I was a commissioned/certified LEO in NM for 10 years. In Northern NM that was at the time outlaw country and nearly everybody went armed or had weapon in vehicle. My wife always had her pistol with her. That was not a justifiable shooting and I watched at least 5 videos from different angles. No one was ever directly in front of her car and the closest individual was on her left hand side. He ended up shooting her thru the driver's window. She was turning away from him and trying to get away from the ice goons that wanted to drag her out of her car after observing what they were doing. I was taught in the NM Law Enforcement Academy to not shoot even a fleeing felon unless that person was an immediate danger to the community. I would have been fired for that shooting and rightly so. I hope he is and then brought to trial for murder.
NM clearly trains its officers differently than AR, TN, and the FBI.
Nothing says that the officer has to be in front of the vehicle.
And the use of deadly force isn’t limited to a fleeing felon being an imminent danger to the community.
If the officer believes his own life is in danger or he is in danger of grievous bodily harm, deadly force is authorized and supported by state law.
The officer was struck by the vehicle. The officer likely could not see the angle of the tires to have any idea which direction it was getting ready to go. They were on ice. How hard would it have been for the officer to be drug even a couple of feet and fall under a tire?
If anything, if you were a commissioned LEO you should know if you weren’t physically there, you don’t have all the information and you can’t get into the officers mind, so you let investigators investigate, otherwise there’s a pretty damn good chance you end up the fool in the situation. You shouldn’t let your personal emotions and distaste for ICE (I.e. “ice goons) skew your judgement. Stick to the facts and let the facts speak for themselves.
I was involved (not the shooter) in two very similar shootings. One in TN (Memphis) and the other across the bridge in West Memphis, AR. The West Memphis shooting was actually almost identical. A guy trying leave the courthouse parking lot, on ice, with an officer trying to apprehend him through the drivers side window. The car moved less than 5 feet before the officer shot the suspect. He had been struck by the vehicle and feared being drug. The only significant difference is the suspect was shot twice in the upper leg near the groin rather than the head like the MN suspect. Both the department and the courts ruled it a good shoot.
In Memphis it involved a high speed chase where the suspect trapped himself in an alley. The first officer on the scene blocked the suspect in with his vehicle and got out of the car to start the arrest procedure. The suspect put the car in reverse and started to move toward the officer with the intent of ramming his way out of the alley. The officer engaged and killed the suspect. The question was asked why the officer didn’t move out of the way.. the answer is simple.. there is no duty to retreat.. at that moment the officer thought his life was in danger… so he shot.. again the department and the courts both ruled it a good shoot…
CNN takes every possible opportunity to punch the current administration in the mouth that it gets.. they had a career FBI agent on yesterday to talk about the shoot… the best the FBI agent could do was say that morally maybe there is a question, but legally there is none.. the woman struck the officer with the car, the officer has no duty to retreat.. if he felt his life was in danger, the requirement is met. End of story.
