Jermane Reid, as he exits the passenger seat as commanded, with hands in the air. is executed by Bridgeton Police Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley.
As he exits, Reid says:
“I ain’t got no reason to reach for nothing, bro, I ain’t got no reason to reach for nothing….”I’m getting out and getting on the ground.””
Then, with his hands visible at shoulder height, Jerman Reid was executed.
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“From the article Reid has a significant criminal history, including shooting at Police Troopers.”
Well. There you go.
“From the article Reid has a significant criminal history, including shooting at Police Troopers.”
Usually, when we see this, it is b/c the cops want to tar the victim.
But in this case, it might be evidence of premeditated murder. Perhaps he wasn’t pulled over for running a stop sign, as one story said. Perhaps he was pulled over for being Jermane Reid.
Smearing the victim is just as important when he’s dead as when he’s alive.
Not that it in anyway justifies the shooting, but it’s not accurate to say “as he exits the passenger seat as commanded”. Days does tell the other officer “get them out of the car,” but repeatedly tells Reid “don’t you fucking move” and “show me your hands.” When Reid says “I’m getting out of the car”, Days says “No you’re not, don’t you fucking move.”
Conflicting commands happen all the time. “Don’t move” plus “get them out of the car” is quite common. And it would appear from the video that Reid was being pulled out of the car at the same time. So what was Reid being commanded to do?
I’m troubled by the conundrum of the firearm (real, imagined, or materializing magically after the fact) and the civilian in the car. Officer perceives a weapon accessible to civilian. Officer draws his own weapon. If civilian, breathes, moves, blinks or even entertains impure thoughts about the real or imagined firearm, he will likely suffer a tragic case of kinetic energy poisoning. If the civilian complies with the officer’s commands, but appears to engage in any if the afore listed activities in the process, he is shot. So, what the hell is the right response aside from relying on the munificence of the local constabulary? Sadly, I am only half kidding. This guy appears to have been shot from behind and in front while complying. What else could he have reasonably done.
As we both know, the answer really isn’t in the suspects hands at the point, but in the cop’s.
Ironic isn’t it, The officer that shot him is Black and he is dressed differently than the officer driving plus neither of them called for backup on the video, but they majically showed up, almost like they were looking for them and expecting trouble.
Why don’t we look at facts, instead of rhetoric?
*It was a routine traffic stop until Officer Days spotted a handgun in the car in the vicinity of Reid.
*Days knew that Reid had done 13 years in prison for shooting at state troopers, having arrested Reid in the past year.
*This meant that Days was no longer handling a misdemeanor traffic stop, but a felony involving a firearm.
*In addition, Days knew that the person with the gun had used firearms against officers in the past.
*At approx. 1:23 of the video, Officer Worley puts out a radio call for help.
*Days gave repeated commands to Reid to show his hands, Reid failed to comply.
*Days repeatedly warns Reid to stop reaching for something, and that if he comes out with something in his hands he will be shot.
*Reid then said he was getting out of the car, Days told him not to, pushing against the door at one point in a futile effort to stop him from exiting.
*While Days is retreating, Reid exits the vehicle.
*While his hands were semi-up (at shoulder level), they were also in a position to strike at the officer. They were NOT extended upwards in a surrender position.
*Reid does not appear to be getting on the ground, but appears to be going forward towards Days when Days begins to shoot.
*Tutt complied with the officers and was not harmed. Imagine that.
*Walter Hudson’s comment that Reid was complying is BS. He was nowhere near complying, nor surrendering.
On its face, this looks like a justifiable shooting.
I agree with most of this. (Let’s presume Days remembered Reid’s criminal record. Do cops remember the criminal record of everyone they arrest? Days didn’t arrest Reid over a new cop-shooting incident.) But the weak link in your reasoning is here:
“While his hands were semi-up (at shoulder level), they were also in a position to strike at the officer. They were NOT extended upwards in a surrender position.”
This makes it so, so clear what Reid’s life was worth relative to the First Rule of Policing. No matter that the First Rule hardly applies at all, because the man was unarmed, covered at point-blank range by Days in front and Worley in back, shot right after he completed his straightening-up movement, had his hands in up and close, and was what looks like a good four feet away from Days, because Days had the presence of mind to take several steps back.
What’s the fantasy here? That Reid could’ve struck like a wizened kung fu master, teleported through bullets from two directions and punched the cops out? How in the hell does his assuming an imperfect surrender position mean he deserved to die?
How much ground can he cover before the officer can react? Studies indicate 21 feet, and he’s only 4 feet away. Are you claiming that the officer has to wait until Reid is on top of him, fighting over the officer’s gun, before Days can do anything? I don’t think so. We’ve already seen that Reid was stronger than Days, able to force the car door open from a seated position.
The point with the hand position and the actions is that it wasn’t a surrender position, it was a position from which he could attack. If he had wanted to surrender, he would have done so from within the car. No, every indication is that Reid was on the attack.
The citizen has a right to go home, but so does the officer. Why would the officer allow him to exit the car on his own and go to the ground, where the officer had thrown Reid’s pistol just moments before?
And while the teleportation rhetoric sounds cool, it has no basis in reality.
Do you really think that an armed felon is allowed to dictate to the officers what he will and will not do? Really? How quaint.
No. He’s asserting (not claiming, which is derogatory) that the officer doesn’t get a pre-emptive kill because “maybe.”
Since we’re working with facts here, he wasn’t armed, and whether he was a felon is irrelevant. You don’t get to kill people for prior felonies. While Reid’s statements don’t “dictate” what an officer will do, the law does, and the law (assuming we don’t squint too hard) provides that a cop doesn’t get to kill because of the inchoate potential of a threat, but only when the threat of force is real and imminent. And yes, the law does seem pretty quaint these days.
The “21 feet” popular fact is NOT distance covered before a person can react – it is the distance covered by a fast attacker before a defender can react, draw from OWB holster, aim, and fire. You are massively misstating that popular fact.
Human visual reaction time (responding with motion to visual stimuli) is typically somewhere between 150 and 350 milliseconds depending on the person with an average of around 250ms. Nobody is covering 21 feet in 1/4 of a second…
Even Usain Bolt, already at his top 27.44mph world record speed, can only cover 21 feet in just over 1/2 of a second… That is the fastest human in the world already at the fastest speed recorded by a human – not counting the time it took for him to accelerate.
If you are already covering someone with a drawn gun – drop the 21 foot crap.
If you want to take a chance with someone like Reid, fine. Go ahead. We’ll take up a collection to send flowers.
No police officer who intends to go home at night is gong to do so, and they all know the studies on the 21 feet.
You can even demonstrate it in court, using the distances of the shooting. Or you can show the Mythbusters video on it. You can even discuss training that the officer has had in the rule. We used to train on the Tueller drill.
Here Days was much closer than 21 feet. That reduces the time his has available.
Yes, I know the drill and have done it before as have hundreds of thousands of cops, CCW holders, Boy Scouts, Military, etc. – my point is you are misstating what it is! If you are already drawn and aiming at someone, the “21 foot rule” no longer applies… period…
21 feet applies when your gun is still in your holster… not while you are drawn and aiming. Don’t conflate the two – you certainly know the difference.
Time to Draw and Aim Pistol: 1.78 seconds for an LEO
Time to React AND Fire Pistol (Already Aimed): 0.365 seconds.
[Source: Dr. Bill Lewinski]
Those are facts – not emotions.
Sure, and the time for a person (like Reid) to draw a weapon from his waist, extend and fire was measured at 0.09 seconds. Bill Lewinski, “Stress Reations Related to Lethal Force Encounters,” Police Marksman, May/June 2002, at 22. Plus, the figure you gave isn’t even the correct Lewinski figure. That figure would actually be 0.56 seconds, as this was a “more complex visuals situation,” Bill Lewinski & Bill Hudson, “The Impact of Visual Complexity, Decision Making and Anticipation: The Tempe Study,” Police Marksman, Nov./Dec. 2003, at 24.
I’m very familiar with the reaction times, and it still relates back to the Tueller drill, especially since there are no other distance-time drills that lend themselves to police marksmanship training.
“If the officer waited until the weapon had reached its peak of motion and stopped so his eyes could see that it really was a handgun, at least two rounds could be fired at him before he could even compete the action of pulling of his trigger. This would happen even if he were set to fire, had his finger on the trigger and had already made the decision to shoot if threatened.” Lewinski, Stress.
The whole point is that a person can both cover distance very rapidly over short spaces and reaction time comes into play. I used to teach this stuff. Emotions have nothing to do with it, knowledge, training, and experience do.
I hadn’t checked this over the weekend, but the 0.09 second figure is definitely wrong. I guarantee it was a printing error, because that would imply the person drawing, aiming, and firing faster than the human body is capable. It would take more than 0.09 seconds just for the nervous system to transmit and receive all the signals to carry out that task – completely eliminating the muscular system times.
If this were a true figure, why would all other references note the time to draw and aim at more than an order of magnitude higher?
Even if you consider this a highly complex situation, the and consider the higher figure, it is still well below the time to draw and aim for the suspect. Also, I never suggested waiting to see a gun or anything else “at the peak of it’s movement” – I simply pointed out the officer would be capable of responding to SOME visual stimuli more quickly.
As SHG pointed out, there is a continuum between hands up and waiting for a pistol “at the peak of it’s movement” to respond to. If the suspect jerked his hands down to his waist, I don’t think anyone would complain even if he were unarmed.
For all your talk about rhetoric and facts, I’m a bit surprised. He wasn’t armed, and why does his status as a felon matter? Do prior bad acts increase the reasonableness of a kill?
How does the officer know that he’s not armed? He’s already taken one gun off of him.
I routinely carried three guns on duty and two guns off duty. I still carry two guns.
Why would I assume that he only had one gun?
It’s not being a felon per se, it is being an individual who has fired shots at law enforcement in the past, meaning he has shown himself to be capable of that type of violence. Very few people can actually do that, but the officer knew that he had. Second, the fact that he was a felon in possession of a firearm meant that he was going to do hard time. Mere possession of a handgun is up to 10 years in prison. Reid is a habitual offender, was he going away for life or a significant period of time?
Why would I assume that he’s going to all of a sudden comply, when he’s been decidedly non-compliant to this point?
The absence of information does not give the officer greater latitude than the possession of information. How does the officer know he’s not a space alien capable of shooting flames from his eyes? The authority stems from factual basis, not lack of factual basis.
Because the law doesn’t allow you to leap to whatever assumption you choose to arrive at a reason to kill someone.
Officers are trained to always presume that there is another gun, once one has been found.
The law does allow you to use your training and experience.
So any time a gun is found, they get a free kill because they don’t see a second? I’m having a hard time with that rationale.
“Officer Zastrow testified he had been trained to operate on what he called the ‘Rule of Two,’ that is, if the police find one firearm, there will “most likely” be another firearm in the immediate area. Officer Strayer testified he had also been trained on what he referred to as the ‘one-plus’ rule, that where there is one gun, there usually is another gun. Officer Strayer acknowledged that this ‘rule’ was not always accurate as there are instances where a second gun is not always recovered.” United States v. Black, 707 F3d 531, 535 (4th Cir. 2013)
Of course, the court shreds the “Rule of Two” in the Black case, but that training is standard across the U.S. along with the “one-plus” rule. It was taught to me in the basic police academy over 25 years ago and was still being taught when I left law enforcement.
Listen to Days on the video AFTER he had already thrown the suspect’s first gun on the ground. Repeatedly telling him to stop reaching for something, to show his hands, that if he had anything in his hands he would be shot. It is clear that the officer was concerned about a second gun.
Or he would be shot even if he had nothing in his hands and raised them, palm out, to shoulder height.
It’s clear they are concerned about not getting home for dinner, no matter what. And Reid wasn’t too big a loss for a home cooked meal with the wife and kids.
Even if the suspect had another gun and he was extremely well trained and using an OWB holster (obviously not plausible, but giving the FASTEST possible scenario), it would have taken him at least 2 seconds to draw and aim before getting off a single shot.
In that 2 seconds, since the officers were already drawn and aimed – even with a doubled reaction + first shot time, they could have gotten off 8 shots each before the suspect could have taken 1. With a normal reaction time, 10 shots.
Jack, that not relevant as he was not wearing an OWB holster. Drawing from the waist was measured as 0.09 seconds, as I noted above.
Jack already addressed the reaction time claim. And Kevin showed me I really should stick to the metric system, because the true distance is about twice what I said. Call it nine, ten feet.
Now, I say this with as little malice as possible. Whenever a cop shooting hits the SJ circuit, we get to see the cops embark on a two-pronged media strategy. First, they want to prove the victim was evil. They do so by releasing his criminal record, or, if he was clean, say because he was twelve, by releasing his dad’s. Easy enough in this instance – as you say, Reid was a felon with a record of shooting at officers. Check.
They then need to prove that the victim, evil as he was, presented a threat to the officer. Though it appears any threat, no matter how minuscule or indeed totally imaginary, will justify a shooting to a cop, the public prefers to believe in more substantial things, like a “deadly” threat. Over the past few months, we’ve seen several cases on SJ where the police claimed such a threat existed, only for video evidence to then be released that proved the claim a lie.
In this case, there’s no way – no way at all. none – Reid could’ve posed a deadly threat to either officer. Or a less-deadly threat. Or, to be honest, any threat. Your suggestion that he was poised to attack is absurd. He couldn’t have attacked if he’d wanted to. Even assuming he accomplishes the (impossible) feat of reaching the armed police officer, what’d he have done then? Dropped him with one punch, like what skinny people fantasize about? Kicked sand in his face? If this had happened [i]in a video game[/i], Reid couldn’t have hurt either cop.
Worse yet, where you see a big, scary man on the attack, we see a guy getting out of his car, complying, hands up, in no way in “fightin’ mode”, far, far away from the cop. And yet they blasted him, because they decided he didn’t fit the surrender checklist well enough. I wonder why you see him as a threat, when there’s no evidence he was and plenty to argue he wasn’t. My guess is that, because he ticks the boxes “armed*”, “felon”, and “at one point in close proximity to a cop”, you’re willing to let the rest slide. We need to be better than that.
*well, he had a gun in the dash, right?
In fairness, ECLS is not the usual cop suspect, but someone in whom I have great respect for his opinion. That doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with him, but he’s no cop shill.
Thanks.
I just don’t agree with you in this one case, after having seen the video.
I would be very interested in seeing the statements and interviews, too, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
I know. One thing I appreciate about your coming around is that you bring your experience combined with your objectivity. So, we disagree from time to time. We should.
“Jack already addressed the reaction time claim.”
And he’s wrong. Sorry, but his theory sounds nice, but it will be easy to disprove in court.
“[T]he true distance is about twice what I said. Call it nine, ten feet.”
Meaning the reaction time for the officer is changed? Or that Reid has already cut half the distance necessary?
“First, they want to prove the victim was evil.”
That has nothing to do with this case–here it is relevant that he was a felon who shot at police in the past because Days knew that at the time. It wasn’t something learned after the fact, Days knew that Reid was dangerous.
“In this case, there’s no way – no way at all. none – Reid could’ve posed a deadly threat to either officer.”
You’re wrong.
“Worse yet, where you see a big, scary man on the attack, we see a guy getting out of his car, complying…”
Boy, if you call that complying…
I am wrong? Please elaborate on where I have gone wrong. You talk about being able to disprove my “theory” in a court of law, but I made no legal arguments or conclusions – I simply brought up a physics problem.
Yeah, like SHG said, I gave you the long version because I thought you were an unusually articulate cop shill. No one gets to accuse the SJ cheap seats of one-dimensionality, after all.
ECLS, you need to show, not tell, man. When you say Days knew Reid had shot at cops, can you back that up? Can you construct a plausible scenario in which Reid goes medieval on the cops’ asses and they don’t get to go home for dinner? Feel free to rely on your imagination, because I don’t think the video will be enough.
@David M
I am not the biggest fan of LEOs but the use of the word shill seems a little loaded, maybe more connotation than denotation. I find that while not always agreeing with ECLS I do respect his viewpoint, and understand the basis for it.
Words matter, we should choose wisely. Especially when dealing with someone willing to face the “chin music” while expressing a perspective contrary to the popular opinion.
Ya know, I was always taught the 21-foot rule related to being able to draw and fire at someone who is charging with an edged weapon, rather than relating to already having a gun pointed at the chest of somebody who’s getting out of a car. Are cops really being taught that they’re so incompetent they have to shoot anybody closer to them than 21 feet?
That doesn’t even deserve a response. Incompetent? KMA.
I think this line of discussion is played out. Everything has been said that can be said, and now it’s just repeating itself, so I’m going to cut this off here.
Everything prior to this justified the officers having a weapon drawn and prepared to shoot, but is irrelevant to the shoot itself. This was the conduct that immediately precipitated the shoot. We all agree he had his hand up, so your point is that he wasn’t surrender-y enough, so the cop was justified to kill him? No. It doesn’t work that way. A shooting isn’t justifiable because a person isn’t sufficiently unthreatening.
Nor does the fact that they only killed one of two make it acceptable. You don’t get the first killing free.
Neither does Days have to allow Reid to attack him.
There is a continuum between insufficient surrenderiness and attack. He was nowhere near the “attack” end of the spectrum.
Perspective and subjectivity are truly amazing things.
The gun is irrelevant because Officer Days removed it from the vehicle at 1:11. Reid’s hands were not in a position to strike Officer Days because he had retreated eight to ten feet away from the car at 1:46. Officer Days appears to have circled around the door, likely to get a better view of Reid, while maintaining that distance, when he begans firing half a second later. It appears that he has a clear view of Reid’s empty hands at 1:47.
Any comment on how hopped up and wild the shooter seems to be? I know a police officer needs to speak with authority to maintain his command presence, but when you get really wild like that, yelling and all, it gets harder to process. When there’s such a barrage of commands, you start thinking wait, what, am I supposed to get out of the car or not, hands up or don’t move. And he wants me to move slowly, but this urgent barking is making me do the opposite.
Conflicting demands, screaming, cursing, mass confusion, and you haters always want to blame the cops, who are specially trained for handling these demanding situations because
pensionheroes.