Mr. Sterling Shooting Summary

I notified dispatch that Officer Albert and I were out at the RSC. I parked our patrol car on the north side of the RSC and entered the north door. I heard Officer Smith on the radio say he was out with the subject near the Credit Union. I observed from across the RSC Officer J. Smith and Officer R. Faison standing next to a black male all the way by the Book Store. As I walked closer, I could see the black male with both of his hands up in the air and he was getting down on both of his knees. When I got to the Credit Union, I saw a set of crutches and a black bag laying on the floor. I told Officer Albert to stay here with these items as I continued to go behind the black male. Officer Faison kept trying to talk to the subject but he was clearly ignoring him. The subject who was later identified as

Officer McNeil, along with three other officers, arrived on the scene just after midnight. Upon exiting their vehicles, a nearby pedestrian opened fire striking Officer McNeil several times. Officer McNeil returned fire and wounded the suspect. The suspect ran into an adjacent apartment complex and was captured after several hours of barricading himself inside.

The shooting occurred at the Fruitvale train station on January 1st, 2009. At the station, a fight broke out in one of the trains and when the train stopped the fight started again outside of the train at one of the stops. While they were fighting on the train the BART officers were called. The officers came and arrested everyone that was in the fight. A guy named Oscar Grant was in the fight and was also arrested (Meyer). While Grant was being arrested by Officer Mehserle, he resisted the officer’s attempts. Since Grant was resisting he was pushed onto the ground on his stomach to be handcuffed. Johannes Mehserle was having trouble handcuffing Grant so the other BART officers helped him. When Grant was on the ground Mehserle was going to tase him since he would not stop resisting. When Mehserle thought he pulled out his TASER, he instead pulled out his gun. Mehserle accidentally shot Grant with his gun since he thought he pulled out his TASER (Bulwa).

Two police officers shot Alva Braziel, and it was allegedly 10 times. These officers were driving down Cullen Boulevard in Houston when they saw the man waving a revolver in the air while standing in the street. Officers stopped and explained to Alva that he needed to drop the gun, but he didn't do it. Houston police shared that a civilian also told him to put down the gun, but Braziel wouldn't drop it. There was no way to convince him to drop it, which then turned into the police handling the situation.

On July 26, 2013, Sammy Yatim, a mentally ill youth was shot nine times and killed by a police officer. He boarded a streetcar and pulled out a switchblade, which he used to threaten passengers (Rogan, 2014). The police arrived shortly after all the passengers had safely exited. Constable James Forcillo was one of the first cops on the scene, and had ordered his partner to radio for a Taser to subdue Yatim. While Yatim was still in the streetcar, Forcillo fired his gun. Officers rushed into the streetcar to taser him and then attempted CPR. However, Yatim was pronounced dead early in the morning of July 27 (Rogan, 2014).

First and foremost Police officers are instructed during their grooming at the police academy to use deadly force when stopping a fleeing suspect, however Police Officers are also taught, but when there are no other options. As we have learned from a landmark case Tennessee V. Garner, That the use of lethal force by law enforcement in the United States is subject to the 1985 Tennessee v. Garner decision. Under “Garner, deadly force may be permissible if “the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has charged a criminal offense involving the infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical injury”. Upon watching the video several times it appears to me that suspect Scott was not in

An entire town, an entire nation, an entire world was left to speculate. Who was right? Who was wrong? Was the officer threatened? Was Michael Brown wrongfully attacked from the beginning? Had Officer Wilson been wearing a body camera or had he deployed a dashboard camera, we would then have the beginning of the story, as well as the tragic end.

The dash cam video disclosed McDonald walking down South Pulaski Road in a Southwest side neighborhood with a knife in his hand, strolling away from officers. Van Dyke immediately began to fire six seconds after arriving on scene, taking only 15 seconds to fire 16 shots. (Drash, W. (2015, December 19). The killing of Laquan McDonald: The dash cam. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/us/laquan-mcdonald-video-records-comparison/) What happened

This proves that taser is an effective non-lethal weapon that can be used to subdue the criminals. Here are some possible advantages of taser guns, first, taser is a non-lethal weapon. As we may have already know, tasers are meant to take down the suspects without injuring or killing them. Also, it is safer to use in a situations where there are many bystanders in the scene, since tasers do not harm people around the intended suspects. This also leads to the second point of avoiding the usage of lethal weapons. So far, 1689 people have been killed by the police in a crime related actions (May, T. 2014). By promoting the usage of tasers, police officers around the world can lower the number of suspects being killed in the scene. Using the lethal weapon also dangers the suspects, police, and the bystanders, because firearms are a lethal weapon that can take away lives easily. Tasers also requires minimal training to use the functions, which also makes the officers and other security related people to easily use tasers in action. On the other hand, typical fire arms requires more training time to properly use them in order to avoid any accidents with it. Fourthly, by using taser, the injury rates dropped significantly. Taser have been used within law enforcement agencies from 1998, and from that time, according to the Taser International, taser helped lower injuries among officers and

Alton Sterling was spotted in front of the store and resembled someone else. He has not had such a good criminal record, and was sought after because of that. Sterling was left putting up a fight which cost him his life. Incidents are not on blaming, but are resulting in getting down to the truth even though it may not appear to be well in the

The media has made this topic a very controversial topic. If there is a story of someone getting tased anywhere in the United States for anything, including having a weapon in their hand pointed at a law enforcement officer, it will be on the Ten o'clock news top story. The media makes citizens question law enforcement actions because they only show the part of the story that has the greatest shock factor. The reporters play the part of the video that makes the point they do not show the complete video and explain what happened. Another issue that is on the rise is citizens believing that some suspects that die after being tased is the result of the Taser. This is another problem the media has created by telling the initial story and flashing Taser death all over the screen and don't do a follow up story explaining the other reason why the person died that was tased. There is usually a medical condition involved with the death. If the public does not receive the whole story how can they make an informed decision if Tasers are a safe and viable option to deadly force.

Now one way to prevent things like this from happening again is to train the young and inexperienced police officers the correct and effective way to judge the use of force. An officer must reasonably believe it is necessary to shoot to kill to defend him or herself or someone else from imminent death. It’s a call made in the blink of an eye, in tense and uncertain circumstances, sometimes limited by distance, distractions or darkness. And it brings to bear all of the officer’s experience, awareness and, perhaps most important, training. The question is how do we do this? How do we prepare our officers for the real world? Half a second. According to experts, that’s how much time an officer has to pull a weapon when confronted with someone perceived as dangerous and about to inflict harm. Studies show that it takes a quarter of a second for an officer to recognize a threat, such as when a person is reaching for a gun, and another quarter-second for that officer to draw his gun. It takes another .06 seconds to pull the trigger. One place that is trying to make a difference and make those

Beginning with Alton Sterling, the video depicts the man immediately being hit and thrown to the ground, but there is a foreshadowing story to this. Apparently, a witness said the police were called because Mr. Sterling was selling CD’s outside, and the gas station owner saw it as loitering. Following this, the recorded confrontation happened where the police held him down and shot him. Not only was this an unarmed man, but this was an African-American man, and this police vs black conflict has been very apparent as of late. Now for Mr. Sterling, may athletes took to twitter, for example, NBA player Jamal Crawford (@JCrossover) tweeted: “Innocent lives man.. No restart button on life. People are taking lives like they're playing a video game.. HAS TO STOP! #AltonSterling” and Colin Kaepernick (@kaepernick7) followed up on Instagram, “This is what

Michael Brown, an unarmed eighteen-year-old teen , was shot to death by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. Due to this unneeded assault protest breaks out in Ferguson during the candlelight vigil for Brown. Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, not walks free of any charges. On July 6, 2016, 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez after being pulled over at a traffic stop. Castile informs Yanez that he is armed and

In the closing statement, Ta-Nehisi Coates provides us a statement inquiring that “police are turning to police brutality to solve situations where it's not needed then leading them to overuse their power. The use of excessive physical assault or verbal assault during police procedures, such as apprehending or interrogating a suspect should never be acceptable. Deadly force is not always excessive force. However, when deadly force exceeds the force that is necessary to create a safe environment, it is considered police brutality. This is emphasised in Ta-Nehisi essay when said “his father called the police, who apparently arrived to find the 19-year-old wielding a bat. Interpreting this as a lethal threat, one of the officers shot and killed LeGrier and somehow managed to shoot and kill one of his neighbors, Bettie Jones.” this situation could have been conducted differently Though the officer over used his authority and instead of simply calming the man down governing both the father and son he chose to kill which wasn't rational .