Posted by bad_luck on 12/16/2014 2:58:00 PM (view original):
When did the police tell Rice to put his hands in the air? They literally shot him within 2 seconds of their arrival. This shooting also makes no sense. Anyone can see that the way to handle this is to stay farther back and take more than 2 seconds to assess the situation. No one was being threatened.
One could argue that people in the park were being threatened by a crazy man with a gun. If that's what the cops believed, I understand their reaction.
I'll disagree that driving up to Rice, rather than staying back, makes their situation criminal. And generally, when cops are told "this person has a gun" they don't stay back to watch him for a bit. I'd also argue that if they're 30 feet away, rather than 5 feet away, I doubt much changes. You think that distance will keep a cop from firing his gun if Rice reacts the exact same way?
Is there a situation where a cop makes a mistake, and it involves the death of someone innocent, where the cop could be innocent of criminal charges?