Full Story – HERE
In case you are unfamiliar, the a “Mozambique” is where the shooter fires 2 in the chest and one in the head.
Drug dealer or not… in my opinion that was completely unnecessary.
Mozambiqued By Police For Wielding A Golf Club
MIL-STD-
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22 responses to “Mozambiqued By Police For Wielding A Golf Club”
wow. on the practical side, good shooting-particularly for an officer involved shooting (where normally x amount of rounds are fired and way less than x amount of rounds hit intended target.)
on the moral/legal side- I think that legally the officers were in the right- man wielding weapon, refuses to submit to police commands, 21 foot rule and all of that. With all that said, I think it may have not been the right choice ethically/morally.
Would I have done the same thing? I dont know.
Well, trials are expensive, and I’m not going to shed any tears over one less drug dealer (or addict) in the world. Aside from that though, I’m not sure what is to be expected in that situation. It wasn’t like the guy was just standing in his living room when the police came rushing in and shot him. He actually ran into that doorway wielding a weapon. He wasn’t terribly far away, and if you had told me he was holding a sword, I’d believe you – I can’t tell from the video what he’s holding, and I doubt the officer could either in that light and in a split second.
In the article the mother claims, “He was not a dealer,’ Arlean Blair insists. ‘I know that he used … but he was not a drug dealer. A drug dealer has lots of money and nice things.” She needs to read the chapter in the book Freakonomics about the economics of dealing drugs on the street. And it’s the drug dealers who aren’t hooked on the product they’re selling that make money off of it. Not the addicts pushing enough drugs to feed their habit.
Excellent points. I have known entirely too many poor drug dealers. Watching the video again, it does appear that it could be mistaken for a sword.
Yeah, that pesky habeas corpus stuff,and being presumed innocent before jury finds you guilty, who needs that, when a cop can just murder, sorry, justifiably shoot you.
Welcome to the Police State folks.
Drug dealing is a malum prohibitum offence; murder is malum in se. I was a police officer, and I am glad that I never was in a position to kill a man defending his home in the middle of the night over a technicality. Vices are not crimes, but murder is.
Shame it went down like it did. If police are training to shoot two in the chest and one in the head I definitely would have a problem with that. Even if the officer practices that move at the range on his/her own time it may become an instinctive response…
Night time raids catch people. Catch them off guard and maybe even sleeping. Someone yelling police and crashing in your front room, and binding you with a flash light within less than 10 seconds would make most peoples reaction times slower than normal.
Its hard to tell what the man was holding but when the door opens because he wasn’t in the hallway yet. As the camera pans back he is standing with an object of some kind. He does not look as if he is approaching. With the object cocked back even if he tried to slowly put it down he would look to be swinging it at the officers. If he had let go and let it drop he might be alive today. Maybe not.
PS: I would like to see no-knock raids stopped. The chance for error is two high.
At least it’s not three high.
21-foot rule.
Golf clubs can be deadly weapons.
And from the brief footage, he appears to meet the deadly force triangle: opportunity (he was within 20 feet with a weapon), intent (he had the weapon raised, and had a weapon in his hand in response to the police announcing themselves), and capability (again, potentially deadly weapon).
That said, I wholly disagree with the notion of no-knock arrests (and this is essentially that), given the cost of failure. What if they were kicking down the wrong house’s door? How many people’s initial reaction to that would be to grab a weapon and head for the door? What if they shot the wrong person? With the increasing frequency of criminals invading homes dressed as police, the citizen is faced with a very uncomfortable dilemma.
“one paperwork screw up, and this could have been YOU”
Or your 92 year old grandma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting
How anyone can think that was justifiable is beyond me. Yeah, ok, 21-foot rule and all that. But seriously; you’re doing a no-knock raid – a nice way of saying “home invasion” – in the middle of the night. Could you give the guy something more than a few milliseconds to comply with “get down on the ground”? It doesn’t take being a bona fide cop to kick in the door and say “search warrant,” and that’s about all they did before shooting him half a second later. For all he knew, that was a gang breaking into the house to steal from or kill him.
I’m gonna go ahead and troll: those of you supporting these cops need to take a step back and examine your empathy deficit. If this was a legal shooting, then the law is obviously flawed. That is complete and utter bullshit. Linoge is right — one paperwork screw up, and this could have been YOU, Mr. NRA Home Defense course.
I find this a bit worrying. I have absolutely no reason for the police to storm my house and arrest or shoot me- none at all. However, if I heard somebody breaking into my house, I would be in a similar position to he was. I’m 6′ 4″ and 190 pounds, I’m not going to cower with my family in the house.
I’m a weapons collector and maker (only legitimate weapons, such as hand crafted knives, swords and miniatures). I have a 40cm long Bowie knife little more than a foot from the head of my bed. If someone burst into my house then yes, I’d be cautious, and initially restrained, but I’d be ready to lop one of their limbs off. To think that I could be shot twice in the chest then in the head if the police were to knock down the wrong door? Ridiculous
I find this particularly worrisome for all the reasons you guys have mentioned. One false paperwork screw up and it would have been innocent civilians, which HAS happened before time and time again!!! As for the 21-foot rule, if one is willfully closing that gap, is it really self-defense at that point? I believe there was a story where an officer gunned down a wood carver in Seattle for refusing to drop his knife, but the officer in question willfully closed the gap himself to make that knife’s range a threat in the first place.
If you’ll recall, the police wanted us to think Kathryn Johnston (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting) was a drug dealer.
“…Sprinkle coke on the floor, make it drug-related…”
A house raid for drug possession? I can see sending arms cops into a house if someone is suspected of being a murderer but it’s unnecessary for drug possession. They just need to watch the house then jump the guy when he is walking through a parking lot to a store. Once you have the guy then search his house when you know with some certainly that it’s clear. Is that too much to ask for? I’m sure it’s a lot cheaper to house a drug dealer then pay the legal settlement that will be coming.
After reading the article and seeing the footage…
If I imagine myself being the police officer I would have done the same exact thing. Bringing criminals to justice and coming home safely are the day’s priorities. I wouldn’t let some doped up guy take me out. I think it is unreasonable for people to expect us to taser and pepper spray everyone. Bullets are the only thing that consistently work were other methods fail.
As a civilian I would have done something similar in protecting my home… but then again I am an honest citizen and shouldn’t have to worry about the cops breaking in; I just have the bad guys to worry about. This guy made different decisions.
I don’t blame the courts for allowing the no-knock; bringing criminals to justice is important. Can’t say I am a fan of the idea though.
Bottom line. Sorry to see him make stupid decisions that cost him his chance for a fair trial.
OH WELL FOR HIM!!!!!
When are these scum bags gonna learn that when your told to show your hands you show em, when they say “Come out or Ill release the dog” theyre not kidding and when you hear them yell POLICE SEARCH WARRANT you dont meet them with a weapon in your hand……………… $1.oo dollars worth of paperwork for a justifiable use of force statement vs countless tax payers dollars to defend another usless dregg of humanity….. Id much rather have the afore mentioned.
obviously, you’ve not heard about kick-door robberies, where the assailants were dressed in tactical uniforms and had used the same tactics.. “Police – Search Warrant”..
if you think you have nothing to fear from this, because you’re an honest upright citizen who chose the better way, better look at your address and realize how simple it is to type the incorrect house number on a warrant..
I have a feeling that some of you really need to read this map of police raids gone wrong.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
Both the home owner and the police officer acted as one would expect from each other’s perspective. What’s really wrong here is the policy of using highly volatile SWAT tactics in circumstances that aren’t violent to begin with. The police are the ones escalating the situation, not the criminal. So the deaths and other tragedies are a natural consequence of these policies.
Why are these “experts” doing a SWAT raid with pistols instead of shotguns/sub-guns?
Clearly they are not top of the line.
Also, the “lethal” threat of a club or blade at that distance is minimal AND there were a half dozen other cops right behind him.
Trigger happy, unjustified.
Scum-bag or no, those techniques are bad for our society.
That is beyond ridiculous. Is that all it takes for a police officer to open fire on me in my own home, really? Fine, I’ll MacGyver my front door with my 12 gauge. Tell everyone I know about it. And let whoever tries to break my door down, police or not, catch a slug in the head. If I’m going to die anyway, because I will come around the corner just like that guy, I might as well make someone, anyone, really think about how these things are handled.
If he had anything that looked like a gun, fine, I would say it was justified. But a f****** golf club or even if it was a machete or sword(ha). 7 officers past the guy with the camera, SEVEN. If you are threatened by a golf club/sword at the distance with that much backup, you need a desk job.
What is the only possible way to hurt someone with a club or sword. You have to cock back to either throw or swing. Unless this poor guy was a ninja or had telekinesis, I saw absolutely no threatening movement. He turned the corner, saw that it actually was police, and before it could properly register he was dead.
They have that much backup because they don’t know what they will be facing on the other side of that door. That officer had about half a second make the decision to fire or not, and the choice was probably made for him when he saw the guy holding something. And by the way, a determined attacker could easily run across a room and kill you with a sword or knife even if you emptied a magazine into him while he was coming at you.
There are inherent risks associated with being a criminal. Among those risks are a higher-than-usual chance of getting shot by the police. Some criminals live their entire lives and never get caught. Others aren’t so lucky. You gotta pay if you wanna play.
Having said all that, I agree this raid was uncalled for if it was for drugs alone.