Quote:
Originally Posted by RainMaker
And you can bet the people saying his criminal history doesn't matter would be screaming about those officers history if it was bad.
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Do you not get the difference?
Someone with a history of racist screeds or use of excessive force being in a position of public trust is not at all the same thing as excusing the extrajudicial killing of someone with a history of trouble with the law because of that history.
If a killing is improper, it doesn't matter what the history of the decedent is. Maybe you're Jon and you think that person is better up pushing up daisies even if their only crime in the moment was to fail to offer to walk a little old lady across the parking lot, because they have a criminal past and are thus worthless scum. Doesn't matter - only the actions of the individual *in that moment* justify the use of lethal force.
Self-defense can be a justification, but it should not be a blanket justification that an officer can throw out as a "get out of consequences free" card.
As to the history of the police officer, the past words and deeds of the person pulling the trigger are absolutely relevant. If the officer has a history of excessive force, it's fair to question whether a shooting represents another example thereof.
If the officer has a history of making racist comments, then that's a training/sensitivity issue for which the department is culpable. The police officer may not have been consciously acting in a racist way at the time he pulled the trigger, but that would be a failure of the department to not have previously addressed those behaviors.