Geraldo Rivera advances the novel boiling blood defense
by digby
“You don’t see, but there is reliable, I think, eyewitness account that there is then a struggle after the Taser. So, up until that point, the cop with his adrenaline pumping, now he’s been in a physical tussle, and now the perpetrator has reached for the Taser allegedly. Now it gives you the context of his blood boiling. [Slager] has done everything professional and now he’s had this, this civilian has dared to physically have this altercation with the officer. Put that in the officer’s head now. I think it saves him from the murder rap.”
Just so you know, if you run from a police officer a cop’s blood will likely boil and you can’t expect him not to shoot you in the back five times as you run away. After all, a broken tail light and a man trying to elude a cop is very threatening.
Can police officers shoot at fleeing individuals?
Only in very narrow circumstances. A seminal 1985 Supreme Court case, Tennessee vs. Garner, held that the police may not shoot at a fleeing person unless the officer reasonably believes that the individual poses a significant physical danger to the officer or others in the community. That means officers are expected to take other, less-deadly action during a foot or car pursuit unless the person being chased is seen as an immediate safety risk.
In other words, a police officer who fires at a fleeing man who a moment earlier murdered a convenience store clerk may have reasonable grounds to argue that the shooting was justified. But if that same robber never fired his own weapon, the officer would likely have a much harder argument.
“You don’t shoot fleeing felons. You apprehend them unless there are exigent circumstances — emergencies — that require urgent police action to safeguard the community as a whole,” said Greg Gilbertson, a police practices expert and criminal justice professor at Centralia College in Washington state.
Gilbertson said he thought the video of the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, was “insane” given what he said was the apparent lack of justification.
The article notes that cases still commonly come before courts which often exonerate police for shooting unarmed fleeing suspects.
Also too:
Each case involving a suspect who flees the police, whether in a car or on foot, poses a balancing test for an officer, said Chuck Drago, a police practices expert and former Oviedo, Florida, police chief.
“Am I creating more of a danger by chasing this person than if I let this person stay at large?” Drago said. “Especially in a vehicle pursuit, is it worth risking everyone on the road to catch this guy?”
In a pursuit on foot, the more reasonable option might be to call for backup, including perhaps with a police dog, so that other officers can set up a perimeter and trap the suspect, Drago said.
In the South Carolina case, the former lawyer for the North Charleston officer, Michael Slager, said Monday that Slager felt threatened and had fired because Scott was trying to grab his stun gun — an older model that would have had to have been manually reloaded. But if the stun gun was on the ground at the time Scott fled, Drago said, then “there is no longer a threat. The threat is gone.”
There’s also no indication on the video that after the physical encounter between the men, where the officer has said he believed Scott had tried to get ahold of his stun gun, that he shouts any instructions.
It’s highly unlikely the state would have arrested Slager if the video didn’t show him unloading his weapon into the back of an unarmed fleeing man and then dropping the taser next to the dead body. You’d think this was a slam dunk. But the revelation of the dashcam tape showing Scott running from the care means that’s not the end of the story. We’re already seeing people on television declare once again that you have no rights once a police officer tells you to do something and they have a perfect right to kill you if you fail to follow their orders or resist in any way. (He must be guilty of something …)
But don’t worry, if you are stopped and feel that a police officer denied you your rights you can always assert them later by hiring a lawyer and suing the police. But keep in mind that these same people who reassure you of your rights being protected by the courts after the fact also say the police should always be given the benefit of the doubt because they have hard jobs and it’s not ours to second guess their decisions in the moment. Neat how that works, isn’t it?