re: Florida deputy fatally shot US airman that answered the door with a gun

Came to post CHANGE THE TITLE.

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I do not believe cops should immediately shoot every person they encounter who has a gun in their hand.

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Explain what you wanted the cop to do there? Seriously, put yourself in his shoes. You going to just chance it that he won’t shoot you? He’s a human being, not a robot.

The only way that guy possibly doesn’t get shot answering the door with a gun is if he immediately says don’t shoot don’t shoot don’t shoot while putting the gun on the ground and walking away from it.


You can say something stupid like I wish they didn’t shoot everyone with a gun immediately, but that’s the consequences of being a stupid gun owner. A responsible gun owner doesn’t answer the door like that even if it wasn’t the police.

So a few things I noticed watching the video:

- The lady telling the cop where to go doesn’t seem to actually know which apartment it is. First the cop says “which door?” and there’s a pause before the lady says “I’m not sure.” Then he asks her “which room is it?” again when they get to the elevator and she says “1401,” this time sounding confident.

As he’s getting in the elevator she says “you’re gonna go to the 4th floor and it’s gonna be on this side” which seems to mean the side where she’s standing. When the cop gets off the elevator he starts to go right (toward where the lady was standing) but there’s a sign that says 1401 is the other way so he turns around.

I don’t really blame the cop for going to the wrong door in that scenario.

- When the cop knocks on the door he immediately moves to the side of the door, presumably out of view from the peep hole. Not sure if that’s training or what but it definitely happens. So I do tend to believe the part about the airman looking through the peephole and not seeing anyone there.

- After the first knock you clearly hear someone inside saying “police” but the odd part is that it’s before the cop yells “sheriff’s office.” It almost sounds like he’s saying it as a question, as if “is that the police?”

- Right after that, the cop yells “sheriff’s office, open the door” very loudly. It’s hard to imagine that the guy indoors couldn’t hear it when you can hear him mumble the word “police” from inside just before that.

- Cop was real fast on the trigger there. But at the same time, the gun is in the guy’s hand so I can understand why.

I don’t know what to make of any of this. I think there were mistakes by everyone involved including the cop, the resident, and the manager lady.

I would not be shocked if the guy had heard the first knock (with no police announcement), looked and didn’t see anyone, then went to the back of the house to get his gun. Comes back and the cop is yelling “sheriff’s office” so he opens the door and immediately gets shot because he’s holding a gun.

I’ll say this.. I’ve been in a scenario where the cops banged on the door like that and I didn’t know who it was. In my case it was at like 3 AM and they woke me up. When they knock, they don’t knock like normal people… they bang. It’s a little disconcerting when you aren’t expecting it.

I had the same reaction.. I grabbed my pistol before walking toward the door. However I heard the cop’s radio and then figured out what was going on. I immediately went to put my pistol away before opening the door, for obvious reasons. In my case it turned out they were looking for a guy popping door handles and apparently my wife’s car door was open when they rode by. So they wanted to let me know and ask if I had seen anything (this was while BRPD still gave a shite).

My point is that I can understand why the guy grabbed his pistol the first time when the cop didn’t announce himself. I can also understand why he said “….police?…” before the cop announced himself as it’s kind of distinctive the way they bang on your door.

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Cop was definitely quick to the trigger but hard to blame him.

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It’s not hard to blame the cop at all. The gun was never pointed at the officer and the officer shot him several times. It was nice of the officer to ask the man in his own house to drop his gun AFTER firing several rounds at him though. I normally defend the police, but judging by the video, this cop deserves jail time. There’s no defending this crap.

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Explain what you wanted the cop to do there? Seriously, put yourself in his shoes.

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I’ll go. Maybe he should’ve asked the man that was legally holding a gun in his own home to put the weapon down Before blasting him with several rounds, not after. After you kill the man legally holding a weapon in his own home, it’s a little too late to ask him to put the weapon down in my opinion

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It's a shame that cops tend to be dumb af

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Hasn’t this already been proven untrue?

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This board really cracks me up sometimes. We are all for a full defense of our second amendment rights. We are all for being able to open carry at all times. We are all for fighting ANYONE who tries to so much as wink in the direction of making gun ownership harder.

Except here is a dude, in his own house, breaking no laws, exercising his right to own and carry a gun. Who was not making any threats towards the officer and did not have the gun aimed at the officer And SOME of you are perfectly happy to say HE is the one who fricked up.

I’m sorry but I like carrying. I have two Glock 19s. One bedside, and one in my truck. I’d prefer not to get shot just cause some dipshit cop is jumpy.

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I'm not saying that he shouldn't be able to exercise his 2A right in his home. It's an absolute tragedy what happened, and he clearly didn't deserve to be gunned down. I'm simply saying that answering the door for a cop with a gun in your hand is something that no one should do. It absolutely can get you killed. Its possible that he didn't realize that it was a cop, even though it seems like he would've heard the cop ID himself and it seems like the guy would have looked through the peephole again before he opened the door and saw that he was a cop. Idk. At the end of the day there were A LOT of mistakes made by multiple people. And it got someone killed. shite sucks.

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Just say a vet was killed by cops.

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I may be wrong but I believe he was active duty, not a vet.