@ucbalumnus Incarceration rates are directly tied to poverty rates, you can clearly see the strong correlation with the states you have listed.
It looks like the FBI says there are about 200 cases per year of justifiable homicide using firearms by people other than law enforcement officers. This case might not fit the definition the FBI uses in collecting that information – the killing of a person in the course of committing a felony – but almost by definition it would have to come within the definition if the shooter were acquitted. Now, that’s not a very large number. Certainly not every case is going to be national news, but I suspect every case is going to be local news, because there won’t be anyplace other than the largest cities with as many as one of those per year. That is probably a very solid number: Lots of things may be underreported, but when people are shot and die, that makes it into the FBI database and gets characterized one way or another.
There are a significantly greater number of “defensive gun uses” by civilians that don’t result in someone’s death, and in fact may not even result in anyone being shot. (If the shooter had drawn his gun and been satisfied when the victim backed off here, and not killed him, that would have been a classic defensive gun use.) The estimates for those are wildly different, ranging from 100,000 to more the 2 million per year.
I am not a fan of people carrying guns and acting like pricks, but I don’t have a problem with the shooter drawing his gun in this situation. Of course he was surprised, of course he was scared. Maybe the victim did intend to hit him again, or even to beat him up. We’ll never know for sure, but that was certainly one of the possibilities. Once the gun was drawn, however, everything changed – you can see it in the video. At that point, the shooter (and the NRA) had won. There wasn’t going to be another hit; there wasn’t going to be a beating; the victim went backwards. That’s when the shooter took a deep breath, steadied his aim, and killed someone. I have an enormous problem with that.
Meanwhile, @SatchelSF is just as certain that all the earlier reports of inappropriate behavior by the shooter are inaccurate as he is certain that the victim was a moment away from beating up the shooter. I don’t understand where he gets either certainty. The earlier reports were not people phoning in after them saw this video to say they had had a problem with the shooter before. They were police reports filed within minutes of the earlier incidents, and they were completely uncoordinated with one another. Does @SatchelSF think there was something about the shooter that led random people to lie about his pointing a weapon at them just like the weapon he actually carried? When a businessman told the police the shooter had said, “You’re lucky I didn’t blow your employee’s head off” – over a handicap zone parking incident – why would he have been lying? And as for the shooter lying, the police report for one of the incidents includes the officer saying that in his experience the physical evidence was inconsistent with the shooter’s story. That sounds like a reasonable basis for thinking he was willing to lie to the police, specifically about his own aggression.
Just a few very brief responses:
That is what the law needs to balance as a policy matter. It will be a question for a jury to determine whether Drejka’s fear was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. Surely, you can see that it would be very bad policy to allow a potential assailant to reap the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this. If it is determined that McGlockton was the initial aggressor and proximate cause of the assault, then he put Drejka in that position (at least legally, if not morally) and it would be unjust to impose the burden of trying to figure out if he was finished and whether or not to respond upon the victim of the assault. Note that Drejka’s ability to retreat was cut off by McGlockton’s actions, and so this situation might not even require a SYG defense. As I said, I believe the facts and the law are very clear here, and I urge you to read that law review article I posted, which is very good on these points.
Of course, if it is determined that McGlockton was actually defending his girlfriend from what he reasonably determined to be imminent harm or injury, the shove will be considered defense of others and justified. As the girlfriend was exiting the car voluntarily, that will be a high burden to clear. Much will depend on what is shown on the missing minutes of the video, which the police reviewed as part of their initial determination not to charge and which you and I have not seen.
Yes, you and I see it, but did Drejka? He had just been knocked over, blindsided by a larger, younger and violent man. We do not know what the girlfriend was saying to Drejka as she exited the vehicle, but the timing of the exit suggests she exited in response to seeing McGlockton approaching, based on vantage point. McGlockton did take a step forward after the shove. In those few seconds, Drejka needed to right himself; track McGlockton - who perhaps reasonably appeared to be going for a weapon by hiking up his pants by the waistband at just the moment Drejka was rising - as well as the the girlfriend (and potentially the third man following McGlockton if he caught a glimpse); retrieve his weapon; likely remove the safety; set; and shoot, all while potentially being in a stunned state from being assaulted. Under the totality of the circumstances, was it reasonable for Drejka to understand that the attack was over? That is the question - and really the only question - for the trier of fact.
In all honesty, I am somewhat mixed on whether he should have apprehended that the fight was over, and so are police officers I’ve spoken with. Nevertheless, if there is some doubt, Drejka gets that benefit in accordance with the law. If that bothers you tremendously, do consider that McGlockton gave Drejka only fractions of a second to figure out whether he was going to be pummeled and whether to initiate that sequence of actions described above. This is the relevance of Holmes’ “uplifted knife” analogy. By contrast, as you can see from the tape, McGlockton walked rather slowly from the store at least at first, and had quite some time to figure out whether a violent assault was the best way to announce his presence.
Not at all! The reports may or may not be accurate, and the question of McGlockton’s actual intent is irrelevant (although, as you imply, based on my experience and talks with police officers in my family and among my friends who have collectively more than 60 years’ experience, yeah I think it was very likely that he would have continued the attack had he not seen the gun). Nevertheless, McGlockton knew nothing of any earlier reports, and I think we should be cautious about believing what the media chooses to put forward. Note that some of the witnesses (e.g., the truck driver who drove the septic truck) only came forward after the facts and so may not be as credible. We saw this phenomenon conclusively in the Michael Brown case, in which numerous witnesses provided false testimony (either intentionally or through faulty recall). Considering what happened to the convenience store in the Michael Brown case, we should also be cautious about the shopkeeper’s unsworn comments to media.
Can you link to those reports? The police will have already had access to all the reports, if they exist, and again in their initial determination found that Drejka was justified. Ultimately, political pressure applied by NAACP and civil rights lawyers forced the prosecutor to reverse the decision. We saw an analogous situation in the Freddie Gray case, with Mosby, and of course the results as well after much anguish in the media. I’ll add that the black community appears to be paying the price for that circus, as homicides in Baltimore have increased ~40-50% iirc to levels that prevailed in places like the Bronx in the “bad old days.” Ferguson did not do so well either in the aftermath of the Brown case, but many virtue signalers had their time in the sun with it.
Let’s just see where the case goes. Surely, we can all agree that the courts are the better place to determine guilt or justification. If you want to see another SYG case that never got much attention, certainly no civil rights full court press, take a look here: https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tampa-man-shoots-father-of-three-then-calls-stand-your-ground-hotline/2293853
Last post on this one for me.
This does not look like “stand your ground” (versus “duty to retreat”), as opposed to a claim of needing to use deadly force against the threat of a violent felony. The shooter in this case claimed that he was trying to retreat (even though not required in Florida), but could not (due to difficulty getting a door open), so it would not be a “stand your ground” issue unless that part of the claim is found to be false.
Less than half of fatal LEO shootings get reported to the FBI. I see no reason to think private citizen shootings are reported at higher rates.
I’m baffled by your certainty that the girlfriend exited the vehicle in order to beat up Drejka, @SatchelSF. It looks at least equally plausible to me that a woman with a hotheaded boyfriend in this situation would get out of the car to go up to her boyfriend and tell him to get in the car so they can take the kids and drive off.
Another thing that puzzles me is the belief that a shove would necessarily be followed by a beating. In my experience, a shove is usually followed by a lot of yelling. A shove, by itself, to me does not justify deadly force.
It is not the shove or the lack of a shove that justifies deadly force. It is the fear of being harmed.
- They did not yet have whatever they came to the store to purchase. Why would they leave?
- The 5-year-old was still in the store.
Right, but if the shove is not going to be followed by a beating, then the fear of being harmed is not well-founded. You can’t just allow racists to go around shooting every black person they see because they’re afraid of black people. Can I shoot a driver because some drivers kill bicyclists? Can I shoot a driver who passes me too close because some drivers kill bicyclists? Being buzzed by a honking driver is scary, I can tell you that, but I doubt that you’d say I was justified if I caught up to the offender at a stop light, pulled out a gun and shot them.
But if the car buzzed you and then backed up? If it went around the block and was coming toward you again, even if it hadn’t hit you in the past? In Florida, with a general SYG law, more likely to be seen as protecting yourself.
If I’m allowed to shoot drivers who buzz me and then yell at me, I may have to rethink my stance on guns. This is not an occurrence that is so very rare.
“You can’t just allow racists to go around shooting every black person they see because they’re afraid of black people”
At the moment he shot the man I don’t think he saw a black man, he saw the man who just violently through him to the ground.
I assume you would agree that you can’t allow people (any people) to go around forcibly and violently throwing every (person) they see to the ground just because they disagree with them. Neither person acted correctly but you can’t suggest racial motivation on the part of only one side.
I have no idea if the shooter is a racist he could be but let’s not guess and express it as certainty and then extrapolate to a society as a whole.
I already posted a link to the CNN story on the earlier incidents. There are many such stories – not because anyone has done great background reporting, but because the criminal complaint filed by the prosecutor in this case referenced the earlier police reports. I haven’t been able to find a link to the complaint itself, but all the stories cite the complaint as the source for their information.
I think it’s OK to assume that if a prosecutor files a document claiming that there’s a police reported dated X that says Y, there’s probably a police report dated X that says Y. There may be other information, too, not being cited, but if that information renders the information presented in the complaint misleading, the prosecutor is going to have a lot of trouble with his local judicial audience, and there’s no real incentive to risk that. So I am going to go on assuming that the stuff about the shooter’s prior inappropriate behavior with his gun around traffic and parking issues is factual, just like the victim’s prior run-ins with the law are also factual. The victim and his girlfriend getting ready to beat up the shooter – that’s speculation, not fact.
^JHS I agree that he has a history of being a total instigator and generally bad guy based on the complaint. I don’t think however I can draw a racial line from what I read. He could be an indiscriminate jerk. Again he may be a total racist just haven’t seen evidence or proof.
Race or racism may be more relevant in how others (those on the jury and in the general public) may see the case, since both Drejka and McGlockton may resemble some ugly racially-tinged stereotypes that may lead some to take one side or the other based on fitting such stereotypes, even though they may not take that side if both were the same race or otherwise less stereotype-fitting.
I would agree with that, and so would everyone else in this thread. The issue is whether the shooter was justified in responding by killing the guy, not whether the guy was justified in shoving the shooter to the ground.
Yes. As a reminder, the relevant Florida statute 776.012 says (emphasis added):
So the question really is, would it be reasonable for someone in Drejka’s position to believe that deadly force “is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony”?
For what it’s worth, I have tried to avoid discussing the racial element in this case. There’s nothing I know of other than the fact of the parties’ different races on which to base a conclusion that the shooter was motivated by race-based animus or race-based fear. It’s clear the shooter was capable of being a jerk to whites as well as blacks. I suspect race did have something to do with what happened here, but that’s pretty certainly a product of my own bias, not any information I have seen about the actual case.
Also, it would be hard to have anything like a civil conversation in this thread if one insisted on calling out all the racial stereotyping.
If we are to believe racism is involved just from what we saw on the tape, are we to assume the deceased was racist against whites, and was just looking for the opportunity to assault a white man? (paraphrasing an earlier post)
Or perhaps it was age discrimination? Maybe the young, strong guy was just looking for an old easy target?
I wouldn’t dare to really assume either of those. Why are others here so willing to do so?