I wasn't aware that there were sound recordings of the interaction. The officer wasn't wearing a body camera, apparently.powerboatr wrote:I watched the press conference this morning
its horrible a person was killed by the officer......HOWEVER
it seems to me that lots of things bad keep happening when persons run from the police.
this guy was pulled over for a traffic stop and then it escalated to a man running and then being killed....what caused this to happen? hopefully we get to hear the officers recording at the traffic stop
tragic
i could see the taser cables... isn't odd to the camera person just happened to be THERE?
Watching the video, a kid's taunt popped into my head... " I'll give a five second head start..." Not saying that's what happened, but what I thought when I watched the video for the first time.
As far as the bystander just happening to be in the right place at the right time, I know with absolute conviction that there were people who had begun videotaping officer/citizen interactions in Fort Worth any time they happened and they happened to be close by, and that was in 2000 when I left MedStar (I know because I (my crew and/or firefighters) had been videotaped by "concerned citizens" twice, who had made a complaint that our interaction with a potential patients was not on the up-and-up, and though both times we were cleared of anywrongdoing, it became obvious to a lot of us that such interactions were going to be recorded for posterity more and more. And the only surprise is that it doesn't happen more often.
BTW-last time I looked at the Texas Penal Codes, running from the po-po was not classified as a capitol crime.
ABTW - I probably sound anti-cop in the above, to some. Nothing could be further from the truth. I did that job, for a while, as an Air Force Security Police at McChord AFB, Wa, and in Vietnam. I've worked as a Police Department communications operator for Fort Worth PD and another suburban department. I have very close friends that are police, and I work with our School Resource Officer /Denton Co Sherrif Deputies often during a school year because of the kids that are assigned to the lab that I coordinate.
I learned a long time ago that is a job I didn't feel up to doing, but I totally respect the person that decides to heed the calling to law enforcement ( and it definitely is a calling! ). That said, police are human, with all that entails. There are good ones, there are good ones who have a spectacularly "bad day", and there are the police that will lie, not just a little fudging of the truth, or presenting a story so that they come out in a better light than they otherwise would have, and then there are those that will purposely do something they know is wrong in a pre-meditated fashion. Luckily, my direct involvement in something like that has been relatively rare, but there are those cops, those darned human beings, that will abuse the trust we put in them, and let us/society down big time. For them, there should be aspecial place in prison.