Are These New York Policemen Justified In Shooting A Man Carrying A Fake Gun? [Video]
Recently, a video was released of a man being shot in his apartment while carrying a gun and a knife. During the video, policemen held up their gun and warned the person that he would be shot if he did pull his gun up at them. After a number of warnings, the gun was apparently raised, and the man was fatally shot. The police would later realize that the gun was a toy.
According to the video, the man who was shot to death had been in his apartment for a number of days and no one had heard from him. The video did not go into detail regarding what the police officers went into the home for, other than stating that the landlord reported him not being seen for a while.
The video, which was taken by one of the officer’s bodycam, starts with an officer letting the man know that he does not want to shoot him and telling him to put his hands up. The officers then convened with each other, asking if they wanted to take him down. Moreover, it also showed an officer telling the man that he did not want to shoot him if it was a fake gun, but he will shoot if it was a real gun and he raised it.
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Social media had conflicting thoughts about this incident. On one side, people believed that it was a straightforward case, and the police were justified in shooting the man. This is primarily due to feeling that each officer’s life was in danger, and did not want to take the risk of determining whether it is real or fake. Moreover, the slight moment of determining whether it was real or fake could have been at the expense of an officer’s life.
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Other thoughts support the possibility that the person could have been dealing with a mental illness, and the officers were not understanding enough to find this out before deciding to shoot. Other conflicting opinions stated that the policemen decided to finally show bodycam footage after “six months” (actually, five) of using them. While this may be true, it really did not have anything to do with the situation at hand.
[Featured Image by AP Images]
