Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteTiger
So you believe that the driver, who, according to police, has lied about every other thing he's said in the entire encounter (of which we don't know the length of) was telling the truth about calling his lawyer? And that if he actually was, he would have listened to that lawyer?
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I have watched this video many times over to try and form an opinion on it. That in itself should indicate some benefit of doubt is deserved for an officer in a potentially dangerous situation.
From what I can see, this video is not what should be shown to train new officers as an ideal approach to this type of scenario. Did the officer escalate the situation in a manner that was (in 20/20 hindsight from the comfort of our homes) unlikely to be successful? It is probably a fair comment that he did.
There was plenty of room to respond to the concerns of the driver about the loaded handgun and potentially being shot with an assurance it was only for officer safety and that he would put it away as soon as he could be sure the car was being turned off and the driver was not going to hurt anyone.
Would that have worked? No idea. But it was very likely something that would have been warranted before screaming to get out of the 'expletive' car (while still brandishing said handgun pointed in a manner that appears to me to be a position that if fired it would hit the driver).
I mean, it should be noted the driver would have to reach down with his hand to a very high-danger area in order to unbuckle his seat belt to comply with the officer's very agitated demands to get out of the car. Would that have ended well? Perhaps that was genuinely in the mind of the driver and not being appreciated by the officer in the moment.
That said, I am having a hard time being able to say that what the officer was doing was completely unreasonable given the circumstances. He did, in fact, answer the driver wanting to know why he was being arrested. He also responded that the driver could record all he wanted...he just needed him to get out of the car.
Related to the bolded above, in my opinion, the "I'm calling my lawyer" in this video appears to be a ruse and a distraction as part of a plan to flee.
If you carefully watch with 0:26 left in the video you get a clear look at the gear shift of the car. Looks solidly in park to me. By 0:11 we see the driver's hand go down to the gear shift and I will say we can know he puts it in gear at this point.
This happens before the window is broken.
In my mind we can know he put it in gear then because from the moment of the glass shattering to him driving away, we can see both hands of the driver...passing the phone from his left to his right and then continuing to hold it in his right as he drives away. A hand never goes down to the gearshift after the window breaking.
We also get a pretty clear view of the gear shift with 0:06 left in the video and it is now down appearing in gear (as different from what it looked like when I say it was in park 20 seconds earlier).
Calling his lawyer? Why put the car in drive to do that?
Is that why the officer suddenly broke the window? Was that the right move? Again, I am not sure. But there is a pretty decent evidence based reason to believe the flight was happening independent of that escalation of force.
In the end, I still am not sure on this one. There could be facts to support either side at this point and we just don't know them. The full body cam footage could be very interesting. But I would also say when a police service is not yet releasing that footage, you do not need to assume the police are accurately describing what it shows in their written media release.