this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Destinee Thompson was supposed to be on her way to lunch with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a robbery suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mother as she fled in her minivan.

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[–] samuraipizzacat420@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago (24 children)

I don't like "the shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. I always thought a cop should be a white knight. They need to be ready to throw down their lives to save someone. A us vs them mentality, the fact the police are people and some have families and their own wants and needs will mess with anyone's line of thinking. Police have to be ready to risk opening the door to confirm a dangerous suspect before they use force to try and save themselves.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee -3 points 1 year ago (13 children)

This isn't so clear cut, the police did try to ask questions first. They asked her to stop and speak to them, she kept walking and got in the car. They asked her to get out and speak to them, she refused. They broke the window (escalation) so she panicked and tried to drive away, smashed a police car behind and then drove forwards over the curb. At that point she's using her car in a very dangerous manner, so lethal force is potentially justified.

However the police shouldn't have escalated by breaking the window to begin with. They had her contained, she was no longer a risk, not until they escalated.

[–] rh4c6f@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No one has a legal obligation to speak to the police. If she was a suspect, they could have stopped her before she entered her vehicle. This was murder.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

No one has a legal obligation to speak to the police.

That isn't entirely true. In roughly half of the states, if an officer suspects you of a crime you are obligated to identify yourself and provide your name. Colorado is one such state.

This lady partially matched the description of a robbery suspect who had threatened someone with a knife. They tried to stop her before she entered her vehicle, but were not able to. They had every right to ask her name and what she was doing, to determine if she was the knife wielding robber they were looking for, and she was legally obligated to answer.

They should not have escalated by breaking the window. However, once she started driving the car dangerously, lethal force was justified. Whether lethal force was absolutely necessary would depend on specifics we don't know from this article, but the legal bar had been met. The fault is with their escalation prior to the use of lethal force.

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