Daniel Shaver was just a ordinary guy who did nothing wrong to deserve the attention of Mesa Police Officer Phillip “Mitch” Brailsford.
On January 18, 2016, Daniel Shaver, a traveling pest-control worker, was in between shifts at his motel, a La Quinta Inn and Suites in Mesa, Arizona. In the elevator, he met a man and woman who’d just finished their own workdays, the two later testified in court. Did they want to join the 26-year-old Texan for Bacardi shots in his room?
They’d already begun drinking when one of the guests asked about an unmarked case in the corner. Was it musical instrument? No, a pellet gun. He used it at work. His job was to go hunt down birds that had flown into businesses including Walmart. Soon he was standing by his room’s window showing off his pellet gun to the man. Down below, two motel guests in the La Quinta Inn and Suites hot tub looked up and saw a man with a gun near a fifth-floor window. Someone called 911.
It’s true that had he not touched the pellet gun, no one would have seen him at the window. It’s true that had no one called 911, the cops wouldn’t have come. It’s true that had it not been a gun, the cops wouldn’t have arrived prepared to kill. But none of this changes the fact that Daniel Shaver did nothing wrong.
That didn’t save his life.
Brailsford applied the First Rule of Policing, the newer version which accommodates the fragile fear of cops for whom any hint of a potential threat, no matter how remote, is worthy of death. And given conflicting and confusing instructions, there was almost no chance that Shaver would survive.
Brailsford was prosecuted for the utterly pointless murder of Daniel Shaver. He was acquitted.
A Maricopa County jury on Thursday found former Mesa police Officer Philip “Mitch” Brailsford not guilty of second-degree murder charges in the 2016 shooting of an unarmed Texas man who was on his knees begging for his life.
Jurors deliberated for less than six hours over two days, finishing Thursday afternoon. The eight-member jury also found Brailsford not guilty of the lesser charge of reckless manslaughter.
The Reasonably Scared Cop Rule prevailed. Brailsford walks. Shaver remains dead. And it’s all on video, so you can reach your own conclusion.
Still, Shaver exited unarmed, put his hands up, and did his best to comply with the demands of police, who ordered him to lay down on the ground. Soon after that, Officer Philip Brailsford, 26, shot and killed him with a service weapon on which he had etched, “You’re fucked.”
Indeed, Shaver was fucked.
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We need to change the name of The Reasonably Scared Cop Rule to something like The Disgustingly Cowardly Cop Rule.
I can’t find words bad enough to express the depth of Brailsford’s smug cowardice.
Murder, plain and simple. MURDER. How was this SOB acquitted? It’s beyond comprehension.
Remember, this jury is from among the same group of voters that repeatedly elected Joe Arpaio.
And John McCain.
“keep your hands in the air and crawl towards me”
Umm…you can’t do both.
I believe, at some point in that, I probably would have said “Officer, I’m going to lay flat on the ground, with my arms and legs spread, and not move. Come do what you want, but I can’t follow what you’re shouting, and i’m too scared to move anymore.”
Refuse to comply? Brailsford didn’t appear to be interested in listening. Or thinking. Just killing.
Don’t forget about while keeping his legs crossed too.
To me this was murder steming from cowardice and lack of training.
I mention training because sound training allows people to move beyond their ( many times irrational) fear.
Any competent trainer would have taught those officers to move up and secure (cuff) the suspects once they were on the ground (they could be bystanders and you are giving the real threat more time to prepare by messing around with them). Unless you are afraid the threat is a suicide bomber there is no reason to not immediately approach and clear the suspect and the area behind them (and that was clearly not the case here, you dont have bombers crawl towards you..).
If they were scared of an additional threat with a weapon securing those suspects and clearing the following corner was the fastest way to eliminate that fear and reduce their risk (and imediatly following thier force posture and the risk to all).
I tend to give police the benifit of the doubt in fast moving situations with a high degree of unknowns (ex: the use of deadly force after chasing a suspect in the dark to have him turn and attack you. Could you have done something else.. maybe but there are many unknowns).
In situations like this however (cowardice and false bravado, while ignoring the clear easy answer) the officer should get life plus cancer.
Layman question, did they overcharge? If not I am curious about the defense teams rational.
Of all the possible takes, your issue is with training? As opposed to…murder?
My point was it had to be murder because no training would condone his actions prior to the shooting.
His defense was it appeared the man reached for a gun. I contend without his reckless actions (having the man move once on the ground with hands behind head, etc) the situation would never have developed to that point and no confusion, real or imagined would have been possible.
So even if the jury thought the shooting was legit due to the suspect’s reaching for his waistband, the officer still murdered him through negligence and should have been found guilty.
That’s not how any of this works. Go to reddit.
I know i’ll get some ridicule for asking, but I legitimately want to know.
Why isnt that the way it works? Doesnt the jury consider everything when deciding guilt and not just the five seconds of shooting?
Edit to my last submitted comment: if it’s cause the world is fucked up, I get it and will shut the fuck up.
Exactly. The law, particularly this aspect of it, is particularly fucked up, designed to do everything possible to accommodate the special fears of a cop.
It occurs to me that it probably takes training to get from an ordinary person with normal moral intuitions, to someone who can execute a man on his knees, pleading for his life.
Arizona is a Constitutional carry state. Anyone can carry a firearm, openly or concealed for any reason.
Why was the cop there in the first place? I understand someone called the cops because they saw him holding a gun in his hotel room but that is not illegal.
Damn fine question.
911 Operator: What’s your emergency?
Well-intended person: I can see a person in a hotel window holding a gun.
911 Operator: Welcome to Arizona. Have a nice day. *click*
You’re wrong about the reasonable suspicion.
Patterico and I were discussing this on the twitters yesterday. He thinks I’m wrong about reasonable suspicion as well, but can’t get past the reasonable suspicion of what, since possessing a gun isn’t a crime.
I admire the tenacity it takes to keep sharing these stories, Scott. Absolutely horrifying.
If it was horrifying for you, imagine how it was for Shaver.
I’m going to use your tenacity mention to make another point. There are daily, hourly outrages happening. I get emails about them constantly. I see people twit about them constantly. There reaches a point of overkill, where we stop caring because it’s too much to process. The rhetoric is overheated. There’s no particular point to be made except “here’s another one.” The unduly passionate are “heartbroken” (which means it’s all about their pain, not the suffering of the person who actually suffered), and it all fades in a few minutes as we move on to the next sad story.
Despite all the bullshit empathy, the sad story of the hour, the tales of woe that don’t contribute anything useful to our understanding. I’ve done thousands of these posts, and chose not to do tens of thousands more. And for all the sad tears and passionate feelz, which I believe is a product of overkill (loss of focus), misdirection (Franken kissed a girl without consent!!!) and ignorance born of the over passionate and under knowledgeable coming up with ineffective, if not damaging, pseudo-solutions. But hey, if we can’t trust Shaun King, who can we trust?
Awe, and here I thought this body added to the pile would turn the straw the camels eat into some sort of motivation to carry the hash tag “You’re Fucked” into a legislative “What’s for dinner?” revolution?!
P.S. Sgt. Charles Langley, recently honorably retired to the Philippines, is the fucking psycho doing the commanding in the video. The executioner, Philip “Mitch” Brailsford, was just his lackey.
RIP Mr. Daniel Shaver, if you are reading this…I hope they gave you extra credit for showing up at the Pearly Gates in a Tool T-shirt.
Did you hear the one about the honor student who was sent to the principal’s office for answering a PC teacher’s question correctly?
Teacher: “What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
Student: “I don’t know and I don’t care!”
That’s very good. I saw a twit today by one of the “new breed” SJW crim lawyers. So a client needed a lawyer to help him, and instead of actually doing something to help the guy, he’s twitting about the sadness of it all for his fans and the circle jerk of feelz? What’s the difference between sympathy and empathy?
I don’t know how long Brailsford had been a cop before this happened, but after the shooting in San Francisco by a cop on his fourth day at work, I wonder if perhaps cops should have to serve for a certain number of years before they are allowed to carry a firearm. They would still have access to all their other deadly gear, and maybe be partnered with a more senior cop who carried. But maybe after three years without a gun they’d learn how to be a Reasonably Scared Cop that can handle shit without shooting and killing people. Just a thought.
Freeze or I’ll think bad thought at you? In other parts of the world, cops routinely work without carrying. Somehow, they manage to do their job and kill no one.
Group of police officers in Poland went to stop a group of thieves at an ATM. One of those police officers is dead. We hope we never will have to use the gun, but it would be nice to know, that it would be justified if we did. I probably wouldn’t shot Mr. Shaver in that corridor and I would be right, but if a thug someday had a gun and shot it in a similar situation, I would be dead.
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]
Distinguishing between when you are threatened with deadly force and when you’re not is the point. You don’t seem to grasp that.
Surprised he didn’t waive jury and opt for bench.
Good point, especially given the video. Obviously, he didn’t make a bad choice.
I have defended more than one shooting. They always look the same: there’s a threat, and when they shoot, they shoot everything. The drywall is peppered. The cat is dead. The TV upstairs will never work again.
This is different. From the video, and nothing else, I wouldn’t defend this case. Call me ethical. It won’t bother me.
Call you ethical? What if I called you un-ethical? Would that bother you?
And why are you you fantasizing about dead cats and broken tv’s?
I’m conservative and “pro cop.”
I’ve watched this video about 20 times, and for the life of me, I can’t even come up with some sort of rational basis for a jury to say “that’s not murder.”
I would like to know what the defense even argued.
I’m sick to my stomach watching this.
The basis was Blairsford’s sincere belief that at the moment Shaver reached for his waist, he was in subjectively reasonable fear for his life. I don’t see it at all, but that’s what the jury decided.
I’ve watched the video too many times.
Dude was drunk and trying not to hit the wall. Officer Brailsford knew the guy was drunk. The instructions were inconsistent, and quite frankly, I don’t know if I could follow them sober. Especially considering an AR-15 is being pointed in my face, the officer is screaming, and I’m told if I make a mistake I’d be shot and killed.
More importantly, how didn’t six cops frisk him? Ask him if he had a weapon? Pat him down?
Pardon my candor, but the prosecutor was terrible. She had a lot of material to work with, but her cross-examination was awful. I hate to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but I know law students who would have been more effective.
Defense attorney did a great job, in my opinion.
When you’re looking at the business end of a cop’s firearm, and you’re getting death threats and conflicting orders, what’s the best course of action?
I know the basics of dealing with the police: “Yes Sir, No Sir, Thank you, Sir. My Id is on the dash. No, I don’t consent to any searches and No, I won’t make any statements, and Am I Free to Go?” IOW, don’t be a dick, don’t self incriminate, don’t argue, and don’t hang around a moment longer than you have to, and most importantly, “Shut the hell up.”
But in this situation? Facing a Barney Fife (or a fire team of similarly excited, over caffeinated and under-nutted urban warriors) yelling death threats? In all seriousness, since the court clearly puts the burden of de-escalating on the untrained civilian population, rather than the professionally trained police force, what is the best thing to do?
I’d rather be facing a charge of failing to comply and some ‘rough handling’, rather than dying because Officer Safety nearly soiled himself.
You missed “I want to speak with my lawyer.” If you’re going to run through the list, then make it the right list. There was no “right thing” for Shaver to do. He didn’t commit a crime. His reaching for his waist was an ordinary, innocuous, likely unintentional (his pants were sliding off) thing to do. He never stood a chance.
Thanks for pointing out the omission. I don’t have that committed to memory as well as I’d like, and delivering it without being regarded as belligerent is key, too.
So, when the officer seems overly agitated and likely to shoot, and even announces that fact, there’s nothing left to lose. No matter what is done, you’re leaving in a bag, regardless.
This does not seem to be conducive to people acting rationally in response to the threat. I wonder how that realization affects actual officer safety, long term, and how that vicious cycle will play out.
I think the police have the respect they have worked very hard to earn.