Beiruty wrote:When bullets starts flying and you or your friend would terminate a deadly threat, something tells me that the common sense will take over and legalities on technical basis will take a second row to your acts.
I wouldn't bet my freedom on the "common sense" of district attorneys, many of whom are aspiring politicians who need to pad their case file with convictions to appear "tough on crime" (don't mean to label all DA's in this way, just saying there are some out there, just as there are a lot of really good people working DA's offices) ..... all depends on way too many factors to get into here, but if the resulting shoot was anything other pure black -n- white good guy killed bad guy in self defense, you run a risk. Is that risk greater than the risk of being killed? Of course not. If it's some sort of hostage situation, like a bank takeover robbery or something, I can see the virtue in taking action.
But trying to save the day when a stop-n-rob actually gets you know, stopped and robbed? Don't play cop with a CHL.
Even cops get railroaded for good shoots. Just ask Leonardo Quintana, formerly of the Austin PD.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/cit ... 94904.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Long story short = APD officer investigates suspicious car late at night. Cuffs driver, attempts to wake up passenger sleeping in back, passenger (who let's just say is not exactly a choir boy) wakes up, sees cop, reaches for gun in his waistband, cop and passenger struggle, cop breaks free, steps back and opens fire on passenger who is still in possession of his gun. Result: passenger is dead (and a second passenger is also shot) cop endures more than a year of legal hell, two-weeks suspension for failure to activate his video camera, calls from the "black community" for his job and possibly his life, grand jury investigation, IAD investigation, newspaper writing as if he is the criminal, an "independent auditor" who says he broke the law (even though the GJ didn't indict), and finally he gets busted for DWI in neighboring county and APD chief fires him.
Mr. Quintana is alive. And that's the best you can say about his heroic efforts at this point. And he was a POLICE OFFICER discharging his official duties.
If you and your BUG-using buddy try to play superhero during a quickie-mart robbery, do you think you'll be treated better or worse when there is a dead man lying on the floor with one of your bullets in him "who was really a good young man with a bright future"
, Welcome to Texas!