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[MetalSlimeHunt]

why the fuck would you feel empathy for this murderer

A normal response to walking into the wrong place is embarrassment. This isn't a "training problem". She didn't praise MLK's murder in her text messages because of her training. This is the most clear racist cop murder in years of clear racist cop murders, stop worshiping the fuckers.

[smjjames]

Isn't the drawing of the gun almost a reflex action though? If you're tired, confused, and not all there, you're going to rely more on muscle memory and trained instinct rather than thinking it through.

Obviously we can all agree that it shouldn't have happened and we're looking at it with 20/20 hindsight.

Anyways, I remember during the early part that there were some things that seemed fishy and didn't really mesh, pretty sure we discussed it on this thread or another one.

[Rolan7]

why the fuck would you feel empathy for this murderer

A normal response to walking into the wrong place is embarrassment. This isn't a "training problem". She didn't praise MLK's murder in her text messages because of her training. This is the most clear racist cop murder in years of clear racist cop murders, stop worshiping the fuckers.

You're really going with the murder angle, where she happened to live in the identical apartment below and had no sign of interaction with the victim?  That's fucked up.  You're being hateful.

Edit: Drawing the weapon IS NOT a reflex!  That's what she did wrong, that never should have happened.  That goes against training, but there's a culture in the police where they do it anyway.

Edit2: I meant to say *premeditated murder angle*.  I already admitted it's murder, because it is.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's not a goddamn angle. She was convicted of murder, because what she did was a murder! She killed Botham Jean just to sate her own frustration. She expressed her indifference to life over and over again, in her testimony, in her cop memes, and in murdering a man she had every advantage over because she saw herself above the rest of humanity like every other fucking pig does.

[SalmonGod]

why the fuck would you feel empathy for this murderer

A normal response to walking into the wrong place is embarrassment. This isn't a "training problem". She didn't praise MLK's murder in her text messages because of her training. This is the most clear racist cop murder in years of clear racist cop murders, stop worshiping the fuckers.

Hadn't followed this case closely, but yeah... I had to check it out when you mentioned the MLK thing.  I wouldn't exactly call it praising his murder, but it was in severely bad taste.  If it were just that, I wouldn't think much of it.  But apparently they found a consistent trend of her pushing the boundaries of racism with her force colleagues, and posting edgy violent stuff on social media.

Link

I agree this factors pretty heavily into the framing of her actions.  She actively cultivated an edgy, violent persona even outside the context of her police training.  Which matters, imo, when it comes to how someone should face judgment for what they do when they panic.  Even if it was a genuine mistake and panic reaction, it was a moment that she built herself up to such that it would go down the way that it did.  Someone who doesn't meditate pathologically on stuff like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

might have been able to get through that situation without killing someone.

[nenjin]

the above video Rolan posted makes the point very clear: nothing excuses walking in to another person's home and shooting an unarmed civilian. If she were a civilian instead of a cop, we would be having a totally different conversation here, firmly in the real world of "it was a flat out crime." We've known since 9/11 that the gung-ho-we're-the-military-now culture of our civilian police force has ramped up. Budgets inflated. Increasing staff. Military-grade weaponry was either bought or given directly to police. APCs. Heavy Machine guns. Stuff that used to be the purview of a S.W.A.T team. The exact culture mentioned above has dominated police thinking since 9/11. "Everyone goes home at night" is their mantra, and fuck how many bodies that creates along the way. The vast amping of police intensity, power and paranoia without the necessary oversight (which is tough to do as every police force in the US is damn near a sovereign entity for how they operate) has come with the obvious consequence: "poor candidates" are pulled in, given training that prioritizes their survival over anything else, and who inevitably escalate to maximum force when they face any real duress. (Or they just straight give in to their desire to kill someone.)

My point is: we've known about this problem forever. Like, it's almost 20 fucking years now. I used to bang the training drum but here's the real truth, I believe: the police enjoy vast amounts of power, resources, the default assumption of public trust and the explicit protection under the law for 98% of what they do whether it's legal or not. They don't have a reason to change. They hold pretty much all the cards. It seems like actual reform of police departments in the US after stuff like Rampart has largely died, and in other cases (like out in the Southwest) police departments have started getting extreme in their methods and their attitude. (Like, nearly open defiance of civilian government.)

It only escalates from here. I think we actually need to disarm and throttle back our policing in America. Not dismantle it, but seriously ask if they need APCs and all this other shit. I'd say they don't need assault rifles but thanks to all the school shootings (haha), I can't actually claim that. It's not a matter of simple reform or better attitudes, I think the gung-ho attitude of cops in general is what has brought us to situations like this. (Although in truth I still think there was something else going on.) The entirety of police culture, and for the public at large, the martyr status we've preemptively given everyone who wears a badge needs to change.

You're really going with the murder angle, where she happened to live in the identical apartment below and had no sign of interaction with the victim?  That's fucked up.  You're being hateful.

It was murder, no matter how you slice it. At every opportunity she had to stop, think, act like a cop even, she ignored them and a man is dead. If she was so tired and disoriented she couldn't find her own apartment, she shouldn't be a cop. If she'd been a civilian (or a he for that matter) they'd fucking crucify them, and the gun lobby would rip the remainder apart to show how "that's not how you do responsible gun ownership, they don't represent MY fetish!" Instead, because she's white, female, and a cop, people can't seem to hold her accountable for the crime she committed. She was in no imminent danger. And with how many people die in this country to firearms, to excuse something this blatant as even manslaughter is beyond reason. If we can't call this murder, WTF are we supposed to call murder? When they twirl their mustache and go "hehe, you'll never make it stick!" Only people who are literal gun-toting maniacs are murderers? Who cares if she was tired, confused, high on meth, a not-so-secret racist? A fuck load of us out here don't ever and will never carry a firearm. That's why I personally can't understand how people can try to call this anything but murder. I do not indulge in the power to take a human life in a split second, for protection or the big-dick-ego thrill of it. So the idea that someone could come in to my home and shoot me and get away with murder because "oooo I'm tired" "Oooo I had a hard day" "oooo I was sexting my partner who I've been sleeping with and was too distracted to find the right apartment" makes me.....want to buy a gun. If people are that fucking stupid, egocentric, paranoid, hateful, whatever and people in the US actually think they should get away with that because of some twisted notion of self-defense we've created....I might be tempted to overwrite my respect for human life. That's how bad it's gotten.

We might be the most scared country in the world.

[Reelya]

As for her emotional state, we can't rule out outrage and entitlement as motives. Probably wasn't premeditated but her first reaction might not be fear, but "you picked the wrong house to rob asshole" and the belief she could  therefore kill him with impunity as a cop, and he'd just be some shmuck who tried to rob a cop, and a good story for her to tell.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As for her emotional state, we can't rule out outrage and entitlement as motives. Probably wasn't premeditated but her first reaction might not be fear, but "you picked the wrong house to rob asshole" and the belief she could  therefore kill him with impunity as a cop, and he'd just be some shmuck who tried to rob a cop, and a good story for her to tell.

Legally, this would be premeditation. There's no required time limit on the act of premeditating, just that it happened.

[smjjames]

As for her emotional state, we can't rule out outrage and entitlement as motives. Probably wasn't premeditated but her first reaction might not be fear, but "you picked the wrong house to rob asshole" and the belief she could  therefore kill him with impunity as a cop, and he'd just be some shmuck who tried to rob a cop, and a good story for her to tell.

Pretty sure the castle doctrine doesn't hold when it's not actually your 'castle'. Dunno about a 'guest in someone elses 'castle'' situation though.

[Rolan7]

Indeed; as for the legal classification, it's murder. Second degree murder, but murder nonetheless (it'd be hard to prove that she premeditated this specific murder given the clusterfuck of circumstances, but it's clear as day that when she pulled that trigger she shot to kill- hell, it is standard training for police, after all).

Second degree murder, then (I was wondering whether it might count as manslaughter but I know I don't know the details which determine that).
I was only protesting that it obviously wasn't premeditated.

And was imagining myself in her shoes, having lived in identical damn homes and approached identical looking doors, and I didn't get to the point where I tried a handle which happened to be open (for some reason??  I'm not implying, it's just weird!  Weren't they electronic locks??) and to be confronted with a stranger in my living space when I, in this situation, live a live of making enemies?

And in such a situation I carry a firearm offduty because fuck, I know *I* would, if I was a cop.  People fucking hate cops.  And here's someone waiting for me in the ONE place I can unwind.

Like I commented on the video I linked, I like to think I'd flee.
Distance, time, cover.  Re-evaluate.

To draw a firearm at someone is to be ready to kill them.  To be sure.
She wasn't sure, she shouldn't have drawn
And that means that some people carrying personal defense weapons are going to die to ambushes, if they do what's right.
It's still right.

Have some fucking empathy, people.

[nenjin]

My empathy is for the dead and their families. This shit happens way too often now for it to be otherwise. Although apparently the victim's brother felt enough to hug her.

[smjjames]

Probably following the Christian definition of forgiveness.

[WealthyRadish]

I was surprised at the reasonable verdict and sentence (my guess a year ago in this thread was manslaughter and 12 months). From what I can see it looks like a result driven mostly by a jury with unusual determination.

I'm trying very hard to imagine all this heartfelt sympathy if the killer hadn't been a cop, and had just been some idiot with a gun (nevermind all the other permutations, like if it had been a black guy killing a white woman in her apartment). There also seem to be many people that are so implicitly willing to give the police impunity that excessive force is permitted even in a bizarre case like this brought about by extreme incompetence. What I mean to say is, the default position in our society seems to be accepting that police can shoot and kill anyone they like if they feel scared, which gets extended by default even in this case.

Pre-edit:
Oh, looks like I'm just repeating the ninja nenjin.

[Rolan7]

I know I'm overposting, but I swear my empathy with "the cop" isn't because she's a cop.  It's purely on the fear of someone being in "my" home-space.

I can't say enough that she acted wrongly and I hope I'd act better.  I don't carry a firearm largely because I know I don't have enough training.  Nor did she.  I have carried a small knife for the majority of my life, just in case.  Intended to intimidate an aggressor away...  or Hel, I don't know, just not be helpless.

Guns are different, obviously.

[SalmonGod]

Indeed; as for the legal classification, it's murder. Second degree murder, but murder nonetheless (it'd be hard to prove that she premeditated this specific murder given the clusterfuck of circumstances, but it's clear as day that when she pulled that trigger she shot to kill- hell, it is standard training for police, after all).

Second degree murder, then (I was wondering whether it might count as manslaughter but I know I don't know the details which determine that).
I was only protesting that it obviously wasn't premeditated.

And was imagining myself in her shoes, having lived in identical damn homes and approached identical looking doors, and I didn't get to the point where I tried a handle which happened to be open (for some reason??  I'm not implying, it's just weird!  Weren't they electronic locks??) and to be confronted with a stranger in my living space when I, in this situation, live a live of making enemies?

And in such a situation I carry a firearm offduty because fuck, I know *I* would, if I was a cop.  People fucking hate cops.  And here's someone waiting for me in the ONE place I can unwind.

Like I commented on the video I linked, I like to think I'd flee.
Distance, time, cover.  Re-evaluate.

To draw a firearm at someone is to be ready to kill them.  To be sure.
She wasn't sure, she shouldn't have drawn
And that means that some people carrying personal defense weapons are going to die to ambushes, if they do what's right.
It's still right.

Have some fucking empathy, people.

I am charitable.  I don't always reject arguments in defense of police that reference their training, split-second decisions, panic, etc.  These are valid concerns.  It is a stretch, but not outside the realm of possibility that a decent person could have done something like this.

But where police are concerned, it's not a simple thing to be charitable.

The history of police impunity makes it really hard.  Not every officer is responsible for this.  Not every officer takes advantage of it.  But when something bad happens, it's impossible not to consider that reliance of police impunity in the justice system may have been a factor in their decision making.

The history of police organizations kicking out officers who act in good conscious or try to improve internal culture makes it really hard.  It's hard to grant the charitable assumption that a decent person may have made an honest mistake, when that person is part of an organization that often actively weeds out decent people.

And in this specific case, her personal history makes it really difficult.  In regards to pre-meditation, it is too aggressive an assumption that she pre-meditated this specific event.  But she proudly associated herself violent memes that specifically reference shooting first on a public platform, along with probably harboring racist sentiments.  So while she likely didn't pre-meditate this specific act, it could be said that she was pre-meditated to react in this specific way in the event of being startled by a black person.

You likely would have fled and composed yourself, because your words in this thread indicate you have practiced the exact opposite style of mental preparation that she did.  So her own behaviors, independent even of her association with the police, undermine the amount of charity I'm willing to grant her vs anybody else.  I know people in real life who are gun-obsessed, sorta racist, and like to proliferate similar memes, but aren't police officers.  If one of them ever ended up in court for similar reasons, it would impact my judgment of them in the same way.