Shot in 1.6 seconds: Video raises questions about how trooper avoided charges in Black man's death
Julian Lewis didn’t pull over for the Georgia State Patrol cruiser flashing its blue lights behind him on a rural highway. He still didn’t stop after pointing a hand out the window and turning onto a darkened dirt road as the trooper sounded his siren.
Five minutes into a pursuit that began over a broken taillight, the 60-year-old Black man was dead — shot in the forehead by the white trooper who fired a single bullet mere seconds after forcing Lewis to crash into a ditch. Trooper Jake Thompson insisted he pulled the trigger as Lewis revved the engine of his Nissan Sentra and jerked his steering wheel as if trying to mow him down.
“I had to shoot this man,” Thompson can be heard telling a supervisor on video recorded by his dash-mounted camera at the shooting scene in rural Screven County, midway between Savannah and Augusta. “And I’m just scared.”
But new investigative details obtained by The Associated Press and the never-before-released dashcam video of the August 2020 shooting have raised fresh questions about how the trooper avoided prosecution with nothing more than a signed promise never to work in law enforcement again. Use-of-force experts who reviewed the footage for AP said the shooting appeared to be unjustified.
I really don't get why people don't start shooting police. As I understand it guns are allowed to "defend yourself against the government". Police is the government and they clearly are out of control shooting people.
So either use your weapons against the government or make guns illegal if you don't use them anyway.
So in the end there are less cops which in return means less people shot dead by cops or cops are less scared because people don't have guns and so they also don't get shot by cops.
What I am saying is: either use your guns or make them illegal if you don't use them anyway.
Most people don't wanna kill each other. And shooting back is probably going to raise the likelihood of getting murdered (i don't have any source for this). That said it is still absurd how the police flagrantly disregard peoples liberties, extra judicially execute them and get away with it with impunity. The societal contract is dead.
In my opinion shooting back raises the likelihood of getting out alive as you are not just a sitting duck.
And I to think people generally don't want to murder. But what people want more than not to kill is to not be killed.
So use your gun or lose your gun. Doesn't make sense otherwise.
Okay, you just killed a cop. What do you think happens next? Do you think its over and done with, just go home for the day? No, you are, at best, going to be arrested and put on trial for murder. It doesn't matter if you were justified or not. And when they arrest you, it will be at gun point. So, will you let them arrest you at gun point or will you start shooting the police again?
You're also assuming your some badass who will walk away without getting shot also or in any way injured. Not to mention the emotional toll of killing someone has on most people.
Trial for killing a cop in America? They going to send the entire department and turn you, your house, and family into swiss cheese.
You drive in the garage and give the stolen car a new paint job, and then you are back to zero stars.
Was it GTA we were talking about or real life?
The alternative is you're dead ..did u not read the story?
Okay so why have guns then for the average person when they don't get used to defend themselves against the governing forces at hand? Shooting at random adults and children is okay but shooting cops is over the line?
Shoot governing forces or ban guns is my point. And everybody replaying just ignores the ban guns part.
How old are you?
You're assuming that the cops percieve you as a threat and are guaranteed to kill you no matter what you do. I won't deny that's happened but its very far from the norm. In a lot of cases the cops are stupid, or negligent or scared and prematurely react without foresight. Add a civillian possessing a gun and and flagrantly threatening to use it and you turn a situation that could be disarmed into a inevitable violent conflict.
The problem is escalation. You fire your shots in self defence, they back off an extra 50' and call in a "shots fired, officer needs assistance" call and suddenly 4 APCs, 20 cruisers and 2 helicopters are surrounding you. Cue sounds of 50 cal freedom suppressors being fired. And because you shot at them even though by the time its all over your body looks like a pile of spaghetti the shooting will be justified with barely a hearing involved.
Even if you get away with shooting the one cop, now the rest of the gang wants blood.
People saying why it doesn't happen. Tbh it might start getting this way, if there is no democratic answer to this constant injustice people are going to start shooting back. It's only going to get worse with the constant militarization of cops.
At that point the people who shoot back will be labeled terrorist and the cops will just get worse and more people will become "terrorists"