Pretty much every story has at least two sides. For the past few years we have been being innundated on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) side of the story -- racist trigger happy cops shooting young black men for no reason whatever. "Murder", "assassination", "genocide" ... all sorts of nasty descriptions.
The police side of the story is is rarely told at all, and when it is, it is often tinged with "the officer panicked", "why did he even have his gun out", "he ought to have just tased him", etc, etc. We see often shown parts of videos that look especially incriminating relative to the officer involved. Videos like this tend to be FAR from universally seen.
Please take the time to watch this video and then imagine that you are the officer, or the officer is your husband, wife, son or daughter. When the shooter sees that all the officer has in his hands is a tazer, do you think that makes a difference to the shooter? If he was staring down the barrel of a .40 or .45, would he feel less "luckly"?
I strongly suspect that if you are looking at the business end of a major handgun vs a taser, your quick draw confidence is reduced due to the increased price of overestimating your speed.
Why did the officer select his taser rather than his handgun? Why did the shooter think it was acceptible to ignore the repeated commands of an officer of the law?
THIS is what BLM is building. Police are not in a "fair fight", they have no way of knowing why the person of interest has their hands in their pockets. They MUST consider it is for the reason we see in the video above. As a nation, we need to ALL understand that when you disobey direct orders from a police officer, you are RISKING YOUR LIFE! You are risking your life because you are risking the officers life!
You have a choice -- you can comply, and in many situations you made the choice to be there. Like Philandro Castile ... you got high and drove around, you decided to carry a weapon, you decided to yell out "I've got a gun!", you decided to keep reaching for whatever you were reaching for ...
The officer decided to be a police officer, and now it is part of his job to answer calls and enforce the law. The OFFICER deserves the benefit of the doubt when he chooses wrongly at the last instant -- in this case, a wrong choice in the other direction (taser vs gun) nearly cost his life.
Certainly police should be scrutinized, but BOTH sides of the story need to be told. There really is a risk to an officer when somebody will not take their hands out of their pockets. Now you have seen it -- quit denying it.
