ANOTHER ICE SHOOTING IN Minneapolis

[DCT]

2 minutes ago, OlDawg said:

According to the preliminary investigative report, he was in the street, impeding LEO’s, and refused to move.

In other words, committing a felony.

Does that in itself justify shooting? I’d say a definite ‘No.’

As far as my comment on possible medication for a purported rib injury, that’s all the more reason to not be carrying at the time. Another failure in judgement. Wouldn’t you agree? Carrying a loaded firearm if he was on opioids?

Did toxicology report indicate he was under the influence?

[OlDawg]

3 minutes ago, DCT said:

Did toxicology report indicate he was under the influence?

Haven’t seen anything on that yet. It was merely a question based on other reporting. If a big deal was made about him being on medication for a rib injury, they probably weren’t talking about Tylenol.

[DCT]

Just now, OlDawg said:

Haven’t seen anything on that yet. It was merely a question based on other reporting. If a big deal was made about him being on medication for a rib injury, they probably weren’t talking about Tylenol.

As you stated, the officers body cam will definitely tell all.

[OlDawg]

1 minute ago, DCT said:

As you stated, the officers body cam will definitely tell all.

I believe I’ve read where 4 agents still had their body cams on.

[thetragichippy]

26 minutes ago, DCT said:

Oldawg brought up a valid point.  The evidence will speak for itself.  I still believe training played a part.  Several mistakes were made.  What ever the crimes people may believe he committed does not justify deadly force.  The initial shot from the ICE agent followed by the 9 additional shots ended this man’s life. Do people even know what crimes he committed? Remember, it was reported that he came there to kill officers which was stated before any videos are evidence was collected.  Now we know today that there was no supporting evidence to support he was there to kill agents.  Now there is a lot of finger pointing.

Why does that matter if he committed a crime? 

What if he just walked up, they seen the gun, asked him for his permit, he refused, said he didn't have it or his ID, or said I KNOW MY RIGHTS - since he was getting in the middle of what they were doing and not having permit/ID, they asked for the gun, he refused, a struggle broke out, one agent is able to get the gun, only one of the 5 agents see that, 2 seconds later, he reaches down to his empty holster (that not all agents know is empty), one agent yells gun gun gun - agents fire to eliminate the threat. 

The agent is going to claim he was in fear of his life or the other agents live cause he reached for the gun.  If it makes it to court, which it won't because there is at least one supreme court ruling that supports this reasoning. 
 

[baddog]

Excellent scenario Hippy, and one I can truly believe. I said he may have had another gun, but like you said, he possibly went for something. I just can’t bring myself to believe that these officers eliminated the threat without just cause. 

[thetragichippy]

48 minutes ago, DCT said:

Did toxicology report indicate he was under the influence?

@tvc184 - keep me honest here.....

This shooting is about if it was reasonable to think he was about to do significant bodily harm / deadly harm to the agent at that moment he fired the gun. The agents perspective, not our perspective after reviewing several different angles of film, rewinding, fast forwarding using slow motion.

None of that other stuff matters

[tvc184]

1 hour ago, OlDawg said:

That’s an excellent breakdown—to me. If I understand what you’re saying, the two go hand-in-hand as a means to a decision.

I’m not an attorney. But, it always seemed to say—in layman’s terms—to not just focus on the instant, but to look at ALL things without a definite time limit. Even those events that may not directly be involved in the specific circumstance. (i.e. recent threats, other stops that may have had an effect on the officer’s judgment, community events, etc.)

That’s why I believe the agent/agents in the Pretti issue will have a strong argument that—while not pleasant to watch, and maybe not the best—they didn’t act with bad intent. They made a split decision under duress.

Do I think they may be better suited for some type of ‘off the street duty?’

Yes. For their own psychological needs if nothing else.

Yes, the totality of circumstances is how you arrive at the question, was the force lawful. You gave a concise answer in my opinion that is 100% correct. Don’t look at just the moment but look at ALL things without a definite time limit. Mic drop…. 💥

 The Fifth Circuit literally said… we only looked at the last two seconds. Yes the officer was in grave danger in that two second timeframe so case closed. The Supreme Court said…. Uhhhh, no! 
 

But a bit of history. 

A problem for law enforcement was how to proceed with an anonymous tip. Think of the Crime Stoppers’s program today where an anonymous person can call a recorded line and leave a tip. What can the police do with this anonymous tip where they have no idea if it is true, a rumor or someone that hates someone else and just wants the police to harass that person?

One of the major decisions was in 1964 in Aguilar v.  Texas. The Supreme Court basically said that hearsay evidence was allowed, but the police had to demonstrate some manner of underlying circumstance that made the tip seem reasonable. An anonymous tip in itself has no reliability and cannot in itself be used as probable cause. 

In 1969 came Spinelli v. United States. In Spinelli the Supreme Court threw out the evidence from a tip because it was too vague. The FBI had gotten a tip on an illegal gambling operation but without specifics. 

The Supreme Court then came out with the Aguilar-Spinelli test for reliability. They combined the cases into a two prong test. The first was the basis of knowledge or how did the police know the means that the anonymous tipster got the information. The second part was the veracity of the information. How did the police know that the information was reliable? Sometimes the Aguilar -Spinelli test was called the Two Prongs of Aguilar. It was kind of a complicated set of hoops that the police had to jump through. So the police had to show some basis to believe that the person giving the anonymous tip had actually come across the information (not merely heard a rumor) and what information makes the police believe that the tip is reliable.

Fast forward to 1983.

The first use of the totality of circumstances was in the landmark Supreme Court case of Illinois v. Gates.

A police department in Illinois got an anonymous tip that Mr. and Mrs. Gates were dealing big-time drugs from their home. This was from an anonymous letter to the local police. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that an anonymous tip in itself cannot be used as probable cause because there’s no way to verify the reliability of the tip as discussed in Aguilar-Spinelli.

The police in this case went to DEA for help. The anonymous letter gave a detailed description of how the drug transactions happened and of an upcoming drug transaction. I don’t remember the exact details and don’t feel like looking up the case so I will ad lib the details but it’s fairly close to what happened. The tip gave a date on which Mrs. Gates was supposed to drive, I think, to Miami, FL or the hottest location for drugs entering the US at that time (I believe later to be replaced by Houston). She was supposed to pick up a substantial amount of drugs (probably close to half a million dollars in today’s money) and put it in the trunk of the car. A couple of days after she left her home in Illinois, her husband was supposed to fly down and meet her. They would then get in the car and drive back home.

The DEA was contacted in FL and they conducted surveillance on the situation. Sure enough, Mr. Gates arrived at the airport as described in the anonymous tip on the date that was stated. He was then followed to a hotel room and spent the night (I think) with his wife. She actually registered the hotel room in her name. I guess back then they were not worried about covering their tracks. The agent got the license plate number of the car Mrs. Gates drove to Florida in and yep, it came back registered to Mr. Gates in Illinois at the address on the anonymous tip. All of this information was given to the police in Illinois. They got a warrant and busted the Gates on their arrival back in Illinois. 

So the anonymous letter gave the address and the names of the people involved. It gave the date that the woman was supposed to drive to Florida. It gave the date and I think the airline that her husband was supposed to fly down in and meet with his wifer. Police surveillance confirmed that the husband showed up on the date stated in the tip. He then met with his wife at the hotel and the registry showed that it was in her name, the same as in the anonymous tip. They were seen getting in a vehicle, which was registered to Mr. Gates and returned to the same address from the anonymous tip.

How could anyone get all of those facts correct unless they had reliable information? But could they get past the Aguilar-Spinelli test?

 The Supreme Court used all of the information from this anonymous tip to come up with the landmark….. Totality of Circumstances.

The somewhat complicated Aguilar-Spinelli test was replaced by the current, totality of circumstances test. So looking at everything we know from an anonymous tip, what makes us believe that it is true enough to rise to the level of probable causes?

Here is an very important point. The totality of circumstances is not the result or what they are looking for. The issue is, does the information rise to the level of probable cause? The totality of circumstances is not probable cause and it did not change the definition. It is a method of looking at the information to determine IF Probable Cause exists. Probable cause is generally defined as facts and circumstances known to the officer at the time of a an arrest (or search) that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime is in the progress of being committed or has been committed.

So the totality of circumstances does not undermine or add to probable cause. It doesn’t change the definition. It is merely a tool. The standard of justification for an arrest is still probable cause.

So under the use of force by police officers, the standard the Supreme Court has set down (like probable cause has a standard) is objective reasonableness in Graham v. Connor. Did the officer act as a reasonable officer would under the same circumstances including “split second” decisions at the time. Barnes did not change that. The standard is still asking the question, how would a reasonable officer act under the same circumstances? The method to answer that question is by looking at what we learned in Gates. Looking at all of the information (totality of circumstances) that the officer had, was his decision objectively reasonable?

So in my opinion your conclusion is spot on. Look at all things (totality of circumstances) with no time limit. 

Please forgive any typos or word usage. That’s a lot to put out on an iPhone…. 😎

[tvc184]

1 hour ago, thetragichippy said:

@tvc184 - keep me honest here.....

This shooting is about if it was reasonable to think he was about to do significant bodily harm / deadly harm to the agent at that moment he fired the gun. The agents perspective, not our perspective after reviewing several different angles of film, rewinding, fast forwarding using slow motion.

None of that other stuff matters

Yes, 💯 percent in my opinion.

One of the key issues that came out almost immediately is that one agent had already taken the pistol. First if the time issue. The second issue is, was the agent who fired the shots aware that the pistol had been removed?

Put yourself in the position of the agent who fired the shots. If someone yells GUN!!, where are you going to look? Are you gonna start looking at the hands of the several agents or are you going to be looking at the suspect? I have been there. I was on the porch one time trying to take a man into custody and he started fighting and actually got my partners pistol out of the holster. There were three other officers there besides me. I can promise you that I was not looking at the other officers’ hands.

I don’t know what the officer saw and I would like to see any body cam footage but those are sometimes extremely limited in what they show.

The burden of proof in court is still, is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt that in this situation, the officer was not in fear and he knew that the suspect no longer had the pistol?