Would you feel threatened?

So, this is the thing. A drunk ass 17 year old kid goes berserk, breaks all the windows out of his house (living with dad, so dad's house). He goes after the cop car with the bat, smashing it all over the place. The cop tries backing away the car but rams into a parked car. The kid breaks out the cop's driver's side window. The cop shoots him dead as fried chicken. Would you feel threatened by a kid with baseball bat? I mean, I'm glad the cop shot his dumb criminal ass dead, but I just can't see being scared of a kid with a baseball bat. I would have got out, took it away from him, subdued him on the ground and kneeled on his throat until backup arrived. Or maybe if you were that scared, why not punch it and hit the kid with the car?

Just grow a pair, really. It's one little kid with a bat going crazy. I would just take a bat hit in the side and then hurt him real bad. I've been hit twice with a bat and while it's not something I would like to happen regularly, it's not something I would kill a dumb ass, know nothing, crazy kid over. And look at him below. He can't be more than 130-150 pounds. He would hit like a q-tip. It would be different if the kid had a sword or something but a bat is just a bat. Unless you let him pound you in the head, it's nothing. I think the cop panicked and just started blasting. I would try to give the kid the benefit of the doubt and let him try to straighten himself out and fly right. Failing that, the second time it happens, bury him.

They're trying to crucify this cop that shot him because they didn't feel deadly force was justified. I'm not a big fan of cops in general but this cop got shaken, panicked and fell apart. If he's going to do that job, he should be given more training to be cool and collected in a stressful situation. It was just a kid. If that kid had a gun, I wouldn't say boo about it and just let it ride because the kid deserved to die. But this, it kind of doesn't sit right with me. A regrettable incident all around but I think the cop needs more training or something.

Was use of deadly force justified?
Only Duluth police officer Jeffrey Keast knows to what extent he feared for his life or health as 17-year-old Joseph “Joey” Carl attacked his squad car with a baseball bat.

By: Mark Stodghill, Duluth News Tribune


Only Duluth police officer Jeffrey Keast knows to what extent he feared for his life or health as 17-year-old Joseph “Joey” Carl attacked his squad car with a baseball bat.

Keast attempted to back the car away only to have the attacker shatter his driver’s side window with a violent swing of the bat, investigators say.

Keast, 30, a two-year member of the police department, responded by firing one shot from his Smith & Wesson Military and Police .40-caliber handgun. The bullet struck Carl in the left side of his torso, killing the teenager near his Norton Park neighborhood home on Aug. 5.

Why was a bullet used to stop an attack with a bat?

Some are asking why a lesser tool of force wasn’t used, something like a Taser, in an attempt to immobilize Carl.

Those weren’t difficult questions for a pair of experts consulted by the News Tribune. A police use-of-force coordinator and an associate professor who has testified against police in excessive-force cases both said the facts as known to them indicate that the use of deadly force was justified against Carl.

Imminent threat

Police officers are authorized by law to use deadly force to protect themselves or others from what is reasonably believed to be an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm.

Sgt. Jon Haataja, the Duluth police department’s use-of-force coordinator, has seen the squad car video of Carl’s attack on the squad car. He said Carl first smashed out the front of the windshield on the passenger side of the squad car. Keast attempted to back away and retreat, but collided with a parked vehicle and came to a stop.

Despite Keast’s attempt to retreat, Carl did not stop his attack.

“He then immediately went to the driver’s window to smash that out,” Haataja said. “That action does not show me that he was intent on breaking windows. Had he wanted to continue breaking windows, he could have broken windows along the passenger side of the vehicle and along the back side of the vehicle and then gone to the driver’s side of the vehicle,” Haataja said. “What it shows me is that his intent was to injure the officer, and I think that any officer seeing that would agree, any citizen would agree with that, that his intent was to cause damage to the person, not to the vehicle.”

And why couldn’t a Taser have been used to stop the attack?

“You are bringing a nondeadly weapon to a deadly force confrontation and it’s simply not appropriate to respond with a lesser degree of force to a higher degree of force,” Haataja said. “It weighs the odds against the officer surviving that incident.”

Haataja, a 24-year police officer, provided an example of how unreliable a Taser can be in protecting an officer against a potential deadly attack.

In April, Duluth police investigator Laura Marquardt was attacked by a woman carrying two knives in downtown Duluth. Marquardt sustained a broken nose and a concussion. Haataja said four or five officers deployed Tasers before one was able to stick in the suspect’s leg and stop her attack.

Tasers work best when the two probes can get far enough apart to affect a large muscle group, Haataja said. When a Taser is shot, its probes spread about a foot for every seven feet of distance.

“Given the proximity between the officer and the suspect that night, I

wouldn’t say there was even seven feet of distance if that bat was able to contact the window. So we would have a Taser spread of less than a foot, affecting less than a foot of muscles,” Haataja said. “And so the likelihood that it would have worked is very low.”

Retreat was right response

Based on News Tribune accounts of the event, William Terrill, an associate professor in the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice and a nationally recognized expert on police use of force, agrees with Haataja that Keast was justified in using deadly force to protect himself.

“From what we have right now, if the officer wouldn’t have retreated or tried to get away I would have been more suspect or concerned,” Terrill said. “But with the suspect going to the driver’s side, I would imagine the officer felt pinned and trapped. If he felt trapped in that particular situation and there was no other recourse to retreat at that particular point, it would appear that deadly force would be warranted.”

Does Terrill think a Taser was an option?

“A Taser, for the most part, should never be used in lieu of deadly force,” Terrill said. “If you are authorized to use deadly force, you use deadly force.”

The Taser is a less lethal weapon, he said, designed to be used in situations where officers don’t fear for their lives or don’t believe they are in imminent danger of great bodily harm.

Terrill is not a police apologist. He has testified as an expert witness in police excessive-force trials and said he has always testified on behalf of the plaintiff alleging excessive force. He testified for the plaintiff in a 2008 case in Jersey City, N.J., in which a jury found police used excessive force and awarded the plaintiff $640,000. He’s the author of the book “Police Coercion: Application of the Force Continuum.”

“It appears that the officer attempted to find an alternative means to reconcile this,” Terrill said. “The suspect, unfortunately, placed the officer in a position where the alternative means — which was retreat —

didn’t work. So the officer was left with a difficult decision on how to resolve it without a serious injury, and unfortunately, it resulted in a serious injury, but to the suspect.”

The professor said that ultimately he believes the videotape from Keast’s squad car will be “crucial” to the decision as to whether deadly force was justified. The News Tribune has made a freedom of information request for a copy of that video. Under Minnesota law it is not public as long as it is part of an active investigation.

What the officer perceived

Duluth police Sgt. Bob Shene, who is a use-of-force instructor, was the supervising sergeant at the scene of the Carl shooting. He said there had been reports of shots being fired before Keast arrived at the scene. It turned out there were no earlier shots, but Carl was reportedly inside his home breaking a TV and smashing windows.

Police said Carl was outside the home with a bat when Keast was the first officer to arrive at the home. Carl went straight to the squad car and started swinging with the bat.

“The issue in my mind isn’t whether a Taser can be used, or a chemical aerosol can be used, or whether a gun can be used,” Shene said. “What did the officer perceive was taking place and what did he perceive was the appropriate level of response? Those are the questions.

“So if the perception was that this was a deadly force attack, than a Taser is not an appropriate response to that attack. The use of force is evaluated by what the officer knew at the time force was deployed. It’s not Monday morning quarterbacking.”

Haataja said officers are schooled to weigh the safety of all the types of people who can be involved in an incident.

The first priority is for any hostage threat that could be involved, he said. The second priority would be the other citizens involved. The third priority would be the law enforcement officers involved. The fourth would be the tactical officers involved, and the lowest priority is placed on the safety of the suspect.

“We never place the suspect’s life above those of the others,” Haataja said. “The officer has the right to protect himself from imminent use of great bodily harm or death against him. So that’s how we rationalize the tactics that we can use. We never use tactics that are going to put our lives in greater danger that those of the suspect.”

On Friday, St. Louis County Attorney Melanie Ford announced that she had asked Scott County Attorney Patrick Ciliberto to review the shooting to determine if the deadly force was justified. Ford said she wanted to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

Ciliberto told the News Tribune that he has not yet received the completed investigative report from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. If he finds that no follow-up investigation is necessary, he expects to make a charging decision in less than a month and forward that finding to Duluth police Chief Gordon Ramsay and the BCA.

 

I see no one asked why the kid went beserk.
I'm not qualified to comment, maybe there should have been more officers called to the scene.
Maybe there should have been two officers in the car.
Either way it's a sad event another wasted life.


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The kid was found with two other older kids in the woods drinking beer at a bonfire. The cops took the minor home in the squad car. The kid has major problems with his old man. He goes berserk and breaks all the windows and his dad calls the cops. The kid goes berserk on the cop and gets shot for it.

I'm not a cop either but my personal unprofessional opinion is that the kid didn't have to die for being stupid. Hell, if that was case, over 99.9% of the world's population would be killed.

I guess the moral of the story is don't bring a bat to a gunfight.

 

The picture is of the recently deceased, shot dead 17 year old kid, while he could still take breath.

Ya, about that taser thing. I've seen too many videos of cops using tasers on different people and sometimes they don't do a damn thing at all, especially to big beefy drunk-off-their-ass guys.

I once saw a video of a drunk guy get tased 7 times before he finally went down.

*edit*
This picture here is of the 30 year old officer, Jeffrey Keast, the officer who shot the other kid dead. He looks like someone who would get panicked easily!

 

To Sir Chet and Gaear: I'm not bagging on all cops again or even this one really. I'm just saying the boy didn't need to get shot dead.

 

Because it's a public matter printed in the newspaper? Using the logic of not being there, does that apply to domestic/foreign trade talks between the president's cabinet and other countries? The joint chiefs of staff deciding on war? Should we withhold opinions on absolutely everything in the world and just trust that others are doing the right thing at every single moment? That seems quite ridiculous. If no one ever questioned these things, we should just have a bar code tattooed on the back of our necks and a programming chip implanted in our brains so that one or two people can make all the decisions in the world?

 

Really, what it comes down to for me, is that I feel the officer could have done more to take this little piece of !@#$ in without killing him. I don't really care either way if he comes out smelling like roses or if he gets sent to general population at Stillwater Prison here in Minnesota. We can't change what is already done. I question the thought process on how he arrived at the conclusion to shoot this kid.

He could've stayed in the car and driven far enough away to get out and try to talk this dumbass down without putting one in him and without being in much danger of getting hit in the head by a wild swing while inside the cop car. If the kid charged him from a distance away while swinging on him, then ya, shoot him in the face at point blank range and then drag his carcass down the freeway. But it would be almost impossible for the kid to hit the cop in the head with a swing because of the structure of the car. It would be significantly easier to jab at him with the blunted end which wouldn't do a whole lot of damage anyways. I'm sure the cop's nerves went into automatic and started acting out of impulse instead of rational thought. His first thought was to kill this kid and he did. I wonder if he regrets it?

I'm almost sure that nothing will come out of this and the cop will walk away with a medal for protecting us from a drunk rampaging 17 year old kid with a bat and I'm fine with that. I am however concerned that his first thought/reaction was to reach for the gun.

 

Necro, you have this wrong.

If you are in a car, you will not be struck in the side. It will be the arm and the head.

Tasers don't work reliably. And in a car, you will probably taze yourself. The same with chemicals. If you use them, don't count on them working. The Guardian Angels just don't use that crap.

Anything that will reliably stop someone will probably hurt them badly. Someday, maybe it will be better.

On the other issue: The penalty for stupidity is Death. No amount of fairy tale hand-wringing will change a law of nature. But I know you already knew that.

Unfortunately, the kid was probably only temporarily stupid. But he's not temporarily dead.

 

A 17 year old swinging a baseball bat will kill you just as dead as a 40 year old swinging a baseball bat. Baseball bats are extremely lethal when swung at ones head, so yes, the cop should have shot him if he felt his life was in danger. The moral of the story is: If you're stupid enough to attack people with a deadly weapon, you're stupid enough to die.

 

1. Someone attacked a law enforcement officer with a deadly weapon.
2. Law enforcement officer shot that someone.

This does not seem wrong, because...
3. No one should attack law enforcement officers. (Except when they are committing crimes themselves, like shooting people in a supermarket.)

Officer had, maybe, some other ways to stop that guy, but he was not obliged to risk his life (or health) to save him.
Being in a limited space of a car does not help thinking on those ways either.
Now, if officer would not shoot that guy, and he would kill the officer, and then maybe ten citizens, who were walking nearby, would that be better?
Yes, we may agree, that result of the officer's actions is not the best, but we can rarely get the best result.

 

Normally I would say yes, but it was at 3-3:30 in the morning. No one else was around. He could've just hit him with the car and parked on top of his legs.