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Notes -
Initially I only watched the first bodycam, and was trying to figure out how this could be anything other than an unambiguously bad shoot.
After seeing the second body cam, with the angle showing her tossing the pot, I still think it's a bad shoot, but maybe not quite so unambiguously.
My timeline:
She takes the pot off the stove and starts pouring the hot water into the sink. She and the cop are talking and sound like they are still laughing and joking. He says something about not wanting to be near hot water (but it appears that he backed away just as a default precaution, not because he really thought at this point that she was going to make a threatening move), and she says (twice) "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus."
This is clearly the moment when it starts to go south. I am not sure what she meant by that - her tone remains casual, and it sounds to me like she's joking. But it's a strange joke. I am familiar with evangelicals (and black evangelicals) and that's not usually the sort of thing they say "jokingly." The cop was clearly freaked out by it. Still not justification for drawing a gun on her, but I can see how his evaluation of this woman might have gone in a split second from "Old, dotty, and annoying" to "Possibly a dangerous nut who might throw hot water."
His words, though, were "You better fucking not," and then "I'll shoot you in the fucking face." She hasn't actually threatened him yet (other than talking about "rebuking him in the name of Jesus"). I don't think anyone would disagree that that's not how police should be trying to deescalate a situation even with an old dotty woman who might be crazy enough to throw hot water.
She continues to stand there. She seems confused. He draws his gun and points it at her. She immediately cringes and says "Okay, I'm sorry." She's obviously terrified at this point. She's still holding the hot water. He says "Drop the fucking pot!" She goes down on the floor.
She looks terrified and confused to me. She probably doesn't drop the water because, you know, she'd be dropping hot scalding water on her feet. Looks to me like she's holding the pot because she was afraid to set it down (while a gun is pointed at her) and she's afraid to drop it (because she'll burn herself).
They start going around the counter, and here is where the second body cam shows her throwing the pot. At this point the first cop shoots her.
There is one version here, where she crouched and prepared to launch the pot at the cops because she's deranged and thinks they're demons or something.
There is another where she crouched, terrified, as a cop pointed a gun at her and cursed her out, and when they came after her with their guns still pointed, she decided tossing the pot away from her was her best option.
Personally, I think the second version is more likely. She's clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, and now she's probably terrified and panicked. "I can't drop the pot because I will burn myself, but if I don't drop the pot he will shoot me, therefore I will throw the pot away" seems like a reasonable thing to be going through her mind (if, tragically, a very bad choice, especially since she threw it in the direction of the cops).
But to be honest, even if it turns out (from more footage or some other evidence) that she was deliberately throwing the pot at the cops, it was still a bad shoot. From the moment she's standing there holding a pot of water, they had a bunch of other options that didn't end in shooting her or getting hot water thrown at them.
It would be very hard to convince me that cop shouldn't be charged with murder.
The cop has been charged with murder. First-degree murder in fact.
The problem is even if she was throwing the water at them, a pot of water thrown across a room by a skinny crazy lady isn't a threat of great bodily harm. If she actually throws the pot basically nothing happens; they get splashed a little. If she tries to throw the water out of the pot, from that position, most of it probably ends up on her; she certainly can't hit them anywhere they'd be severely harmed.
I find "How far could she have thrown the pot?" questions kind of irrelevant. This is exactly the sort of thing we see after incidents like this where everyone suddenly becomes an expert on guns, knives, sprinting speeds, or the ability of old ladies to throw pots of hot water and how much damage hot water can do. It's all useless because there are too many variables and no one is actually making those calculations in the moment.
Like, let's stipulate that in theory she was physically capable of throwing the pot far enough to splash the cops. Still not buying that this was justification for them to react the way she did.
The cops sure as hell should be. Whether one is in reasonable fear of grave bodily harm depends on that.
If we accept that she was capable of and appeared to be about to throw the pot far enough to douse them (not just splash them) with the boiling (or just off-boil) water, they have a good case for self-defense.
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A two-handled large pot, from above your head? I tried it (with a half-full pot, since she had dumped some out) and mostly the water landed about 2 feet from me. I can throw it further, sure, with a good backswing. But not from that position.
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Quite so unambiguously perhaps is reasonable doubt, no? High standard to convict
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