Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46603133

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Cops do need to be severely punished for abuse of authority, nothing I said so far contradicts that.

In these cases, isn’t it usual for evidence to be kept out of the public eye until after all relevant court trials are done?

Also, just to be very clear, I am not saying ICE shot Renee because she was being a nuisance. I am saying she got shot because she made an intentional and almost lethal maneuver at the ICE agent with her car.

I think for there to be any chance for government officers to do their jobs, and for there to not be any pointless deaths, their authority should never be challenged in the streets, and if they do abuse that authority, the officer should be severely punished.

As for my biases: I don’t care for Trump, I like some things he does, I hate others, but I do think illegal immigrants are a problem.

The reason I am taking this stance, is because I think that, unless they are fine with becoming a martyr, people should not go and mess with government officers in the streets.

Yeah, I know: “victim blaming”, but there is a difference between officers descending upon a blameless victim vs. you going out looking to make trouble with authority. Even in the first case, the right thing to do (if you value your life) is to comply with the instructions (even if illegal) and challenge them in court later.

No, I am not claiming that. I explained previously why it looked to me that Renee intended to hit the officer with her car, very hard, and the only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice. [1] And also she did hit the officer, this was even acknowledged in the NYT analysis of the event. Again, he got lucky that he was able to jump out of the way, only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip.

At that point, I would think there is an argument to be made that the officer’s life was threatened, and he is allowed to use lethal force, he does not have the time to second guess if Renee is going to change her mind and not hit anyone with her car. I am NOT saying that the officer is definitively absolved, just that based on what I’m seeing, it is not as clear a case of murder as a lot of people claim.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that, the lethal intent is there with the 1st shot. Is it that we expect the officer to go from deciding that she is enough of a threat to be shot, to deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot?

[1] but just for posterity: a) when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center while the officer was directly in front of her. b) she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated.

What I said was that she was looking directly at the officer while having her wheels pointed in his direction and accelerating hard (to the point that she lost traction). The looking detail is important because then you can’t claim she didn’t see the officer was in her way because she was still looking back from her reversing maneuver. It makes it more clear that she was intentionally trying to hit the officer with her car.

People should protest but there are clearly very stupid ways of going about it.

[1] the streets are not the place to decide whether that authority is legitimate, ethical, moral, etc.