Caution: his sarcasm/cynicism is thick; he constantly fields what he believes are dumb questions from ignorant and inexperienced critics of police actions.
The video of the Longview police shooting of the mentally ill, knife wielding 17 year old female has been released.
I watched the video and honestly, what happened is pretty easily explained. In fact, I've been in that solo officer's position before. He was the only officer in the lobby fighting with her for several minutes. It is clear that she is resisting, kicking, hitting and fighting in general. Some people, with no law enforcement experience or training, yet who know better, are suggesting that the officer should have handcuffed her and searched her and thus prevented this incident.
Clearly, said experts (with no experience or training) have never been in a similar situation. AT NO TIME does the officer have control of her. At best, he has her partially subdued, but not remotely controlled. First rule of handcuffing, especially for a solo officer, is never try to put handcuffs on someone that is fighting you if you do not have control of them.
I can only assume he got up off of her because he was getting tired and decided to try a different approach because at that point, he has been fighting with her for two and a half minutes.
What follows is the time sequence from the video:
Solo officer arrives at 7m:43s mark, goes hands on at 7m:56s, they go down at 8m:04s, he gets up off her at 10m:35s, backup arrives at 10m:48s, she charges them at 11m:08s, she is shot at 11m:09s.
At no point during that encounter did the officer remotely have control of her, especially not enough control to try and handcuff her like the inexperienced experts suggest. But hey, I suppose my training and experience can just be disregarded because it is inconvenient to said experts version of how this should have gone.
-Matt