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[Folly]

Rather than tasering one cop and taking his weapon to shoot the other at close range, ideally after pushing the tasered cop onto him, as I would do if I was in this stupidly suboptimal situation... he took the taser and ran, creating distance which means it is going to be harder to accurately use the taser, and then even if he somehow he hit and incapacitated one of the officers... you're expecting someone to change direction mid-stride, cover the distance to the now incapacitated officer, retrieve their weapon, AND use it against the other officer who is coming the same direction?

So if you were in a struggle against 2 opponents and you managed to take a ranged weapon, you would attempt to fire it at point-blank range, where either of these two opponents could just reach up and push your hand to the side, rather than taking a couple of steps back before aiming and firing?
Did you watch the video? Brooks was not in a full sprint away from the cops. He was sidestepping just barely outside of their reach when he turned and started firing back at them. He was still close enough to be on top of the cop in less than 1 second if he saw an opening.

Besides, tactical thinking is largely immaterial here, because we are talking about a very drunk man. The fact is that he had just demonstrated that he was absolutely capable and willing to take a firearm from a cop and use it against them. He did it once, so they had every reason to believe that he would do it again, and they had every reason to believe they would die if they did not stop him before that happened.

[Max™]

He was running, he was very far from the two of them, and this is a world where cops don't tell people to stop running before they shoot them.

I've run from cops many times, drunk even, been caught exactly twice (once when an apartment complex we tried to cut through had higher walls on the back side and one of our friends was very slow slipping out of sight so we got chased, once when a slower friend was above me on a staircase and I couldn't get past them) and it was definitely a thrill as long as it was a situation where they're left wondering "what the fuck kinda crackhead kid just runs up a fence with barbed wire on top and keeps going" instead of actually presenting a target.

This was a long time ago, cops got super militarized after the 90's so it's a different situation entirely, you run from the cops nowadays, you do it before they get there, and have cover, or you're getting shot.

The video is right here: https://twitter.com/MattWSB/status/1271909804848623617 he was running long enough to go past two and a half cars before he even turned back towards them, he obviously wasn't agile or coordinated or sober or collected enough to spin around and collect the firearm from the closer of the two cops chasing him. To me he demonstrated this when he didn't take it while he was right there and tasing them, because again, it's a dumb situation all around, one I'd never take the steps necessary to end up at in the first place, but if I was dropped in that position and realized I'm a black dude with two officers wrestling with me who are probably going to kill me, grabbing a taser and running straight away through an open and somewhat lit parking lot is NOT how to get out of there alive. Even just tasing the closer one to push him on the other before taking off through cover next door to the parking lot is better than what he did.

Hell, he could have tried ducking behind that car and tossing the taser out while shouting "PLEASE GOD DON'T FUCKING EXECUTE ME IN A WENDY'S PARKING LOT FOR BEING DRACK WHILE BLUNKING" and to be fair they may have still just shot him because cops do that.

Letting him get away even if he did fire it at them that is better than what they did, they had every reason to believe he would keep running because he was currently doing so, and usually when someone stops chasing you... you don't just stop running so you can go kill them.

They knew who he was, his car is still there, if giving him a DUI and charging him is so fucking important, show up at his house tomorrow?

I mean, obviously it wasn't that important, can't charge or fine or imprison a corpse, and just putting myself in the position of an officer who lost a taser to a drunk who was running from me with said taser... I can't imagine being so fucking terrified of this drunk fool running away with my taser that rather than telling my partner to toss me his, or just duck behind the nearby car when he pointed it at me... any number of things which I could do before I'd make the massive fucking escalation of drawing and executing someone who I could just let run and either wait for him to come get his car or meet him at home, but I'm not a coward.

[Reelya]

Yeah, he didn't pose any sort of possible threat to them, they had no reason to think he was a threat. It was a one-shot weapon. So they knew if he missed he had no weapon. In this sense, it's even less plausible to say that they killed him for being a threat than if he'd thrown a punch. You can throw more than one punch, but if you miss with a harpoon based taser, there are no more shots. So they more or less killed him for a "how dare you resist us!" reason, rather than any threat he posed.

As for the reasoning that resisting the cops is a death-sentence, therefore it's your own fault and not the cops for killing you, that's pure circular reasoning as well as being victim-blaming.

The cops will kill you if you don't comply, so you have to comply and it's "your own fault" for being killed by the cops, then. But the problem here is that this argument doesn't actually absolve the police from their role in murdering you. Yes, you can get killed if you don't play along with murderers. No, this doesn't make the murderers any less guilty when they kill you. The cops aren't a force of nature. It's not like the cops are rattlesnakes and you need to just learn not to stick your hand in rattlesnake nests or you'll be bit and just throw your hands up and say "what can you do about it? just don't poke rattlesnakes". The police are people who make these decisions to act like this in the first place.

It's also victim-blaming to the level of blaming rape victims for their assaults if they did anything that left them vulnerable, and saying that this somehow absolves the rapist of guilt. The problem here is that a rapist is 100% responsible for the rape, and a murderer is 100% responsible for a murder REGARDLESS of what the victim did. It's not like there's a 100% quota on responsibility, and if your actions made you 20% more likely to be raped or murdered then that makes the rapist or murderer only 80% guilty. They're still 100% guilty. An this goes for police carrying out extra-judicial executions too. They're still 100% guilty even if you annoyed the shit out of them.

[ChairmanPoo]

Insisting on it being a taser and therefore not so dangerous it's something said with the benefit of hindsight. I can understand why during a scuffle a night a cop would shoot someone who turned around suddenly wielding something looking like this


I mean lets be honest here, if someone started waving that around your default assumption would be that it was a handgun. Specially in a country known for its loose gun laws and the great number of firearms in circulation.

I'm not saying he "deserved" to get shot, but I do think this situation is more nuanced than others.

[Reelya]

Well him grabbing it off them should have been a clue as to what he had in his hand. He didn't suddenly pull anything out of his pocket, and as well they had quite some time talking to him to sort out what he did and didn't have.

[Bumber]

Letting him get away even if he did fire it at them that is better than what they did, they had every reason to believe he would keep running because he was currently doing so, and usually when someone stops chasing you... you don't just stop running so you can go kill them.

They lost the reason to believe that as soon as he turned back and fired the taser. The officer shot him less than a second after he fired the taser, including the time it took for the officer to drop the taser and draw the gun.

He doesn't likely know the status of his fellow officer, who got knocked over in the prior struggle and is much farther behind.

[ChairmanPoo]

During a scuffle? It's not exactly the best time to stop and run an inventory of what he grabbed exactly.

Not to mention the things look like guns to the extreme that there have been  several cases of cops grabbing guns thinking they were tazers. I've actually googled it right now and many of them turned out to be "deputy" cops. Apparently  retired folks are earning a bit extra on the side by acting as cops.
In all honesty besides gun laws there needs to be a review about US police training. And retirement benefits for the general pop, i guess.

[martinuzz]

When abolishing the police like in Minneapolis, should black cops be fired too?  Obviously, by not taking action against their colleagues they are just as guilty to racism against blacks as the other cops..
And how about white cops with black spouses and mixed children?

[Folly]

It's also victim-blaming to the level of blaming rape victims for their assaults if they did anything that left them vulnerable, and saying that this somehow absolves the rapist of guilt.

He's not a victim just because he got killed and happened to be black. Brooks attacked cops without provocation, stole their weapon, and shot at them. He was a violent criminal and an active threat.

[Bumber]

When abolishing the police like in Minneapolis, should black cops be fired too?  Obviously, by not taking action against their colleagues they are just as guilty to racism against blacks as the other cops..
And how about white cops with black spouses and mixed children?

ACAB, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[JoshuaFH]

Obviously we can't question the dead, but I'd say the benefit of the doubt falls on the side of the dead man. He was drunk, but if he could be questioned what his drunken motivation was, he might have said he was acting in self-defense; he didn't want to be killed by the cops like George Floyd was. The black man has much more reason to be scared in that situation than two cops.

[Bumber]

Everything was polite between them until they tried to put the cuffs on. We can't really know his motives, beyond that he probably didn't want to miss his 8-year-old daughter's birthday the next day.

He might've been released in about an hour if it was a first offense. Now he's going to miss all her birthdays.

[andrea]

When abolishing the police like in Minneapolis, should black cops be fired too?  Obviously, by not taking action against their colleagues they are just as guilty to racism against blacks as the other cops..
And how about white cops with black spouses and mixed children?

Well, the problem isn't just racism (and mind you, one can have prejudice against his/her own group too), but a culture and training that has failed.
In that case, the best way is probably to fire everyone and rehire to the new standards, with hopefully a large influx of new blood. For those who can't fit the new standards... they do whatever everyone else who loses a job do I guess.
Ideally you could just sort out good from bad perfectly, but when it is company (or rather department) culture you are fighting, you need a reset.

[Zangi]

When abolishing the police like in Minneapolis, should black cops be fired too?  Obviously, by not taking action against their colleagues they are just as guilty to racism against blacks as the other cops..
And how about white cops with black spouses and mixed children?

That is extra discriminatory and gives fuel to the other side.
Close the police, then when you reopen 'the not-police, but police', you rehire the folks that past muster.  Just like how a business can do it.

[SalmonGod]