Florida deputy Jesse Hernandez screamed “shots fired,” and frantically fired his gun after an acorn fell onto the roof of his squad car, making him jump.
Cop should at least be facing reckless endangerment, if not attempted murder.
The review board found his conduct was not reasonable; so, it’ll be up to the prosecutor (which I’m sure in FL is an office eager to go after cops). The other officer, who began shooting after the officer wearing the bodycam in the OP began shooting, was found to have acted reasonably.
Essentially, you can’t think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
Essentially, you can’t think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
IIRC Sympathetic Fire seems to be insta-forgiveness (by other police and the courts) whenever it comes up.
As one example, I think it played a role in the Daniel Shaver case, but it’s been a long time since I read all those details and I really don’t want to dive into that pool of anger and sadness again to verify.
Remember, he’s not getting triggered by the acorn, he’s reacting to his coworker yelling that they’ve been shot and actual gunfire. That’s a justified reason to pull out your weapon IMO
Granted, he should’ve tried to take control of the situation and de-escalate so he could “save” his panicked coworker, but that kind of calmness “under fire” would take actual training
It does mean that the assisting officers aren’t required to actually confirm their target, though.
What if this was real. If a 3rd party shot at them. 1st officer fires, blindly assuming it’s the perp in cuffs in the car. 2nd cop shoots and kills perp in car because he saw that’s what his partner was shooting at. When, in this hypothetical scenario, it was really a 3rd party that wasn’t identified yet, which would be the only plausible source of a gun shot anyway since the perp was already searched and cuffed.
That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how they’re trained. Ride or die with their comrads. Once the first shot is fired, it’s shoot first and ask questions later for all additional officers.
That’s not good policy. That’s not good for civilians.
It’s not a great policy, but it’s a decision that, you know, has ups and downs either way. On one hand, if you have a particularly sharp officer who can peep out someone shooting at them, locate where that person is, and then fire back and understand exactly what they’re shooting at. It would be better if that officer was able to also get their partner to follow their instructions, rather than relying on their partner, who, you know, being part of the police, might not be a sharp, and might not really be able to understand what’s going on or what to do without external instruction.
That’s if you have it as a kind of top down encompassing training thing, but that’s really kind of the stupidest way to handle it. It’s why the military has rank, and specialists, and roles, you can have a more clear chain of command where the more capable can, at least theoretically, rise to the top and be able to give those instructions. But then, none of this really prevents the person above you snapping randomly, and deciding to shoot a detained and searched person because of an acorn. Of all of what I’ve said, cops have a very mild amount of ranks and shit, too, but they’re obviously subject to much less training, have more uniform ranks, and, like the military, they’re very insular and have very little faith in anything but themselves. So more often than not they’re just going to all collectively default to kind of whatever will keep them the “safest”, which is going to be killing everyone around them that twitches kind of weird. Internal to the police, the life of every cop is worth infinitely more than the life of a criminal, and even the life of your average civilian, or, better put in their terms, potential criminal. When realistically it should be the opposite, but yeah.
I dunno, I kind of think sometimes that, I dunno if it’s just a lack of news reaching over here from other countries, but I never hear about police brutality from other countries nearly as much. Maybe in britain, and france, and places where I can kind of think, oh, yeah, the power structure above them is kind of fucked up, america style, but maybe a little less so. But, so, I kind of wonder if police corruption is really it’s own internal thing, and we should just abolish the police, like everyone says, or if it’s really just every overarching power structure that’s actually fucked up, and if we were like, finland, everything would be fine, cause I’ve not really heard a lot about the police of finland being super corrupt. Basically, I wonder if we target the symptom, and not the problem, because the police are obviously the slammer, you know, they’re the pog which gets thrown by the long arm of history to flip everything over, they’re the direct force that anyone who’s doing any political action, or anyone who’s a victim of the government, they’re who they interface with. But is that because they’re intrinsically a problematic institution, or is that because they’re just the face, just the tool? I dunno. I find myself wondering that, in the face of, you know, so much evidence that the police is full of like, fucking morons.
The review board found his conduct was not reasonable; so, it’ll be up to the prosecutor (which I’m sure in FL is an office eager to go after cops). The other officer, who began shooting after the officer wearing the bodycam in the OP began shooting, was found to have acted reasonably.
Essentially, you can’t think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
IIRC Sympathetic Fire seems to be insta-forgiveness (by other police and the courts) whenever it comes up.
As one example, I think it played a role in the Daniel Shaver case, but it’s been a long time since I read all those details and I really don’t want to dive into that pool of anger and sadness again to verify.
Nah, it kind of makes sense for the second guy.
Remember, he’s not getting triggered by the acorn, he’s reacting to his coworker yelling that they’ve been shot and actual gunfire. That’s a justified reason to pull out your weapon IMO
Granted, he should’ve tried to take control of the situation and de-escalate so he could “save” his panicked coworker, but that kind of calmness “under fire” would take actual training
It does mean that the assisting officers aren’t required to actually confirm their target, though.
What if this was real. If a 3rd party shot at them. 1st officer fires, blindly assuming it’s the perp in cuffs in the car. 2nd cop shoots and kills perp in car because he saw that’s what his partner was shooting at. When, in this hypothetical scenario, it was really a 3rd party that wasn’t identified yet, which would be the only plausible source of a gun shot anyway since the perp was already searched and cuffed.
That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how they’re trained. Ride or die with their comrads. Once the first shot is fired, it’s shoot first and ask questions later for all additional officers.
That’s not good policy. That’s not good for civilians.
It’s not a great policy, but it’s a decision that, you know, has ups and downs either way. On one hand, if you have a particularly sharp officer who can peep out someone shooting at them, locate where that person is, and then fire back and understand exactly what they’re shooting at. It would be better if that officer was able to also get their partner to follow their instructions, rather than relying on their partner, who, you know, being part of the police, might not be a sharp, and might not really be able to understand what’s going on or what to do without external instruction.
That’s if you have it as a kind of top down encompassing training thing, but that’s really kind of the stupidest way to handle it. It’s why the military has rank, and specialists, and roles, you can have a more clear chain of command where the more capable can, at least theoretically, rise to the top and be able to give those instructions. But then, none of this really prevents the person above you snapping randomly, and deciding to shoot a detained and searched person because of an acorn. Of all of what I’ve said, cops have a very mild amount of ranks and shit, too, but they’re obviously subject to much less training, have more uniform ranks, and, like the military, they’re very insular and have very little faith in anything but themselves. So more often than not they’re just going to all collectively default to kind of whatever will keep them the “safest”, which is going to be killing everyone around them that twitches kind of weird. Internal to the police, the life of every cop is worth infinitely more than the life of a criminal, and even the life of your average civilian, or, better put in their terms, potential criminal. When realistically it should be the opposite, but yeah.
I dunno, I kind of think sometimes that, I dunno if it’s just a lack of news reaching over here from other countries, but I never hear about police brutality from other countries nearly as much. Maybe in britain, and france, and places where I can kind of think, oh, yeah, the power structure above them is kind of fucked up, america style, but maybe a little less so. But, so, I kind of wonder if police corruption is really it’s own internal thing, and we should just abolish the police, like everyone says, or if it’s really just every overarching power structure that’s actually fucked up, and if we were like, finland, everything would be fine, cause I’ve not really heard a lot about the police of finland being super corrupt. Basically, I wonder if we target the symptom, and not the problem, because the police are obviously the slammer, you know, they’re the pog which gets thrown by the long arm of history to flip everything over, they’re the direct force that anyone who’s doing any political action, or anyone who’s a victim of the government, they’re who they interface with. But is that because they’re intrinsically a problematic institution, or is that because they’re just the face, just the tool? I dunno. I find myself wondering that, in the face of, you know, so much evidence that the police is full of like, fucking morons.