saw local news interview tonight with his girlfriend, who lives in atlanta, and wouldnt show her face. she went through their phone call & said he told her, he heard someone banging on door, didn’t know who it was and TOLD HER he was going to get his gun.

next thing she hears is gunshots, her bf says, i’ve been shot, and i can’t breathe.

said she’s been contacted by LE multiple times to speak to them, but understandably is not ready to do so.

They are looking for their DV victim so they can paint him as an abuser.  How surprising.

I think I finally figured out where the disconnect is in your thinking that causes you and others to repeatedly spout the same nonsensical replies.

I don't know where you guys are from, but here in the United States the front doors of homes and apartments do not randomly pop open of their own accord.  A person must make the decision to open the door at a particular time and act on that decision.  That decision is part of what we in the US call the "totality of the circumstances".  That act colors the later act of displaying the handgun to the knocker and makes the combination of actions reasonably perceivable as a threat.  Now, if I was visiting your apartment building in your country where doors popping open randomly is normal the situation is different.  If your door happened to pop open right when I'm outside it and you were standing inside with your pistol in hand and now visible to me then I could not reasonably perceive a threat because you had no input into the door opening.

Jason, the truth hasn't changed -- I just tried to change the way I explained it.  If it makes you happier go back and replace "displaying" and "holding" with "brandishing" in all of my posts.  

I denied what you claimed I said because I didn't say what you claimed I said.  Let me lay out the logical deduction which you can't seem to figure out:
- Situation X is a threat justifying self-defense
- The ROE prevented acting in situation X (per Missilegeek and BamaMarine)
- QED the ROE prevented acting in self-defense

Click To View Spoiler

Yes it is and so have I.

No it isn't normal or expected.  I would feel threatened and expect the same from anyone else.

Fortson had time before opening the door to decide not to flash the gun and he was the one that chose when the door opened.

I pointed out the reaction time problem because of the posts falsely claiming that since Fortson's hand was up that he couldn't be shot.

You seem to have forgotten that the deputy had his back against a railing.  He couldn't back up except by jumping off a fourth floor balcony.  Ooh, let me guess: he deliberately trapped himself to create exigency!

Fortson escalated it to lethal force by flashing the pistol.

I am under the impression that curtilage is the area around the house and does not include the house itself.  Two people meeting in the front yard, for example, is different than one being inside and one being outside with an initially closed door between them.

Yes, those are reasonable responses.  (Except for the creating space since the deputy was backed up against a railing already.)  It is also reasonable for someone knowledgeable of how quickly the pistol could be snapped up and fired to not take that risk with their life.

Killing someone for the mere possession of a firearm is not reasonable.  Absolutely.  Opening the door and flashing the gun to the knocker is not mere possession.

Noted.  Thank you for the correction.

I think if you go back that reference was to a few posts where people here want the deputy to ass raped… but you can interpret that anyway you want. If you do have pictures if chips, I’m not judging

Well, as I said before dig down and define those words…such as rude, it can include unexpectedly, abruptly, etc. Would the display of that firearm, be alarming… something to be considered.

A great example of pulling the finest of slivers of legality to justify the homicide of a man.

You didn't say that this?
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Stop gaslighting. Anyone can go to page 27 and see what you said... or to page 28 and see it quoted in case you decide to edit it.

Oddly enough... that post also starts with "I never said that"... seems to be a whole lot of you saying that

If a hostile act or hostile intent isn't included in your need for self defense... you shouldn't defend yourself. You don't understand when it's warranted. What's legally justified in an OIS is not typically legal for anyone else... even the military. That was his whole argument...

Training or pre-employment physc evaluation. I don't claim to know the best way to go about it but one would think red flags of improper behavior patterns could be a clue. I guess they need better policing of their own but that ain't gonna happen.

When some does not expect a person at the door, you cannot be surprised that they have a gun.

If a government agent kills you for holding a gun in a non threatening manner, then the government does not acknowledge your right to be armed.  That is a government that does not deserve to exist.

Bull.  Full stop.  He did not brandish in any way, shape, or form.

You are looking for reasons for government agents to kill citizens.

Looks like the LEO ball garglers are still gargling away.

Can't believe people can be so delusional.  Even scarier, some of them are part of that, now corrupt, "profession"

I was at my buddy’s house out in the country shooting my new ar15. Sheriff showed up while we were shooting. According to some on GD. Me, my buddy, his dog and his son should have been shot.

It isn't necessarily the house.  It can be the porch or an area adjacent to the house.  In this case the cop was in the curtilage.



The deputy could have created space by moving parallel to the railing, perpendicular to the door.  If there is a way into an area, it stands to reason there is a way out of an area.

It is indeed reasonable for someone to acknowledge how fast one could bring a gun into play.  It's also reasonable for one to know that not everyone wants to kill another person, much less a cop.  It's also reasonable to note a FLEA's study that shows a mere presence of a firearm can de-escalate a situation, and does so an estimated 1,000+/- times a day.  Then again, you pin the badge on, you take the oath, you get your free drink from QT or your discount from [insert store's name here], thems the risks you take.    

That said I gave three valid options for the deputy that were far better than killing someone for possession of a firearm.



OK, so were back to the difference between "flashing", which is the same as brandishing, and possession.  According to FL law that has been posted, possession of a firearm doesn't equal brandishing, and nothing the Airman did meets the definition of brandishing.

Is it an escalation to lethal force anytime a police officer flashes his pistol?

I'm almot positive some of these are troll accounts set up to further the divide between LE and the public... because all he is doing is making LE look worse by trying to defend it.

Just reminded me of an incident from years ago. Shooting at a county-owned gravel pit and a Sheriff's Deputy pulls in. 4 guys with guns, 1 Deputy. He may have been a bit apprehensive but did not draw down and just explained that we could not shoot there. Very low-key, no problem. We packed up and left. Have things changed that much in recent years that, in today's world, we all would have been "swatted"?

I'm sure cops encounter people with guns on a regular basis. And DON'T shoot them.

Yep, we are supposed to believe, with over HALF A BILLION guns in America, any cop has the right to kill us if they see us with one.

Talk about delusion on a grand scale.  No one could be this completely inept. They are either trolls, or functionally retarded

I agree this was handled all wrong and probably cost a good man his life. But let's use some common sense that apparently seems to be lacking.

In today's environment of shootings, it seems that a certain group of people that is displayed nonstop in the news every day. LEOs are now getting ambushed, etc.

If there was someone pounding on my door announcing LE and I were to look through a peep hole and see it was a uniform LEO beating on my door. I sane person given today's environment most certainly would not answer the door holding a gun in their hands.

You are a fool if you do that.

Yes, it may be legal to do. Yes, it may be your right to do that. But come on, what kind of idoit does it. You've got a cop pounding on your door announcing he's a cop. You look through a peep hole and see that it's a cop. But let's answer the door with a gun in my hand. Yes, it's legal. Yes, you are not acting threatening. Yes, it's your home and so forth.

But let's go back to that common sense thing. Cops it seems, are being targeted lately, and they are wounded up tight today. I'm most certainly not condoning what happened. But come on, even if it is legal who the fuck with an ounce of common sense would answer that door holding a gun in your hand. I seem to remember a phrase growing up that went. Just because it's legal doesn't mean you should you do it. Because it's stupid.

How many here honestly would answer a door that LE is at holding a gun in your hand surprising that cop. I most certainly wouldn't, and I don't care how legal it is, and i seriously doubt most everyone here would not do it. With the exception of the Johnny bad asses here saying they would fuck the cops it's legal. Yeah keep telling yourself that and then do it. Then some probably have done it. Do it today under the present environment.

That said, I'm guilty of answering my door with an FBI agent and plain cloths sheriff’s detective. I had no idea who they were. They did not announce police. But I kept my armed hand behind the door where they could not see it. Once I verified who they were and had put the gun on the table. I let them in. I did notice the detective unsnap his holster, and I did tell them there was a gun on that table.

They were there to question me about a bank robbery. Some asshole called crime stoppers and said it looked like me. Fortunately, I was in hospital having surgery at the time of the robbery.

But what do you guys think would have happened to me if I'd answered that door swung it open, standing there with a gun in my hand of a suspected bank robber. I'd probably not be posting this today. I used a bit of common sense, knowing you just don't answer a door with LE holding a gun. Even if it is legal and I have a right to do so. I'm not stupid enough to do it.

But even though the young man did and had the right to do so. He did not use his head and most certainly used common sense in doing so. It is all so easy to arm chair quarterback these things. Honestly, if I were a Leo. I do not know how I'd handled this same situation in today's environment.

I feel bad for the loss of probably a fine young man. Plus, that person that said if he, a friend, and his son, along with their dog, were out shooting on their property that under what's being discussed here. That the Leo if responding to a complaint of them shooting. That officer could just shoot them all for holding a gun in their hands. Be fucking real and stop acting stupid. That's a totally different scenario. Officer is not surprised and knows well in advance you are armed. I've had that happen to me. We saw officer coming and unloaded weapons and sit them down. It's called common sense. Yes we didn't have to do it. But I promise you. That'd been the first thing officer would have told us to do.

Airman was a dumbass. He knew who was at the door and surprised officer by answering the door holding a gun in his hand. I don't care if it was legal or not he was absolutely stupid. As far as what should happen next. That's up to the prosecutors. If it went to a jury trial and I was on the jury. I do not know what I'd do. If it were my family, that he killed. I'd want to burn that cop. I don't know it's a tough position to be in.

My condolences to the family

Do you honestly believe, if he knew it was LE at the door, that he would have opened it with a gun in hand? That makes ZERO sense... and him not knowing it was LE is backed up by the person he was on the phone with.

This has already been hashed out, several of us have neither shot the homeowner with the gun in hand, nor been shot in the same circumstance.

Did you watch the video. Unless he was deaf he knew it was a cop. Stop it with your bs twisting of events. Goddammit you people don't quit with your BS.

I'm done with this dumbass post and the stupid posts. Even I could have heard that officer through the door,

Unsubscribed

b


WAH WAH WAH

Them boots aren't going to lick themselves.

Try fucking reading my post again.

Your lucky

I did watch it... show me in the video where it shows he knows it's police?

Pray tell, how am I "lucky"?

Weird post, trying to hide something?

How would he know it was a cop? The cop was hiding from view.

*You're

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He said he was a cop.  Only cops can physically say that.

I can't figure out why he knew it was a cop, grabbed a gun for the cop, then made no attempt at all to use the gun on the cop even when the cop was drawing his own weapon.

Well reasoned explanation. But here's what it reminds me off:

I'm a gun owner and I support the 2A, but... in today's environment of school shootings, etc., etc., we need common sense [INSERT TYRANNY]....

Freedom is scary.

Wellbye.jpg

Guess we should just cower in fear of government agents instead.  Can't expect the reasonable officer standard to account for the reasonable person acting lawfully.

Why do some people on this thread seem to think that apartment walls perfectly transmit sound? He wasn't standing on the other side of the door when the policeman knocked and announced. He was in another room on a phone call. It is unlikely he understood a word the cop said.

Your post is really just stuff that's already been said.

No point in reading it again.

@exDefensorMilitas This sounds like a misunderstanding of how statistics work.

If you have 10 instances of a situation with a good outcome, does it change the probability that the next instance might have a bad outcome?  Even more relevant, does it change the possibility? I'm sure you know that much of law enforcement training is based on possibilities, not probabilities.

I remember a law enforcement guy who was very fond of the expression "fortuitous outcomes should not reinforce bad tactics".  The fundamental problem here is that the homeowner chose to take a situation where the officer is not very worried about what might happen (open the door without a gun visible), and he chose to turn it into a situation where the officer is forced to start thinking very quickly about all the bad things that might happen.

Simply by not opening the door until he figured out what was going on, or keeping the gun hidden, he could have avoided flipping that switch. Instead, he flipped that switch and changed the entire situation from the officer's perspective.

Now, the officer is forced to choose between thinking about probabilities versus possibilities.  The probability approach is what everybody here seems to want. Yet that is the approach that has led to deadly complacence and many dead officers. I assume you are familiar with the training that focuses on this problem.

If instead he starts thinking about possibilities, his options are very limited.  His back is against a railing, he has no cover available, he can't retreat without making things worse tactically, etc.

One might say "why didn't he just move to the side out of the line of fire and talk before shooting?". But he doesn't know if the potential bad guy can shoot through the wall or not. What's going to stop the bad guy from reaching around the corner and doing a mag dump in his direction, while the officer doesn't have an angle to fire back and no cover, no option except to hit the floor and pray?  There are no good options, which means the best option available to stop the potential threat is to draw and fire before the bad guy has a chance to raise his gun and fire.

Or, of course, he could just play the odds and hope that this isn't the one time out of X that a guy knows police are at his door, opens the door with a gun in his hand, but DOESN'T intend to start shooting. (remember, from his perspective there's zero question the guy doesn't know it's police outside, so X is a pretty low number)

You may be able to pick that crude analysis apart, but that's not the point. To put it in 80/20 terms, yes--there's a lot the officer could have done differently. But that's on the 20 side.  The 80 is the occupant's many opportunities to make different choices that don't put the officer in "life or death split second decision" mode.

Again, I'd prefer the officer never knocks on the door in the first place. But once he does, that question doesn't matter.

For the record, I really wish people would slow down and think before making bad decisions. But normalcy bias is just ingrained in human nature, and periodically everything converges to result in a tragedy like this one. That doesn't mean there must be a bad guy somewhere.

It's not a misunderstanding of statistics.  It's how I and my cohorts were trained and how we conducted ourselves.   Someone answering the door with a handgun down at their side like this, just isn't an automatic draw and fire.

This isn't an issue in the next county over, when I've interacted with our deputies.

"chose to take a situation where the officer is not very worried about what might happen (open the door without a gun visible)"  

That's just a false assumption. Assume everyone is armed.

“If it makes you happier go back and replace "displaying" and "holding" with "brandishing" in all of my posts.”  

He literally believes that having a gun in the hand is “brandishing”.  He cannot understand that their is actually a different criteria between “holding”, “displaying”, and “brandishing”.  Must be a trust fund baby as their is no way one can hold that belief and be able to read and write one’s own post.

Your premise that Fortson was a good kid that did something legal but unwise contributed to his death is noted and a valid point.  Now do the actual criminals with guns, doing illegal stupid stuff that still manage to not get shot by police every day.  As a general rule you can’t just open up on those guys with no opportunity to surrender either.  You know that, right?

According to some I should have had a handful of OISs as a LEO because I should have been deathly afraid of a gun near a person and shot without thinking.

To use a favorite term, the totality of the circumstances doesn't add up to a reasonable fear in this situation.

Sure, I'm certainly not saying the deputy had no other option.  But do you agree that 80% of this is due to the homeowner making a bad decision?

I just don't understand why people seem to think it's reasonable to expect that every law enforcement officer be the equivalent of a robot powered by supercomputer that is programmed for every single theoretical possibility, able to take every sensory input and calculate the best reaction possible in milliseconds.

Cops are humans with brains that are just as imperfect as anybody else. I certainly wish that everybody had extensive force on force scenario training that helped their brains get to the point where they avoid panic mode. Maybe in 10 or 20 years it will be standard for everybody to spend a lot of time in virtual reality simulators and things will be much better.

Again, past outcomes have no influence on future probabilities. A deputy in a rural county may go 20 years with frequent interactions with armed people and never have a problem. Somebody working in an urban environment may have a completely different experience. The burden should not be on the officer to figure things out in the moment, people should be expected to not do dumb things.

The burden should not be on the officer to figure things out in the moment, people should be expected to not do dumb things.

Uhm, THE sole purpose of the police is to deal with the people in society doing stupid things.  They absolutely DO have the burden to figure things out in the moment.  You just described the police officers job.

Awwww.  Did someone get their “pwecious wittle feewings” hurt?

He also didn't know some Karens cooked up a story about him and duped the police into harassing him.  Probably also didn't expect the police would actively hide from the field of view of the peephole.  And finally probably didn't expect the police would mag dump him in under a second without even telling him to drop the weapon first.

This.  He was not afforded the same considerations a dude leaving a liquor store he just robbed, gun in one hand (pointed to the ground) loot in the other.

No, I don't agree this was an issue because of the homeowner.

As far as VR goes, those training systems already exist. It's not VR, but it's good enough.

There you go again, testifying what the victim "knew". We don't know what he knew and when. Only that the deputy eventually hollered "sheriff's office" a couple times while pounding on the door and demanding he open it.