It wasn't. He had no visible weapon. and represented no visible immanent danger to anyone.
I thought I could let this go, but it's so transparently silly. If he did not earlier fire a gun, or if police officers did not believe he had fired a gun, then you'd be on much firmer ground. He escalated the encounter throughout.
This is just poorly trained gun-happy cops that could murder you or anyone else tomorrow. Don't go thinking that just because unarmed black men are 3X more like to be shot by police that unarmed white men don't get murdered as well.
Statistically, I'm unlikely to be murdered, period. Unless you're in a relationship with a cop, or getting out of a relationship with a cop, non-cops are far more likely to kill a given person, regardless of race (law-abiding citizens in particular). Even in instances of domestic abuse, cops are committing violence apart from their official duties. That's ******* violence, not police violence. People should be more afraid of... themselves. Suicide is more common than homicide, especially police homicide.
Now, instead of imagining oneself as the suspect, let's imagine you're a police officer. The suspect runs, do you chase? If you do, and he suddenly turns around, do you wait to register a hand in motion (at night) to confirm he's indeed holding the gun you believed was fired earlier? If you do, but other cops fire, do their actions cause you to fire? If they do, do you fire repeatedly?
It's so ridiculous that people here can readily imagine themselves behaving like this irrational, ski-mask wearing man, but once they put on a cop uniform, they're Neo acting in bullet time.
