Citizens aren't charged with preventing felonies, just reporting them. They're allowed to interfere, but only if it really is a crime.
I think intent should matter rather than the fact, but eh. It works to dissuade people from taking the law into their own hands unless it's absolutely clear.
I found it interesting that a citizen can't legally arrest someone performing a misdemeanor. Has to be a felony (and sometimes the difference is the extent of damage). Exceptions include protecting a home or place of business... Though a security guard can't just shoot a shoplifter, unless the shoplifter is threatening violence first. Appropriate escalation, etc.
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This is why I investigated citizen arrests. A robber can't do that, because they're not trying to make an arrest. So they don't get any of the waivers of liability that come with making an arrest. AKA, firing in self defense or the defense of others.
Citizens are allowed to defend themselves in other situations too of course, but those still don't apply to a robber. They initiated the violent situation. As for nonviolent criminals, like burglars... court cases and laws vary between states on how a homeowner can react.
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It's not "they're a criminal", it's "they're a suspect". It's also that the situation has escalated. Police need a reason to draw their weapon. The suspect being violent or resisting arrest is sufficiently suspicious, though they have to use judgement too.
Again... This man refused to pull over, drove into a residential area, and tried to run into it. That raises the stakes because he could be going for hostages or allies. It's dangerous, and justified an escalating level of force.
Why does "they're a suspect" invoke an entirely different form of risk assessment than any other situation, though, and only from police or citizens witnessing a felony at that? If the claim is that something is dangerous or suspicious or justified, it should hold true everywhere; this clearly doesn't in the slightest.
So, again: Where's the difference? Why is "they're a suspect and I'm a cop" turn "is near houses" into "I have to kill them to stop them from taking hostages or collecting allies" when that's not a valid line of reasoning in any other situation? It can't be self defense unless you're arguing that everybody except police have a severely impacted right to defend themselves, and it can't be that the situation is wildly more dangerous unless you've got some statistically backed mechanism to make that the case. Last I heard, "an officer suspected them" is not a scientifically credible indicator of danger to others.
"Refuses to comply with the commands of an armed person" is probably better matched for erraticism, but I have to wonder if it's any better at predicting actual danger. And to even get to that point, you've still got to justify the cop drawing in the first place, which suffers from the aforementioned issue of requiring an entirely different form of escalation and risk assessment than is generally accepted anywhere else.
And yes, the shot placement and distancing is bizarre.
Yeah I wasn't going to say anything, since obviously he did get shot, but it sure didn't look like it in the video. I swear the second shot seemed to kick up snow a couple feet away, but multiple sites say he got shot twice. Maybe only the first shot actually hit, dunno. Doesn't really matter.
Also that, but I meant her timing; it didn't seem like she fired in response to anything in particular except losing her shit.
He had his hands exposed (a little) but then he moved them back towards him. When she fired they were hidden behind his head.
Right, but he couldn't have had a gun there, so "oh shit he's about to draw on me" doesn't make sense. It's like she just finally freaked out enough to pull the trigger.
She couldn't see his hands clearly, and he might have had a vest pocket. All he had to do was keep them up... If being arrested, crossing one's arms in front of one's chest, for example, isn't enough. They go in the air or on top of your head, so it takes a clear motion to draw something.
A vest pocket on his neck? And I thought I saw some skin over his hair, as though one hand
was over his head. It certainly wasn't a good position to fire back at her as far as I could tell.
Citizens aren't charged with preventing felonies, just reporting them.
Cops aren't charged with preventing felonies, either, heh.
I think intent should matter rather than the fact, but eh.
Intent can (sometimes, and probably should) matter for sentencing, but it generally doesn't (and shouldn't) count for conviction. Mostly, intent has no place in determining if a crime occurred because there's basically zero way to prove its existence (or lack thereof). It's pretty close to impossible to provide evidence of intent in the vast majority of cases. There's exceptions (written evidence, recorded statements), but most of the time? All you have is suspect testimony, and it shouldn't need be said how reliable a metric that is.
Actually, that's not quite true, at least on paper. Both intent and action are required for a crime to have been committed; that's why some cases of one person accidentally killing another can be ruled purely accidental and therefore not murder or manslaughter or anything, while fully intending to kill someone is never proper homicide unless you actually go through with it.
The problem is that there's a
lot of fuzziness and tiers for most stuff, as with situations where negligently allowing something to happen is still a crime even though you didn't intend the actual event, since the act of negligence itself is punishable. Likewise for conspiracy and suchlike; you have to intend to do the crime and then actually do the crime, but frequently portions of the setup or planning for committing the crime are crimes themselves, so you can still get Conspiracy to Commit Murder or Attempted Murder even if the victim's still alive, which is a complete block to any flavor of Actual Murder.
Most intent proving, as far as I'm aware, is essentially tricking suspects into incriminating themselves. Most of the rest is of the "well what else could they have been planning" sort, which as you've suggested can get pretty fuzzy. It's also one reason lawyer quality can affect conviction rate and sentencing; a good lawyer can point out that being arrested heavily armed in a van outside someone's house that you've recently threatened doesn't necessarily mean you intended any particular crime much better than a poor (or god forbid, overworked public defender) lawyer can. The fact that people who can afford fancy lawyers probably know not to say anything without them present also probably skews things quite a bit.