Texas Shooting

[nappyroots]

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Was this necessary!

[BS Wildcats]

1 hour ago, nappyroots said:

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Was this necessary!

If the officer felt as if his life was in danger due to a vehicle coming towards him, it may have been necessary.  Probably should wait until all facts are in before any insinuations are made or hinted at.

[tvc184]

1 hour ago, BS Wildcats said:

If the officer felt as if his life was in danger due to a vehicle coming towards him, it may have been necessary.  Probably should wait until all facts are in before any insinuations are made or hinted at.

It may have been legal depending on what happened but I doubt (and have a hard time believing) that it was necessary. 

 

[BS Wildcats]

13 minutes ago, tvc184 said:

It may have been legal depending on what happened but I doubt (and have a hard time believing) that it was necessary. 

 

I agree, but should wait and see what the facts are.

[baddog]

Balch Springs police shooting: Department changes story about 15-year-old's death

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[Hagar]

Waiting for all the facts, but based on the current information, this looks terrible.  

[tvc184]

6 hours ago, baddog said:

Balch Springs police shooting: Department changes story about 15-year-old's death

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Maybe it is just poor reporting or the chief didn't explain it. The article seems to say that the car was not going in reverse, it was driving forward. That tells me almost nothing but what gear the car was in. Was it driving "forward" toward the officer or away? I could care less what gear the car was in but it matters quite a bit which way it was moving. 

[baddog]

18 minutes ago, tvc184 said:

Maybe it is just poor reporting or the chief didn't explain it. The article seems to say that the car was not going in reverse, it was driving forward. That tells me almost nothing but what gear the car was in. Was it driving "forward" toward the officer or away? I could care less what gear the car was in but it matters quite a bit which way it was moving. 

Just posting what is out there. I take no sides until all facts are in.

[tvc184]

1 hour ago, baddog said:

Just posting what is out there. I take no sides until all facts are in.

My response wasn't to you but to the article you posted. 

It is what us sometimes a standard of poor reporting or did the chief give vague information? 

[baddog]

My opinion......people had a problem with his being shot in the forehead with the cop behind them and the vehicle traveling in reverse. I did.

[tvc184]

1 hour ago, baddog said:

My opinion......people had a problem with his being shot in the forehead with the cop behind them and the vehicle traveling in reverse. I did.

 I would be lying if I said I understood that. 

 

[bullets13]

2 hours ago, baddog said:

My opinion......people had a problem with his being shot in the forehead with the cop behind them and the vehicle traveling in reverse. I did.

he could've been looking over his shoulder while they backed up.  but who the heck knows what really happened.  supposedly there should be some body cam footage, and there oughta be dashcam footage.

[nappyroots]

A police officers job is hard and very dangerous at times. They must make split second decisions at times. Hopefully for the policemen and the deceased this case is handled in a honest and professional manner.

[baddog]

1 hour ago, bullets13 said:

he could've been looking over his shoulder while they backed up.  but who the heck knows what really happened.  supposedly there should be some body cam footage, and there oughta be dashcam footage.

True, I was playing percentages.

[Big girl]

They have ruled the kid's death a homicide.

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[bullets13]

29 minutes ago, Big girl said:

They have ruled the kid's death a homicide.

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this has absolutely no bearing on the case.  Any time someone intentionally kills someone else it's called a homicide.  Even if it is determined that the cop did nothing wrong, it will still be ruled a homicide.  I'm not taking the cop's side on this one, just explaining to you.  If you break into my house and try to shoot me, and I end up killing you, the coroner would still rule your death a homicide, even though I have committed no crime while protecting myself.  I can tell that you're posting this because you took this to mean that the coroner is saying the kid was murdered.  While this may be the finding of investigators later, the article here doesn't add anything to what we know.  It was already known that the cop had shot the kid, which was all this ruling is stating.   

[Tigers2010]

This sounds like a terrible situation. Granted, I do not know all of the facts, but based on the articles I have read, it does not seem like the officer made a good decision. I think he will end up having to pay for such a poor decision.

 It sounds like the Police Chief is saying the car was moving in the opposite direction that the officer. Though the driver was disobeying a direct order, that is not a justification to fire.

[bullets13]

17 minutes ago, Tigers2010 said:

This sounds like a terrible situation. Granted, I do not know all of the facts, but based on the articles I have read, it does not seem like the officer made a good decision. I think he will end up having to pay for such a poor decision.

 It sounds like the Police Chief is saying the car was moving in the opposite direction that the officer. Though the driver was disobeying a direct order, that is not a justification to fire.

the most recent account I've seen was that the vehicle was running in reverse, ignoring commands to stop.  then they shifted gears and started going forward, at which point the shot was fired.  what I'm wondering is whether the officer who shot was near the front of the car (following it while it was backing away), and when they kicked it into drive and started heading forward if he then was in/near the path of the vehicle and fired the shot.  it would appear at this point that the officer used horrible judgment in shooting at the car.  Perhaps a bodycam video will shed some light on the situation.  If the video shows that the car is trying to hit him, or driving in a manner that put his life in significant danger, then while I'm not a fan of firing blindly into a car in most situations, I can understand why he feared for his life.  If the car is passing by him without the officer having to move out of the way and he fires into the car as they drive by, that's a different matter.  

[Hagar]

The sad irony here, and understand this is just my opinion, if the Officer did feel his life was threatened, I'd bet he was trying to hit the driver, yet happened to hit the passenger with a fatal shot.  Car swerved?  Officer just made a bad shot?  Doesn't matter, the young man is dead.  On such relatively small things, our lives hinge.

[tvc184]

Just like the local case of the security guard shooting into the car in Port Arthur while thinking he was witnessing a robbery.  It would be lawful to stop a robbery by using deadly force.  Unfortunately, blasting indiscriminately into a vehicle he caused the death of a woman who is not involved. 

 I wonder about the thought process of firing into a vehicle in such cases. If a person is actively and continually try to run over you, I understand shooting at the driver.  That does not seem to be the case in the security guard in Port Arthur or the officer in Balch Springs. 

[nappyroots]

On 5/2/2017 at 4:14 AM, baddog said:

Just posting what is out there. I take no sides until all facts are in.

The officer has been arrested. The facts must be in.

[BS Wildcats]

1 hour ago, nappyroots said:

The officer has been arrested. The facts must be in.

Sounds bad and he should be punished

[baddog]

3 hours ago, nappyroots said:

The officer has been arrested. The facts must be in.

See, I waited and was presented the facts. Difference between you and me is that I can accept these facts. I won't make excuses for a white criminal.

Feel bad about the young man. 

[tvc184]

I have yet to read any facts or even what is reported to be facts other than an officer shot someone and a 15 year old child is dead. 

Not that it matters what I think but.......

1. A 15 year old child was needlessly killed. He is an innocent victim no matter what happened.

2. Was the vehicle driving away or toward the officer? The chief changed the "facts" but said the car was not in reverse but was moving forward. Okay, but what gear he was in might mean nothing. Was he driving forward toward or away from the officer?

3. What is the time span from the shots fired on scene and the officer opening fire?

4. What was the distance between the officer and the vehicle that he fired into?

5. Did the officer see muzzle flashes in the vicinity of the vehicle whether it was heading toward or away from him?

In the late 80's in San Bernardino, CA an officer responded to an armed person on school grounds late at night or early in the morning. As the officer was walking around the school he saw a man with a gun that turned toward the officer and fired. The officer saw the flash of light and returned fire, killing a teenager. No problem..... except it was some people playing Laser Tag. The officer killed a kid with a toy that likely had no idea the officer was there other than to think it was one of his friends playing the game. 

No, it isn't the same scenario but in a way it is. It is perception. What did a officer reasonably believe? The SCOTUS has set the standard of viewing such incidents from the eyes of an officer responding to a situation. It is not viewed from the eyes of a person in his living room or in a judge's chambers a few months later. The ruling (Graham v. Connor) said that such uses of force are to be viewed from an officer responding to a possible violent situation and not from the totality of circumstances as we might later find. It was a unanimous ruling.

In a recent case the SCOTUS (2014 Plumhoff v. Rickard) a unanimous Court found that an officer could not be sued for firing into a car and killing not only the driver but an innocent passenger. Note again that it was a unanimous ruling. 

In 2007 in Scott v. Harris the SCOTUS ruled in an 8-1 decision that ramming a car off the roadway in a chase and causing a person to be a quadriplegic was not an unlawful use of force. 

In 2015 in another 8-1 ruling the SCOTUS said that a Texas DPS trooper was entitled to qualified immunity from even a lawsuit after he fired into a fleeing car and killed the driver. At the time the trooper was on top of an overpass and was in no danger from being struck. He had just been ordered not to shoot by his supervisor but he opened fire anyway. 

In all of these cases the SCOTUS has ruled that a decision must be based on what an officer sees and what he reasonably believes. In these decisions we have an innocent person killed and an officer disobeying a direct order. In 9-0 and 8-1 rulings the officers were cleared. When we often have 5-4 and 6-3 split decisions all the time from the SCOTUS, in these four police cases on use of force there were 34 votes in favor of the officers and 2 against. That is overwhelming. 

While none of these is the same scenario as in Balch Springs, the point is that you cannot simply say a person that was unarmed/not a threat/innocent automatically makes the officer wrong. These were civil suits where the burden of proof is not beyond a reasonable doubt such as it is for a criminal conviction but a burden of a preponderance of the evidence or roughly more than 50%. 

There is a good likelihood that this officer will be convicted although maybe not for Murder. I can envision Manslaughter or Criminally Negligent Homicide. But who knows, maybe the "facts" will show enough for a Murder conviction. If so, great. We still have seen nothing publicly released that show what happened other than the aforementioned a 15 year old is dead and an officer fired the shot. 

Maybe the officer has a history of stupid decisions and this one rises to Murder and he needs to get a life sentence. Maybe he was responding to a legally defensible situation and will be cleared by a jury. If anyone can actually report any known "facts", please point out the source. 

[Big girl]

On 5/2/2017 at 7:49 AM, tvc184 said:

 I would be lying if I said I understood that. 

 

Roflmbo. I agree