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Originally Posted by Meph  There have been cases even where they now have the term "Suicide by Cop" because people decide that since they just broke up with their significant other, they will go on a chase, get out of the car, and do those very same acts of abrupt, threatening motions. |
"Suicide by Cop" is generally the term for someone who makes it very clear they have a weapon and advance with purpose towards the cops. I have never heard the term applied to someone getting blown away as a result of the sort of ambiguously threatening gestures you describe. However, I spend very little time dealing with criminal law or the news relating thereto, so my understanding of the term may well be narrower than the commonly accepted definition.
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Originally Posted by Meph But I'm curious. When would you use lethal force against a cop? I'm assuming on duty officer |
Um, unless the cop has drawn his/her weapon and threatened my life for what I believe to be no sufficient reason at all (and even then, proving that I really did shoot a uniformed officer in justifiable self defense for his illegally threatening me would be damn near impossible, so it would be a pretty desparate act of last resort)... never? My above posts have been pretty clear that my concern isn't about being able to use lethal force against a cop.
My concern is the different concepts of justification between cops and the everyday world. Example being, when a cop says "I shot and killed that unarmed, law abiding citizen because I felt threatened by actions X, Y, and Z that said citizen took," X, Y, and Z are sufficient for the cop to have a valid defense under your idea of how it should work... but if I, as a trained and licensed concealed carrying citizen, pull out my P7 and kill someone who was engaged in behavior X, Y, and Z, I will go to jail becuase a civilian shooting and killing someone who "threatens" them by doing X,Y, and Z is clearly a trigger happy gun nut or a vigilante.