hi sorry i haven't been able to get to making any uh my scheduled live videos i've just been so busy but take a look at this video from oklahoma this police officer was charged with manslaughter after shooting this guy who had a knife this was in oklahoma oklahoma city oklahoma so he got charged with first degree manslaughter and shooting this guy who came at him with a knife this guy and some other officers were in a parking lot this was on december 11th of 2020 when this guy was threatening them with a knife they were asking put down the knife and they tried to use a taser on them they tried to do some other things including including pepper spray but he ends up for some bizarre reason charging at the officers he ends up getting shot and killed now one of the things that you'll notice is that the shots begin when he's coming at the police officer who's who's firing but then he sort of jukes to the left and starts to run away and the shots continue so you have some shots where you know oh my god he's coming right at us and then you have other shots that are in the back as he's trying to run away and that invokes the controversial quote fleeing felon rule from tennessee versus garner supreme court and before we get to the law take a look at the video and this is captured from several different angles and then we'll discuss what i think first thing you'll notice is that he puts his mask on i mean you you've got to put the mask on when dealing with the knife-wielding attacker in the parking lot of course there's no audio during this portion for some reason but it kicks on here in just a second just watching the video i mean it looks like maybe it's a homeless guy not sure what the call for you gotta you know what the taser can come here so he was called there because this guy was quote bothering customers outside the store when police arrived the guy ran the officer he had a knife and the officer was forced forced to discharge his weapon so he called for another officer who had a taser i assume that he saw the knife i don't know if he saw it at that point or not obviously the guy didn't come at him with a knife or anything at that point so he wants to bring in another officer who has a taser and this is you know this is some of what's going on the country right now where some of these like blue city mayors are trying to create policies where even in a traditional deadly force situation such as a guy with a knife coming at you or attacking you or even someone else there's and now they're trying to create these policies where you know you have to have somebody there present with a taser to be able to use less than deadly force which is what they call tasers prior to using a firearm [Music] so yeah they see the knife yelling put the knife down several times put the knife down i can't hear what the guy's saying and there's somebody just going in the beauty world nobody got time for that all right this must be officer taser pulling up drop the knife dude all right you're about to see the shooting right now so first he takes a couple steps at the officer taser and then here he comes at this guy after he gets tased you see it does nothing really and then watch he runs at the officer with a body cam and here he goes running at him gets pretty close to him sound like you had two or three shots and you have two or three more shots as he's running away you all right you hit i don't know are you hit are you hit see they i think they may have shot each other right there was one of the first things i noticed is that he's not only like muscle sweeping another police officer you know he's really looks like he could be shooting in this direction i'm not hit all right you can 1064. he's in cup muscle or something all right now they're going to show it from a different body cam this is from officer taser i believe drop that knife [Music] don't come near me you're getting tased not good drop the knife drop the knife drop the knife all right i guess muscle got taste a second time all right so the shooter is limping there 124 hefner started shots fired subject down you all right you hit i don't know are you hit that's so that's why he thought no you stay right there [Music] all right there's another view this must have been from the the officer who fired the second taser shot i didn't i didn't realize the first goal put the knife down who can go we can't go no we can't put the knife down we don't know [Music] all right put the knife down why are you making such a big deal about this okay so here's the third officer's body cam you see officer taser pull-up escalates very quickly here at this point [Music] then he charges the shooter i wonder why he could be living put the knife down all right here's the dash cam view maybe [Music] we can't go looks like a reputable neighborhood right here extra cash not just cash extra cash extra cash gold that's good cash to have especially if you have extra put the knife down [Music] not good all right here it is from the dash cam angle you have the second oh right so he was spraying too all right i see now i didn't realize that at first all right we had two shooters so shooter number one was the first body game officers limping now and so officer taser fired the fleeing felon rounds all right so i'd much rather be the uh officer with the imaginary bullet to his leg right now than the one who shot the guy in the back well i guess that is obvious because he got charged with manslaughter oklahoma city oklahoma so there it is that's the video i'm gonna replay some of this video trying to get a better look at it hey and it looks like the second officer must have missed one or more of his three rounds that he fired because you can actually see them striking the asphalt off to the right unless that's after it went through them now the first shooter one thing i noticed from just moving some of this around the first shooter i mean he's got a it looked like it was a glock probably a glock 17 glock 19 probably has you know he's probably got another what so glock 17's got like 17 plus one rounds in it so i mean he had plenty more ammo in his magazine and he stopped firing you can see he pulls back and the officer taser steps up and starts firing so that doesn't look good for officer taser right there because the first shooter he stops shooting and you know you're trained to keep firing until the until the threat is eliminated until there's no threat and so he stops firing all right take a look at that screenshot right there look this is after officer one has fired his three rounds and now he's lowering his weapon to be pointed in safe direction presumably then he no longer sees that there's a justifiable use of deathly force or he no longer feels that he's in danger or anyone else is in danger now juxtaposed that with this screenshot this is where officer taser comes up and fires another three rounds and clearly the guy is running away at this point and look you can actually see in this screenshot a little splash of lead or dirt or whatever it is on the asphalt just ahead into the right of the guy who's running away i'm not sure if that went through his body and came out the other side or whether that was a missed crown one of the most controversial topics in all of excessive force law all of the use of force law has to be the so-called fleeing felon rule which comes out of a u.s supreme court case tennessee versus garner from back in 1985 and i can recall that when i worked at the department of justice i can remember doing memorandums to the attorney general remember memorandum whatever whatever the appropriate word is regarding tennessee versus garner and the so-called fleeing felon rule they include it in everything internal wise at the doj because it always could come up and i'd say it comes up here however there's always some sort of asterisks asterisks it's one of those days where it says like you know you don't want to depend on that because it's yeah you know it's it's it's it's somewhat iffy so here's the deal i've already seen some police officers claiming or some you know i don't know what you want to call them armchair police officers claiming that well police are it's not always a self-defense analysis you know police officers have a special special right to shoot so-called fleeing suspects in the back that regular you know concealed weapon carriers wouldn't have under the same circumstances and that's not actually true that's not actually true what is the fleeing felon rule and when does tennessee versus garner reply when does it not apply does it only apply to police officers well tennessee versus gar from some of the materials i've written before tennessee versus garner the supreme court held that an officer can use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon only where there is probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of death or serious physical harm to the officer or to others okay what is the the usual rule all right here it is all right the usual rule usually is it's always a reasonableness analysis you know the moment that force is employed the moment that the trigger is is pulled an officer may use deadly force when the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm either to the officer or to others that's from tennessee versus garner we have explained and i'm quoting the supreme court here we have explained that an officer does not possess a quote unfettered authority to shoot based on quote mere possession of a firearm by a suspect instead an officer must make a quote reasonable assessment that he or another has been threatened with the weapon in order to justify the use of deadly force so that's the general law with deadly force so tennessee versus garner it says that you can prevent the escape of a fleeing felon if you have probable cause to believe that that suspect poses a threat of death or serious physical harm to the officer or to others so it's still a self-defense analysis even though he's not running at you he's running away technically technically it may be possible to do that if there's a probable cause i believe there's a serious threat of physical harm or death to others now the court held that apprehending somebody by the use of deadly force is a caesar seizure under the fourth amendment and it still has to be reasonable following the tennessee versus garner case some courts began to hold like people confused today that deadly force cases were some discreet category of use of force that were governed by special rules that were articulated in the tennessee versus garner case or the police officers had some special right to shoot fleeing felons in the back that it didn't have to go under the same reasonable reasonableness analysis now the supreme court rejected that analysis in the case of scott versus harris that was from 2007 and held that all applications of force by police officers must still be analyzed under the general reason reasonableness standards of graham versus conor and i've gone over those many times that's where you look at the crime that the the suspect was alleged to or suspected of having committed whether he was actively resisting or fleeing arrest and um you know whether there was you know somebody was in immediate danger so you still go through those those gram factors the quote so the question of whether a given use of force is reasonable is as always fact specific so there's never going to be a bright line answer to any shooting case it's always going to depend on the facts of the specific case the fifth circuit has ruled that the court's decision in scott did not declare open season on suspects fleeing in motor vehicles this is one of those situations where generally somebody has a knife in their hand they're within striking distance of you it's almost always going to be a good shoot police officer or citizen or not now somebody running away with you even if armed that's where it becomes a gray area you know then you really need to look at well who was this guy what did they know about this guy was this was this a suspected serial killer call or was this just a you know homeless guys bothering people outside the local pawn shop or public intox which may be you know very very very minor on the scale of crimes and so then you know you if you have if the police officer has some of those facts it's going to make it more likely to be a reasonable shoot if he doesn't it's going to be less likely to be a reasonable shoot from my understanding of this case they're not going to have any of those facts this guy was was you know thought to be some sort of super dangerous guy he just he just maybe was acting a little crazy and he had a knife and he refused to drop it so i don't know i i think that that is going to i think that's a questionable shoot on the second one uh i'm not saying it was a bad shoot i need to know more about it i think there could be more facts to be known he definitely lunged at the the first shooter with the knife and so i think those i think those shots are going to be they're going to be good um you slow it down you might look a little less questionable but then officer taser comes you know flying up after i mean and here's another thing is the first officer he looks to make the decision that it's no longer no longer reasonable to keep shooting this guy he lowers his weapon and then then and only then does officer taser run up and fire three shots and it looks like even missing one i mean just pretty reckless the guy was pretty far away from him at that point uh so he ended up getting charged with manslaughter so like any defendant he'll he'll be able to assert his own constitutional rights in that case so i'll i'll be anxious to see what happens there and if there's if there's more information available i'll definitely take a look at it and uh unfortunately there's no brightline answer to any of this stuff you know if it's if it's you know is it objectively reasonable and i don't know i think my opinion is those first three were those second three i would not have pulled the trigger there you know i would never pull the trigger on somebody who's unarmed and i don't think i'd ever pull the trigger on somebody who's running away even if they had a knife in their hand i mean if you you want the fleeing felon rule then you know what made him a felon just quickly lunging at the first officer i think i'd want a little bit more of a legitimate felon status if i'm gonna shoot a dude in the back anyways thanks for watching that those are my thoughts so far um not definitely not an easy one but not that difficult either [Music] you