You could look out your window. You could stay inside and not get involved. You could get on the phone and call the local police and ask them why a bunch of cops are at your house.
I bet the first words the police said were something very similar to, “Police! Put your hands up! Don’t move.” Can you process that? In the video, the man was outside his home for about 10 seconds before he was shot. Is 10 seconds long enough to process the situation?
I don’t think anything can make this a “good” shoot, but I do think the officer was within his legal authority to use lethal force.
You live in New Hampshire, correct? Would that be, perhaps,
rural New Hampshire? Like, in the woods, in a house on a lot that's probably anywhere from 3 to 10 acres in size? How long is your driveway? How close is your nearest neighbor?
I live in what is now considered a suburb, but when my parents built the house in 1950 it was rural. They evicted a herd of cows to build the house, and there were cornfields across the road until I was in my teens -- at which time the fields went over to hay. My driveway is 100 yards long, and in the summer I can't see a neighbor's house in any direction. I
know if the police are at my house, because if they're at even my nearest neighbor's house I won't see or hear them.
The shooting took place in an urban/suburban neighborhood. I'm sure the houses are close enough that if there were more than two police cars, nobody would know which house they were there for until they assessed and saw which house the attention was focused on. It would not be at all unreasonable to think that an innocent man might see the pretty, flashing lights and hear all the commotion and decide to pop open the front door to see what's going on. Remember, he was
innocent. He had NO inkling that they were there for him. Given that he was
innocent, have you considered that maybe he thought all those shouted commands were directed toward some actual, like,
criminal?
