I considered it justified based on a couple specific points plus the overall circumstances. In overall circumstances, I look at the length of time he was fighting, the attempts by more than one officer to de-escalate the situation and talk him down, the fact that he had been tased more than once and it did not stop him, and the obvious mental issues. There is an old statement that there is no way to stop a suicidal attacker, and this man was suicidal. He was trying to get the police to shoot him, demanding it some times. It is also just a guess from the video and his lack of reaction to the taser and being shot but I am guessing he was on some pretty strong drugs. That would help account for the depression and the paranoia he was showing.C-dub wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:10 pmI can accept that there is something I'm missing. Can you tell me what it is or give me a clue? That doesn't sound great when I read it out loud, but I assure you there is no sarcasm in that question. It is a sincere attempt to understand. Was there another weapon besides the sharpened piece of rebar of did that even exist at all?srothstein wrote: ↑Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:00 pmI only watched a 16 minute video of the incident that was released by HPD and was narrated by Acevedo and spliced from the edited videos of the various body cameras. Since it was from a link where Acevedo announced that he had fired the officers for having such little regard for human life, I assumed it would show something that justified their firing.
After viewing the video from Acevedo, and from an ex-officer's point of view, I cannot see how Acevedo expects to make the firings stick. To me, it was a legally justified shooting. I can see where someone with no police training MIGHT question some of it, especially the first shooting. I can see where the anti-police media would say it was wrong. But the police and their lawyers can explain how it was justified pretty clearly, in my opinion.
Note, there may be something in HPD policy that I am unaware of that would make the shooting a violation of policy and justify the firings for that reason. I am going based on legal reasons as opposed to policy. With that proviso, I expect that HPD is going to start seeing some of the mass exit of officers that cities like Atlanta, New York, and Minneapolis are seeing.
Then we get to the fact that he was armed. He had a sharpened hunk of rebar. Another word for that is a shank or homemade knife (or spear if it is long enough). This can be fatal if anyone gets close enough to him for him to use it. A less well known fact is that a bullet resistant vest will stop bullets but doesn't do much to protect from knife attacks. At the very end, just before the officers start shooting to end the fight, Chavez pulls the taser prongs from his chest and then grabs the wires and pulls the taser to him. When the officers actually shoot, he is holding the taser getting it ready to use. The problem with this for officers is that if he does tase one, the officer is subdued for some period of time and cannot protect himself. This allows the suspect to then gain control of the officer's pistol if he so desires. It also allows the suspect, when armed with another weapon, to use it on the officer when he cannot protect himself.
I see no way the officers could have closed on him and subdued him in any reasonably safe manner. He would not surrender and kept challenging the officers. Whether they were taking him into custody to arrest him for some charge or to take him to a hospital for an emergency psychiatric commitment, there was just no safe way to do it. The officers at that point had two options, arrest him any way they could (which includes shooting him) or walk away and leave him alone. I doubt it would have been safe for the public to leave him alone out there.
I cannot see a clear reason for the sergeant to have shot him in the beginning of the incident, but that was confused by the way Acevedo cut the videos together and narrated them. I don't see where Chavez left the officers any choice at the end but to shoot him.