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Police Officer charged with second degree murder for killing a suicidal person

Senua

Member
Wow at this video. Is this how police are trained in the US? They're called about a suicidal person and the result is them shooting and killing them for holding up lighter fluid?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ting-of-man-who-tried-to-set-himself-on-fire/

An Oklahoma City police officer has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with a November officer-involved shooting.
Sgt. Keith Patrick Sweeney was charged in connection to the death of 29-year-old Dustin Pigeon.
Police were called on Nov. 15 to approach a suicidal person.
Pigeon reportedly doused himself with lighter fluid, held a lighter and threatened to kill himself. Pigeon was killed when he refused to comply with officers' commands. Pigeon's death was the seventh officer-involved shooting and the 77th homicide.
According to the court document, Sweeney shot Pigeon multiple times after Pigeon was hit by projectile from a bean bag shotgun deployed by another officer. Pigeon was pronounced dead at the scene.

Video here:

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c24_1512513064
 

oliander

Member
Unfortunately, Pigeon got what he wanted and a hothead having a bad day was sent to the scene. He probably mistook the beanbag shot for a live round and took the opportunity to go to town.

Seeing as the other officers seemed to be doing everything right according to the story and footage, I wouldn't chalk this up to bad training.
 
You hear the cop ask toward the end of the video, "Was that a knife in his hand?" That will be his defense, of course. I don't think that defense holds water even if the court believes him. The video is dark, but it does not appear to me that the victim moved toward the officer or gave any indication he was going to. If anything, the offcer closed too much distance on the victim if he believed he was holding a knife.

The 21 foot rule of thumb is a thing. It does not mean you can shoot a suspect with a knife with impunity if you are inside of 21 feet. It means that someone with a knife in that range is potentially a deadly threat and that pulling your weapon is warranted.

A) The officer closing within 21 feet appears to be completely unnecessary.
B) Shooting someone who isn't making any sort of move in your direction is not legal, knife or not.
C) The officer already having his weapon drawn and pointed at the victim is going to mean that they need to really prove without a doubt that this guy made an aggressive move toward the officer.
 

Naudi

Banned
Jesus, they guy didn't make any sudden movements or grab for anything either it seemed. I could easily tell it was lighter fluid and one of the cops even told him to put the lighter fluid down.
 

krazen

Member
Talking to a family friend who’s going for LAPD and he was talking about how they were trained to effectively “make sure they get home”. He gave a scenario where the instructore quized them om a five year old kid with a gun and what would they do and the answer was basically “He’s five, he’s old enough to pull the trigger, don’t risk your life”.

But its like, we kinda pay you to risk your life, lol. Imagine you had firemen that were like! “What? There’s a remote chance I might get hurt! I can’t do that!”.

Its like they are taught EVERY ENCOUNTER CAN KILL YOU, which just leads to everything getting escalated as opposed to de ecalated.
 
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