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[Max™]

Oh good, that's slightly less terrible than the alternative. Still he shoulda known better than trying to vote drive walk sit at home while black.

[SalmonGod]

Don't worry, she's going to prison for manslaughter at least.  Possibly more, they're doing an investigation.

The only thing this has to do with "police brutality" is what they do to police in prison, but don't let that stop the fun.

Yeah... like MSH, I'll believe it when I see it.  If she has no drugs in her system and just says that she spaced for a moment when walking home, then was suddenly shocked and afraid to find a strange man in what she thought was her own apartment, and made a split second decision while fearing for her life, then the nature of the case really isn't very different from any of the thousands of other encounters where a non-violent person was killed by a police officer who got spooked for a second, leaning on the excuses of "I'm a human being, aren't I allowed to make mistakes?  I was so afraid, and I should be able to defend myself when I'm afraid.  This job is so stressful, which should make it more excusable when I react to things with violence."  The only difference here from most other cases is that she was presumably off-duty, but that's not unprecedented either.

[Reelya]

Oh good, that's slightly less terrible than the alternative. Still he shoulda known better than trying to vote drive walk sit at home while black.

I don't know, the idea that it was a lovers-quarrel gone wrong would have been less alarming that a random home-invasion. At least if she murdered him for a reason there would be some sense to the story.

[Max™]

If it was a lovers quarrel and she is only getting manslaughter it's terrible, I meant.

[Mech#4]

Do off duty police officers not lock their sidearm in a cabinet at their headquarters?

[WealthyRadish]

My first thought is that since the guy had money and connections (despite having the appearance of a homo sacer) the odds are better that she'll get at least a light prison sentence of like ~12 months for manslaughter.

[scriver]

Do off duty police officers not lock their sidearm in a cabinet at their headquarters?

Lock their sidearm up and check their personal arm out

But seriously, was he shot with her police weapon?

What happens if a cop engages in police behaviour outside if work anyway in the states? (As in what is supposed to happen, anyway)

[Max™]

I mean, does anyone else find the "I was afraid" shit like... disgusting?

YOU ARE A POLICE OFFICER WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO REACT TO HIGH THREAT SITUATIONS, WHY ARE YOU JUMPING AT SHADOWS AND FIRING FROM THE HIP?

[Kagus]

Speaking of unconscious conditioning, anyone else remember the story about the cop who disarmed a criminal, then the criminal just put his hand out and the cop gave him the gun back?

[Max™]

Because you can't train people to reliably kill other people without making it an unconscious response. It is incredibly hard to train a normal person to consciously kill someone else quickly and reliably (not to mention a 300 millisecond pause every time), so we compensate by simply training them to do it unconsciously.

When she says that "she was afraid," it's a retroactive justification meant to fill in the fact that, in reality, she doesn't know why she shot him. She can't know. That's the most damnable part of the unconscious mind- we do things, and then we have to guess as to why. Fear becomes the explanation, but training is what set up the "shoot if unconscious mind says shoot" response. Whether there's untrained bias involved in that unconscious decision process is unknowable by the cop.

I mean, that's another part of the problem, cops weren't supposed to be part of the judge/jury/executioner triad, much less able to casually skip it so often, but doing it with such a piss poor justification? I get fear responses, I know what it's like to have a weirdly trained one, I get angry and charge things that frighten me, I should not be a cop, but I never suggested I should be either.

Doing this is like getting told after the fact that a fireman let people die because they're scared of fire, a pilot left the copilot in charge to cry in the bathroom because they're scared of heights, or, yes, a cop shot and killed an unthreatening individual because they were afraid.

Hello, why should you be afraid sweetheart, were you facing another cop?

[Rolan7]

I mean, does anyone else find the "I was afraid" shit like... disgusting?
[snip]

I really don't.  The fact that this was off-duty means a lot.
Imagine retail:  It's one thing to tolerate aggressive customers at the store.  You're expecting it, you're ready for it, and you know it'll probably be okay.  It might even become routine.

What if one of those customers knocked at your home?  Or you saw them get into what looked like your car?

Training doesn't make people into always-on automatons immune to fear and surprise.  At best it lets them do that for a while, then recover and do it again.

Anyway, this was still tragic manslaughter.  Guyger fucked up bad and is being tried for it, like in any other manslaughter case (except with the court of public opinion somehow framing this as police racism, I guess).

Here's a CNN article with additional information
The doors have electronic locks like a hotel.  Supposedly Guyger was able to enter anyway because the door was ajar, saw a silhouette in the dark, and thought it was a burglar.  Supposedly Botham Jean didn't respond to verbal commands, Guyger shot him, and he died despite first aid attempts.
Supposedly it was during the 911 call that Guyger realized it was the wrong apartment, so that recording should be interesting during the trial.

Guyger was involved in another shooting, last year, where a suspect grabbed her taser during a car stop.  Guyger shot him, he survived.

Edit:  Dangit I forgot to mention that the prosecutor is considering heavier charges than manslaughter.  The investigation is mostly to see if this was actually murder (which, obviously, it very well could be).
Guyger was released from prison on bail.

[Rolan7]

She was still in uniform right after a shift, yeah.  But almost to her door, high up in the apartment building?  That to me would be "trying to get out of cop mode, try to unwind" time.

Edit: I am kinda confused about the uniform thing, I didn't think cops took those home.  I'm still not sure whether it was her service weapon, I guess probably so.

[smjjames]

Well, how off-duty are we talking here? I thought she was still in uniform at the time, having literally just gotten off her shift. Which would be prime "put your mind in cop mode" time.

From the article:

"Jean was home alone when Guyger, still in uniform after her shift, entered the apartment, Dallas Police Chief Ulysha Renee Hall said Thursday."

Though the article then later says that she had just arrived to the complex after coming off shift and wasn't actually in her apartment.

I kind of have a question on the 'not realizing it wasn't her apartment', how long had she been living there? If she had recently moved in, I can get how she might have been confused, but if she had been there for a while, she most likely wouldn't have mixed up what apartment it was unless maybe she was out of it or distracted (which can happen to anybody for a variety of reasons), or, she meant to go there. Not neccesarily saying that she intentionally did it, just pointing out some logical reasonings.

[Kagus]

Who leaves their apartment unlocked for an entire workday? As a cop, no less.

[nenjin]

If a cop can't remember what fucking apartment they live in, I don't see how they can be trusted with the legal responsibility for killing people. It just does not track. If they're that distracted off the job, how can they possible function on the job?