Was This Police Shooting Justified?

Chris | InformationLiberation
Jan. 25, 2012

There's a ton of debate all over the interwebs over this police shooting at a Carl's Jr. in Monterey Park, California.

The suspect was smashing the windows at the store with a crowbar before the police shot him. “I had heard that he had gotten into an argument with his teacher about a bad grade. People are saying that midterms are on right now,” one witness said, see this article for more background on the case.

I'm undecided on whether this shooting was justified, one thing I noticed is the man was trying to just walk away from the scene, he hadn't harmed anyone physically, only property. It's when the cop tries to taze him, then mace him that he turns and takes an aggressive posture, leading to the other cop unloading on him.

Compare it to this video I posted the other day where a man walks up and punches/tackles a cop in the middle of an arrest, the cops fumbled around and wrestled with the guy for a while, not using any deadly force. They also just let the first guy who they were arresting for "disorderly conduct" run away without thinking too much about it, he was, of course, later caught. The asian cop in the video definitely took things too far, but the other two cops were rather professional about the incident, and they didn't just rush to execute the men for questioning their authorit-taih.

Almost everyone agrees there was no need to shoot the man an additional 5 times after the first cop shot him 5 times, many say one shot would have been enough. One stray bullet even flew into a restaurant sign across the street with a woman standing below it, shattered glass apparently rained on her, she was taken to the hospital but only suffered minor injuries.

Also note, if the cop didn't have his gun pointed at the guy like he was some violent criminal ready to strike at any moment, and the cops again didn't taze him/mace him, it's entirely likely he would have just walked away and calmed down if they just talked him down, it really strikes me as just lazy police work, which is, of course, to be expected.

I'm really not sure entirely what to think about this video, it's hard to make judgement calls on whether this or that shooting was justified when the entire system of policing is inherently criminal.