts of free will and enforce the christian value of vengeance.

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+deathtokoalas This isn't something that just happened, these cops are trained to asses the situation and only use deadly force where they deem it absolutely necessary.

Drawing a gun I can understand, but firing before confirming the other guy had a gun is inexcusable.

You also said you think that the cop only drew because he thought the driver might have been armed. Well guess what? That's not what the cop said, he said that the guy dragged him with his car and only shot at him to save himself.

When the video was analysed it turned out that the cop shot before the car moved anywhere.

Even the cop himself doesn't back the excuse you're making for him.

You come across as someone who values logic and common sense, so why are you ignoring all the facts and fabricating your own scenarios to support your ideal outcome?

deathtokoalas
+Smoke what the cop says doesn't mean anything. it seems foolish, and not particularly borne out by the evidence, but that doesn't mean it's not what he was thinking. (inserted to replace strike: it does seem as though the video backs up his narrative. but what's more important than what actually happened is what he thought was happening before the adrenaline took over.). it's not really an important part of the scenario - or at least it wouldn't be if it was being approached with a scientific understanding of how humans react under stress.

my understanding is that the protocol in this situation is to draw as you're taking the person out of the car - that is, that he's trained to have his hand on his gun as he's taking the person out, in the case that he's armed. that's what i meant, and it's perfectly rational. it's not clear why this person is refusing to provide his license, and if the cop is going to make some assumptions the assumptions he needs to make are on the side of precaution. so, that's the answer as to why he drew his weapon - he was trained to draw his weapon.

as i pointed out, he should have a non-lethal weapon in this circumstance.

the important point here is that what we understand about how people work in these situations is that hormonal processes take over and people act on impulse. it's clear that he made a conscious choice to enter the car. it's clear that he made a conscious choice to draw - and that that was the right choice, both relative to his training and relative to the logic of the situation. it's also clear that when a struggle erupted, the impulse of self-defense overrode any rational thinking process and that he fired not out of a conscious decision but out of a subconscious reaction.

that's just how humans work. it's just the science of the situation. but our legal system has no framework to integrate this. rather, it's based on archaic concepts of imaginary "reasonable people" that are as absurd as the now largely discarded "homo economicus".

the blame is in the scenario. the solution is in taking the guns away. you can't train monkeys to act like robots. it's just not in our nature. when people get into struggle, and are placed under stress, they are unable to think clearly because their bodies are flushed with hormones that take control. our policies should be based on this understanding - and what that says is to disarm traffic cops.

as i mentioned: it's a challenging position to take relative to our existing legal, economic, philosophical and religious norms. but, the reality of the science is actually crystal clear and what it states is that when people are in situations like this cop was in they have almost no control over their actions.

so, we need to prevent the situation from occurring.

i don't think that whether he was actually dragged or not is a meaningful aspect in the case. it's enough to suggest he thought he was going to be dragged for the stress to kick in and the officer to lose control.

however, it is indeed clear that he's closer to the grey car when he gets up than he was when he reached into the car. the video rather clearly demonstrates that the car was moving with him attached to it, and that that aspect of the narrative is accurate.

it's not the important thing to try and figure out. if the car was moving, and it was, that doesn't mean it's ok to shoot to stop the driver. that still collapses to a fight-or-flight response, and a lack of conscious control. and it still suggests that traffic cops should not have guns.