The taser lady thing was an accident. It was an unbelievably crazy brain fart and I don't care what anyone says, every living adult has had at least one serious one in their lives.
Two or three years ago I was driving in Sioux City in the middle of the day, no texting or any other weird distractions. I was the first one at a red light at an intersection with Lewis Blvd which was ridiculously busy. I drove up to the intersection, stopped like I would at a stop sign and proceeded to drive right through like a total idiot. People started honking like crazy and when I looked in my rearview I could see the light was still red and a semi going through doing probably 45 or 50. Tons of other cars too. I could've killed someone or myself, left my kid fatherless...I have no explanation for it, it just happened.
To be clear, this lady fucking killed a kid and she needs to go to prison for some amount of time that a judge decides. You cannot excuse doing that. As a police officer you are given a heavy burden that not only includes the benefit of the doubt in most cases, but also a much higher standard of judgement and action. You know that signing up for the job. If you fail that and kill someone, there's no do-overs.
Where that whole fiasco went wrong was everything leading up to it before weapons even came out. My cousin is a cop in Mesa and they have a lot of weird situations, non-standard traffic stops etc. with a lot of drug use and drug traffic out of Mexico. We talked on the phone the other day and he basically said that whole squad of officers did everything wrong. He said if they ask someone to get out of the car and the person does, the absolute first thing they do without question is shut the car door. If the guy bolts, you at least have a few seconds bought to try and restrain him. After that they move the guy away from the car and if there's an officer available he/she stands in front of the suspect's car door. Anything to keep him from getting back in and causing a shooting or a chase.
According to my cousin, it's a nightmare to get someone out of a car when they don't wanna go. They have the steering wheel, shifter, seats, seatbelts, and 100 other things to grab onto, and all they need to to is straighten out their legs and push against the seat to lock themselves in the seat. There's also a whole lot of places to grab a gun from, or a knife, or a hammer, anything. I'm obviously not a cop, but it seems to me that letting this kid have the chance to make a dumb decision like getting back in the car was what allowed this shit show to happen.
Most bad incidents are like that though. A series of stupid little mistakes that add up into a big one. Would that lady have shot the kid if all of those officers had had the training and experience to know enough to keep him from making a break for it? Probably not.
