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[Iduno]

Maybe it's worth pointing out that the ideal resolution to the situation would have been the restaurant employees approaching him on their own and convincing/helping him to roll into a parking spot and leave it at that.  Don't call the police for stupid shit that can likely be resolved without them.  Especially where minorities are involved.  It's willfully endangering the lives of everyone involved.

Even in a non-white neighborhood.

How many people haven't had to handle asshole drunks at some point in their lives?

Plenty. And many of them called the cops rather than face off against a belligerent drunk. That's why we have cops in the first place, to take that risk for us. I'm not going to fault anyone for deciding to call the cops rather than deal with someone who _is_ intoxicated.

Regular black guy walking down the street? Messed up to call the cops, that's fear talking. Someone obviously under the influence of something, which you don't know what it is? That's an acceptable reason to call the cops, especially when it comes to ejecting them from your property.

Not everyone is a bouncer at a bar. And as an uber driver, if some intoxicated individual started shit with you and decided to get physical, what would your response be? Just "handle it"?

So you're suggesting getting them killed is a better solution? "That guy might be intoxicated, better have him murdered, just in case."

[TD1]

Happens a lot for black people too, but it's - in aggregate - far more confrontational and dangerous, as we saw here.
[...]
Also they shot him in the back as he fled, unarmed, I can't believe people are defending that.  I think it's obvious that he wasn't a threat, the only argument is that he deserved to be shot dead because he assaulted the police.  Which is awful both morally and legally.

Did we see that here? How? The police seemed bored, the drunk seemed amicable enough, everything was going smoothly and peacefully until he failed the test and was placed under arrest. Then he assaulted the police.
After that, yes, there was conflict because... of course there was.

He wasn't unarmed. He had a taser. Incidentally, the policeman he assaulted to get it spent a very long time holding it to his side and warning him instead of using it.
So he held something which looked like a gun, it was night, and he'd just fired it. It was by no means obvious that he wasn't a threat. We, sitting in our living-rooms, know he wasn't. The arrogance of foreknowledge.
You can't possibly say the only motivation for the shooting was the previous assault. Try imagining if everyone had been white or everyone black in that situation. Can you see it happening the same way? I can.

Just because they're white doesn't mean they're racist.

Really, very few people are defending what happened. Because it shouldn't have. But crying racism and burning down a Wendy's won't help the problem, because the problem here wasn't racism. The great tragedy of this case is that we won't learn anything because people keep trying to boil it down to race.

American gun-cults and a society-wide inclination towards violence is the issue.

Iduno:

So you're suggesting getting them killed is a better solution? "That guy might be intoxicated, better have him murdered, just in case."

This is ridiculous and you know it.

Are people honestly trying to blame the Wendy's staff here for calling in the police? Do we now expect scared shop workers to self-enforce the law? I can see people blaming the police. I can see people blaming the drunkard. It is preposterous and manifestly unfair to blame the Wendy's staff.

[bloop_bleep]

But nobody is afraid of a heroin addict when they've got the heroin.

[citation needed]

Heroin is a stimulant (opioid) anyway, isn't it? Most people would be understandably wary of anybody significantly under the influence of any substance. Most of your post seems to be based upon anecdotal, somewhat dubious, hand-wavy information which I doubt applies in a practical situation, which I'm seeing a lot around the forums lately. People are wildly unpredictable under substances; maybe they just want to sleep, maybe they are in a fit of paranoia and are curling up because of that.

I'm talking about whether the police should have been called in the first place; yes, they should have been called, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, no, it shouldn't have come to this guy getting shot.

[Rolan7]

Maybe it's worth pointing out that the ideal resolution to the situation would have been the restaurant employees approaching him on their own and convincing/helping him to roll into a parking spot and leave it at that.  Don't call the police for stupid shit that can likely be resolved without them.  Especially where minorities are involved.  It's willfully endangering the lives of everyone involved.

Even in a non-white neighborhood.

How many people haven't had to handle asshole drunks at some point in their lives?

Plenty. And many of them called the cops rather than face off against a belligerent drunk. That's why we have cops in the first place, to take that risk for us. I'm not going to fault anyone for deciding to call the cops rather than deal with someone who _is_ intoxicated.

Regular black guy walking down the street? Messed up to call the cops, that's fear talking. Someone obviously under the influence of something, which you don't know what it is? That's an acceptable reason to call the cops, especially when it comes to ejecting them from your property.

Not everyone is a bouncer at a bar. And as an uber driver, if some intoxicated individual started shit with you and decided to get physical, what would your response be? Just "handle it"?

So you're suggesting getting them killed is a better solution? "That guy might be intoxicated, better have him murdered, just in case."

Calling the police on a black person sleeping is not equivalent to getting them killed.  It's different than that "Oh nooo, I'm a terrified woman and this black man is assaulting me and my dog!!!" situation.  (And let's not pretend that was a one-time thing just because it was recorded)

Some people clearly don't understand how risky it is for black people to interact with the police.  Their ignorance is some excuse, though diminishingly so with awareness.  Even then it's not 100% lethal, it's "just" far more dangerous than it needs to be.
ugh, sometimes it sucks to be a pedant.

Also because there were new posts before my edit:  This Wendy's situation is exactly why defunding the police (reallocating a portion of funds away from them, towards more specialized mediation roles) is vital.  Even many police departments are bemoaning the cornucopia of roles they've been assigned over time.  Those tasks are most of a police force's job, and better handled with mediator training which just doesn't fit with the warrior training promoted in many police districts.

[nenjin]

So you're suggesting getting them killed is a better solution? "That guy might be intoxicated, better have him murdered, just in case."

Patently absurd and you know it. Shit out there is bad, no doubt about it, but this style of rhetoric isn't helping anyone.

But nobody is afraid of a heroin addict when they've got the heroin.

I don't have any experience with heroin addicts or users. But I'm sure it's somewhere between what the movies show and real life. If my experience with the other ~70% of mainstream drugs out there has taught me anything, it's that everyone can react to the same drug differently.

[Rolan7]

Happens a lot for black people too, but it's - in aggregate - far more confrontational and dangerous, as we saw here.
[...]
Also they shot him in the back as he fled, unarmed, I can't believe people are defending that.  I think it's obvious that he wasn't a threat, the only argument is that he deserved to be shot dead because he assaulted the police.  Which is awful both morally and legally.

Did we see that here? How? The police seemed bored, the drunk seemed amicable enough, everything was going smoothly and peacefully until he failed the test and was placed under arrest. Then he assaulted the police.
After that, yes, there was conflict because... of course there was.

He wasn't unarmed. He had a taser. Incidentally, the policeman he assaulted to get it spent a very long time holding it to his side and warning him instead of using it.
So he held something which looked like a gun, it was night, and he'd just fired it. It was by no means obvious that he wasn't a threat. We, sitting in our living-rooms, know he wasn't. The arrogance of foreknowledge.

Spoiler: Emotional aside (click to show/hide)

I respect parts of that argument.  I have defended cops in the past for things like shooting fleeing suspects who had tried to grab the cop's weapon.  I think I made the argument that they demonstrated some dangerous character such that they might be running to a cache of weapons, or to form up a posse.
Or that they were guilty for having resisted, and thus deserved what happened to them.
Sorry- while I think I'm avoiding personal attacks towards anyone here (and in fact am glad to see these things being discussed in the open), I do have intense emotions about it.  Maybe it's easier because my scorn is mostly focused on my past self.

Back to the facts:  The cops saw a gun-shaped object in the suspect's hand as he ran.  One of them was shouting that [the suspect] had stolen his taser.  Likely they even observed the taser go off.  They certainly didn't hear any gunshot, which would sound completely different.

The cops had no reason to believe he had stolen an actual gun from them, and they had already checked him.  The worst they observed was him holding a gun-shaped object as he ran as fast as he could in the other direction. 
(they certainly didn't observe him executing a complex plan to reach distance, tase one, then somehow murder them both.  Sorry Folly)

If the cop's defense is now that the suspect held a gun-like object while fleeing, and the cops somehow didn't realize it was the stolen taser, even then - there was no cause to shoot him.

You can't possibly say the only motivation for the shooting was the previous assault. Try imagining if everyone had been white or everyone black in that situation. Can you see it happening the same way? I can.

I have kept my arguments about this incident's details colorblind.  I understand that others do not.  I can see this happening to a white suspect, and in fact recognize that it does.  The racial aspect is statistical.

My brother, who believes himself a victim of police brutality, was recently very upset at me for framing it as an issue of racism.  We argued about that a bit.  Eventually I backed off to say that police brutality was out of control, and he was relieved to agree.

Defund the police (in favor of mediators who can do a better job with less violent tactics).

[nenjin]

Legitimate, non-baiting question about that though. What are these people going to do when they do face violence? Call the actual cops? Doesn't separating cops out into "The guys you call when there's violence" just put them further into an isolated, undesirable category of law enforcement? At some point, someone has to hold a gun. There's no fantasy scenario where this isn't a reality in America, or anywhere else in the world. I'd PREFER if whoever is holding a gun isn't part of the same ancient, corpulent, corrupt body of current policing. But someone will eventually need to be in that role.

In my mind, having two separate groups handle the mediation and use of force respectively seems like a deliberate inefficiency that's going to come with its own issues. Like if your job is only to draw a gun and tell someone to do something or get shot, that lack of actual, positive human contact is going to create its own problem. Likewise, no willingness to use force by people looking to just mediate is going to put them at a lot of risk. It's very noble to ask someone to walk into the lion's den unarmed, it's a very different thing to get effective people hired to those positions though. Again, this is why cops get sick pensions. Because for it to work, it can't just run on altruism and nobility. Mores the pity.

[Max™]

^Cops end up as a catch-all for any sort of call that comes in, but are not trained for any of it, and violence is a tiny fraction of their job when they aren't the ones inflicting it.

Look, I haven't said it yet because I assumed it was obvious, but here's why everyone is so fucking pissed off about this shit and shit like it happening all the fucking time: if Brooks had been a white dude and everything else happened the same way, he'd probably still be alive.

I'll say again. It's not obviously racism. If a white dude ran away with a weapon pointed back, I can see many a police man reacting instinctually. Even simply acting on training.

The only reason to assume it was racism is because the cops were white. Which is, you know... racist.

I am racist against blue people, and white people suck too.

My racism doesn't kill unarmed civilians engaging in minor scuffles or nonviolent crimes, it is less of a pressing issue than the institutionalized racism which is police culture in the US, arguably it is a complete nonissue by comparison. My distrust of old white dudes and cops hurts nobody, cops kill black dudes for no reason all the goddamn time.


Edit: ALSO, remember that time black people got armored up, grabbed assault rifles and barged into state capitols past police without getting shot or stopped or arrested or anything because they felt getting haircuts was more important than saving lives of others?

Oh wait, those folks were white weren't they... huh, funny how that works.

[Bumber]

The whole COVID issue might play a part in the employees not wanting (or not being allowed) to handle the issue themselves. He was blocking everyone in the drive-through, so ignoring wasn't really an option.

Also they shot him in the back as he fled, unarmed, I can't believe people are defending that.  I think it's obvious that he wasn't a threat, the only argument is that he deserved to be shot dead because he assaulted the police.

Spoiler: Brooks being shot version: (click to show/hide)

[Doomblade187]

Spoiler that.

[SalmonGod]

He was blocking everyone in the drive-through, so ignoring wasn't really an option.

And now we've moved onto 'blood sacrifice for the line' narrative.

Honestly it looks to me like the officer had his gun pointed, and even looked like he was firing, before Brooks had even reached back with the taser.  The actual video may have sound to make that more easy to determine.  But I've seen enough videos of police murdering people.  I don't care to go out of my way to see more.  I haven't even watched the George Floyd video.  I've seen so many of these fucking snuff films over the years.  Far more than have ever made national news.  I'm tired of subjecting myself to it just for the sake of countering those who will devote so much effort into grasping at every available detail that can be twisted into a rhetorical trinket to excuse police as much as they can, but zero effort into imagining how the victim's behavior could also be excused and thus didn't deserve to die.  I don't understand why police with superior armor and weapons and training are allowed to panic and do stupid shit that gets people killed, but everyone police interact with are supposed to be perfectly calm and alert to every possible way to maximize their expression of non-threatening compliance or else whatever happens is 100% their fault.  If I ever get killed by police and it made national news, I would expect tens of thousands of people to go digging into my personal history for anything unflattering and play the video over and over and over trying to look for anything I could have possibly done differently, and as soon as they find anything, it's 100% my fault that I died.  The arguments all boil down to police lives mattering more than everyone else's.  Which isn't what police should be about.  We're safer without them.  It would be a net benefit for society if it lacked the guy with the gun on those uncommon occasions where it was needed, rather than have the guy with the gun constantly abusing it in situations where it wasn't needed in the first place.

[Folly]

Honestly it looks to me like the officer had his gun pointed, and even looked like he was firing, before Brooks had even reached back with the taser.

The cop had his taser pointed at Brooks at the start. If you look closely, you can see the cop dropping the taser and taking out his gun only after Brooks aims the other stolen taser backwards.

[ChairmanPoo]

I honestly don't see things working out w/o a police force. And even though US PDs could use a change of culture... I don't see it working out disarming them given the prevalence of weapons in the US. I just cant. I think things can be reformed and many should be reformed. But such radical changs as the ones proposed here... I dont see it working out

[Bumber]

And now we've moved onto 'blood sacrifice for the line' narrative.

[martinuzz]

I honestly don't see things working out w/o a police force. And even though US PDs could use a change of culture... I don't see it working out disarming them given the prevalence of weapons in the US. I just cant. I think things can be reformed and many should be reformed. But such radical changs as the ones proposed here... I dont see it working out

Indeed.  The only sensible thing to do is to start with abolishing the 2nd amendment.  As long as everyone and their neighbor's cat is still armed, police will keep being trained to enter a warzone.