A day or so ago, I got a notification from CNN on my phone about a news story that I only got around to reading now. CNN summarizes the article as "Two decades later, a traffic stop on a country road is still teaching police officers about deadly force – and the cost of hesitation." The article is part of a series, the rest of which is also worth a read.
The article is about the death (murder) of a Georgia police officer back in 1998, which was caught on video from a dashboard camera of the police car. This murder incidentally occurred only two days after my birthday, which is a morbid fact to notice. The police officer was killed while making a traffic stop; the man who he had stopped was apparently somewhat unhinged and started shooting at him. Some theorize that he was trying to commit suicide by cop, which he ultimately failed to do. [As an aside, I enjoy living in a place where most people are not gun fanatics/owners. So you would assume that something like that is less likely to happen here. The most recent local police officer to have been killed was killed by a drunk driver, which is still unfortunate. In somewhat related matters, the local police department hasn't been at the center of any controversies recently, which is good.]
You can actually watch a portion of the video, interspersed with some commentary from the officer's father and other members of law enforcement. The part where he gets shot is out of the frame of the camera, but you can still hear him screaming as he is killed, which is, to say the least, at least a little chilling. For the more faint-hearted among us, it's probably quite chilling and possibly veering into the territory of somewhat disturbing. As they say on television, viewer discretion is advised.
Then the article goes on to say "Most humans would rather not kill, even when society asks them to," which I thought was sort of interesting, especially in light of having watched the movie Experimenter, which was all about obedience experiments and how far people are willing to go in following orders. I suppose the willingness of one person to kill another can vary according to circumstances; the degree to which people were obedient in the obedience experiments changed when some of the conditions in the experiment were altered. The Nazis certainly seemed willing to be complicit in committing a genocide, which is why Stanley Milgram decided to conduct his obedience experiments. Also, fighting in a war sort of entails at least the possibility of having to kill other people.
In general, I think that people would be more willing to kill another person if it were in the interest of self defense. Notwithstanding the whole legal (not to mention psychological) consequences of killing other human beings, self defense seems like the most likely motivation that would bring an ordinary person to kill another person. I know I'd kill someone in self defense if my life depended on it. Of course I can only speak for myself.
Interestingly enough, this particular incident would have been a perfect justification for killing someone in self defense, yet the police officer did not. In contrast to recent controversies where police have killed civilians, this police officer was killed by a civilian because he (the police officer) was too hesitant to kill the civilian. The article says "The line between firing too slowly and too quickly can be very, very thin," which I think is a pretty good summary regarding these kinds of incidents.
The murderer was eventually captured, convicted of murder, sentenced to death, and finally, executed. In his defense, it was argued that he was mentally ill and had PTSD, which caused him to commit the murder, but regardless, the jury convicted him.
I do think that this whole incident and the aftermath could be an interesting thing to portray in a movie. I'm pretty sure there have been Law and Order episodes based around criminals who have killed a police officer, I just can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head.
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