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I mean, I don't want to come off as needlessly pedantic but "he tells her that if she does he'll shoot her" seems like a phrase that doesn't quite capture it. He's screaming at her. He draws and points a gun. And even as communication goes I don't think it's effective at all. If you tell someone practically anything at the same time you point a gun at them, you know, chances are they aren't going to process it because they are busy processing a gun being pointed at them. <Okay, yes, he yells at her and then immediately draws the gun before she can respond, but it's still the same processing window> Clearly there's a disconnect -- in fact if you had paused the video at even the second "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus" (pause right afterward that is) and asked me, assuming I had no context, "what do you think would happen next," her being literally dead in less than 10 seconds flat would not be on my bingo card, right? To me this doesn't come across as an "ambush" which implies premeditation, but rather an irrational stress reaction directly tied to the cop's aggressive response. Her behavior up to that point was less deranged and more simply someone possibly a little on the dumb side and clearly without their life together. Assuming maximum hostility just feels wrong here and I feel like cops often aren't fully aware how their actions appear on the receiving end. I mean for God's sake, the first words out of her mouth are "uh - okay - uh sorry" and crouching down. Surely that's not the language of someone angry enough to assault a cop, right?
This is a little flippant, but I do wonder if, similar to how if you're given a taser many police departments would require you to be tasered first just to know how it feels (or pepper sprayed for similar reasons), if cops were threatened with their lives at some point if it would affect their respect for their given power. Human psychology is just not well designed for instant compliance in a crisis.
My experience is that innocent people will freeze and back off. Non-innocent people… depends on what they were trying to do to begin with.
Not when a 200-pound man is angrily shouting obscenity-laden orders at you while brandishing a gun.
I’m less than 180 and don’t like obscenities, but like I said that’s my experience. Only cases I’ve seen that act differently were out to get someone - but even some of those would freeze. I’m open to hearing others’ experiences, of course.
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So do you think he might have originally intended to kill her, since he threatened her and got closer to her when he perceived her as threatening him with hot water? (Apparently, in your model, if he was innocent, he would freeze and back off in such a situation.)
You might say that policemen are trained to not freeze and back off from threats, but they are also trained to defuse situations and to remove themselves from a situation when appropriate. If he felt so unsafe from a woman with boiling water, he could have left the room and called for backup, or at least left to wait for her to calm down.
I'm not convinced he intended to kill her, rather than just couldn't handle the mental responsibilities he had undertaken as a police officer.
What are you talking about? She doesn't have a gun.
Edit: To clarify, I wouldn't classify any kind of operative as "innocent" anyway, so the cops aren't "innocent" in that case. Maybe "civilian" or "non-combatant" would be more accurate?
I thought you were suggesting that, if people don't have guilty conscience, they will react to threats by backing off. She didn't do that and he didn't do that.
She did have a potentially lethal weapon. That was his reason for pulling his gun her, after all.
I was saying that every time I pointed a gun at a civilian, and most times I ever pointed a gun at a bad guy, they would immediately freeze and back off. I’m not suggesting threats can let you see into man’s heart.
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