States of Confusion

The incident with Rayshard Brooks went viral.

Brooks was drunk inside a car at a Wendy’s parking lot, crashed, not driving, cops were called, they questioned him, they were looking for a quota. Instead of driving him home or letting him walk home, they wanted to corral him for public intoxication. He resisted, they struggled, he grabbed a cop’s taser. Then he ran, and fired a wild taser shot back at the officer, who drew his gun and shot him in the back several times.

The peanut gallery defended the action, gallantly defending the lack of compliance and the reactionary attempt at defense as a justification for deadly force. Generally speaking, you can’t die from a taser shock, unless you’ve got a considerable heart condition. That’s why they’re sanctioned as non-lethal force. While it’s understandable in the heat of the moment the cop’s adrenaline ran and he responded with a knee jerk reaction, the police are, in theory, supposed to be trained to deal with high stress situations. Protect and serve. The stolen taser wouldn’t have killed him even if it found its mark, which it did not. A defensive posture would’ve been to take cover or to back off a ways. Slapping leather and shooting a drunk guy twice in the back is excessive, more so if you’re professionally trained. A third shot was reported to have narrowly missed some bystanders in a car nearby.