The BART Shooting

This is somewhat on topic, about as much as the last post was as it deals closely with a side storyline within Bombshell: accidental police shootings.

Yes, accidental.

I was asked to respond to what I thought of the videos by a reader. I watched the different videos of the event from all the different angles, and based on the reaction of the officers it was clearly an accident. After the shot is fired, they stand up, all three put their hands on their head, an indication of panic and worry in body language. The officer who fired the shot and another officer stare at each other for a few seconds, and then they go to turn the man over to check for signs of life.

Was it a tragedy? Yes. Was it brutality? Think again.

Just judging on the reactions of the officers right when it happened, and the fact that the man resigned right afterwards sends a clear message that he knows that he messed up. They say that he was going for his taser, which in some agencies is kept on their gun holster in like an extension part. In a struggle to keep this guy still and everything that is going on, it can and did happen. Accidents happen. There is no way that any police officer could honestly pin someone down and murder them in cold blood in front of a train full of witnesses and two other officers right there. That was not adrenaline, abuse of power, that was clearly every officer's worst nightmare.

That's not to say that it hasn't happened before that way. I can't seem to remember where this was exactly so I can't google for the articles on it, but here in the Inland Empire where I live out toward Rialto or Colton there was an officer who had a Marine on the ground. The Marine was following orders and being submissive, but he asked if he could get up off the ground. The officer instructed him to get up, and then shot him twice. Twice. He tried to claim that the man was reaching for a gun, but when that story didn't pan out he claimed that the gun went off accidentally. That man now sits in jail, because it's clear what really happened there.

How do we prevent something like this from happening again? Petition all agencies to train their officers to carry their tasers on the opposite side of the gun, backwards in a holster so that the officer can reach across their body with their dominant hand to draw the weapon. I actually know of an officer who refuses to carry a taser for this among many other reasons, including the fact that he doesn't want to accidentally tase himself.

You can also prevent it by not resisting the police. That's a thought, eh?

It just seems to me that any time someone dies at the hands of the police it becomes a huge controversy, be it the 13 year old boy who drove a car into a group of LAPD officers or the 18 month old who was being used as a human shield by her father as he shot at the SWAT team, it will always be controversial.

And isn't that great?

A police officer can't kill a person, accidentally, justifiably, or on purpose, without it being looked into. The checks and balances exist, people. They do.