I am going to offer some insight as you seem to be open to rational discussion. You second guess or criticize numerous actions, so to get a better feel for where you come to those conclusions, it might help the conversation if you cite your experience or any expertise in these areas? Be honest with yourself and perhaps do a no shit self evaluation. There are individuals who look to find fault and their judgment is extremely biased in that direction from the start. Is that the issue here with your initial observations? Having said that....
Hey surf, I wasn't trying to put down cops in general. They have a difficult job and for the most part do it quite well. I just feel that in this particular instance the officer made some questionable choices.
I never took your statements as a put down on cops as a generalization, but I took it rather as judgment by yourself which was based off of very few facts. I would think that statements condemning an action based off of so little information, much less what is reported in the news, would be an action worth avoiding.
Even yet again you state the Officer made some "questionable choices". Again you are basing this off of very little information. I am about 99.9% positive that if you had the brief and all of the information in regards to the entire incident you would feel quite different and would probably feel quite stupid (for a lack of a better word) for having made the comments. Of course you will not get all of the information and you will stand behind the comments made, but this just shows the ugly side of web forums can be. Rational discussion is good. Ignoring those who thrive on self indulgence via the www. is easily ignored, but I would think rational thinkers would opt to avoid coming to a condemning conclusion with what would obviously be far less than all the facts. Now if the facts showed any negligence, then so be it.
You share an obviously intimate knowledge of how the investigation should progress, but a picture is worth a thousand words. The chain of command and most especially the city have a vested interest in finding the shoot justified. If it's not, in an election year no less, the proverbial fecal matter will hit the fan. Not good news for the department or the city.
It would really help if you had a better understanding of how the investigative process truly works. There are too many checks and balances in place. The City Prosecutor is a politician and the #1 bottom line is that he is not wanting to make incorrect decisions or losing cases. His concern is not so much the City paying out lawsuits as opposed to his own untarnished records of wins and loses. Making a bad call on a use of force and failure to bring charges, would be a huge loss for him. If Kaneshiro shows up you need to be worried. If he goes through all the facts and commends your actions, not just calling it justified, that is a big deal. They will just as quickly bring charges against an Officer if there is even a hint of in-propriety. The HPD AND the Prosecutors Office go after Police Officers and do more stringent investigations against them, then they would give the same attention to a private citizen in a similar case. They will cut you loose and let you hang without second thought. That has been the huge trend for over the past decade.
Also, the fact the officer is "highly decorated" is really irrelevant. Just today I read about one of the officers from the shootout in Kahala that had been awarded the highest honor the department has to give being arrested for kidnapping and sexual assault. Even officers that have done great service in the past aren't immune to making mistakes.
Past or prior behavior either good or bad is "irrelevant"? Hmm, that is an interesting summation from a legal and common sense perspective. Of course bad people can become good, or good people can go bad, but to think that prior acts good or bad is "really irrelevant" is again not a wise consideration.
That was really my point. From what I saw in the video it seemed to me that the officer made some poor choices.
There really is little video that was shown on the news. Do you feel that was the only video available? Do you think quite a bit may have happened prior to where the video started? Do you think that perhaps quite a bit happened after the end of the video up until the actual shoots were fired? Or are you basing your simple assumption off of that short clip? Sound like the latter. Again not wise. So we have an experienced Officer who obviously has worked under pressure quite a bit, who made a calculated decision, yet you feel he made some poor choices? And which amount of your training and experience combined with this short video clip, makes you feel that you would opt for another option? Perhaps the shoot the tires, or shoot the gun out of their hand option?
Sticking his arm into the vehicle. He's lucky the guy didn't grab his arm, roll up the window and drag his ass down the street.
Calculated risk, no doubt. Do you feel that the Officer was not smart or experienced enough to have known this? Do you think that he had more or less information than you do at the time of the incident? Do you think he made decisions based off of his training, experience and that information, or that he just was completely out if left field? Are you privy to all of the possible verbal exchange and comments that may have been made by the driver? Are you privy to any of the overt actions that may have been attempted by the driver prior?
Hanging on to the vehicle after it started moving. He endangered himself there, he's lucky he was able to stay on his feet and not get run over. This wasn't the drivers fault.
So you are condemning this action as an error? Could it perhaps have been a non-lethal attempt at disabling the vehicle, which may have been deemed a necessity from prior bad actions, comments, or both by the driver, perhaps in an attempt to safeguard the heavy vehicular and pedestrian foot traffic?
Pursuing the vehicle on foot. No idea what he was trying to accomplish there. Maybe he thought he could tase and disable the car?
Exactly. You have no idea because you were not there and had not seen and experienced everything that Officer did up to that point. He made certain decisions obviously on training and experience and a first hand evaluation of the situation as it unfolded. What are you basing your summation off of?
Failure to use his radio to call in backup. As I said in my original post, many of us have seen traffic stops in Waikiki where 3 to 5 cars show up almost instantly. Or is this just reserved for hot chicks? Had he done this, they could've allowed the guy to move on to an area less congested with pedestrians and stopped him using their cars. A little body damage to a couple of cruisers, nobody dead.
Failure to use his radio to call backup? And you know this to be a fact, how? You have "seen" cars showing up almost instantly, so obviously that must apply to every single situation? You have so little information on the actual circumstance it is almost comical, but you make the cracks about "hot chicks"? Do you know if he had back up available to help attempt a stop? Do you know anything about any of the traffic situation in that area, at that time, that may have caused that part of Kuhio avenue to have been overly inundated with vehicular AND pedestrian traffic? Do you even know if this was the case or not and why it may have been like that?
I won't even go into the possibility of innocent bystanders being hurt by ricochets or over penetration when he discharged his weapon on a crowded street.
What are your credentials in regards to ballistics? Do you feel that the Officer had no consideration for his target, backstop and possible surroundings? Do you know from his angle what his backstop and surroundings were? Do you feel he fired wildly? Do you know his angles? Do you know how many shots were hits or misses? Do you not think that a detailed ballistic workup, including trajectories were not a part of a standard investigation?
As far as I can see, with the information available, unless the driver was threatening the officer with a gun or a bomb, he didn't need to be shot 5 times and killed. If this was the case, I think it would've been all over the news by now.
As far as you can see? Therein lies the problem. You have so little information on the entire process, from training, to experience, to investigation, to how the system actually works, not to mention having far far far from all of the factual information and evidence from the actual incident. Trust me, very few on this forum have access to this information and I can guarantee that you are not one of those individuals that does. This is not a jab, but your comments are coming from a very uniformed position and I will tell you 100% that your are way off the mark here.
** I will edit to add that I am not trying to convince you of anything, but to perhaps to give you other perspectives that you may not have taken into account. If you are still set with your beliefs, that is, what it is and I am good with it.