Dallas cop mistakenly thinks she is home and kills a man

Parent Cafe
201

It is possible that the verbal commands given may be effective in other circumstances (police do manage to arrest suspects without shooting them), but not in this case where:

  • Guyger may have been fatigued and therefore may have been at reduced mental and physical capacity.
  • It was dark, both were surprised, and the situation was one which neither expected could happen, resulting in greater inaccuracy of observations and responses.
  • Jean may have been fatigued (late evening when most people are about to sleep) and therefore slower to figure out what was going on, and may have unintentionally moved in a way that, in the dark, a fatigued Guyger thought was a threat.
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And that’s exactly the problem. Sometimes, as in this case, the person the police is shouting at is not a criminal, is not committing a crime, and does not expect someone to start shouting at them. Those are exactly the people the police officer is supposed to not shoot! The verbal instructions should prevent police from shooting innocent people going about their business.

Both criminals committing crimes and non-criminals not committing crimes will be startled when someone unexpectedly starts shouting at them, and will be unable to instantly comply even if they want to. It seems to me the unintelligible shouting, followed instantly by bullets, does not prevent any shootings at all, but merely gives the police officer cover for killing that may be unjustified.

203

I’ve got a couple of questions:
She was off duty, therefore I cannot imagine the Police Union would be involved - is this accurate?
Off duty, does that mean in or out of uniform?
If off duty but still in Uniform, what if anything does that have to do with her status as an officer?
In other words, was she acting as a civilian or a police officer and is it relevant?

I, like many, view this as a tragic event in which she was obviously trigger happy. Unfortunately, the victim cannot tell us his side and IMO its reasonable to assume that she may twist what occurred to cover her hind end. Lets be real, when in the same situation, many of us would be thinking of ways to justify a VERY bad decision with an unthinkable outcome.

I would hope that anyone as well trained as a police officer should be, would notice those small details that maybe you or I wouldn’t since the occupation requires observations of things that you or I may not actually “see”. I would hope that regardless of hours worked or confusion of location that someone as highly trained as a police officer would take more than a split second to make a decision that means the difference between life and death. There is absolutely nothing that I have read that proves she was in or could justify eminent harm.

My heart breaks for the victims family, this is a tragic event.

204

She was in uniform, having returned from a long shift, by all accounts.

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UPDATE: According to a lawyer representing the deceased victim, there were noise complaints made by the down stairs neighbor against the deceased–including one that day.

The officer lived directly beneath the deceased victim.

Affidavit filed by the police officer claims that the victim’s door was open. Attorney for the deceased victim states that this is not accurate as the doors automatically close.

The lawyer was on CNN.

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This comment and similar related comments above are excellent points. No doubt some people would respond to verbal direction. In fact, I myself when I was much younger calmly did what I was told when three police officers approached the car I was in with weapons drawn and trained on me and the other occupants. But not everyone would, and no one should be expected to.

That said, I think many of the same posters of these comments fail to see the analogous situation in the case of break-ins and the use of weapons. If a homeowner is sitting at home and is “caught off guard” suddenly by an actual intruder, why should the homeowner be subject to a requirement that she react calmly and coolly, assessing the danger of the situation and evaluating whether a simple warning to the intruder should suffice to end the intrusion?

In all situations, it is a question of who should get the benefit of the doubt. If a police officer is acting lawfully (as they were in my case because my beat-up black 1981 Malibu matched the description of a car used in a very violent felony that had just occurred nearby), the benefit of the doubt goes to the officer. If I had been shot, it would have been tragic for me, but as a policy matter society should probably err on the side of the cops. (Despite the fact, although the car matched, that I was not even of the same race as the suspects in the felony. Once the cops determined that we were not the suspects, we all actually joked around about the situation with them, which is how we learned who they were looking for.)

In this Dallas situation, as near as I can tell based on all the info we have, the officer was acting improperly. Maybe, under the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable person would have complied. Too bad, the benefit of any doubt goes to the victim here. Similarly, in a home invasion situation, if in the heat of the moment the armed homeowner judges it wise to start blasting away, no one should come in and impose some burden of reasonableness. The intruder, just like the improperly acting officer, has lost that benefit.

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@jazzymomof7 Why is it so appalling that she wasn’t under custody for a few days while the authorities investigated the incident and determined how to proceed? It was determined, presumably correctly, that she did not present a further danger during that time. She would have been under no obligation to say anything to the investigators without the right to consult with her attorney and have council present. If you’re worried about perceptions, that’s one thing. If you think it gave her time to come up with a story she shouldn’t have otherwise, that’s quite another. We don’t take away people’s rights just because we’re appalled at their alleged actions.

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Appears that this incident was the result of unresolved noise complaints according to a CNN interview with an attorney representing the deceased victim.

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@“Cardinal Fang”

I have no idea how things unfolded. I just see a lot of inconsistencies in her story.

First, the information initially reported by news media (that I believe was supposedly taken from the original arrest warrant before the case was handed over to the Texas Rangers) stated that she was fiddling with the lock, he opened the door, and she shot him.

The information on the affidavit from the Texas Rangers is entirely different from the above and makes no sense.

If you come home to find your door ajar, why would you stick your key in the lock?

The slight action of her sticking her key in the lock (not a door unlatching, because remember, it was ajar) alerted Jean to her presence, and he made it from wherever he was in his extemely dark apartment to where she was before she had time to get far enough into the apartment to realize she was in the wrong place. Also, we’re to believe that this startled young man (who had only heard the slide of a card key into a reader) acted so quickly as to pose such a threat to the officer that deadly force was necessary???

My kids and I were upstairs a few weeks ago, and my oldest said, “Wait, I think I hear the front door open.” We listened for a minute to see what we could hear, and then he peeked down there and saw that the door was open and looked around for something he could use to defend himself if needed (we had nothing!) before going down to check it out.

But we’re to believe Jean (who was doing whatever can be done in the dark - ahem, sleeping) heard the slightest noise and instantaneously rushed to the door to confront the officer without even turning on the light? I just don’t buy it.

Those heavy, fire doors that automatically swing shut must be intentionally propped open, and it would be very obvious that the door was left open so no reason to insert a key.

I do agree with your point about verbal commands.

How do we know the officer lived alone? If she had a live in boyfriend or even a boyfriend who was just over regularly, she may have believed there was someone in her apartment who could open the door. In that case, the witness statements would be believable.

The honorable thing for this officer to do would be to tell the truth and face the consequences. The Jean family deserves to know the truth about his final moments.

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@Publisher What do you mean noise complaints lodged by “the” downstairs neighbor? Are you referring to the police officer?

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Neighbors were earwitnesses to banging on the deceased’s door demanding to either open up or, possibly, let me in. Unclear, but the earwitnesses did NOT hear any type of police commands. Just banging on a door followed by a female voice demanding to open up or let me in (unclear as I have heard or read both demands from different media sources).

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@RandyEricka. Note my post above #204.

The attorney representing the deceased victim’s interests stated that the complaints about noise emanating from the deceased’s apartment were made by the down stairs neighbor. He noted that the police officer lived directly beneath the victim.

Apparently there were multiple complaints about noise allegedly made by the police officer against the deceased including one on the day of the shooting.

This was my first guess about what was at the root of this incident. See my posts #25, #27 & #29 above. If correct, this could escalate to a charge of “capital murder” if the DA & the grand jury determine that the killing was premeditated.

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This is a recipe for cops with implicit bias shooting innocent black people.

Did they start with screaming? Most people, with the best will in the world, are going to be startled when someone unexpectedly starts screaming at them. We don’t expect people to suddenly start screaming at us. If I saw cops walking toward me with guns drawn, I’d obey their instructions as well as I could, probably while shaking. But if someone starts screaming at me, I’m going to take a minute to realize first that they’re screaming at me, and then what they’re screaming at me to do.

Yeah except the “intruder” might not be an intruder. They might be your step-son, or your wife’s college roommate that she gave the key to, or your houseguest you forgot about, or your neighbor returning something he’d borrowed as your family member told him to do, or your kid surprising you with a visit because she’s got unexpected time off. Or someone who innocently blundered into the wrong house.

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@RandyErika Aren’t most killers immediately taken into custody? Of course waiting 3 days to arrest her makes it appear that she’s receiving preferential treatment. She was in custody for less than an hour 3 days after shooting an innocent man in his own home.

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Her story doesn’t seem to add up. The noise complaints of course add another dimension to the story. He didn’t know her, but she knew who he was. Did she decide to stop and harass him in uniform, on her way home that night, in the hope that he would be intimidated by her uniform? That would explain the witnesses hearing her bang on the door. While I agree sometimes memory is off, it’s not unreasonable that they would remember such noise just before they heard shots fired. I do wonder if anybody else called 911, or if they all “didn’t want to be involved,” thinking it was just a domestic dispute.

When he opened the door, did he not react the way she expected? Did she panic, and then realize she needed an explanation for her presence? Did she realize it was inappropriate to show up at his door in uniform, and therefore need an excuse for being there?

What bothers me the most by this is that is fits the narrative of so many other shootings - shootings after people keep insisting blacks need to learn to follow instructions from police officers. That they have nothing to fear if they’re innocent… on and on, every time. But here is a man who was clearly innocent, whose life was at risk. Perhaps because he didn’t respond immediately to the demands of a cop. If I saw a cop walking toward me, shouting “put your hands up,” when I had done nothing wrong, how am I to know I’m the one he’s shouting at? This isn’t that different than situations where an officer “thought they saw a gun.” If the victim doesn’t have a gun, how is he supposed to know the cop thinks he saw a gun?

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So…is the implication here that it’s now OK to shoot your neighbors because they are noisy?

217

Seems like the attorney for Jean['s family] may be trying to make the argument that the shooting was based on a petty neighbor dispute, not that it was OK because of that.

218

That was the start of this thread…four days ago. Four days of being able to sit with coffee, tea, wine, beer, Evian– or even Kombucha for those so inclined. Four days to noodle, discuss, review. To give point and counter point. To research State law. Four days to ruminate over what was thought, what should have been thought. How each of the two people involved should have reacted based on one’s own personal views and experiences.

Four days to casually discuss what would be a reasonable vs non-reasonable response. To judge what someone might or might not have been thinking. And four days of waiting for additional information and then having the leisure to have another cup of a favorite beverage and re-evaluate ones’ previous position. Four days of getting to be a casually appointed judge and jury. It’s just something to do between whatever we do during the rest of the day.

All this time ruminating over an incident that transpired within SECONDS.

Our LEOs are, and need to be, held to a standard well above the average citizen. Our LEOs are responsible and culpable for their actions. Shooting or otherwise harming innocent citizens is not acceptable and needs to be dealt with in the appropriate legal manner. They are however, also not that different from most of us, they react – and sometimes with bad, awful consequences. Consequences that are due to the job they do, their experience of the world due to the population with whom they most often interact. Consequences due to PTSD – diagnosed or not – sleep deprivation and any other almost infinite number of states a human body and mind can be in at a split second in time…

Yes, it is a leisurely activity in which we here participate. One undertaken by calm, emotionally stable people who feel very safe in their lives, whose heart rates are within the ‘resting’ rang. Here we sit philosophizing while typing away.

How would I react in that scenario – I can easily state what I would do – as either LEO or victim – from the comfort of my sunny deck with a chilled Kombucha at hand. What would I do IN THAT SECOND OF CONFUSION AND PANIC? I’d be lying if I said I know that answer with 100% certainty.

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As victim, I’d be scared out of my mind. As LEO? I can’t imagine that, because I’d never be an LEO or own a gun.

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@thumper1: I have no idea how you drew that implication from what the victim’s attorney shared on CNN.

The implication is that this may have been a premeditated act of murder.

The attorney’s comments are also designed to discredit the police officer’s sworn version of events.

Additionally, these comments are designed to encourage the Texas authorities to enhance the charge of manslaughter to murder or to capital murder.