Do you think Rayshard Brooks was afraid for his life once the police wanted to cuff him?
Asked by
JLeslie (
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June 15th, 2020
from iPhone
He was cooperative until the cops wanted to cuff him.
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91 Answers
Hard to tell as he failed several sobriety tests.
Was the cop afraid for his life as Mr. Brooks grabbed his taser and aimed it at him?
The guy was completely hammered, so it is not difficult to suppose that in his drunken stuper he panicked and flipped out.
Maybe.
I’m not a cop and I’m not an attorney but it seems this police officer and his partner have a decent claim of self defense because of the circumstances.
What kind of question is this? The guy was murdered on video by the cops. Case closed.
Considering the tendency of black men to die at the hands of police I’d say he had understandable reason to fear.
These officers kinda justified that fear.
Sure, that seems very likely. I’ve never been handcuffed, but I imagine it’s terrifying even for those privileged enough to mostly trust police officers. For a black man, it probably feels closer to being handcuffed by a violent gang.
No. When he realized what he had done and what was to become of him for doing so, he freaked out.
So many of these instances occur because the person being detained by the police does not obey the officers.
When the man tells you to do something, DO IT! Don’t fight it!
@hmmmmmm What’s your issue here? When I first heard about what happened I immediately thought he was probably frightened, but I did not hear that being said in the “reporting.” It was being more being discussed the cop didn’t have reason to use deadly force. I agree he didn’t, but that’s not my question.
I know I was raised to be afraid to be alone with a cop. I also have been raised when under attack to run, even risking getting shot. I just wonder what I would do with all these fears in my own head let alone everything we are seeing now on TV.
If so, grabbing a cop’s taser and firing it at him is a pretty fucking stupid way to try to stay alive. I know this case will be treated as if it’s exactly the same as George Floyd but they are quite different.
@JLeslie: “What’s your issue here?”
@Demosthenes: “If he was, grabbing a cop’s taser and firing it at him was a pretty fucking stupid way to try to stay alive. I know this case is being treated as if it’s exactly the same as George Floyd but they are very different.”
^ This. See what happens when you start talking about the behavior of the victim? Even if you are attempting to excuse Brooks’ behavior, you’re allowing the discussion and framing to be about something other than it is. Brooks was murdered. That’s it.
Just as a point of interest, people who are sufficiently afraid are not capable of rational thought. The fear response literally bypasses the higher functioning pathways of our brain.
Is this not something everyone has experienced for themselves?
@kritiper “When the man tells you to do something, DO IT! Don’t fight it!”
Comply or die.
It’s exactly that kind of attitude that empowers police officers to believe they can do pretty much anything and get away with it.
Like the guy in the hotel halway that was laying on the ground.
The pigs told him to put his hands on his back, so he did.
That was their excuse to blast him with bullets because “he was reaching for a weapon”.
@kritiper You can comply and get raped, die, all sorts of horrible ends. You’re more likely to simply be arrested and taken to the police station, but there is a chance complying gets you harmed, and right now that’s very in our faces. It’s quite obvious and easy to understand that police work attracts men who see control, like driving fast, carrying a gun, and moving through society with people presuming you are in the side of good. I don’t mean the majority of cops are bad people, I believe just the opposite, most police interactions I’ve had have been very positive, or at minimum neutral, but there are too many bad eggs. It’s similar to teachers, coaches, and clergy, the positions attract pedophiles, but most teachers, coaches, and clergy have callings to the positions and are working for all the right reasons.
When I was a teen I was told if it was late at night to put on my hazards and drive slowly to the police station or a well lit busy store parking lot instead of being pulling over on a dark road. I’ve never done that, but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. In fact, I think cops should be aware this is something told to young women, or it used to be anyway, so they understand why we keep driving.
I assume you’re white and male, and have no clue what it feels like to feel extremely vulnerable. Maybe you didn’t grow up hearing stories of people getting hurt by security guards and cops.
It’s not uncommon to hear stories of women who were forced into sexual acts while in the custody of police, in police cars. Just recently in Brooklyn there were two. I’ll try to find a link.
@longgone Does that apply also to cops who fear for their lives?
^ Cops don’t have that luxury. If they fear for their lives, they shouldn’t be a cop. This is another reason cops shouldn’t have guns.
Cops are supposedly paid to not freak the fuck out and start gunning people down or choking people out.
There is no comparison between a citizen and a cop in any way. Cops have such power over people that they need to be held to sky-high standards or done away with. Disarm and defund these terrorists, who are apparently little fucking man babies.
Does that apply also to cops who fear for their lives?
Why bring that up? Rayshard Brooks was shot in the back while running away.
@Darth_Algar and @JLeslie That is typical mob mentality. Assume guilt before actual guilt of innocence is established. And that is the basis of what is wrong. On BOTH sides.
Cops aren’t above the law but the cops need to be thought of as innocent and harmless, the same as any suspects they confront/arrest.
One major problem with police and everyone in general who has a gun is that nobody knows the correct method of proper gunplay. One simply cannot pull a gun on someone when deadly force is not required, or not yet required. To do so BEGS for trouble!
@Call_Me_Jay I didn’t mean it only in the context of this case.
@hmmmmmm I agree cops should be held to a higher standard. But it seems to me that turning off the fear response entirely is asking someone to be superhuman. It simply won’t be possible in some cases.
@Demosthenes: “I agree cops should be held to a higher standard. But it seems to me that turning off the fear response entirely is asking someone to be superhuman. It simply won’t be possible in some cases.”
If you believe this, then you should seriously look into why people have been calling for defunding and disarming police for years. If the design of your institution requires people to be “superhuman” in order to function, then the institution should be done away with. If we are assuming that cops are merely human, yet we provide them with super-human power over the population, then we should expect the brutality we have always seen.
One simply cannot pull a gun on someone when deadly force is not required, or not yet required. To do so BEGS for trouble!
I’ve written before here about a neighbor’s 24-year-old kid who was threatening me (and his mother and others).
I thought about keeping a gun at hand for literally less than a second. Immediately, I pictured the consequences. The gun turns it into a kill-or-be-killed situation. If I don’t shoot the guy, there’s a strong chance he can take it away from me.
Police in other nations subdue violent men routinely without shooting anybody because they are trained that it is an option, or even THE option.
@kritiper That is the reason the cop is wrong in this recent situation, he had no reason to pull a gun and shoot the guy in the back. But, that is not really my question here.
For women, an average man has an extreme advantage over an average woman physically. Every day we trust that the men we interact with are not going to harm us. We have no choice, or we would die from anxiety. Certain situations we are more concerned. Cops are more likely to be believed so they can abuse their position. Cops are trained to subdue people, are usually in decent physical shape, and usually have guns. They have an obvious advantage if they are bad people. Like I side, I believe most cops are good people, but I believe most people are good people, but I still am wary of getting in a car with someone. At least if the officers are always in twos it would have to be both officers in on it, which I would hope is less likely. But, then look at what happened to George Floyd. FOUR. FOUR participants. If you grow up with stories and fears about this sort of thing against your group, then seeing something like that will make you paranoid. I was going to add more to this, but then I might have to change the heading to NSFW.
They could have just had a family member take him home. I guess it was justified to arrest him since he obviously had been driving while drunk, or maybe they could have just cited him and he could have appeared in court at a future date? Seems like cops on a scene like this should be able to write an order to suspend the license maybe and have the person appear in court. I don’t know the rules for drunk driving. He complied with the breathalyzer.
@JLeslie: Here if you get caught drunk driving you get arrested.
@jca2 He was parked. They found him passed out in his car from what I understand, but in the drive-thru if I have the information correct, not a parking space, so he probably drove there.
I got that but he was in the drive through so he probably had the keys in the ignition.
I think everybody involved was scared from the get go!!!
@JLeslie the news report said he was sleeping in the drive thru & people were having to pull around him to complete their orders. Employees tried to wake him up to get him to leave but were unsuccessful so they called the cops. By the time the cops arrived, he had pulled into a parking space & gone back to sleep. The cops tried to awaken him on their arrival & once out of the car he managed to confiscate one of the cop’s tasers & things went down hill from there as he was considered armed & dangerous & he became combative & took off running holding on to the taser.
Police: “Tasers are not deadly weapons!”
Also police: “Brooks was holding a deadly weapon!”
@LadyMarissa Oh, I heard the cops told him to move the car to the parking space, which was interesting since he had some alcohol in him. I am not sure what is correct now. I thought he spoke to the cops for a quite a while, and then when they went to cuff him he took the taser. I’ll have to google the story again and watch the video.
I can understand why a cop feels him having a taser makes him dangerous, because a tasered cop cannot protect himself, he is essentially disabled, but the guy was running off, and didn’t seem to be a danger to others. The cops could have followed him and kept enough distance the taser wouldn’t work. I don’t know the distance on those things.
@JLeslie The cops could have followed him and kept enough distance the taser wouldn’t work. I don’t know the distance on those things. I would think it all happened so fast that they didn’t have time to think all options over.
@Demosthenes “Does that apply also to cops who fear for their lives?”
Yes. Which is why they should be trained to recognize an acute stress response in themselves and in others. It’s also a very, very good argument for making weapons less available, more regulated, and less powerful. There’s no need for semi-automatics at a peaceful protest.
That said, the heavily armed and legally invincible cops of today are not likely to fear for their lives while unarmed men are lying on the ground in handcuffs, drunkenly fleeing from them, or sitting on the couch watching TV.
Who knows
He was drunk
At that point things become unknowable
I’m just flummoxed at why they use lethal force so often, when shooting the guy in the leg would have taken him down without killing him!
Other incidents on video in the recent past (Walter Scott), seem that non-lethal force would be the normal response to a runner but again, death was chosen. And in the back, at that, the ‘cowards shot’.
I’m just a 40-something woman in the Midwest, but even I know where to aim to stop someone instead of killing them.
^^No surprise to some people here.
You unarmed attack cop. You die. You unarmed walk away from cop. Cop follows you. You unarmed don’t obey and attack. You die.
Those cops and supporters of that procedure are surprised you are surprised.
How dare they disrespect cop. How dare they look at cop angry. How dare they make cop fear for his own life.
Do that. You die.
@KNOWITALL
Arms and legs are hard to hit. There’s a much greater chance of missing your target entirely and hitting an innocent bystander. And that’s even if you’re a crack shot, which, most police officers are not.
Beyond that, a shot in the leg or arm can kill you just as easily as a shot in the chest can. There is no such thing as a non-lethal shot.
@Darth_Algar Maybe our resident ex LEO can weigh in on that sometime.
Felony murder is going to be difficult to prove. I see an acquittal ahead.
Felony murder? Is there such a thing as misdemeanor murder?
@Yellowdog Last night I saw a video of Rayshard talking about his past crimes and doing time. Makes sense that he was on parole and didn’t want to go back to prison. I guess he’s an alcoholic too. It all stresses me out. I really think if we had society set up a different way this sort of thing wouldn’t happen so often. He should not have been shot, and a deadly shot at that. I can’t help thinking his entire life circumstance led to that moment, and some of that is not his fault and not right. I’m not excusing his behavior, but I think if we want less crime in our society we need to do better. I’m not just talking about black people, there are plenty of white people committing crimes and DUI’s and abusing children.
@Darth_Algar I re-watched the video in relation to this thread. Yes, I’ve heard discharging your weapon means you shoot to kill, not shoot to injure (on a personal level many times), so maybe that was a naive comment on my part.
I suppose in your article, when it says ‘dangerous criminal’, I just don’t associate a drunk asleep in a car at Wendy’s as a ‘dangerous criminal’, which is probably a failure on my part.
@KNOWITALL. What if, instead of a taser, he had grabbed the policeman’s gun? Yes, he was passed out in his car, but it quickly escalated.
@chyna If he’d grabbed the gun, the cop Rolfe (the DUI certified officer was second on scene) couldn’t have shot him in the back and killed him, but I guess Brosnan could have.
Again, I’m not an officer, but with two officers on scene and armed, I’m not sure I would have killed a man armed only with a taser, half drunk and scared, that was my only point earlier.
PS, it has been ruled unjustified killing by officials.
It has been ruled “Murder.”
I saw yesterday on the news, they said murder is a “stretch” and they may have a hard time proving it.
I know the judge and jury will do their jobs but I also think it’s very easy for any of us to play armchair quarterback.
@KNOWITALL
Make no mistake – I am in no way saying this shooting was justified. Merely elaborating on why police don’t aim for an arm or a leg.
@KNOWITALL Unprovoked, while pretending to cooperate, he assaulted police officers, including shooting one with the officer’s own taser, resulting in that officer’s head trauma and concussion, and was not finished with that taser when he was shot. Not just a drunk asleep in a car.
Georgia State law, as do most states, consider a taser a deadly weapon; and the prosecuting district attorney,declared a taser as a deadly weapon just two weeks ago in a case against six officers who used a taser on a suspect.Even when it does not kill, it will disable and guns can be taken.
@Yellowdog Going to jail is a pretty big deal to a lot of people. Don’t you watch Cops or Live PD? People run for expired licenses and all kinds of silliness.
I’m not a cop, you arent a cop so guess we should let the courts figure it out.
I’m how both body cams dropped and why over 2 minutes passed while he bled out and why the officers foot was on his shoulder as he lay there. I’ll definately follow it.
That’s what the prosecuting District Attorney said, but the first video released had the cops immediately applying CPR and desperately trying to get him to breathe.
@Yellowdog Yep. Then the got Wendys security tapes I read, and saw the rest. I dont know, after reading up on Rolfe more, I’m not automatically taking up for him.
Even his name sounds racist if you knoq what I’m sayin.
What the prosecuting DA said is way different from what’s on audio or video, So therefore, the case is already dead. If an aquittal happens, there will be another excuse for rioting, looting, burnings and killings
Unless, of course, they can stack the jury, which they probably will. And they will go for the death penalty. When that happens, no cop is safe—from the mob or political decisions over their lives. Expect the majority of cops to resign when this happens.
“Expect the majority of cops to resign when this happens.”
Then they are unworthy of the badge to begin with.
@yellowdog: “Expect the majority of cops to resign when this happens.”
That would be great!
They already are in MN and Atlanta. I think I read NY, too.
@Yellowdog: The majority of cops are not going to resign. What are they going to do? It’s a job. In the county I work in, it’s a well paying job, too. The cops make more than the leader of the county. The cops’ salaries on regularly 150–200k annually, sometimes more (this is including overtime). They’re not resigning. If anything, they may make less arrests, maybe be less aggressive and gung-ho about doing their jobs.
But is it woth the death penalty…
The majority of cops are not resigning anywhere.
@Yellowdog: I’m not arguing about it. I just don’t think the majority of cops will resign. Only time will tell if I’m right or your theory is right.
I just read NYPD is having the Blue Flu July 4th.
@KNOWITALL: Yes! They’re not resigning! They’re just slowing down for the day or maybe calling in sick. The law in NYS for civil servants says we can’t strike, and can’t call a sick out, but discipline is at the whim of the boss.
@jca2 That’s a pretty big holiday to leave citizens to fend for themselves in an urban area. Does that scare you a little bit?
@KNOWITALL: I’m an hour away from there, so no, I’m not scared.
A close friend of mine’s husband is a detective in Ohio and he says morale in the police department is terrible. He was planning to retire in 5 years, but now he is considering doing it sooner.
@JLeslie Many of my LEO friends are very upset, too.
If I were a cop, I’d be saying I’ll finish out my 20 years but I’m not looking to arrest anyone and I’m not going to kill myself working hard. I’ll do the minimum and lay low, under the radar.
The shitty people whose feelings are hurt when they’re told not to harass and murder people are selecting themselves out. Good. Make way for someone with morals and decency.
@KNOWITALL: To describe it another way, in the hour ride from the city to my house, it goes from one of the densest urban areas in the world (NYC) to a rural area where there are lakes and horses.
@jca2 We’ll see how it goes, I guess.
@Call_Me_Jay Cops that haven’t done a thing wrong are being attacked and spit on. Two wrongs dont make a right.
PS Sounds like you take this very personally. Whats that about?
“Cops that haven’t done a thing wrong are being attacked and spit on.”
Their “innocence” is on the same level as a bank robber’s lookout or getaway driver, or a sniper’s spotter.
They know the abuse and corruption is happening, they know the cops that perpetrate it.
They look away and do nothing, at best.
They protect and hide their crimes to prevent justice, at medium.
They actively bully, drive out, and sometimes harm and kill, the very, very few cops that actually do try to hold the corrupt cops accountable, at worst.
There was a cop that stopped another drunk cop for speeding. She got mobbed, harassed, and eventually driven out for it.
Another one stopped a colleague when he was engaging in police brutality. She got fired for it.
During the protests, some cops knelt with the protesters. They are now facing punishment for “insubordination”.
They think they are making a point in their own favour by staging these “walk outs”, but in reality, all they are doing is proving the protesters right, once again.
It has been almost 50 years since the events in the film “Serpico”, and nothing has changed.
@ragingloli
Yep. I was just about to mention Frank Serpico as I was reading your post. He’s still persona-non-grata as far as the NYPD are concerned.
@ragingloli Then all blacks are thugs? All Asians are mobsters? All Germans are Nazi’s? All Jews are greedy?
Sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?! There are a lot of good cops I call friends and stereotyping them is just as bad as any other group of people.
Response moderated (Personal Attack)
If 1,000 good cops stand by and do nothing about 100 bad cops then you have 1,100 bad cops.
@ragingloli Evolutionbremse. :D
@Darth As if all depts are the same? As if bad cops wear a scarlett letter? No one likes bad cops and they’re all over the world, no one denies that. With Trumps reform hopefully things get better. Until then just hope you or people you love won’t need help.
@KNOWITALL
The response had nothing to do with my point, but ok…
@Darth_Algar You say that here a lot to various people. Such a cop out (pun unintended.)
It has everything to do with your post. You seem to believe cops know magically that another cop is a bad cop, so explain how they know please.
When a cop stands around while a fellow officer is slowly mudering a suspect, the cop that is standing around is a bad cop. He may not have killed anyone, but he is just is guilty. It’s not hard to pick them out. You don’t have to be magic.
@KNOWITALL
If that’s how you choose to interpret my statement, then I don’t know what to tell you. @Dutchess_III has it right. The bad cops make little to no effort to even try to hide it. Hell, in many cases they openly flaunt it and the “good cops” do nothing.
@Darth You both are welcome to your opinions, as always. If they witness a crime and do nothing I agree. We’ll leave it at that.
Has anyone seen the movie 16 Blocks? It’s a really good movie that focuses on bad cops.
I haven’t seen it but I’m familiar with the plot. It reminds me of The Gauntlet, which was released about 30 years before.
@Dutchess Is it on Netflix or where did you find it?
Gosh, I don’t remember exactly where I first saw it, but after we saw it, it was one of our first Prime purchases @KNOWITALL. It’s a sleeper, for sure.
The Gauntlet was a good flick. I’m going to have to see if I can find it @Brian1946. Yes, the plot was comparable, but the story is different enough to be unique.
@KNOWITALL: I’m not sure but I don’t think there was any sick-out last night due to July 4 in NYC.
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