Don’t know if this one was posted: basically, police are called on a shady methy type of dude who was trying to get into other vehicles and swallows a pill while speaking to officers. The family claims it was an anxiety pill because he gets nervous when talking to cops. Police pull the guy out of the car and get more than they bargained for when he kind of gets the better of one of the cops and is on top of him. He fires three shots with the gun up against the guy’s body and kills him with the family right there.
Using graham v Connor and the Connor factors, i can go either way. I can kind of see how this could be justified because he was on top of one of the officers and told them he had a knife earlier in the conversation. If the officer had been alone, I would be 100% fine with it, but there was a second officer there. On the other side, you have a guy that at most, takes a drug to get rid of evidence when the officers ask him if he is on anything. They overreact imo by escalating this situation and when he wiles out on them, they escalate it all the way. The second officer seems like he doesn’t know what to do after his partner kills this guy. You don’t get to initiate a physical fight and then when you start losing, pull out a gun. The guy was most likely unarmed and would have run if given the opportunity and I fail to see how this warranted deadly force. If he had been raining down strikes there would be more of an argument for deadly force.
I am leaning towards this being excessive because there were other avenues on how to handle this. So what. He took a pill. Tell him to get out of the car, Pat him down, place him in custody for obstructing/destroying evidence, write him a ticket and kick him off of school property. I think the police unnecessarily escalated this situation. I think if this guy were not a white male, it would be all over the news.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/family-man-shot-deputy-after-wrong-suv-sues-97456630