the Kajieme Powell shooting video

[Drunken Master]

Originally Posted by dead man

the knee cap was my exact thought.

never been through police training but i was under the impression that officers were trained to use non-deadly force to neutralize violent suspects if ever possible.

They are. Lethal force is supposed to be a last resort.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to say that the cops were right in this situation. I wasn't there. I do think they acted within their "rights" just based off the video though.

They had their guns out almost immediately upon exiting their cars.


This could be because they're trigger happy.

However it could have also been because whoever called them there had already seen the knife. Or maybe it's a neighborhood with a lot of gun violence. Maybe whoever called the police exaggerated the situation and the severity putting the police on alert.

Then when the police arrived he had his hand in his pocket and wouldn't remove it (yelling at them to shoot him) and then lunged.

I know watching the video quite a bit of time passed, but those situations are much harder to gauge if you're right there in the thick of it. They don't get to pause it and see if there is a better option. They went from yelling, to (in their minds) defending themselves. Didn't really have time to swap out for the tazer.