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

Do they still use those Lie-Detector machines in courts in America?

Put both LEO's who were on the scene, separately onto those, and see what's the outcome, after asking the standard verifying questions first. Then show them the shoulder cam's video/audio, and the 2 Deven Guilford hand-phone video/audio records, while asking them specific to the scenes, questions.
That should do it.

This happened a few miles from where I live.
First off everyone here flashes their lights at people if they have their brights on. It's done to remind the other drivers to turn their brights off. The officer knows this, everyone knows this. The officer confesses to the boy that others have flashed him because of his lights. After the 3rd stop and the same story heard from each driver the officer knows his lights are too bright for conditions. The officer is driving around illegally, knowing people will flash him. This Officer is fishing illegally and in general is being reckless for other drivers on the road. In normal circumstances he would not have been pulled over but this officer is fishing for drunks.

Here is straight from the State Police of Michigan's mouth concerning flashing lights:
"It's illegal to flash brights to tell an oncoming driver his or her high-beams are on, but "as long as it's done with a quick flick, it's not something that's enforced," said Cook, who works in the State Police traffic services section in East Lansing. "Even police officers use that same method to inform other drivers.""

As for the story. If the boy actually did assault the officer, the officer would have been within his right. Pending the FOIA, the officer was within his rights. The boy watched too many "am I being being detained" vids and not enough vids about what to do when you are being arrested.
I think the boy was in disbelief from the point where the officer tried to pull him out to when he was being arrested. Then he flooded emotionally and with the adrenaline kicking in either assaulted or fled.

Originally posted by: Answer at page 11.

"JeanPaul" : Why did he turn the camera off? For all we know the cop did that (LT : his bloody face) to himself.

"Answer" : If you'd read the thread instead of jumping to ridiculous conclusions, you'd already know that he didn't turn off his camera. It was knocked off during the struggle and the kid's cellphone recorded audio of the fight.

In your version of the story, did the cop taser the kid, stand him up, turn him around, shoot him 7 times, and then beat up his own face just because he wanted to kill someone? Seems plausible...

Member Answer, do you still hold on to your thoughts expressed in your above short post from page 11, after reading my and Bastion's reasons in the above posts.?
Isn't it time to seriously wonder if your imagination is not a bit biased towards believing the officer in this case.?

That blurred still frame is taken from the full second long (one Mississippi, two Mississippi) period beginning at 05:37 in the full officer Frost shoulder cam video I posted several times already, in which Frost fires his first 3 shots.

originally posted by: LaBTop

The officer had my/all others initial sympathy, after I listened to the first part of the audio, accompanying his shoulder cam video.
He handled the situation in a calm and restrained manner, until his second call for backup to his precinct, and their answers (non audible, garbled or too soft).
Perhaps those answers triggered the sudden need in his mind to end the show-down situation?
Or, a sudden move of the boy inside his car made him decide to change to arrest mode? Possible weapon in the car, he could have thought?

It became obvious that the kid was stalling. Usually, when someone is stalling there are two outcomes: they are about to make some sort of move to avoid arrest or they're going to jail without an incident.

However, the boy definitely did not give the impression of some kind of build-up of aggression, more the other way round. He apologized already about his intention to warn the officer for his seemingly too high dim lights, which he had thought to be his car's bright lights.

From the beginning, the kid was calling the cop a liar. He kept changing his story about his driver's license. He then started filming with his cell phone and pulled a TV-attorney move and tried to turn the cops words around to say he wouldn't give his badge number. When you get pulled over, you don't start the conversation by saying the cop is wrong. You don't then escalate the situation by talking over the cop and generally being a disrespectful twerp. People keep overlooking the fact that the officer displayed a LOT of patience by dealing with this kid's antics for as long as he did without losing his cool.

Now also take in account that the officer's back-up arrived about 60 seconds later. Which was probably told to him by his radio dispatchers in their last garbled answer on his second call for assistance.

60 seconds is a very long time to wait when you don't know what the individual is capable of. The kid refused to provide ID, was confrontational, and was still inside his vehicle and refusing to get out. Those are signs that the kid is planning to flee.

Suddenly the officer switched from reasonable to rage, after that second answer from his radio.
I would REALLY like to hear a transcript from that answer.
Because that's the moment that everybody in this thread lost empathy and sympathy for the officer.

The officer didn't go from reasonable to rage. He told the kid that his options were to comply with the traffic stop or go to jail. The kid just sat there and started fiddling with something. Notice when the officer opens the door, the kids hands are down near his lap. The officer opened the door and said "get out of the car" to which the kid replied "no" multiple times, forcing the officer to pull his taser. This is all SOP for a traffic stop gone bad. Even after the kid finally gets out of the car, he refuses to comply with the officer's commands to put his hands out because he's too busy screwing with his cell phone.

Because a logical operating LEO would have waited for the backup, and asked the boy to remove his keys from the ignition and lay them on his dashboard. And told him that backup was on its way and arriving shortly. And calmed the boy down by explaining that he only risked a minor ticket, eventually.

You're looking at the situation with the benefit of hindsight. The officer was dealing with a completely non-compliant individual and it was time to get control of the situation. Leaving the kid in the car allows the situation to go sideways in a big hurry so the smart thing was to get him in the open and cuffed.

I still wonder why the officer asked for backup in the first place, with "priority" added to that request. What was so life threatening in his eyes, for him, in this situation? The behavior of the boy certainly not.

He called for backup because the kid was confrontational and refusing all commands. That's the behavior of an individual who is up to no good and because the kid had no ID, the officer literally had no clue who he was or what he was capable of. He was also slurring his speech so the officer realistically had reason to suspect he was driving under the influence.

He reacted all the time VERY polite, even when the officer threatened/assaulted him with a Taser, to get him handcuffed.

You have a strange definition of "VERY polite." How, exactly, is calling the officer a liar, lying to him about your ID, filming him while trying to get him to admit to something he didn't do, and refusing to comply with anything you're told equal polite behavior? The kid started the interaction behaving like a jerk and it only got worse as time went on.

Everyone wants to talk about what the officer should have done. Let's talk about some things the kid should have done:

1) When explaining why you flashed your lights, don't call the officer a liar.
2) When asked for your driver's license, don't lie about it.
3) Don't demand to see the officer's badge and then pull out your camera and lie about the situation.
4) When the officer tells you that you only have 2 choices: comply or go to jail... it's probably a good idea to tell him the truth about your ID at that point.
5) When the officer opens your door and tells you to get out of the car, you should probably get out the car.
6) When the officer pulls out his taser and tells you how to lay on the ground. You should probably listen.
7) When the officer has to resort to tasing you because you've done NOTHING he commanded, you should not get up and attack the officer.

This kid had SEVERAL opportunities to not get shot. The biased viewers watch the video and see a "17 year old kid who made some mistakes." The officer, at the time, saw a non-compliant and confrontational white male who refused to provide ID, slurred his speech, refused to comply with any commands, refused to get out of the car, kept fiddling around in the car, and then refused to put his hands in a safe place after he was out of the car.

As usual, folks on ATS are looking at a video with the benefit of hindsight and are ready to crucify the police officer who had literally ZERO information available to him at the time.

a reply to: Answer

This kid had SEVERAL opportunities to not get shot. 

This is correct. The boy made the situation worse.
The officer also had multiple opportunities to stop being a butthole.
I am talking about the multiple times that he pulled other people for flashing their lights at him and they told him that his lights were blinding them. Not only was he creating a hazardous condition by continuing to drive with head lights that were obviously causing a safety hazard, but he continued to pull people over for the same thing.

originally posted by: LaBTop
Originally posted by: Answer at page 11.

"JeanPaul" : Why did he turn the camera off? For all we know the cop did that (LT : his bloody face) to himself.

"Answer" : If you'd read the thread instead of jumping to ridiculous conclusions, you'd already know that he didn't turn off his camera. It was knocked off during the struggle and the kid's cellphone recorded audio of the fight.

In your version of the story, did the cop taser the kid, stand him up, turn him around, shoot him 7 times, and then beat up his own face just because he wanted to kill someone? Seems plausible...

Member Answer, do you still hold on to your thoughts expressed in your above short post from page 11, after reading my and Bastion's reasons in the above posts.?
Isn't it time to seriously wonder if your imagination is not a bit biased towards believing the officer in this case.?

That blurred still frame is taken from the full second long (one Mississippi, two Mississippi) period beginning at 05:37 in the full officer Frost shoulder cam video I posted several times already, in which Frost fires his first 3 shots.

My opinion hasn't changed. Your "breakdowns" of the video are mostly nonsense based on what you think you see in the highly blurred screen shots. No offense. The "Ow" comes from the kid, not the officer and was a response to getting hit with a single taser prong. You keep trying to imply that the officer tased himself but that's not how a taser works.

Your breakdown and posting of still shots conveniently missed the most important frame:



Here we see Deven Guilford facing the officer and it appears that his right hand is formed into a fist. This is a much clearer view than the blobs that you're using to rewrite the story.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Answer

This kid had SEVERAL opportunities to not get shot. 

This is correct. The boy made the situation worse.
The officer also had multiple opportunities to stop being a butthole.
I am talking about the multiple times that he pulled other people for flashing their lights at him and they told him that his lights were blinding them. Not only was he creating a hazardous condition by continuing to drive with head lights that were obviously causing a safety hazard, but he continued to pull people over for the same thing.

A safety hazard? People drive around every night with very bright headlights. It's hardly a "safety hazard" to anyone. The headlights wouldn't be DOT approved if they're a safety hazard. The problem is, people who are easily annoyed love to flash their brights at anyone whose headlights are just a bit brighter than normal instead of looking toward the right line like they're taught in every driver's license manual.

Is the officer supposed to go back to the station and request dimmer headlights? New car, new HID headlights. It's illegal in Michigan to flash brights at someone within 500 feet.

Let us not ignore all rational thought just because we want to find the officer at fault.

a reply to: Bone75

I hope you are not suggesting that after failing to kill the kid with the first shot he should have put him out of his misery instead of getting him medical help to try to save his life.

a reply to: Answer

Lol you never address the fact that the cop was baiting people and illegal pulling them over.

He had no reason to pull the kid over period because he knew why he was being flashed.

But you are all for them violating our rights huh?

Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he can just do whatever he effing wants

a reply to: Answer

safety hazard? People drive around every night with very bright headlights. It's hardly a "safety hazard" to anyone. The headlights wouldn't be DOT approved if they're a safety hazard. The problem is, people who are easily annoyed love to flash their brights at anyone whose headlights are just a bit brighter than normal instead of looking toward the right line like they're taught in every driver's license manual.

That is if you are apt to believe that the officer did not have his high beams on, creating a reason to stop them in the hope of finding something else.
I have driven vehicles with high intensity headlamps at night. I have not been flashed at by other drivers.

The cop may claim that he was not using his high beams, and blamed it on having a new vehicle with high intensity headlamps, but I find this highly suspect. Do you know why?
You provided the answer.....
The headlamps are DOT approved.
They wouldn't approve a headlamp that would blind oncoming drivers.... that would be stupid.

originally posted by: alienjuggalo
a reply to: Answer

Lol you never address the fact that the cop was baiting people and illegal pulling them over.

He had no reason to pull the kid over period because he knew why he was being flashed.

But you are all for them violating our rights huh?

Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he can just do whatever he effing wants

Flashing someone with your brights within 500 feet is illegal in Michigan. It's not the cop's fault people can't tell the difference between high beams and HID's.

What's next, people should get away with speeding just because they didn't realize the car behind them was a cop? "Oh, I'm sorry officer, I wouldn't have been speeding if I knew you were back there."

The whole point in pulling people over is so they won't be so quick to flash the next car that drives by with HID headlamps. That's the reason the officer was letting those people go without incident. I'm sure the conversation went something like this "I pulled you over because you flashed your high beams at me and I didn't have my brights on." "Oh, well those headlights are really bright." "Yeah, it's a new car with new headlights." Afterward, the driver can make a mental note not to flash high beams at every headlight they think is too bright.

If the officer was truly "baiting people and pulling them over illegally" like you keep claiming, he would have been writing tickets to the other 3 folks he pulled over.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Answer

safety hazard? People drive around every night with very bright headlights. It's hardly a "safety hazard" to anyone. The headlights wouldn't be DOT approved if they're a safety hazard. The problem is, people who are easily annoyed love to flash their brights at anyone whose headlights are just a bit brighter than normal instead of looking toward the right line like they're taught in every driver's license manual.

That is if you are apt to believe that the officer did not have his high beams on, creating a reason to stop them in the hope of finding something else.
I have driven vehicles with high intensity headlamps at night. I have not been flashed at by other drivers.

The cop may claim that he was not using his high beams, and blamed it on having a new vehicle with high intensity headlamps, but I find this highly suspect. Do you know why?
You provided the answer.....
The headlamps are DOT approved.
They wouldn't approve a headlamp that would blind oncoming drivers.... that would be stupid.

Have you driven a vehicle with new high-intensity headlights?

People will flash you. Anything brighter than normal and people are very quick to flick the high beams at you.

a reply to: Answer

Have you driven a vehicle with new high-intensity headlights?

This would be where we all understand that you did not read the second sentence in my post that you were responding to.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Answer

Have you driven a vehicle with new high-intensity headlights?

This would be where we all understand that you did not read the second sentence in my post that you were responding to.

Reading comprehension failure on my part but your experience does not mirror my own.

I changed headlights in a pickup and was flashed constantly. I drove a car with HID's and never got flashed. I think it has a lot to do with the height of the headlights because I've noticed that trucks and SUV's with HID's seem to be brighter than cars.

originally posted by: Answer

originally posted by: alienjuggalo
a reply to: Answer

Lol you never address the fact that the cop was baiting people and illegal pulling them over.

He had no reason to pull the kid over period because he knew why he was being flashed.

But you are all for them violating our rights huh?

Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he can just do whatever he effing wants

Flashing someone with your brights within 500 feet is illegal in Michigan. It's not the cop's fault people can't tell the difference between high beams and HID's.

What's next, people should get away with speeding just because they didn't realize the car behind them was a cop? "Oh, I'm sorry officer, I wouldn't have been speeding if I knew you were back there."

The whole point in pulling people over is so they won't be so quick to flash the next car that drives by with HID headlamps. That's the reason the officer was letting those people go without incident. I'm sure the conversation went something like this "I pulled you over because you flashed your high beams at me and I didn't have my brights on." "Oh, well those headlights are really bright." "Yeah, it's a new car with new headlights." Afterward, the driver can make a mental note not to flash high beams at every headlight they think is too bright.

If the officer was truly "baiting people and pulling them over illegally" like you keep claiming, he would have been writing tickets to the other 3 folks he pulled over.

The point is they are too bright or people would not flash them. As I stated and quoted in my post everyone in Michigan flashes. the state police said it is illegal but is not enforced and the state police said even they will do it. Because it is not enforced there is no law exempting it, its common sense. The kid is bewildered by doing what is considered a normal behavior. He didn't write tickets BC he was fishing for drunks. They pound people hard in Eaton county for dwi's. F
You don't think dot could be wrong? Lol

originally posted by: jellyrev

originally posted by: Answer

originally posted by: alienjuggalo
a reply to: Answer

Lol you never address the fact that the cop was baiting people and illegal pulling them over.

He had no reason to pull the kid over period because he knew why he was being flashed.

But you are all for them violating our rights huh?

Just because he's a cop doesn't mean he can just do whatever he effing wants

Flashing someone with your brights within 500 feet is illegal in Michigan. It's not the cop's fault people can't tell the difference between high beams and HID's.

What's next, people should get away with speeding just because they didn't realize the car behind them was a cop? "Oh, I'm sorry officer, I wouldn't have been speeding if I knew you were back there."

The whole point in pulling people over is so they won't be so quick to flash the next car that drives by with HID headlamps. That's the reason the officer was letting those people go without incident. I'm sure the conversation went something like this "I pulled you over because you flashed your high beams at me and I didn't have my brights on." "Oh, well those headlights are really bright." "Yeah, it's a new car with new headlights." Afterward, the driver can make a mental note not to flash high beams at every headlight they think is too bright.

If the officer was truly "baiting people and pulling them over illegally" like you keep claiming, he would have been writing tickets to the other 3 folks he pulled over.

The point is they are too bright or people would not flash them. As I stated and quoted in my post everyone in Michigan flashes. the state police said it is illegal but is not enforced and the state police said even they will do it. Because it is not enforced there is no law exempting it, its common sense. The kid is bewildered by doing what is considered a normal behavior. He didn't write tickets BC he was fishing for drunks. They pound people hard in Eaton county for dwi's. F
You don't think dot could be wrong? Lol

"Too bright" is a subjective description.

The other people that were pulled over will likely not flash the next new police car they see with HID's because they now know the difference between high beams and new HID headlights. That's what you call a "teachable moment."

If you want to say the officer was wrong for pulling people over for flashing their brights, I'd like to know... what's the alternative solution?

this type of crap sickens me.... it is happening all to often but i doubt anything will be done to change and prevent this from happening until it happens in such a way that it causes international outcry e.g an American cop gunning down a foreign tourist from say Russia, China or even Britain to an extent.. something like this would cause an international incident and then and only then can i see steps being taken to rectify the problem.... cops in America seem to operate on the assumption that they can do as they please because they have a badge and at some point this way of thinking is going to bite back in a serious way...just another reason why i will never set foot in the united states again... as much as i like the people and enjoy all the little quirks America has it just isn't worth the risk.....

also if this is the case with these headlights it means that every police officer in Michigan with this vehicle is pulling over 3 or 4 people a night just to tell the person who flashed them that hey its just my HID lights? Hundreds of people a night? Yea right.

a reply to: Answer

Nothings ever the cops fault as far as ur concerned

But it it is the cops fault when He knows peroiod.

He knew he knew he knew

originally posted by: Answer

From the beginning, the kid was calling the cop a liar. He kept changing his story about his driver's license. He then started filming with his cell phone and pulled a TV-attorney move and tried to turn the cops words around to say he wouldn't give his badge number. When you get pulled over, you don't start the conversation by saying the cop is wrong. You don't then escalate the situation by talking over the cop and generally being a disrespectful twerp. People keep overlooking the fact that the officer displayed a LOT of patience by dealing with this kid's antics for as long as he did without losing his cool.

Why not? He was only explaining why he flashed his lights.

The police officer was acting illegally, he didn't have to do anything the cop was saying and had every right to explain his actions to the officer. Is he not allowed to know the reason for being pulled? The victim is obviously in a panic which the cop tries to use to his advantage.

From a UK/EU perspective I don't see a patient cop in the slightest. I see one who's doing everything he can to goad people into committing an offence and one who's out creating crimes to duke the stats, not one that's patient or attempting to diffuse the situation.

Surely a patient or professional cop would at least give their badge number or say 'look it's night time and I can tell you're a bit high, now is not a good time to be arguing with a police officer. No one drops off their mate at church at this time of night - if you're going to try and fob me off, at least have the respect to make up a half decent story - now please, hand over your papers' or something to that effect.

The whole fleeing mentality makes no sense this side of the pond as the 'crime' of flicking your headlights isn't worth the petrol money of a chase - let alone risking others' lives for one. They can always track him down later but because the cop had such a bruised ego he started trying to get into the car knowing the victim was already in a flap.

It's genuinely terrifying that this seems like normal or acceptable policing over there. If it happened here or anywhere in Western Europe there'd be mass riots and demos. We still hold annual ones to commemorate the police beating anti-nazis up pre-WW2 and the police didn't even kill anyone.