Police officers have been granted by society the power of life and death. They must therefore be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
I’ve handled tasers. I’ve fired 9mm pistols almost identical to police issue weapons. The weights are dramatically different. The grips are dramatically different. The method of firing is dramatically different.
If she really didn’t know she was holding her firearm instead of a taser, then her irresponsible act must rise at least to the level of depraved indifference. The fact that she was a police officer must make her depraved indifference matter more, not less.
She had a responsibility to protect that man. Instead she killed him, because she couldn’t be bothered to make sure what she was holding in her hand.
She needs to be charged with and convicted of first degree manslaughter and sent to prison for decades — to teach police officers a lesson. If they’re going to use deadly force, they need to expect to be held to the highest possible standard, and be severely punished if they get it wrong.
Deadly force should be, after all, extraordinarily rare and used only in the most exigent circumstances.
I would further submit that even firing a taser under these circumstances would have been unjustified violence. Taser strikes carry a non-negligible risk of serious health consequences, up to and including death. People die every year in the United States because police shot them with tasers.
How is that acceptable?
I’ve seen that video. The driver of the car was surrounded by police officers. They had him completely overpowered. He did not represent a threat to them or to anyone. And let’s not forget, they stopped him because he had air fresheners hanging from his mirror, and they needed to ticket him because his registration was expired. That’s it, that’s all.
They couldn’t figure out how to write him a ticket without firing a weapon and killing him?
Police in the United States are out of control, and Black people bear the brunt of their aggressive, needless violence.
If police don’t figure out how to stop being vicious thugs, calls for defunding them are going to grow, and street protests are going to grow until something fundamentally changes. I would think police would realize that getting their own behavior under control would be better for them.
But maybe they’re just too violent and stupid for that.
