Watch: Fort Worth Police Shooting, New Body Cam Footage; What Would You Have Done?
This may have seemed like a Clear-Cut, Black & White, Open & Shut case for some people, when we all first heard of this horrible event:
A cop doing his job at 2am, after answering a call of a possible home invasion, shoots an innocent woman through a window in her own home, turns in his badge out of guilt, and then gets arrested for murder.
However, it isn’t quite as “Clear-Cut” as all that.
We all support our law enforcement officers, and the life threatening & dangerous work that they do. Every morning they leave, not knowing if they will be coming home to their own families, yet they leave for work anyway, to protect everyone else’s family…
…absolute heroes every single one.
And we all support the Second Amendment; the right given to us by our creator and protected by our constitution, to self protection. We have the right to protect our homes, our persons, family and property, with our right to keep and bear arms.
Now, imagine this…
You are a police officer. You get a call from someone’s neighbor at 2 in the morning, that something is wrong at her neighbor’s house. The neighbor’s front door is open and the lights are all on, which is strange for the middle of the night; and the caller believes someone has broken in and may be harming the home owner.
As an officer, you know that if you pull up out front with lights and sirens, you may alert the robber and he may panic and kill the occupant or occupants of the house, so you park around the corner and quiety aproach the home on foot.
As you get to the home, you notice that indeed the front door is wide open, all the lights are on, but you don’t see the home owner or anyone else inside the property. You begin, in the dark, to quietly move to the side of the home, using your flashlight to check the yard and behind every object, incase a prowler is hiding behind one of them and may jump out at you. You begin peering through every window, looking for the perpetrator and his hostages worried that at any moment he may see you and shoot you dead through the darkness…
You come up to a dark bedroom window, and the moment you look, you see a dark figure pointing a gun directly at you. You immediately raise your gun and flashlight to the window and simultaneously tell the suspect to drop the weapon raise their hands as the flashlight hits the window and the extremely bright reflection hit you squarely in the eyes and the last thing you see is that gun still pointed at you as you fire a single shot…
You don’t have to imagine… the body cam footage below ? shows that exact scenario.
The problem is that he didn’t shoot an intruder, it was the homeowner who was playing video games with her 8 year old nephew when they hear a prowler outside her home. She quickly turns out the lights in the room and pulls her firearm from her purse.
Believing that their lives are in danger, she aims the gun towards the window, waiting for the intruder to break in or shoot her and her nephew the minute they are seen. She sees a dark figure with a gun come right up to the window, she hears him yell something, and frightened she raises the gun into firing position…and BOOM!!! …
…she is shot and killed, not by a prowler but by the officer.
Now, what would you have done differently, in that same situation, if you were either one of these people?
It’s easy to Monday-Morning Quarterback this event. And say, that as the cop, you would have announced that you were a police officer before shooting, or maybe just knocked on the front door when you arrived. You would take the chance of scaring the intruder into doing something rash and putting the homeowners life at even more risk.
Or, as the woman, you wouldn’t have pointed your gun toward the window until the threat was clearly recognized…taking the risk that you may be too late in seeing the actual threat, and you and your young nephew, could be killed because you were too cautious…
…but the truth is, in these exact circumstances, and with only a split second to decide whether to aim your gun, pull that trigger & fire…or be shot and killed. Both people did what they thought was right in that terrifying moment, and tragedy happened anyway.
There is no way to know for sure what you would do differently in that situation…unless you are right there as it happens.
Take a Look at the footage below and try to put yourself in their shoes. ???❤???
Below is the full story from the Daily Wire:
An “open structure” or “open door call” is much different than a wellness check, Michael “Britt” London, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, told the outlet.
With an “open structure” call, officers are typically on higher alert, as reports could vary from a door accidentally being left unlocked to something more serious like a burglary.
People Magazine
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