So from the looks of it, at least based on that article with very limited info, bad guy decided to run from the police and put his son in danger. HE CHOSE TO RUN FROM THEM. WITH HIS CHILD IN THE CAR. Some will blame the cops. Some will say "why not shoot out the tires". I say the bad guy chose to endanger his son. All he had to do was surrender peacefully and his son would still be alive. PERIOD. Lets all assume this warrant was for something serious enough to justify a pursuit (felony crime of violence). Do we as a society want to send the message to the criminal element that all you need to do is hide behind innocents to evade justice? Think about those repercussions for a second.............. As I previously stated in the recent "felon wants a gun" thread. Decisions have consequences. It is a shame that the father chose his son's safety over his own selfish desire to commit crime and evade inevitable consequence. Its more ashamed the child paid for his father's poor string of decisions with his life. And it is equally as sad the one or more LEOs will have to live with this for the rest of their lives as a result of trying to keep their community safe.
So from the looks of it, at least based on that article with very limited info, bad guy decided to run from the police and put his son in danger. HE CHOSE TO RUN FROM THEM. WITH HIS CHILD IN THE CAR. Some will blame the cops. Some will say "why not shoot out the tires". I say the bad guy chose to endanger his son. All he had to do was surrender peacefully and his son would still be alive. PERIOD. Lets all assume this warrant was for something serious enough to justify a pursuit (felony crime of violence). Do we as a society want to send the message to the criminal element that all you need to do is hide behind innocents to evade justice? Think about those repercussions for a second.............. As I previously stated in the recent "felon wants a gun" thread. Decisions have consequences. It is a shame that the father chose his son's safety over his own selfish desire to commit crime and evade inevitable consequence. Its more ashamed the child paid for his father's poor string of decisions with his life. And it is equally as sad the one or more LEOs will have to live with this for the rest of their lives as a result of trying to keep their community safe.
I guess the only good thing so far is the people that were shot were both white.
That is when a gun battle ensued between the marshals and Few.
Here's a couple of semi-unrelated questions to the LEOs onboard, can you open fire on someone being being hostile (ie someone attempting to ram you or your cruiser)? Is a non-LEO allowed?
Or offensive weapon I'd imagine. I was just wondering how the letter of the law is written is all. For example, if the guy was ramming the cruiser with the cop inside can he open fire? What if he exits the vehicle during the ramming?A vehicle is considered a possible deadly weapon.
Here's a couple of semi-unrelated questions to the LEOs onboard, can you open fire on someone being being hostile (ie someone attempting to ram you or your cruiser)? Is a non-LEO allowed?
Louisiana law permits employment of lethal force in defense of self or others when faced with immediate serious bodily harm or death, so the easy answer is yes and no, it depends, situation dictates.
https://www.legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=78336
The morning news stated that the warrant servers were not LEO and did not have police powers.
The boy, Jeremy Mardis, died on Tuesday night after police shot into a car driven by his father, Chris Few. On Thursday, Colonel Michael Edmonson, head of the Louisiana state police, denied earlier reports that Few had been reversing his car toward the officers, who then had to defend themselves. *No. I didn’t say that,* he told the Guardian. *That didn’t come from me.*
At a press conference, Edmonson initially described the shooting as *an exchange of gunfire*, but later clarified that only the officers had shot, and that investigators had found no gun in Few’s car. Officials had previously declined to confirm whether officer gunfire was responsible for Mardis’s death.
Orange spray paint marks the orientation of Few’s car and three patrol cars, at the intersection of Taensas Street and Martin Luther King Drive. The particular placement of the cars – and a spray of glass from the passenger’s side of Few’s car – seems to indicate Few was not backing toward the officers. His car was perpendicular to them, and the officers’ shots hit the driver’s side broadside.