If your gun were a semi-automatic and five seconds were all it took for you to fire all your bullets, if the intruder were still standing upright on your rug, if he still had a 'gun' in his hand after your moral allowance of two shots, if you knew from training and experience that he might be wearing a bullet proof vest (that training is why some of the shots were fired at Diallo's legs), if he had just shot (you thought) one of your children and you figured he wouldn't therefore hesitate to shoot the other one, your husband, and you...
maybe you'd keep shooting until you were positive the danger was over. Maybe not.
"Sufficiently incapacitated so as not to fire his weapon"? That would require neurological tests.
What do you think you would have done differently in the situation I described, not in your house (you didn't mention whether the "intruder" was pointing a gun at you); with protocols you are trained to follow (and the jury said you did follow)?
How would you propose to instruct police officers in the future who face such a situation?
Do you think these men hated Diallo?
Do you think they did it because they were racists?
Do you think they were vicious, or just stupid and incompetent?
Do you think they knew he was not shooting at them?
The day before the death of Diallo, one of the cops had disarmed an armed man without firing a shot.
What do you want? Your moral limit of eight bullets for four cops is a start. Do you propose that be incorporated into the protocols? Do you propose two per cop, however they perceive the threat, or a total of eight for four cops?
What if the suspect is wearing a bullet proof vest?
You wrote, "if he starts to fall, I stop shooting." As I have said, these bullets don't have a large impact; the scene was over in five seconds; Diallo didn't fall until the very end, and was still holding his..."gun" as he lay there dying. (At least one bullet was certainly fired after he had finally fallen, according to what I've read.)
Do you think the cop who applied to be a fireman should be rejected? |
