California Cop Who Shot 18-Year-Old Had His Bodycam Off, But Surveillance Footage Captured Him Shooting Suspect in the Back as He Fled

I knew 5 and they were all at least wife-beaters, and 3 beat their children.

A good friend of mine has an older brother that is a state trooper and I have heard him say ... ".... A dead suspect can't defend himself in court" multiple times.

But I also my tenant who is a new state trooper and he is the nicest guy I have ever met. Maybe he isn't tainted yet.

I work in municipal government, and different departments have very different police. It really comes diem to leadership and accountability.

In my last city, the police department wasn't founded until around 2010. The city manager who hired all their leadership at the beginning was a black man who had seen bad policing in his day.

They started with the understanding that shit don't fly. They all wore body cams from the moment the department was founded. They get most of their hires fresh from the academies so they haven't been tainted. They focus on public safety and compliance instead of punishment (in 2023 they wrote 4 tickets between 20 officers). It's a great department.

My current city is different. They exist to chase poor people and minorities out of the city. When there was a major collapse in a road, I (the maps and permits guy) was out there flagging traffic myself because the police chief didn't see it (public safety) as their problem. They go to the"warrior cop" seminars and just meet every stereotye of the bad cop.

The rest of the city staff hates them for a million reasons, but primarily because they're useless. We could just use the county sheriff's office and highway patrol and achieve everything we need to, but instead over half our staff positions are wasted on police when we don't even have a public works department or city engineer.

Hemp?

So he got killed for dropping the guns when told to? The article may not be explicit enough with the timeline, but at least implies that

I don't have it off the top of my head, but the usual "he was running at us blasting so we had to do it"

When they claimed he was shot as he was advancing on the cops. When in fact he was shot when he was running away

alleged

The video of someone being shot in the back?

He did drop his gun. You can see it in the video, he yeeted that fuckin thing. There is NO REASON to shoot someone in the back, because if their back is towards you, they are not a threat to you. The only people who shoot other people in the back are fucking cowards, you fucking coward.

Cops aren't allowed to perform summary executions. It doesn't matter what the cop demanded he do. He's not allowed to execute people for disobedience.

It's sad how people like you think people should be allowed to behave like this without getting shot.

Jesus fucking Christ. You do not belong in society.

Fucking disgusting, justifying execution because "cops"

I'm going to take the under on that bet

Worth every penny, and far from a large expense for cop budgets.

The LAPD cost more than 50% of the ENTIRE LA budget. Just the cops. Everything else combined costs less than one department.

If that footage is safe/secure/available and makes these murderous thugs think twice about pulling the trigger, then its worth twice the price.

Yeah this should cost less than half that per patrol.

Even for a small town, the yearly budget is likely in the millions of dollars. 60k/year shouldn't be a crippling expense.

Lol, that's crazy.

Definitely getting scammed. There's no reason for it to be that expensive.

Just use your own brains, purchase your own cameras, and use your own storage. $60k per year? Yeah. You all are definitely getting scammed.

But useful idiots will see otherwise, as they always do.

Additionally, someone is innocent until proven guilty and that's not the cops job. The cop shot someone not guilty and now people are speculating about the crimes that person could have done to justify it

Actually, the Fleeing Felon rule explicitly does allow for deadly force in this case.

This is an interesting ethical dilemma which I don't know if there's a clear cut answer. It's a variation of the trolley problem (sort of). I think it depends a lot on the risk assessment being made. I don't know the details of this particular case, but I can think of plenty of examples where a potential future danger should be limited by direct action. I'm happy to provide examples if you're interested in exploring this thought further. I don't know that I have a simple yes/no answer to this dilemma (also why I never became a cop).

Of course it doesn't because that "somebody" isn't someone you know. If that "someone" is your family, what do you suggest he do?

I don't think a person is actually interested in hearing both sides if this is mysteriously omitted from their discussion.

Yes, you can have a gun, but holding it opening in front of an officer is asking for trouble.

The guy that got shot was part of a car chase that switched to a foot chase after the cars tire blew out. The guy didn't just walk down the road with a gun. In the video you can also see the guy making a strange movement with the gun just before the cop shot. It most likely was to throw the gun away but the cop couldn't have known that. And given the overall circumstances shooting at this point seems reasonable.

But the cop is still a piece of shit that shouldn't have been a cop by this point anymore. He is a cop since 2018 and has been involved in now 5 shootings (far higher than the average). And he was part of the badge bending scandal. Where cops bent the tips of their badge to mark fatal shootings. Any cop who does that, shouldn't be a cop.

Luckily the guy survived, unfortunately the cop will stay a cop.

In the same comment where you suggest people stop going by what if, you say:

I will be honest, I don't know the full extent of the situation yet

You’re making a stance based on your admitted lack of information, and a single video that doesn’t show the whole story.

So much this. If we aren't going to restrict possession of firearms in any way then we can't use that as a basis for intent. Just replace, "had a gun", with literally any other constitutionally protected right and this argument falls flat on its face.

"He was using words, we will never know if he was about to run into a theater and yell 'fire'..."

Not everything is black and white. There's nuance to every situation, and this user brings up good points

He pretty clearly calls out that he's not justifying the execution and cover up.

Wasn't it just last week some cop in NSW gunned someone down for looking at him crossways?

Edit: my bad, it was 2 years ago that 4 cops went on a hunt and shot a guy in his own yard for wearing a hoodie. 2 days before Christmas. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-19/nsw-police-brad-balzan-inquest-st-marys/103600190

If the suspect raises the stakes to endangering life, half measures don't cut it.

You have a gun out in front of an officer, I am not surprised when tensions rise and someone gets shot.

How do you go and post a reply to the wrong comment, and then come back a day later and get mad with an edit that the dude didn't reply to you anyway. That's some impressive shit.

Edit: Or wait, did you actually MEAN to reply to that guy in the hopes that he'd somehow justify why they didn't wish death on someone for having a gun? Because that's frankly even stupider so it didn't even enter my mind.

I don't care if you burn down police stations, figuratively or literally. I'm just sick to fucking death of pro-gun people seeking out vulnerable minorities and convincing them that buying a gun is anything other than a donation to the Republican party.

you're gonna have to have examples for wild statements like that, dude.

It's weird how few "gangbangers" ever wind up being caught, pursued, litigated against and how many of them cops seem to kill or claim they've killed before any substantial evidence is ever obtained.

It's almost like they're justifying their increased budgets and surveillance even though crime has been on a steady decline (covid spike notwithstanding) for the last 50 years.

Those same gangbangers exist in countries that don't have the same level of police shootings, and they haven't overrun the government (even though bad guys don't listen to gun laws and can buy them anywhere, as police tell me, so that can't be the case)

Can you give me an example where this is true. There's plenty of counties that only have a sheriff's department with minimal police presence and they aren't overrun with gangs.

When I was in France I did see the police being heavy-handed on a few occasions (by UK standards anyway) but there was no routine gun violence and certainly no 18 year olds running around with pistols. The US is unique among developed countries.

Even if he had a gun? Something that's made specifically to kill people and no citizen should get to own?

Weird how ya'll are pro-gun all of a sudden, even more pro-gun than the typical pro-gun nuts. Lol.

Well of course you haven't seen law enforcement being helpful, between "Police shot an armed bank robber and everyone else is unharmed" and "Police shot an unarmed teenager", what do you think will get more public attention? It's definitely not "Police helped an old woman crossed the street", nobody gives a fuck about that, I've run into both good and bad cops and even I don't care.