One officer is seen standing at her door and repeatedly telling her to “get out of the car”.
“For what?” she responds twice, adding: “I’m not going to do that.”
One officer seen in front of the car has his left hand on the hood, his gun drawn in the other hand.
“Are you going to shoot me?” she says moments before a single shot is fired and the officer quickly moves out of the car’s path.
The cop who killed her was in no danger, and has time to casually stroll out of the way of the vehicle.
What he doesn’t have is a name or a face — as often happens, the police haven’t been named, and their faces have been blurred in the video.
Why?
If they weren’t cops — if they were just a pair of random dudes killing a black pregnant woman, and there was video footage — would their names remain secret, their faces blurred?
This guy is a murderer. What they were doing before that was 100% legal. If someone broke into your house and stole from you and cops happened to be right outside, she couldn’t get away with it by just not opening the car door and driving away straight into a police officer when the cops came over. If she were innocent and complied, bonus! She could’ve probably successfully sued the store and the cops. Instead, she refused and started running over one of them with her car.
I was pulled over once for driving the speed limit with a car full of family. The cops asked for my license and our names, asked what we were doing and we gave them everything. They apologized and explained that everyone speeds on that street and they’d found that road to be used for stolen cars. That was it. 3 minutes and we drove away. If I had refused to give them anything and started driving away while a cop was in front of my car, I’d have at least gone to prison. That cop should be in jail. Her behavior was terrible.
That line is such tired cop propaganda, and untrue.
You’re misrepresenting what happened here. She pulled the car ahead, yes, but only moved forward at a speed less than the speed the cop could walk backwards. So characterizing it as “started running over one of them with her car” is a little inaccurate, don’t you think?
And the cops were beside the car and then for some reason, one guy moved around in front of the car. I suspect he did this because she started the engine or in some other way indicated she was going to drive away. If that was the case, the cop put himself into a dangerous situation over a shoplifting accusation. So that means any argument that he was afraid doesn’t fly with me because he made the mistake of putting himself in that situation.
And yeah, I’ve never had problems with police because I don’t break the law either. But after seeing enough videos I’ve come to realize that I don’t have problems with police because a) yeah, I don’t break the law, but also because b) I’m white. That second factor that can’t be ignored in all of this. If it were a white woman would this situation have gone down the same way?
And the cop feeling threatened (because of a situation he put himself in) also applies to the woman. Was she trying to drive away because she was afraid? I suppose she can’t give testimony now, so that’s convenient for the cops, isn’t it?
The cop fucked up by putting himself in front of a running car, and then murdered a woman for slowly moving that car forward. None of their actions are defensible.
It’s a strategy so commonplace that I suspect it’s part of police training:
If someone doesn’t step out of a car immediately on command, an officer stations him/herself in front of the car’s headlights, with gun drawn. Not in front of the car, but in front of a headlight. This allows the claim that, holy smokes, the cop could be run over if the car moves an inch, but it leaves the officer ample time and space to jump out of the way even if the driver floorboards the accelerator.
It’s bogus, but such a well-practiced maneuver that even people who recognize other police misconduct tend to believe it. Well, I guess they had to kill this particular perp — she was trying to run him over!"
Yeah and I’m thinking if she drives off, they have her license plate, right? And it’s someone accused of shoplifting not a mass shooter. Of course if it were a mass shooter they’d be holding back and assessing the situation to avoid being put into danger.
It’s possible for both people to have been in the wrong. That woman wasn’t a murderer, so let’s remember degrees of wrong, but she definitely wasn’t innocent. One of cops’ literal jobs is to catch criminals who don’t want to be caught. That’s why they approached her and probably why he stood in front of the car. They weren’t accosting some rando on the street. What they did wrong was drawing a gun, pointing it at a person, and pulling the trigger when not in mortal danger.
I don’t appreciate that in these situations, everyone lines up on one side or the other and whomever we’ve decided to defend could have done no wrong. The wrongdoers were wrong in every possible way. It’s mob mentality. And then we wonder why those on the other side can’t see things our way. Hyperbole helps nobody.
So the cops didn’t take down the license plate? The job of the police is to maintain law and order. Escalating a situation so they can gun someone down in a parking lot is the exact opposite of maintain order. Instead of of doing the sensible thing of allowing the person leave the parking lot and then arrest the person in a less dangerous situation, they continued to escalate it and then shot and murdered a person in the middle of a busy parking lot.
I don’t appreciate that in these situations no one has any regard for the bystanders that had nothing to do with the situation put at risk by murderous cops. These cops are greater danger to the public than a woman slowly moving her car forward.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a fine principal, quickly forgotten by most, and a punchline for police.