Quote:
Originally Posted by SackAttack
I'm not interested in handcuffing police officers' ability to do their job, pardon the pun. I'm interested in accountability. And I'm NOT interested in "I was afraid for my life" as a blanket escape-accountability-free card.
You're a police officer. You chose that job, knowing what it means, and one of the things it means is that you may find yourself in a threatening situation. The power of the state means that you have the ability to use lethal force to put an end to dangerous situations, which isn't a power civilians necessarily have. But you trivialize that power and that responsibility if every time you pull the trigger - justified or not - you fall back on "I was afraid for my life."
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Saying "I was afraid" does not alone absolve anyone of a shooting. The claim of fear is relevant, as it would be for any other person in a self-defense/use of force scenario. But it's rare you can ever prove or disprove someone's subjective feelings. The circumstances surrounding a shooting will either support or not support whether the fear is reasonable given the circumstances. And officers involved in shootings are trying to bring (through their attorneys and union reps), much more to the table than "I was afraid." They'll make arguments about the circumstances, highlight facts that are good for them, point to uncertainty when it's the state's or agency's burden to prove wrongdoing - just like every other defense attorney. Except they're more specialized and better-funded than public defender's offices.
And it's more difficult to prove intent for criminal acts when you have split-second judgment calls. I'd personally be happy with more criminal charges in those situations. But there IS a difference between police officers and private citizens when it comes to analyzing split-second use of force. Usually, the officer is in a position where they have the lawful authority to seize the person that's shot, because the person has committed a crime or are suspected of committing a crime. The private citizen sometimes has that same authority, but it's less common. So the private citizen is one step behind the officer right off the bat in justifying the force. When a person is allowed to use SOME force, but uses too much, that's a much more difficult criminal case to make than when you're not allowed to use ANY force, and then clearly use some - which is usually the case with private citizens. But not always, in civilian self-defense/use of force cases, you have the same challenges - look at George Zimmerman. That's the classic bad-guy getting away with bad conduct because of the way the law is case. Back in that thread here I remember explaining exactly what the prosecution was probably fucked, and people got really pissed off.