Shock Video: Teen Boy Shot and Killed by Cop for Flashing Headlights and Flexing Rights

a reply to: hefficide

I was born and raised in GA and I live here part time. You were gravely misinformed. I personally know two people who have killed unarmed intruders without so much as a catch and release. GA is very lax when it comes to defending yourself if it seems very obvious that you had to.

originally posted by: jacobe001

originally posted by: roadgravel

...they are nothing but glorified revenue collectors with a license to kill.

Then it's a good idea to learn how to evade death.

I would do the same in North Korea as well. I am a sheep like you.
But I cheer the ones that would speak out against it.
I guess I am a coward.

Nothing wrong with staying alive. It is what living things attempt to do. Confronting something as this requires a different plan then he had.

a reply to: Answer

Are you implying this skinny kid was still a threat after 1 shot, or 2? How about 3 or 4? Exactly how many shots are overkill to you? How many shots is a cop allowed to fire at someone before you deem it unnecessary?

And yes, the level of derp in this thread is truly astonishing

a reply to: raymundoko

Completely depends on where you live... a neighbor down my street when I lived in SC plugged an intruder, they checked to see if his gun was registered and that was the end of that.

Here in NC; you are expected to keep backing up in the house and if cornered, as a last resort you're expected jump out the window... if you assault the intruder in any way, you'll be charged as if you had assaulted a random person in the middle of a public street. If it sounds ridiculous... that's because it is.

The constitution was clear on gun rights... trying to circumvent gun rights and place harder restrictions; only places monetary and carry burdens on legitimate gun holders. So, what is thought to be the cure for guns and not burdening gun owners? Attempt to remove all guns via legislation.

If guns were not legislated, sure there would be more available in the streets... that doesn't mean there would be more shootings and crime; it may seem paradoxical, but if anyone could be packing and had every right to defend their home? Less gun crime would be committed. If someone does not believe this to be the case... then imagine only one country having nuclear weapon capabilities and tech. seems they could bully pretty easily without much resistance doesn't it? Add another country or several and well, you get the old "Mexican stand off" where engagement or retreat is impossible... without the possibility of incurring an attack, so a truce is called... cold war ring a bell? Same thing would occur with guns and has occurred with guns, the old West where a shooting broke out at any time... makes for a good Western, but it was actually more tumbleweed and virtually no shootout in reality.

So, leaving guns alone and allowing the defense of property, would make many criminals think twice... and if they got popped in the middle of committing a crime? Less burden on the legal system, less people housed in prison at 30k a year per inmate, and Darwin wins another victim for his award show.

Mind you, I don't own an gun... nor, do I want one. It is a constitutional right... therefore, I respect a gun owners right to have them... any ideological opinions about them, are just that in the face of the constitution and moot where they stand.

Why gun owners don't just support the NRA for handling this issue, since lobbies are who gets listened too? I will never understand it... I know several people that think the right wing are a bunch of bible thumping panderers strictly for the votes that the pandering brings... that they truly only care about dismantling parts of the government to hand over to corporations... prisons have been privatized, yet we still pay for them yes? So what did privatization actually accomplish? are these same people I know; for gay marriage? Check. Are they for equality? Check. Are they for not privatizing government sectors into the hands of corporations? Check. Do they say the drug war is an abysmal failure and treatment should take precedence, over incarceration if no violent crime was committed, under it's influence? Check. How do these people vote? Right Wing. Why? Guns.

I know they are not the only ones out there, picking a team for a specific piece of legislation... it's just a peculiar phenomenon in politics, not many people are aware of.

Off hand how many decades, have these same issues been debated over and over ad nauseam? Not going anywhere are they... there's good reason for that. Take away the moral pander that arises out of these issues for votes... and go by the political ethics framed by the constitution as it should be... and the moral political debate and pandering over them ends. What happens when the nation isn't polarized over a bunch of moral issues... that are typically, unethical based on the constitution? The nation as a whole, might actually start focusing on solving real problems, and not focused extreme moral ideological views that are unethical in an equal and free society from go. The oddity is when people pick up the same talking points as their own that would run this country in the ground, based on the moral pander from their chosen side.

Both sides are guilty of the pander, but when it comes to human rights and equality? The pander falls on the left, the extreme on that side is as bad for removing rights as the right extreme side is... it's actually, getting harder and harder to find a non extreme right winger. Most I encounter, are ready to go into civil war. I personally, don't understand the compulsion to try and politically control what happens in another person's bedroom, or someone else's sexuality... but that's just because it doesn't belong in the political arena.

The decades wasted arguing the moral panders of both sides? Irreplaceable. The arguing of the pander specifically of moral topics on both sides from citizens so far? Futile... if they are not going to resolve them; based on the constitution or even a public majority? They are never going to resolve them, unless someone else makes an argument moot, through technology or some other discovery... because ethical reasoning based on the constitution as it should be? Is off somewhere, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

originally posted by: thektotheg

This has been the strange aspect for me. It didn't feel like the norm. The cop was very patient, and I noted it the first time I watched. I'm just out of sorts over the escalation. Usually, when you watch one of these videos, the cop is pretty much looking for blood from the start. This one seemed pretty reasonable until the # hit the fan.

Usually when we watch videos like these, we don't have such a history as to why things got to the point that they (at least not as told by both the victim and the LEO). Many of these videos that I see posted on here actually have some justification as to why the LEO acts the way that they did, even if it appears to the average person that there is a lack of justification, or that it seems excessive. People don't understand things if they've never been trained in similar scenarios.

I think a lot of this stuff absolutely happens because people are flexing rights they don't need to flex in the situation. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying you could give him your ID and be on your way two minutes later, because in case you forgot, you didn't do anything wrong.

I will never say # to anyone in law enforcement without a lawyer, regardless of what I'm being asked about. I also won't argue with a cop, because it's pointless. Which is why, if you haven't done anything wrong, stop acting like it. Being respectful and providing your ID could seriously save your life nowadays. I don't understand why that's somehow submission to people. I'm not going to mess with a cop, because A. I don't want to die, and B. I would rather be back on my way wherever I was going.

Sort of, sort of not--this kid had zero right to deny the LEO his driver's license, as it's a law to show it to an officer when you're pulled over for a traffic stop while driving. Flashing your brights at someone is against the law in many states, so this traffic stop was justified (although at the admission of the LEO, if he'd been flashed a few times before, he should just understand that his lights are too bright and to accept it and move on instead of hassling people trying to let him know that his brights might be on).

I wholeheartedly disagree with the over-played fear of being killed by LEOs these days--I hear about shark attacks, but never any stories about people successfully swimming without being attacked by sharks. Should I just assume that most people get attacked by sharks who swim in the ocean since most media stories about people swimming at the beach contain something bad happening to them?

No, I shouldn't, and the same logic applies here...and with driving a vehicle, and flying in an airplane, or living in Chicago

I understand, and I agree: the cops will f*n murder you; literally for no reason. That's my point, though. You know they've been militarized and clearly been made immune to legal repercussions. Stop giving them reasons to kill you. They're clearly no longer rational, and they clearly aren't concerned with your rights - because it's not like they will be prosecuted, let alone found guilty of anything.

Your point is not well received, as it's based on a vast minority of run-ins with LEO by citizens in the United States. Just because those are the only stories that you ever see around here does not mean that is both the norm and the majority...or that most of the victims of officer-involved shootings didn't do something to provoke the use of deadly force.

I do, however, agree that he justice system does need a restart button as to how they deal with officer-involved shootings and use of force.

Transcript of traffic stop that led to fatal shooting, in the Lansing State Journal.

I have watched the officers shoulder-cam video its last few seconds from the moment the taser goes off at 05:23 / 05:45 to the first 3, then 2 and another 2 fast gunshots a few times now, and paused it intermittently by clicking in the screen, just behind the blue bar video-progression line, to view its concurrent screen shots as if it were pictures, so you can see the very blurred screen grabs, jump from one still to the other.

Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.12.JPG
Empty gloved left hand and right hand with Taser(green led at the back) and flashlight shining to the right of the boy's hand. Officer just took the recording hand-phone of the boy and threw it away from them, see blueish blob, indicating that it was still recording, since the officers cam registered the phone's blueish video assist light :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.19.JPG
Note the tiny green dot to the left, it's the power led from the taser; officer pushes taser front with the extra 2 outer electrodes to the neck of the boy :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.22.JPG
That's the boy, mirrored in his car's left back-door window glass, sitting up on his knees, with his face to that window and his T-shirt's neck visible :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


At 5:23 the crackling sound of the Taser starts. And the officer yells "OUCH".

Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.24.JPG
The officers left arm (see his Velcro strip and thump) with a black glove, seeking a hand hold on the boy's back seat door :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.25.JPG
Officer still behind the boy, but about 1.5 meter away from the boy's car already, he still holds the Taser (green led) in his right hand near the boys head and right shoulder.
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.25.1.JPG
Officer still in control, boy's bare hand visible, stretched out, they are 1 meter from boy's car :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.26.JPG
The row of green Taser LEDs (video glitch by fast moving camera) is seen in the screen's top center, doubled by the same video glitch. Officer still holds the Taser near the boy's head. Both adversaries are a few meters away already from the boy's car, officer is standing in the far right lane of the road, quite dangerous for him where a car could hit him.
This will surely raise his adrenaline level. The boy is crawling or jumping(?) low in front of him :
files.abovetopsecret.com...


Deven Guilford shooting shoulder cam at 05.37 seven shots.JPG
At 05:37 the officer shoots Deven Guilford 3 times while the 17 year old is screaming of the top of his lungs, then he pumps 2 other rounds of 2 bullets each in the boy.
files.abovetopsecret.com...


The only important thing that stands out in those last seconds of the boys life is a very blurred still of what seems to be the boy standing at the right about a meter from the officer at the left. And then the struggle(?) ends and shooting starts. I'm not sure from that fuzzy footage, if there was a real struggle with the boy, at all, or the officer pulled the boy away from his car, pulled him along the front of his car, and then ?.

One thing I am quite sure of, is that the officer spits out the "Ough" when the taser goes off, and that is when he is very close on top of the boy, who just before that said "what are you doing, officer? ".

From that, it seems either that the officer tasered himself, instead of the boy, got dazed, the boy jumps on his legs again, and the officer realizes he's in trouble, dazed as he still is, panics and pulls the boy to the snowy side slope away from the road's motorists, and shoots his gun empty on him, aside from one last bullet, when he at last realized that he was shooting in stupor and misplaced rage, an unarmed 17 year old boy with seven shots.
So he clips out that 8th bullet in the snow, and ....... I have no idea what he did after that, it's not registered by sounds or pictures available to us.

Or, the boy does something to the officer (Grabbed his testicles perhaps? Was he a wrestler perhaps? ) causing the officer to yell in pain, and after that assault, the officer defends himself.

I repeat, the report of the first assisting officer arriving on the scene is crucial, together with the rest of the boy's hand-phone file (was still recording) that is clearly cut off by the DA. It must have registered much more SOUNDS than just up to the moments of the arrival of that second officer.

NOTES :
1. I saw that the boy closed his door before kneeling down, so, the officer could not have hit his head to a still opened door, as I suggested in my former posts on page 19, only to the door's knob. Or any other part of the boy's car.
2. The photo of the snowy crime scene posted by me on page 18 was not made by crime scene recording officials, as I thought, but by a thus much later arrived news photo-reporter, Rod Sanford from Lansing State Journal.
Still, the absence of blood puzzles me, or it must have happened more to the left, which I doubt, in that case the photographer would have taken his picture from another POV.

So we see the footage from the body cam.....Where is the footage from the dash cam? That cam should have the clearest view of what really happened after the body cam was disengaged.

A dud cartridge would have a firing pin mark on it, would it not.

Lack of that tends to point to some other issue or situation.

originally posted by: KnightFire
So we see the footage from the body cam.....Where is the footage from the dash cam? That cam should have the clearest view of what really happened after the body cam was disengaged.

There was no dash cam in the car, iirc.

a reply to: alienjuggalo

Cops like this are why things will continue to escalate between Leos and the public.

a reply to: alienjuggalo

Unless this video was edited, there are 10 seconds between tasing and shooting the kid. That's not much recovery time, not to mention the time it takes to get off the ground when an adult male is trying to hold you on the ground. This was a cold blooded murder imo.

a reply to: roadgravel

Yes, that's what's bothering me too. Why is it, that in such shocking events, the legal threshold is nearly always used by the DA Office, to block too investigating minds such as in forums like ours, from accessing seemingly futile, however utterly important details concerning such still hot cases.

Some posters already addressed the possible options to change the standard Internal Affairs investigation after an officer of the Law shoots a civilian without proper legal reason.

A Military style Investigation Board has been suggested by Bedlam, which I would like to see audited by a Civilian Board chosen from members of the public, jury-style made up by a judge from at least two states away from the one where the event happened. But not randomly chosen, more in line with reasonable expertise needed to review all preliminary reports and the end report.
Made up from -local- Journalists, Lawyers, Scientists, Doctors/Coroners, Church representatives and Family members of the victim(s) and the accused officer(s).

Is there in the US legal system any form of civil assistance allowed?
For instance the many questions and proposals addressed in this thread, sent to the case investigation team?
Giving additional security to the family of the victim(s) AND the accused officer, that their case will be handled with the utmost concentration on details regarding every aspect of the ongoing investigation.
Afterwards, a FAQ list (like provided by NIST for 9/11) would be publicized on the Internet, which answers all proposed questions and advices.

a reply to: roaland


Hardly that expensive.

Those props are easy to get/make.
www.autoblog.com...

I would be safer encountering a thug drug dealing gang member than a cop.

originally posted by: mymymy
a reply to: Answer

Are you implying this skinny kid was still a threat after 1 shot, or 2? How about 3 or 4? Exactly how many shots are overkill to you? How many shots is a cop allowed to fire at someone before you deem it unnecessary?

And yes, the level of derp in this thread is truly astonishing

You know nothing about how people react when shot.

Quit basing your opinion on Hollywood's portrayal of shootings.

originally posted by: Answer

originally posted by: mymymy
a reply to: Answer

Are you implying this skinny kid was still a threat after 1 shot, or 2? How about 3 or 4? Exactly how many shots are overkill to you? How many shots is a cop allowed to fire at someone before you deem it unnecessary?

And yes, the level of derp in this thread is truly astonishing

You know nothing about how people react when shot.

Quit basing your opinion on Hollywood's portrayal of shootings.

You are quite correct. The, "he should have shot once or twice, or in the leg, etc." arguments are completely bogus. He either should have shot or should not have. You should not be shooting if your intention is not to kill. Number of times and locations of bullet placement are irrelevant. Too many people think like hollywood. You shoot until the threat is no longer a threat. Most times this will be 5+ because it's really easy to pull a trigger quickly. It's not like you reload in between every shot.

originally posted by: ShadeWolf
a reply to: smurfy

...what? That entire paragraph...what? You completely missed my point. What I'm saying is that American cops have every reason to be paranoid, because in the past year alone I can think of half a dozen instances of crazies specifically targeting LEOs for violence. That incident in New York earlier this year, Dallas last week, Vegas and Dorner last year...

I did not miss your point, but it is out of place. The officer attacked the youngster, after the verbal exchange was going nowhere..especially since no violence was offered, and that the officer first refused to ID his number, then lied about that to the youngster, argued about his headlights not being on high, then admitted to the youngster that his dims were already giving him problems more than once before, meaning that he had trolled on that by stopping others using the letter of the law, then letting them go because they were compliant. Pff!
And this guy gets off, well let's see?

originally posted by: smurfy

originally posted by: ShadeWolf
a reply to: smurfy

...what? That entire paragraph...what? You completely missed my point. What I'm saying is that American cops have every reason to be paranoid, because in the past year alone I can think of half a dozen instances of crazies specifically targeting LEOs for violence. That incident in New York earlier this year, Dallas last week, Vegas and Dorner last year...

I did not miss your point, but it is out of place. The officer attacked the youngster, after the verbal exchange was going nowhere..especially since no violence was offered, and that the officer first refused to ID his number, then lied about that to the youngster, argued about his headlights not being on high, then admitted to the youngster that his dims were already giving him problems more than once before, meaning that he had trolled on that by stopping others using the letter of the law, then letting them go because they were compliant. Pff!
And this guy gets off, well let's see?

Wow, way to completely change what actually happened.

The officer attempted to detain the "youngster" and was then attacked by said youngster.

The officer did not refuse to give his ID number. He refused to SHOW HIS BADGE. You obviously didn't pay attention to the actual exchange of dialogue.

I've already posted a transcript of what both men said but it's been largely ignored because it goes against the anti-cop/pro-smartass kid agenda. Too many people here couldn't care less about the facts.

a reply to: Answer

You know nothing about how people react when shot.

I'm sure you're the resident expert

But you keep talking facts

How do you know for a fact the kid was still a threat after the first shot, or the second or third?

How do you know for a fact that the head shot wasn't the first shot but the officer kept firing because his intentions were to kill, not just to make sure the threat was neutralized?

7 shots in 4 seconds doesn't seem like he even cared to evaluate the situation to see if the threat was neutralized but was making sure the kid was dead

For all we really know the kid was falling after the first shot and the officer kept firing because he was mad he got his ass handed to him by a skinny 17 year old kid

originally posted by: mymymy
a reply to: Answer

You know nothing about how people react when shot.

I'm sure you're the resident expert

But you keep talking facts

How do you know for a fact the kid was still a threat after the first shot, or the second or third?

How do you know for a fact that the head shot wasn't the first shot but the officer kept firing because his intentions were to kill, not just to make sure the threat was neutralized?

7 shots in 4 seconds doesn't seem like he even cared to evaluate the situation to see if the threat was neutralized but was making sure the kid was dead

For all we really know the kid was falling after the first shot and the officer kept firing because he was mad he got his ass handed to him by a skinny 17 year old kid

That's a lot of "how do you know?" questions coming from someone who pretended to know how many shots were necessary and how many were excessive in the first place.

Why don't you just admit that you don't have a clue what went down and 7 might have been the exact number of shots necessary to stop the fight instead of making assumption after assumption after assumption?

a reply to: Answer

And why don't you admit you don't know any "facts"?