BREAKING: Dashcam Video Just Released Shows Cop Murder Zachary Hammond

originally posted by: Barcs
a reply to: SlapMonkey

The officer's actions were still excessive. You're seriously going to shoot a kid through the window of a car when he's got a passenger in the car? That's even more reckless. Lethal weapons should be the last resort, not the first. I'm not saying the victim didn't take actions that allowed the office to legally make a judgement call, but to paint the officer as a victim is excessive. The officer did everything he possibly could to escalate the situation.

I disagree with your last assertion, but I've said more times that I can count in this thread that I think it could have been handled differently.

And it's just as inappropriate to claim something bad would have happened. Nobody knew that the kid was high on coc aine at the time, you can't just go shooting people in the face over a possibility. That's kind of a red herring in this situation, if you are looking to rectify what happened at the time.

And I saw no part of that video that showed the officer's life was in danger because of the kid. He was the one pursuing the car with deadly force.

But in the same breath, I have never said that something bad would have happened had the adult (not kid...that's an important distinction) been allowed to flee in his 3,000-lb deadly weapon, either. But the facts are the facts--a person high on drugs who is obviously willing to recklessly flee from the cops is not really someone an LEO should allow on the roadways in that scenario. I wish he had been stopped in a different way, for sure, but what happened is what happened, so playing the speculation game at this point is...well, pointless. We seem to agree on that.

As for the LEO's life being in danger--like I keep saying, that is a judgment call that the officer is legally allowed to and expected to make in the line of duty. He felt like it was during those few seconds that the incident took place. Whether or not some of us Monday-morning quarterbacks want to fault him for that is just as inappropriate as if I were to say that Mr. Hammond would definitely have been a danger to society if he were allowed to drive away all full of coke, adrenaline, and illegal intent. None of us were there, none of experienced what he did, and none of us had to make that judgment call. All we can do is agree (apparently) that he legally had the right to make that judgment call, and if it is determined to be wrong, hopefully he will stand trial and be held accountable.

But I do know this for a fact--there were numerous, blatantly illegal acts committed by Mr. Hammond. Not so much by the officer.

So the kid put his life in danger, yet you clearly say here that the OFFICER was attempting to get in front of the car. If that's the case, then he put himself in harm's way hoping the kid would stop knowing he could always fall back on just shooting him. So the OFFICER created the whole situation and used it to justify shooting a kid in the face.

The difference here is that it's the officer's job and duty to attempt to stop criminals from becoming a probable danger to the general public. It's not the criminals job or duty (or legal right) to do what Mr. Hammond did. But you are speculating about the officer's intent, here, so I'll have to disregard those comments as biased speculation.

Oh, and he didn't shoot the "kid" in the face, he was shot in the side of the chest and the rear side of his shoulder. Big difference, as your wording is wrong and, I think, intentionally inflammatory.

I try to look at each situation individually before making any judgements. You can call me biased because I disagree with this, but I have sided with cops in similar situations in the past. There was a situation in Denville, NJ where the cop was trying to arrest somebody and they pulled away with the cop hanging out of the car window, clearly putting him in danger. In this case, the officer was justified. In this case, the situation is almost opposite. Every action the officer took made the situation worse and it could have been easily resolved if he didn't charge the car with a gun out and try to step in front of a moving vehicle.

Similar to the Sam Dubose case here out of Cincinnati, where the officer started being dragged by the car as Dubose tried to flee the traffic stop once the LEO asked him to get out of the vehicle. The officer tried to reach in and take the keys out of the ignition and started being dragged while losing his balance. Dubose was killed with a shot to the head. I think that it could have been handled differently, but as in this case, I think that the officer had the legal justification to use deadly force as he feared for his life from the vehicle that was turned into a weapon.

Same logic applies here, though, in that a vehicle was turned into a weapon; whether or not it was aimed right at the officer with obvious intent to kill or injure is irrelevant.

To me, this sounds similar to insurance scams where people cut you off on the highway and then slam their brakes to collect insurance from you. Yes, technically the driver who hit them in the rear is in the wrong, even though it is not their fault. That's like a cop stepping in front of a moving vehicle and then claiming the vehicle was trying to hit him. To me, it's painfully obvious that they need to do a better job training police officers. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, the cop was technically in the right. His actions were still excessive, however.

While I disagree with your claim that this was done intentionally to kill someone and get away with it (that's what your insurance analogy equates to), I agree with the bolded statement, and that's what I've been basically arguing all along in this thread.

originally posted by: diggindirt
a reply to: SlapMonkey

The idiot cop tried to get in front of the vehicle. I saw it with my own eyes in the video---unless you are now claiming that the video has been altered.
As I said, most five year-olds have better sense than that! The fact that the cop didn't have as much common sense as a kindergarten kid says a lot about him.

Well, I guess this is why it takes a certain type of individual willing to volunteer to put their life on the line every day in order to do their job. Yes, it does go against common sense to try and stop a moving vehicle by standing in front of it, but when you sign up to try to protect the general public, you try to do what is necessary in any given situation.

You can't deny that a person willing to flee the police and who is high on coc aine at the time is a danger to the general public, especially behind the wheel of a potential 1.5-ton weapon. You may not like the officer's judgment, but at least he was willing to try to keep him from getting on the roadway.

The cop escalated the situation---he put himself in danger then blamed the kid he'd just freaked out. He's probably a druggie, high on steroids and who knows what sort of legal drugs.
Drug test the cops. We have to weed out the whackos who are are so terrified they shoot anything that moves.

I'm all for drug testing LEOs, and I think that my home town of Bakersfield, CA, is about to initiate a program to do just that.

But what you're doing her is making ideologically based assumptions in order to make the cop seem worse than his actions indicate that he is. You can blame him all that you want for the outcome of this case, but I'll simply disagree with you, as did the outcomes of the multiple investigations into this case.

But marinate on this possibility--maybe the "kid" (he was an adult, stop lying about that) wouldn't have been freaked out had he not been high on coke, attempting to flee the cops, and there in the parking lot to allegedly aid in a drug transaction. And the cop may not have overreacted had the criminal not attempted to flee the scene while steering his vehicle in the direction of the officer.

Yes, these are hypotheticals that put the onus of responsibility on the criminal...crazy possibility, I know.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

But what you're doing her is making ideologically based assumptions in order to make the cop seem worse than his actions indicate that he is. You can blame him all that you want for the outcome of this case, but I'll simply disagree with you, as did the outcomes of the multiple investigations into this case.

OMG that is hilarious coming from you in this thread.. That is textbook what you have been doing to make the innocent "teenager" look worse.

a reply to: SlapMonkey
There is nothing I could say that would make that cop look any worse than the murderer he is. It was his actions that defined him when he went all psycho.
My ideology doesn't support shooting people over non-violent, victim-less crimes. I know that's a crazy thought to authoritarians who think only a police state can keep them safe.