Quote:
Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl
I agree that someone who is retreating is a diminishing threat, not worthy of increasing force. However, as the scientific forensic evidence irrefutably proves, Brown's entry wounds were not in his back, they were in his front. Therefore, he was not running away when he was shot, he was turned around, and re-engaging / re-approaching the officer.
Struggling for a cops gun is a REALLY stupid thing to do, you might as well hold a sign that says, "I'm going to react in the most unreasonable, unpredictable, and dangerous way possible."
Having set that tone, at that point you cannot expect to be treated like a typical suspect for petty theft or anything.
You can't expect the cop to let you just leave without consequence. At that point, he had basically sealed his own fate. Even a black officer, who understood what it's like to be unfairly harassed as a kid, would be on the highest level of alert possible. A stress that most of us probably can't imagine.
If I was watching a tape of that encounter, and you paused it as Brown started to retreat, and asked me what happens next, honestly I would say, the guy is probably gonna be shot if he does anything but freeze with his hands in the air, and his back to the cop, in a least threatening posture possible. That would be true even if he was a white guy.
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What people forget is that if I'm a cop and someone goes for my gun and hits me in my car, and I'm assuming he would have killed me had he actually gotten the gun, I now have to wonder what he might do to anyone who gets in his way while he's trying to run away from me. Semi-irrelevant point though because Brown was shot from the front.