Dillon Taylor: Court Rules Utah Police Were Right To Shoot Dead Innocent Unarmed Man
WHEN Officer Bron Cruz of Salt Lake City, Utah, shot dead innocent, unarmed 20-year-old Dillon Taylor, it was lawful.
How so?
Well, Taylor looked a bit like one a group of men reported on a 911 call flashing a handgun.
The SaltLake Tribune reports that Taylor was with two other men, who were “making a scene”:
Confronted by officers, the two men with Taylor held up their hands, while Taylor alone was “noncompliant.”
Why should you comply? If you’re innocent, why should you do as you are commanded?
Police had cameras.
Body-cam video shows that Taylor turned toward officers with his hands in his pants before hoisting his shirt — a gesture officers are trained to recognize as a possible weapon-draw.
Innocent til proven dead
They are trained to recognise a man raising his shirt to be sign that he could be about to shoot?
“Nothing that Mr. Taylor did assisted in de-escalating the situation,” [the district attorney Sim] Gill said. “If anything, it escalated things.”
He had no gun. Told to comply with armed police, he was bit bolshie, maybe. But he was not armed. He was an innocent man out and about.
Taylor’s shooting was justified, Gill said, not because he posed an actual threat, but because Cruz reasonably perceived a threat.
Thinking the innocent man is armed is enough reason to shoot him dead.
“Officer Cruz’s belief that Dillon Taylor was armed with a gun and intended to use it against the officers was reinforced by Dillon’s actions and the acts of others,” Gill wrote in a letter to Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. “By the time Dillon drew his hands from his waistband, Officer Cruz’s belief that Dillon was presenting a weapon [and … would use the weapon against officers] was reasonable.”
After shooting Taylor, Cruz handcuffs him.
The copcam shows us one angle. What we need is an innocent victimcam to show what it looks like being shouted at by a uniformed man with a drawn loaded weapon…
Posted: 2nd, October 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
