re: Off-duty cop shot and killed a non-verbal, intellectually disabled man in a Cali Costco

Sad. If the argument is “sorry, my kid has autism and can be aggressive”, and was escalated by the cop saying “you need to control your fricking son”, then this is murder, in my opinion.

I find it hard to believe that the cop couldn’t run from the threat. As big as the guy is, I doubt he was a killer.

Unless the nonverbal guy was putting the cops kid in a chokehold or something.

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But to shoot someone (legally), you must fear for your life, or in this case, his babies life

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Legal scholar, I see

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The police officer being not on duty actually has a duty to retreat and back off any escalation.....walk away

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There is no duty to retreat in self-defense situations under California law.

Why don’t you guys stop just making stuff up.

So you can shoot someone you argue with? If an autistic person pushes you, shoot them?

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So you can shoot someone you argue with? If an autistic person pushes you, shoot them?

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The law in Cali is similar to most states. The shooter needs to be reasonable apprehension of death or great harm to himself or another. The fact that the victim is autistic will be irrelevant unless it can be shown that the shooter knew or should have known that fact.

There is no possible way to determine whether this was justified on just the information in the article posted.

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The law in Cali is similar to most states. The shooter needs to be reasonable apprehension of death or great harm to himself or another. The fact that the victim is autistic will be irrelevant unless it can be shown that the shooter knew or should have known that fact.

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Things like negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter, etc. can still be in play.

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If the argument is “sorry, my kid has autism and can be aggressive”, and was escalated by the cop saying “you need to control your fricking son”, then this is murder, in my opinion.

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Haven’t seen anything new on this, but just because someone has autism or another mental disability does not mean they are otherwise a nice person. People with mental disabilities have personalities, flaws, strengths, etc. Their disability does not encompass their entire being. There’s people with autism that are very smart, given one of the basic traits of the disorder is generally poor social ability and conflict de escalation.

There are some very nice people with autism. There are also aholes with autism. I’ve been around plenty of people with mental disabilities that the only reason they weren’t in jail was because of their IQ but they were otherwise horrible people. That had nothing to do with their IQ or disability.

Honestly without more to the story, simply stating an off duty cop shopping with his family shot someone with Autism is nothing but click bait. It’s a horrible headline meant to draw attention.

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I mean, the police released a statement and I think it's pretty relevant that in a potentially controversial shooting where there is already a narrative blaming the "victim" for initiation, the shooter was a police officer. It also helps to explain why the shooter was armed in California.

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Exactly. Costco is a weapons free store, so the fact it was a cop is absolutely relevant.

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Costco is a weapons free store

I’m not sure why that matters.

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Well he wasn’t supposed to be conceal carrying if he was a normal customer, since he was a cop it was probably okay.

I’m not sure what legalities the cop would have broken if he was a citizen outside of probably being banned for life from Costco.