shootings

3 officer involved shootings in the past 6 months, and 2 ruled unjustified...

Keep this up and you may actually start to make the ECSO look like the more friendly agency!

Where did these shootings take place?

One in Traget parking lot after the bank robbery, one at the fleeing tide detergent thief downtown, and now the one at the stolen car that was "trying to run over the officer", but was facing away from him.

First of all, genius, a car can run over you even if its facing away from you. ITS CALLED REVERSE!!!! Jeff saw the reverse lights come on just before the car took off because, read this twice if you have to, you have to go through the reverse gear to get to the drive gear when you are in park. I apologize if I seem sarcastic, maybe you have been driven everywhere your entire life and aren't familiar with operating a car. Also Jeff was concerned with the female hanging out of the vehicle because she looked like she was hung up on something as it drove off. Just a reminder, being drug by a vehicle travelling at high speed can cause death or great bodily harm. HOLY COW!! for a minute there that sounded like a justification for the use of deadly force.

Wow!! I watched the video quite a few times and I don't recall seeing reverse lights. I must have been looking elsewhere, like maybe the brake lights.

Put yourself in that situation, guest, and decide in 2 seconds what kind of lights they were.

You obviously have never been in that situation or you'd understand.

PS...glad you had the option of watching the video several times to make your decision on how it should have been handled.

You are right. By your own statement things happened so fast that even the officer shouldn't have known the lights were reverse lights. Even after watching the video several times I never saw the vehicle even once move backwards. I also fail to see how the officer involved could have even witnessed the passenger "FALLING" out of the vehicle while he was watching the driver from the driver side of his cruiser. You can make up every excuse in the book but it was a bad shoot. Deadly force should have never been used on a stolen tag and stolen vehicle complaint if that is all he had to go on. But I know you will never see it that way.

Since I started this thread, I geuss it is time I added my response to everybody.

The simple fact is this...reverse lights or not, Jeff continued to shoot after the vehicle began moving away. You can see an oncoming car RIGHT IN THE PATH of the bullets!

Bad shoot, plain and simple.

And by the way, if he would have waited calmly for backup to arrive, form the saftey of his car, the situation probably would have turned out a lot different.

Instead, he started squirreling out and making the suspects nervous, and then they knew that he knew, and it was on.

Should have been handled differently all around.