Check out the video.
A police officer is seen to stop a suspect (of an assault) on a bridge by way of the view from his dashboard camera. The suspect does not obey the commands of the officer and the officer is starting to back away and finally shoots the suspect with a TASER. The TASER shot is ineffective and the suspect then attacks the police officer. They go off camera, and you can hear the police officer struggling and taking punishment as he does so. Then an off duty police officer from another state arrives on scene and renders aid to the uniformed officer. As he renders aid, the uniformed officer is able to draw and fire his service weapon fatally injuring the suspect - all off camera - but from the looks of the uniformed officer when he comes back into view I would have to think the shooting had been justified. Of course I am taking a few other things into consideration. The suspect was much bigger than the police officer, he attacked failed to comply with the legal orders of the officer, he attacked the officer violently, the officer was heard to be gasping and struggling, one of the officers after arrival of the off duty one was heard to command the suspect to cease his attack repeatedly, the audible leads one to believe the suspect kept on attacking, an officer is heard to say something to the effect if you don't stop I'll shoot, shots are fired, the suspect comes back into view of the camera and is now compliant to the commands of the officers. One would probably think, as did I initially, that the off duty officer fired the shots but this article explains how it came to be that the uniformed officer, the one who was being attacked, actually fired the shots that killed the suspect. The article also explains that the shooting was found to have been justified and gives some more info about how savagely the officer was being attacked saying one of the officer's eyebrows had been bitten off by the suspect.
Imagine what would be the case had there been no video and audio footage of this event. I can assure you there would be marches, there would be tons of accusations or racism against the police officers, Al Sharpton and his gang (or those like him) likely would be protesting (they may be anyway for all I know), there would possibly be race riots. I don't know what is happening as a result of this shooting - maybe all that is taking place despite the video but I don't know one way or the other because this is the first I have heard of this event. Of course, this took place at the end of July this year so if it bad things happened in reaction to the shooting they may have calmed down already. I would hope though that anyone who saw this video realized that the use of deadly force by the officers was in all likelihood necessary and justified.
Now imagine another thing, no matter what else takes place, both of these officers will live with this for the rest of their lives. Because of what they did a man died. Because of what that man did they were forced to do what they did and the suspect died as a result. One of the officers lost his eyebrow because it was bitten off of his face. My bet is that you would not give a second thought to his returning to work - but do exactly that for a moment. Think about having all of that stuff happen to you - your weapon not doing the trick (the TASER), a guy taking control away from you and beating you like a mad man then biting off part of your face, it all probably seeming helpless, then help arriving and still the guy keeps attacking you , then you having to shoot him, then the guy dying. Would you be able to go back to that same job? Man oh man that has got to be a tough thing to do. Remember this is not the army during war - this was just another ho-hum day on the streets of Davenport, IA. My bet is he goes back to the job and does it until he can retire. Don't forget the other officer, it cannot be easy for him either. Yeah they both did right, they were both justified, but I'd be willing to bet my pension both have ethics, morals and an upbringing that told them killing another human is bad. They will live with that forever, hopefully they will be able to come to terms with it. They both did damned good.
A Side Note: Being an LEO for virtually 30 years (my 30th anniversary is on the 28th of this month) I find myself compelled to point out what I think was one mistake, but a big one, that the uniformed officer made in his handling of the suspect (my opinion). He had the suspect climb over the railing and he was between his cruiser and the suspect when the suspect came over the rail. I think it would have been better for the officer to have climbed over toward the suspect from a good distance after he first had him kneel. This way the officer could not have wound up basically pinned between his cruiser, a moving lane of traffic, the rail and the bad guy. Sure the officer could have arranged it so the suspect would have been in that pinned spot, but the officer still would have been in danger from oncoming traffic had the suspect then attacked him. Just look at it again and imagine the suspect had pushed the officer in the other direction and that cars had kept coming. On the other hand, had the officer gone over to the side of the rail on which the suspect had originally been standing there would have been much less potential for the officer to be pinned with moving traffic on one side of him. I am not making note of this to fault the officer but rather to give him and others something to think about when handling a suspect in the future - don't let yourself get boxed in - you need to be able to get away and get some maneuvering room should things go bad.
Of course, as I see it, both of the officers acted in exemplary fashion. I know some may find fault with the big bad officer who used politically incorrect words and cursed at the suspect. To them I say - great a life - that officer was saving one and I don't care what he said while doing it the right way.
All the best,
Glenn B
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