I don't see the need to make this personal. I will try to reply briefly to the issues you have raised, and then I am done. I don't think that things are going to improve.
Police officers are persons who are often in stressful and dangerous situations, and who are required to make judgement calls on an ongoing basis. The fact that a judgement call gets made or is required is not a blank check to do whatever you want.
The whole point of developing training, rules, guidelines, and procedures is meant to limit those judgement calls and as much as possible ensure that bad calls are not made.
Beyond that, there is a chain of command, intended to ensure that Judgement calls are made by persons entitled to make them at every step up the chain.
Finally, Judgement calls are reviewable by outside agencies - the Courts both civil and criminal, the public, review bodies, inquiries, inquests, etc.
The worse thing you can give the police is a free hand - freedom without responsibility, judgement without accountability. We cannot sustain a free country and give the police powers like that.
This is a case where the Officers involved made a series of judgement calls. The reasonability of each judgement call is open to examination. And because it lead to a death, each judgement call should be examined.
The fact that there were a lot of bad judgement calls is not open to dispute. You, yourself have admitted it, and you've quoted that there were numerous changes made to police policies and procedures, that police policies and procedures were defective.
Well, if things are done right, then there wouldn't be a need to change policies and procedures, there wouldn't have been any defects.
From time to time, people get shot dead by police, and the inquiry shows that police did everything right. That wasn't one of these cases.
Guzman and Belll may have been thugs. But that doesn't give anyone a right to kill them. It doesn't make them any less entitled to life than any other person. It doesn't make Bell's death any less tragic or unnecessary. It doesn't mean that Guzman's shooting is meaningless. It doesn't make them worth any less as human beings or United States citizens. It doesn't mean that they were not entitled to the rights and freedoms the rest of us enjoy.
Whether Guzman and Bell were thugs is irrelevant to what happened that night. They were not engaged in a liquor store robbery, they were not dealing crack, they were not committing crimes or conspiring to commit crimes. The activities that they were engaged in were the ones anyone could have done. Bell didn't deserve to die for that.
As to what happened that night, the evidence is that the officers were looking for a gun before they ever looked at Guzman. That's the evidence. They were primed, they were keyed, they were going for it. This is what they wanted and expected to find. It's very possible that this set the context for what happened later. It's very possible that if they were not already keyed up and looking for the gun, they might have handled the situation differently. Their judgement may have been biased.
The evidence of the officers is that they heard Guzman say something. Maybe they heard something, maybe they didn't. Maybe they made a mistake. But right now, facing years of jail and lawsuits, they are not going to admit to a mistake, and they're not going to admit to the possibility. They have motive to lie.
Guzman, out of revenge, may have motive to lie. But on the other hand, he's not looking at lawsuits. He's not looking at jail. He has less motive to lie. Maybe he still has a motive. But under the circumstance, the worst you could say is that he's no more trustworthy than the police. And there are arguments that he is more trustworthy.
Other witnesses, not involved one way or another, have even less motive to lie. There is very little at stake for them. They don't have revenge, they were not shot, they're not looking at jail or lawsuits. No witness corroborates the statement the police attribute to Guzman. The outside evidence does not corroborate the statement attributed to Guzman.
There was no fourth man. There was no gun. Those are fantasies.
My assessment, is that the police got it wrong and screwed it up. Error of hearing, error of judgement. An error that they might have been predisposed to make. But it was an error. They got it wrong. They came to the wrong conclusion, and then they made the wrong decisions based on that conclusion.
People make mistakes all the time. Most times, we get away with it, or we learn from it. This time, someone died for the officers mistakes. The stakes are higher.
For Bell and the people in the car, there is no reason to think they acted unreasonably. Their behaviour and actions were reasonable. They were confronted with armed men in civilian clothes, men who apparently did not identify themselves as police, who did not show badges, who did not show lights. They were justified in believing that they were being carjacked, that their lives were in danger, and it was not unreasonable of them to try and flee. They didn't do anything wrong. Except for a drunk driving issue, their behaviour was not the problem.
You yourself admit that it was bad judgement to send plainclothes officers to make an arrest under those circumstances. Okay, fine.
Yes, their vehicle collided with another, and struck the officer. There is no evidence that they were deliberately trying to ram a vehicle or strike the officer. That doesn't take omnipotence. That's just the evidence. They were trying to escape a carjacker, in their minds.
The officer that they struck was not injured. That's also part of the record. There's no dispute, no issue there.
They were not gearing up to strike the officer again, they were not trying again, they were not aiming for him, ramming him, or heading at him. They were trying to flee.
They posed no danger to the officer. A fleeing party is not attacking you. They were not attacking the officer, or continuing to attack. The vehicle hit was past tense. The officers life and safety was not in danger and not being threatened in the moment that he pulled out his gun and opened fire. That's a judgement call, and its a spectacularly bad one on the officers part.
The policy is that you don't shoot at a moving vehicle, for very good reasons. There are exceptions. This case didn't fit into the exception. The shooting violated the policy. It violated the officers training. It made for a very bad judgement call.
I have to be responsible for my decisions. And I have to be responsible for the consequences of bad decisions. These police officers have to be responsible for their decisions. They have to be responsible for bad decisions. And they have to be responsible for bad decisions which cost lives.
I don't believe that there is anything controversial in that. Our entire discussion, and all the evidence that you have dug up and provided to us only confirms my opinions. I have tried to look at this evidence carefully, and I believe that I have looked at it as or more carefully than you. I have done my best to avoid importing or manufacturing facts that might make the case more or less palatable, but restricted to the facts that were there.
That's the bottom line. Things have gotten ugly, I'm not going to engage that. But I don't see any further point in continuing a discussion which has become personal.
Disarming a single person can be quite difficult. Disarming two people simultaneously is hardly something I would say is easy.
) to some guys flashing guns around. If I didn't know they were cops I might be quick to hit the gas to get out of there.
