This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, given the fact that the guy had SURRENDERED already. There is no justification for the officer if the guy already had his hands on the hood of the car.
Based on what you're saying, if someone threatens to physically harm the officer, and the officer feels his life was threatened, given the fact that the guy has surrendered, the officer has the right to shoot the guy? I would understand if the perp was still resisting arrest or some shit like that, but given the situation, this officer should be losing his job.
Yes, but not to shoot the guy. The suspect was tased, which is less-than-lethal force which means not likely to cause great bodily injury or loss of life. From what I could tell it was not the gun-like taser that shoots out two prongs. It looks like he had one of the close range tasers where you actually have to press it up to the person to deliver the shock.
You don't understand because apparently you don't know anything about law enforcement training and policies. That's okay though, because the majority of the general public don't understand. In fact you pretty much have to be in law enforcement or married to law enforcement to understand. Now, I'm not saying there wasn't perhaps a better way to handle the situation. Just that he was more than likely within his training to do what he did, and that's legal.
If someone has the physical ability to carry out a threat of bodily injury, we are within our rights to use force on them to protect ourselves. Given the size of the suspect compared to the cop, there's no way in hell If I were the cop I would want to risk getting behind that man and letting him have the opportunity to hurt me.
Everyone seems to be under the impression that because this guys hands are on the car he had surrendered. The way I see it they haven't "surrendered", if that's what you want to call it, until they have their hands cuffed behind the back and are sitting in the back seat of the vehicle where they pose far less of a threat to the officer.
I totally agree that the video shows nothing but bad things for that officer. It doesn't look good at all. I also still believe it's quite unreliable without footage of everything that led up to that point.
Video camera's can be our best friend or worst enemy depending on what they happen to capture.
I've been in a situation like this before before, where there was an incident that required a use of force and a camera was not on the scene immediately due to the spontaneous need for the use of force. When the camera did arrive and start filming it only caught maybe 30% of what had occurred, if even that. What the camera footage showed did not look in our favor. And even though all of our reports reflected what had happened and was on the camera. The camera didn't show everything leading up to why we had to do what we did. And so the retarded higher ups that we had at the time felt that excessive force had been used and decided to punish one of the leaders of my team by kicking him off the team. They weren't there, I and everyone else on the team was there. The use of force was completely justified and gave the results required, but the higher ups wanted to focus on the video and not our reports. A week later we all decided to quit that particular team. No sense on being on a special team if no one of higher authority has your back when real shit goes down that isn't pretty. So I can easily understand what this officer is probably going through.
Now if we were to know via tape that the whole time this suspect was "Yes sir, No sir." and doing everything asked and gave no intentions of causing trouble, then yes, the officer would definitely be out of line.
But we don't know that do we? Why, It's not shown.
Now as to the comment about other officers being in the background and laughing. Well, I'll have to watch it again because I didn't see them. But to be honest I couldn't not crack a bit of a smile either at how the big man screamed like a girl. It's always kind of funny to watch people get tased be they law enforcement for training purposes or actual police footage on the field. Funny to watch but not nearly as amusing to be on the receiving side.
