Cincinnati Police Officer Indicted On Murder

[Peace]

Josh,

After long enough on the job, cops can sense things.

This cop knew this guy was driving on a suspended license. He could tell by the way the guy was answering his questions. Cops can tell when people lie, and often what they are lying about. People lie to them all day long.

The cop sensed the guy was about to try and evade arrest. That is why the cop opened the door, and that is why the cop reached through the window around the steering column. He could tell the guy was about to take off even before the engine started. The cop is thrown backwards when the car accelerates because he has some portion of his body inside the car. He was thrown backwards when the acceleration forced him free.

He should not have reached into the car to try and stop this guy from getting away.

But you have to realize that it is not natural for a police officer to let the bad guys go, or retreat from trouble. Firefighters call police "blue canaries," because they frequently run into burning buildings despite the fact that they are not firefighters. It is a dumb thing to do, but it takes time and the wisdom of experience for police to learn to resist the urge to run towards trouble or let bad guys go when the cost is too high.

I have no doubt the cop thought he was about to be dragged or run over. I have heard people poo-poo this as an illegitimate fear because "cars do not go sideways." Well, I have been a nanny long enough to know that kids are easily run over when they are standing too close to the driver side window of a car - let alone inside of it.

It is very likely it never occurred to this cop that he could get away simply by letting go. When cops are in trouble they do not think about how they can "get away." There is tremendous psychological inertia to overcome before a police officer can include "letting the bad guys go" among the acceptable outcomes to consider when making a split second decision.

I have seen the video.  I have software that lets me watch it frame by frame. 3 minutes is about an hour going frame by frame.

I think he made a stupid mistake. Manslaughter maybe. I don't think he murdered this guy.

I think you should join his defense team with that kind of advocacy. Only he and God knows whether he truly believed that he was going to be physically harmed. The question is - would such a belief have been reasonable? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I think that police officers should be given the benefit of the doubt given the risks that are associated with their jobs. On the other hand - we hold police officers to a higher standard than we do the general public. They know the risks of the job when they sign up for it. They are trained, and they take oaths to act in accordance with they way they are trained. And they wield immense power including the power to take another person's life.

I don't really think this is a lynch mob. We have to scrutinize the actions of police officers just as we scrutinize the rest of our government. To the extent that we do not, it seems to me that we live less and less in a democracy, and more and more in a police-state.