First shot is a red herring. It might be legal in the US to shoot the driver trying to hit you when are already out of the vehicle's way.
The more condemnatory are the 2nd and 3rd shot from the side window. This is pure cruelty and disregard of human life which in a parallel universe could be one of your family member. Anyone justifying this deserves no sympathy from rest of the human populace.
That is simply not supported by either facts or law. At this speed of firing, the decision must have been made in advance. The second and third shots are not "from" the side window; they hit there as a natural consequence of continuing to fire in a burst. I see nothing to support the claim that the officer was "already out of the vehicle's way" at the time of the first shot. In fact, he was struck by the vehicle; he did not succeed in getting "out of its way" at all.
A trained LEO in a self-defense situation is expected to fire multiple shots. Even civilians learn how this works in sufficiently advanced firearms training. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique_drill . A failure to follow procedure here would be more consistent with "not actually self defense".
Once the officer sees that Renee attempted to hit him with her car, he (tragically indeed) has the right to use lethal force. When somebody tries to kill you, I don’t think it’s reasonable to (in that same split second) give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they won’t try to immediately kill you or one of your partners again.
Have you stopped to consider how you got to the point that you are defending this. Like, I get sort of working this over in your mind to yourself, but you have gone out of your way to excuse a cop gunning down a mom that just dropped off her kid at school. She had stuffed animals sitting in her dashboard. Her kid is an orphan. You didn't have to do this. You could have just stayed silent. Now you're the guy that is going to defend secret police murdering people in broad daylight.
I have been curious about this as well. So far what I have discovered, for a significant section, it is schadenfreude borne out of their past injustice. It roughly translates to: nobody was on my side when I was kicked down and this is my moment to rejoice where others like the victim do not have privilege to human dignity either and therefore assuaging the previous resentful assumptions to the contrary.
I think this situation is very tragic, and I wish it had not happened.
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.
What if the instructions they give you would be to submit to them while they assaulted you, sexually or physically? Are you supposed to comply and then challenge them in court later?
That is a thing that happens. Rarely, I suppose, and #notallpolice and all that, but the idea that we should live in a country where everyone just has to "comply" with the instructions or be murdered is ridiculous.
Do you recognize the freedom and comforts you enjoy is due to the tiny brave and unhinged section of population willing to take actions against their self-interest? It is reasonable you yourself won't take the risk but discrediting those who do is another low.
What leverage do the citizens have when government can illegally constraint their rights including the right to justice in the courts which you speak of?
How would you challenge these masked gunmen when they have legal immunity conferred by the fascist in charge? How successful is your approach for the sitting president with criminal history and redacted links to Epstein? Are you willfully feigning ignorance of how fascism works?
I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.
Appeal to mental ineptitude is not a defense of murder. If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.
Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.
I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.
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.
She made contact with the officer. And that is only because he had to put down his recording phone and take out the gun instead of focussing on stepping out of the way. This framing feels even more egregious when you consider that he casually strolled to take a glance at dead mother and escape the scene.
> only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice.
> only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip
It is winter season and all roads are layered with ice. Ice was not a lucky coincidence at the spot she was shot. When you drive in ice for months every year you gain the intuition of vehicle motion. Before being killed, she had reversed in that spot and had a good idea how much gas creates how much traction like any other person driving in snow does. You can not claim her intent to hit based on how fast the wheels are spinning. Grip is immaterial, what matters is how fast the vehicle was actually moving.
> This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that
> deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot
If you can make a decision to step aside and fire subsequent shots from side window instead, your intention is no longer own safety but to kill, in common parlance, murder. A woman driving in different direction, clearly escaping is somehow more of a threat than the masked gunmen surrounding her.
> when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center
Do you drive? If you did you would know that it is not a discrete process of turning and forward motion. It is easier to turn when you are moving. Whatever the direction of wheel at the moment, the rotation towards right while the masked gunman is on left corner makes her intent clear.
> she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated
Because he is a masked gunman with ability to leave her child motherless which he actually did.
> If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.
> > I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life
> > It is the actual intent that counts.
> As an objective legal matter, it is.
You are both wrong. The requirement for self-defense (which may or may not even be available here if it is ever charged, because it doesn't apply to all kinds of murder, notably generally not to felony murder, which given ICE's very narrow jurisdiction there is a very good case, IMO, applies here) is neither mere subjective perception nor actual intent, but objectively reasonable fear. Actual perception of a threat which is not objectively reasonable in the circumstances does not justify self-defense.
Fair enough, I misspoke, implicitly accepting a false dichotomy. The case law I cited agrees with you WRT the standard.
But I don't understand the distinction in "kinds of murder" that you are describing; murder is always a felony and "misdemeanor murder" is a term of art not describing an actual statutory offense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor_murder). Nor can I see how the "narrow jurisdiction" of ICE is relevant here, given that it includes (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357):
> (a)(5) to make arrests — (A) for any offense against the United States, if the offense is committed in the officer’s or employee’s presence
Obstructing federal officers in their duty is a federal offense, and it necessarily occurs in the presence of those officers.
Anyway, given the evidence I find it quite clear that the threat was "objectively reasonable in the circumstances" (i.e., with the available information in the moment, without benefit of hindsight and given the time pressure).
> But I don't understand the distinction in "kinds of murder" that you are describing; murder is always a felony
“Felony murder” is not “murder which is a felony” but “murder where malice is established not by, by the fact that the death was the consequence of the commission of a felony by the perpetrator, rather than by intent to kill or any of the other alternatives”.
> Obstructing federal officers in their duty is a federal offense
There is no reasonable case, based on any of the video I've seen, continuously from before to through the incident, to be made that she could reasonably be perceived to have been doing that when they exited their vehicle and accosted her.
Their job involved driving their own vehicles down the road. Her vehicle was in the way, deliberately stopped and deliberately perpendicular to traffic. That is an obstruction of their duty.
The more condemnatory are the 2nd and 3rd shot from the side window. This is pure cruelty and disregard of human life which in a parallel universe could be one of your family member. Anyone justifying this deserves no sympathy from rest of the human populace.