Originally Posted by Deep Purple:
“I cant see any justification here. Even if he'd got the taser, he was running away, and was not an immediate threat to anyones life.”
“I cant see any justification here. Even if he'd got the taser, he was running away, and was not an immediate threat to anyones life.”
That's a bit of a simplistic view.
I mean, even in a case like that of Duggan, a big part of the reason for taking such decisive action is because if the target escapes they are likely to go on to do bad things using the gun thought to be in their possession.
That being the case, I don't really have any fundamental issue with the idea of shooting somebody in the back if the circumstances warrant it.
But that, of course, is where we have to start thinking about the real issue here; the idea that (as in the example I gave earlier) cops need to consider whether or not the suspect is involved in an offence that warrants the use of deadly force.
It seems quite common, in these cases, for the cops to get drawn into a spiral of escalation which leads to a death rather than ever actually stopping to think "Y'know, this just isn't worth taking a life for".
Course, it might turn out that this guy was actually Public Enemy #1 and shooting him before he could escape and commit more horrible crimes was completely justified, in which case I guess a lot of people are going to have egg on their faces.



