Oooof. Wanting till everything is cooled down?
While the delay in releasing footage is heinous, I don’t see that the responding officers did something wrong here. They chased down and stopped a murderer who had just killed 2 people, one a child, and didn’t hurt anyone else in the process. They also rendered aid to the murderer after stopping him. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
I dislike that I’m defending police here because we clearly have outrageous, systemic problems with policing. I really appreciate all the work people like Doug and others do to bring police problems to light and help to change public opinion. But we have to be careful not to highlight situations like this (the incident, not the delay in releasing footage) and point to them as evidence for our argument, because it just gives the other side more ammo for their arguments and delays that sway of public opinion that will be required to enact real change.
All that said, I only read the article and I’m well aware of the media bias in favor of police. I didn’t watch the video because after decades on the internet I’ve seen enough traumatic footage to give me issues. So if there is something problematic in the video, I apologize for my above critique.
New to this info too. I think the issue arises from the suspect tossing his gun before he ran, meaning he was unarmed.
I don’t know if he was unarmed. He did throw away one gun but may have had another? The article says there was an ‘exchange of gunfire’ but that might be weasel words that the media loves to use when the police show incredibly poor firearms discipline as they so often do. Like I said above, I won’t watch the video so I don’t know for sure.
The particulars are moot to me, and like you and for the same reason, I didn’t watch the video. All that matters here is that the police withheld the bodycam evidence for ☆four months☆.
Bodycams must be required on all cops, and footage of any incident must be released within a reasonable time after any request. And since cops can’t be trusted to be “reasonable,” that reasonable time needs to be specified — 72 hours sounds good to me.
Fair enough on your first line, and I completely agree with your stance on bodycams and release of footage. They stonewall and deflect inquiries constantly to hide their corruption. I just hate giving the other side even a tiny chink in the armor of police reform arguments so I’m always wary of highlighting what would generally be perceived as them actually doing their jobs correctly for once.
Understood and I see your point.
