i looked at this video footage from the shooting that was in columbus ohio i looked at the body cam footage i looked at the surveillance footage from across the street and i think it's everything you need to know about this case in case you were wondering what i thought about it you can see on this video so let me show you these two different angles and then i'll tell you what i think get down uh [Applause] god you know there was a us supreme court case just back in 2018 where they took up a case from california out of the crazy ninth circus where the issue was is you had a police shooting of this woman who was apparently mentally ill and she was holding a knife and she was in close proximity to a third party and she was shot by the officers i believe she survived and there was a 1983 lawsuit and basically the supreme court said it was a good shoot in that case and this was over qualified immunity but they said because she had a knife in her hand she refused the orders to drop the knife given the proximity to a third party who could be stabbed to death as far as the shooter knows that is an immediate threat of somebody's physical safety and that would justify if it were if those are the facts that would justify deadly force so that's us supreme court really support for the police officer that that pulled the trigger in this case you look at the moment of where force is employed so the the time that the the shots were fired it doesn't really matter what happened before with the 9-1-1 call it doesn't matter who was the initial aggressor who was at fault doesn't matter what you know the the the police officers implicit bias is it really none of that matters nothing else matters because when you focus on the mo the moment that force was employed you can see that there's an immediate threat to somebody's serious safety or most likely somebody's life given the fact that this was like a butcher knife so the law is very clear that an officer may use deadly force when that officer has probable cause to believe that a suspect poses a serious threat of physical harm either to the police officer or to others that's supreme court tennessee versus garner which by the way also allows whether you may not believe this actually allows police officers to shoot a fleeing felon in the back now not a good idea to test that out but that's tennessee versus garner now probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat to somebody's life here you have a knife and the woman the girl was within striking distance so it's really not even a close case and again you can look at casella versus hughes 2018 u.s supreme court and that was a california case originally and where i practice in the fourth circuit there's there are lots of shooting cases a lot of shooting case law involving knives and where you get into the gray areas is where the person who was shot with a knife in their hand maybe they don't drop the knife when they're ordered to drop the knife they get shot you know the mere possession of the weapon in the hand isn't necessarily enough especially in the fourth circuit um they've held that the mere possession of a deadly weapon by an individual did not justify the use of deadly force so if a person has a knife and they're not in proximity to somebody to use it immediately they can't just be shot because they refuse the order to drop the knife you're going to have to add more facts such as the exact facts that you had in this case and i don't think there's any court in the land that wouldn't find what you see on this video reasonable and the fact that you have people like lebron james that come out and basically threaten this police officer and what does that do ironically you know this is the same analysis really that we all as free supposedly citizens of america get to ourselves rely on this is the natural right of self-defense you know you can use deadly force to defend yourself for others you don't have to be a police officer if there's an immediate threat and it's reasonable to you know it can't just be a paranoid threat it has to be an objectively reasonable threat you're allowed to defend yourself with firearms or with a knife or whatever deadly weapon you can get your hands on that's not just police officers so if you're going to water that down and restrict that in the name of politics or in the name of of race pimping you know to fit some sort of social justice agenda who is that going to harm that's going to harm people who may need to assert their own right of self-defense at some point in the future you're also when you attempt to take away the due process rights of a police officer that's involved in a shooting such as this who is that going to hurt that's going to hurt people who are going to you know face judicial or criminal justice scrutiny in the future you don't want to deprive due process the presumption of innocence and all that from police officers if that's going to result in you or your your family or your friends not being able to assert those own rights in the future because you set a precedence so it really doesn't matter who called 9-1-1 it could have been either of those girls it doesn't matter i mean if you place a police officer or just your everyday armed concealed carry person in a situation where there's one person with a butcher knife going after another person if they save that person's life by shooting the bad guy or the bad girl that is going to be a good shoot police officer or not and the scary thing is is well take away the body cam take away the video from across the street that opens the door for people like lebron james who really don't care whether or not it was a justified shoot under case law or not they don't care it's about their politics it's about their agenda and that would open the door for people like that to lie to misrepresent the facts i mean look at how they're able to create this outrage when there's a video of it showing that it's justified what would they do without the video so it's scary times that we're in i think the important takeaways are one that doesn't you know the other facts don't matter it's just a knife the manner in which it's in the process of being used and it's the proximity to a potential victim of that knife and uh that's pretty much all it comes down to if you take away some of that it could be different okay if you have somebody who's standing there in the street after the officer arrives and she's holding the knife but she's not chasing anybody she's not in the process of trying to stab anybody with it she's just standing there they say drop the knife drop the knife and there's nobody in close proximity and they shoot that is a much different case that's a much different case and especially if it's this you know if it's a 16 year old girl they don't have any information that she is a you know dangerous uh felon who's been in prison before and actually has a conviction for for killing somebody with a knife before and you'd have to add different facts i mean this literally you could take anybody with that knife and it's going to be a good shoot at that at that moment and that is it's just the immediacy of of of a threat there or you could take the knife and replace it with like a a sub sandwich or something and now you have a mistake situation so you could have all sorts of different gray areas but this absolutely is not a gray area i mean it's it's it's completely completely clear and i can tell you that the case law is i mean it's just voluminous to support the shooting that took place in this situation and that's that's good for all of us not just police officers because that is our natural right of self-defense you don't want to take that away from anybody not police officers not individual citizens i mean that is the right of self-defense so that's those are my thoughts i mean there's not a whole lot to say about it if you you want to read up more about it again the case is casella versus hughes 2018 u.s supreme court case another basic case of shooting cases is tennessee versus garner again another supreme court case so it's finally friday and it's about that time of the day it's been a long week and i wish you guys a happy weekend [Music] you