Kondor3
Cafeteria Centrist
Ties, and benefits-of-a-doubt, always go to the police officer.Brown was worm-meat as soon as (1) he reached into the cop's squad-car window to try to wrestle the gun away from the cop, and (2) he failed to comply with the cop's command to surrender. Everything else is a mere matter of degree, and mere detail. Don't want to get shot? Don't try to take a cop's gun. And surrender when he tells you to.
Q.E.D.
You keep saying that. If it were PROVEN that he went for the gun, then the officer would have been in the right if he shot Brown dead BEFORE Brown turned and ran away.
It hasn't been proven. And he shot the man dead long after going for the gun was even possible.
And, technically speaking, you're right about the timing of the use of lethal force.
Unless, of course, the officer commanded the suspect to halt, and to surrender, and the suspect failed to comply.
Of if the suspect turned on his heel and proceeded to rush-charge the officer, which, when compounded with the early attempted gun-grab, constituted sufficient cause to use lethal force, yes?
Now, as to whether or not such things actually happened, I cannot say.
But, ties, and benefits-of-a-doubt, always go to the police officer.
Apparently, the grand jury saw it in similar terms.
Consequently, justice has been served.
It's over.
And, as the days and weeks go by, this has already slid off the front page, and is already sliding out of the collective Public Consciousness.
Yesterday's news... in a world of Short Attention-Span Theater... bore, bore, bore.