You missed the point entirely. The cops created the life threatening situation, you cannot exclude the prologue when talking about the epilogue, you lose all context.
How about this situation
Epilogue: I shoot and kill a man attempting to stab me with a knife.
That would be a valid self defense situation, correct?
Prologue: I break into someone's home and awaken the homeowner.
Epilogue: I shoot and kill a man attempting to stab me with a knife.
Is that still a valid self defense situation? Should I now be cleared for murder based on the Epilogue? I was about to get stabbed. I was in fear for my life. Should I be exonerated for murder? The prologue and epilogue are intertwined and you need the whole story to draw a valid conclusion. The biggest difference between hypothetical situations on THR and here is that the cops injected themselves into this situation, by drawing a gun, stepping out of their truck, and in the path of another car; they created the danger to their lives themselves. If it was a CCW'er the advice would be to avoid confrontation at all cost, don't get out of the car, drive away, don't draw / brandish a gun unless your life is in danger, and don't move into the path of a moving car! I can't jump into the middle of the road and the shoot the driver coming at me claiming self defense, I created the life threatening situation, which is essentially what the cops did .
I have already admitted that the cops could have handled it better in this particular situation. However, in the general comparison above, the cop does not have the luxury to "walk away". He has to put himself and the suspect into a high-risk situation. He has to initiate a confrontation to do his job of making the arrest. That is inevitable, unless the reason for the arrest disappears, e.g. drug are made legal.
Very flimsy connection if any. They passed busting the woman, their actual target twice on drug charges but when they see a man that gave her a ride and dropped her off they decided that they must felony stop him now. How does that logical connection go because I can't see it.
We certainly do not know all the details for the particular case. However, in general, why would it be unreasonable for the cops to suspect that ride was a purchase drive, and that the vehicle contained narcotics? She was a known drug offender. I am not a lawyer and do not know what constitutes a legally reasonable pretext for a felony stop. All I can do is speculate and think using common sense and the info given.
No I listed no rule, don't assume my intent, a car weaving on the road is a good indicator that the driver is drunk and even if he isn't its still a reason to pull them over, reckless driving. A more accurate example would be you leaving the Taco Bell and cops pulling a felon stop on you for reasonable suspicion of possession of marijuana. The cops had NO evidence of a crime, they witnessed nothing indicating that drugs were being used or distributed by the pastor. What reasonable suspicion are you talking about?
Same point as above. I do not know what is legally reasonable for a felony stop. My defense of their "shock and awe" approach is predicated on the assumption that they had a sensible reason to suspect the driver was involved illegal drug activities. So, in a sense, we are arguing about different aspects of the same event.
Where are you making this stuff up from? The guy was a pastor not a violent drug criminal,
Did
they know his was not, at the time of the attempted arrest? Was it reasonable for them to suspect he was
at that time? The headlines say "A pastor gets shot in a botched drug arrest!" but when you are the cop on the ground, you do not have a god-like knowledge of 20/20 hindsight. You are there, with your gun, and your colleagues, and you are facing the unknown. You do not see a pastor, you see a drug driver running over one of your buddies. And you react.
Second off I acknowledged that traffic stops are the most dangerous part of police work, but that doesn't mean there getting murdered daily. Cops being killed in the line of duty are actually pretty rare statistically. In NYC I can only think of one example in recent years of a cop being killed in a traffic stop. Being scared of getting shot in not a reason to conduct themselves in this manor, they increased the likelihood of them being injured specifically by their own tactics. Even if this was a violent felon that just makes this stop even worse, they allowed him to reach a 2000lbs weapon, failed to actually box his car in, and then got in the path of the car. If this guy really was a violent felon that department would probably have had a run over officer.
Again, they could have and should have handled the particular case better, especially since they could have got him before he reached the car. But, we are talking about a generic situation and what is justifiable as police tactics in general. Also, I am not certain what the point of the statistics is. Do you mean to say they should be gentler and take more chances, because they do not get killed as much (how much is much?)?
Ok let me amend that, have a marked car do a felony stop. Do you think this situation would have come out differently if the pastor would have been given a chance to know that actual cops where pulling him over? When cops are getting shot daily, I'll accept felony stops on all traffic stops, but until then if you don't have actual proof of a crime don't felony stop random cars. What proof did these cops have that this guy was violent? Don't say their actual target because she was involved in drugs because they turned a blind eye to her drug buying ways twice, yet some random guy was of greater concern than the target of an actual police investigation.
Again, that was not a traffic stop. They tried to arrest him on suspected involvement in narcotics, which raises the threat bar enormously. Which is why we need to legalize the drugs, de-fund the criminals and their organizations, and take the teeth out of a social phenomenon that makes law enforcement adopt in self-defense the kind of tactics and morbid expectations that get people killed by the generated high-risk situations.
