We just finished discussing how people think things, draw conclusions and react. Sometimes, retrospective review shows their perceptions were incorrect, but that doesn’t change what they thought at the time.
If this officer’s perceptions are so far removed from reality that he thought at the time that he was being dragged, then he shouldn’t be anywhere near a police department
That describes lots of people in all kinds of employment.
If you recall, the officer’s first statement was that he thought he would be dragged, not that he was being dragged. It may turn out that was part of his perception at the time he decided to shoot.
I think his perception at the time was that this black guy was giving him grief and he got really irritated (notice how quickly he escalates the situation), and when it appeared that his quarry was going to get away, his only thought was to stop him. And I think he believed he’d get away with it. Must have forgotten about the body cam in that moment.
I’m a white woman, and I was stopped several years ago and through a chain of circumstances, didn’t have my insurance card in the car. I explained the chain of circumstances, told him that in fact I do have insurance, but the card didn’t make it to the car. The officer didn’t ask me if the car was mine, didn’t tell me to step out of the car, didn’t ask me if my insurance was cancelled, didn’t repeatedly harass me for something I’d already told him I didn’t have. Instead, he did what someone suggested earlier that Officer Tensing could have done. He went back to his car and ran my tags, then came back and wrote me a ticket, and I drove away alive. But, like I said, I’m white.
Did your car “start rolling” during the stop? With literally millions of them going on, I’m sure traffic stops happen in lots of different manners.
No, but it might have if I’d been treated the way Mr Dubose was treated. But I wasn’t treated that way, and never have been. And bear in mind that black drivers get treated that way constantly. See the posts from our very own CCers. I can see how that would get really old.
JustOneDad, explain to me how Tensing could have “thought he would be dragged” when the one part of his body ,which only had brief contact with the vehicle, was barely inside an entirely open window? He was able to instantly remove his hand without the slightest impediment, draw his weapon, and fatally shoot the motorist whose car had only begun to roll slowly forward (as in 5mph or less)?
Seemed to me that the cop started opening the car door and the driver held the door and re closed it, then the driver appeared to turn the car on. At that point the cop reached in the car to turn it back off.
The rest is a blur. Don’t know if the driver grabbed the cops left arm or not. The cop shot him with his right hand. The cop was not expecting the driver to escalate the stop by closing the car door and starting the car, the cop had to be very anxious at this point.
I do believe the driver escalated the situation and had a part in the events that then led to his death.
After the officer tried to turn off the car with his left hand he placed his left hand on the drivers chest over his seatbelt. As the officer brings up the gun, Dubose brings back his hand and the officer shoots. Before the officer placed his hand on Dubose’s chest, Dubose was trying to prevent the officer from turning off the car with both of his hands.
@poetsheart I just did explain it; didn’t you follow it? People think all sorts of things, it doesn’t mean that’s actually what’s happening, especially with the benefit of hindsight.
It happens right here on CC all the time. People jump to all sorts of goofy conclusions and say things, but that doesn’t mean there is any reality to it.
You have no way of knowing what that officer did or didn’t think. Have you had even a smackerel of his training or experience?
In this case, we have the officer’s statement, fresh out of the incident. Didn’t he say he thought he was going to be dragged?
I understand the cop did not expect the driver to try to remain in his vehicle, or to start the car, but did those developments really warrant such an outsized response, the use of deadly force? Did he really see no other option? Why do we find it so acceptable to blame a scared and unarmed motorist, and give a pass to the supposed “trained professional” with a gun? If you really look at the footage, there was nothing threatening in the behavior of the driver. Sure, he restarted his car, and tried to keep his door closed. But he didn’t in anyway assault the officer. Certainly, he didn’t speed off. In what universe would such a slow roll forward constitute a dragging threat to someone able to so easily extricate himself, and remain free of the vehicle? Why are some people willing to turn themselves into pretzels to blame the victim for his own murder, and exonerate the cop as having been panicked?
If the driver had been your son, would you be so understanding of the officer’s response? I highly doubt it.
According to the Cincy Enquirer - which a relative works for - the other officers at the scene backed off their supporting statements when questioned. This is why they were not indicted and why they are only on leave. From the story:
"In the video, Kidd is heard corroborating Tensing’s claim that he fired the shot because he was being dragged by DuBose’s car, a claim disputed by prosecutors and by DuBose’s own body camera video.
“Yeah, I saw that,” Kidd said in the video. He later answered “yes” when another officer asked Kidd if he saw Tensing being dragged. An incident report written by Supervisor Eric Weibel also suggested one of the officers saw the car drag Tensing.
Prosecutors, however, say both officers later told investigators they did not see the incident and did not see Tensing being dragged. They said both officers cooperated with authorities and at no point attempted to conceal evidence or misrepresent what happened that day.
“These officers were totally cooperative in the investigation and consistent in their statements,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said. “There was some confusion over the way the initial incident report was drafted, but that was not a sworn statement by the officers and merely a short summary of information.”
Me again, one legal result is that Officer Tensing’s defense has a much harder time because it now appears he led the other officers to back him up. It’s important to note that it was an “incident report” written up by a supervisor, not the other officers. That allowed the prosecutor more leeway in approaching them with questions; they didn’t have to repeat or defend their own sworn statements.
Yes, it is horrible that a person died and I am glad the cop is going to be charged with murder, but who cares about the race of the people involved. This story is race baiting by the media to separate the people of the US. The news never talks about black on black crime or black on white crime, but it always talks about white/latino on black crime, especially when it is related to the police. this shooting was bad. There was no reason for the officer to shoot. But, if the man would have listened to police orders he would be alive.
^ Here we go again, the same old excuses.
How is that the same old excuse?
If this man would’ve just listened to the cop’s orders, he would’ve just been arrested, charged, and had his car impounded all for something that is ignored, let off with a warning, or ticket. What’s to complain about? What’s with all the hullabaloo? He still would’ve had his life.
Those who are truly seperating the U.S. are the ones who refuse to believe the experiences and mistreatment that their fellow Americans are facing.
Doubting Thomas’ are inevitable, but body cameras work.
But a much better person than I said it most eloquently.
Here, let’s go over it again. I don’t know if what happened warranted the use of deadly force and neither do you.
We are talking about what the officer thought, and apparently, in his mind, it did. He stated that he thought he was going to get dragged. I don’t know everything about police training, but I am fairly sure that officers are not told they need to let the citizens hurt them to a certain degree before they respond. Since officers have been injured and killed from being dragged, it is reasonable to imagine that could have gone through Tensing’s head. That is a ‘threat to officer safety’ and his training may have kicked in, resulting in the shooting.
"In what universe would such a slow roll forward constitute a dragging threat "
People have been caught, pulled under a car and KILLED by slow rolling vehicles (in this universe).
One other thing to consider about the problems between police and black people is that the distrust of police that results likely makes black people more vulnerable to general crime.
If victims and witnesses are reluctant to call the police when a crime occurs or appears to be about to occur, then criminals are more likely to get away with it. An example was the student being subject to racist harassment by others in his suite, but was unwilling to call the police for a considerable amount of time until his parents found out about it (the police subsequently wrote up a police report recommending felony (assault with a deadly weapon) and misdemeanor charges against the suspects; see http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24574082/police-report-read-san-jose-state-university-police ).
In the US, black people are at about a 3.7 times higher risk of death by homicide than Americans overall (and 7.8 times higher than white people), according to http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/ (the headline 12 times is in comparison to that of other rich countries, who generally have lower homicide rates than the US).