Road Rage, Then a Shot. For a Police Officer, It is Called Self-Defense

Police officers are poorly trained, candidates for police academy are poorly vetted, continuing education is ineffective if it exist, police department "culture" is toxic, maybe all of these. Why are police officers so afraid of everything and everyone? I'm a white guy in a lily white neighborhood in a lily white town and I don't want any type of encounter with my local police officers for fear one of them might flip out and do something crazy. I know it can be a hard and stressful job at times and I wouldn't want to do it but these guys signed up for a job to protect the citizens, all of them, not just themselves. This needs to be addressed by every community in the country.

After reading this article, I believe that while police officers may get special consideration when it comes to the use of force, the NYTimes continues on it's never ending bid of racial propaganda. "A white officer shot a black man" - that rhetoric is only published when the officer is white. If the officer and victim are black, no comment on race. If the officer is white and the victim is white, no comment on race. And the majority of police shootings are white on white, or black on black. So why do we only cite race when it's white on black? Because the NYTimes isn't interested in the truth - that police officers demand respect and silence and cooperation OR ELSE. And blacks don't have to comply, as it's racist to expect that they comply with the police? Is that only when the cop is white? Shame on the NYTimes for their propaganda articles and divisive writings. And shame on their insinuation (claim?) that police get a pass, while criminals - whatever their transgression - deserve to respond as they like, but only if black. Racism is wrong, but perpetuating it through biased eyes is criminal at best. NONE of these shootings even suggest that a civil rights or hate crime should be levied. NONE. Does that mean I believe they were all just shootings? No, but I also believe in the court of law and when the evidence isn't there to convict, then one cannot be convicted. Ask OJ and Cochran about that.

If police were unarmed they'd kill and wound fewer people. They'd also learn an infinite number of ways to relate to others without force or threats of violence.

What too many people here seem to ignore is the fact that Mr. Small decided to get out of his car and approach Mr. Isaacs aggressively. Had he simply driven off, he would be alive today.

Years ago I cut in front of a taxi. At the light, the driver slammed his car into mine. He then proceeded to get out of his car and try and open my door. When he couldn't he started smashing my windshield with his fist. I was in fear of my life. If I had had a gun would I been right to shoot him? Probably not. In this case, (pre cell phone) I waited, terrified, until the light changed and sped off. If this was a civilian who was accused of shooting the cop, he would've been found guilty and serving a life term. When will the police be held accountable like all other citizens? I suspect never.

As I have said before and still maintain, police officers are trained to react instantly to danger and observed illegality. It is unfortunate that there are sometimes gray areas where an observer would see something different than a person involved. For example, did Mr. Isaac really cut off Mr. Small? Was the blood alcohol level in Mr. Small's system tested postmortem? Why would Mr. Isaac have his drivers window down as Mr. Small approached if he expected trouble? I don't know about any reader of this post, but even in South Carolina, I would hesitate to approach an unknown driver in a vehicle if an altercation might develop. If his family history is as stated in the article, would Mr. Small not opt to get his family, his responsibilities, home safely? There are too many questions left unanswered by the article and perhaps the trial itself to conclude a guilty plea for the officer involved. It is a shame that the author of the article could not have written it from a neutral perspective. It might have been more effective.

Unfortunately, the reporter is wrong about the law in New York requiring that deadly force can only be used in self-defense when deadly force is imminent or being used. The Getz case changed the law by creating a standard that justifies the use of deadly force so long as you had a reasonable fear that deadly force was going to be used against you. That's what he argued when some black teenagers harassed him on a subway. Getz argued that being white, he was reasonably in fear for his life. That standard was then used a few years later at trial to acquit Larry Davis, a notorious drug dealer, for shooting six police officers coming to arrest him. Davis argued that being black he reasonably believed the police were coming to kill him. The police officer, in this case, according to press reports, claimed he had a reasonable fear of being killed - because of the character of the neighborhood where the incident took place, to justify using deadly force in his defense. This is a terrible standard which has allowed people who should have been found guilty to avoid proper punishment and it leaves all of us more vulnerable to being killed. While I don't specialize in criminal law, I am an attorney and have paid attention to these developments as they occurred.

"If two men in a bar got into a fight over a Giants game and one punched the other causing him to draw a pistol and shoot his adversary, the shooter would struggle with a self-defense claim." Not if the aggressor was 250 lb. and the other 120 lb. A more reasonable standard is encoded in many state statutes whereby if a person reasonably fears for his life or safety then deadly force may be used. Indeed, many courts have ruled against the so-called "parallel force" argument as well as the alleged duty to retreat. Mr. Small made a bad choice and paid the ultimate price. It's not OK to get in a fight in a bar much less escalate road rage into violence as the author suggests. It can get you killed.

Isaacs is a cop and the only way he knows to diffuse a threatening situation is to shoot?

All over the U.S. the unspoken line of logic for police is "better to be tried by 12, than carried by 6". No one is even questioning this.

Can this be appealed based on a theory of the jury not following their instructions from the judge?

This is not about the Defendant. It is about Police Empowerment.

So, let me get this straight, Mr. Smalls leaves his vehicle in a rage and approaches Mr. Isaacs’s vehicle and punches him. Why, pray tell, did he leave his vehicle in the first place. Who does that? Are we really having this discussion? What a thug - and, no, I am not referring to the cop. And then everyone is pointing out all the other “options” the cop had. Please. This is cut and dry. The described “caregiver” abandones his vehicle and family and walks to another stopped vehicle and punches the driver. He created this situation. He had choices, and he chose to be a thug.

No doubt the fact that America is saturated with guns makes cops fear for their lives when confronted by an angry civilian. Police who kill unarmed people often say they thought they saw a gun. Even though crime and murders are down from the bad old days of the '90s, there is still have an incredible amount of gun violence in America. Just another side effect of the NRA's guns everywhere agenda. The police are supposed to be the good guys with a gun. Unfortunately they often turn out to be bad guys with guns.

What if the Defendant drove his vehicle into the deceased, dragging him 2 blocks? Like in a recent incident.,, Would the jury verdict be the same?

Again we have comments about "dumb police" and "getting away with murder". Some commenters said the aggressive driver should have been ignored and just let him get away with it. Is this what we're supposed to do? Ignore these things and let people get away with it? But yet, after the fact when, say, a shooter guns down people in a church, these same commenters will say "why didn't someone look into this guy when others saw his mean behavior beforehand?" You know, maybe people were just ignoring him and let him get away with it just like the commenters wanted Mr. Small to be ignored. Oh wait! We have to whip out the color charts and hold them up to compare color shades of skin before we can know if we're supposed to be offended. I'm tired of people who expect the police to be psychic. They're supposed to know if a suspect's gun he's waving around is loaded or not, or if an aggressive person's pockets are empty, or not mind when people don't follow their commands. Somehow the police are supposed to give every single person the benefit of doubt and if they get shot by a thug, then, well, so what--and idiots get to cheer that an officer has been killed. Attorneys on both sides agree to who sits on the juries. But somehow these attorneys escape criticism. All these boo-hoo articles in the NYT about thugs' deaths, and not ONE article that follows any police trial from beginning to end to demonstrate why a "not guilty" verdict was reached.

Police officers are justified in the use of deadly force only if they believe their life is in danger. What we as a nation have been witnessing is one of two things: 1) These white officers are racists who hate black people and use their position of authority to carry forward their agendas. And 2) These white police officers are terrified to their core of black men, to the extent that any sort of movement a black man makes, perceivably even scratching his nose instills so much fear in him that he perceives his life to be in imminent danger. Additionally, I have always been baffled by the NYPD's insistence on placing white - especially rookie officers in mostly black neighborhoods. After all, so many of them do not live anywhere near NYC - likely because of their racist tendencies, that drive them to the Lilly- white enclaves of northern New Jersey (i.e. Copland). Look guys, whatever state you live in, if you hate, or are terrified of black people, show some guts, and choose another profession, or at least move somewhere else where no black people live and be a police officer there. I mean, there are so many choices, since black people are by blatant official policies, deliberately segregated in every single city and town in this country. Apartied still lives in America in 2017!

The assailants black race is mentioned in the first sentence. The cop's in the last paragraph. Ginia your bias is showing.

It will be with both fear and hope that I will observe civil rights lawyer Larry Krasner as he assumes his duties as the next district attorney for Philadelphia. My hope is that I am wrong but I believe that the low income areas of many of our large cities are so consumed with violent behaviors that the police must be unforgiving in the execution of their duties. The violence has been so consuming that the police simply will not survive if they are not quick to react to threats and yes mistakes are being made. My fear is that if we take off the threat of force the violent citizenry will consume their neighborhoods. I wish Mr Krasner the best of luck, I hope he finds an approach that is successful in quelling the violence. Personally, I believe that that the real answers are in in managing our economy and recreating the 'Gateway Jobs' that allowed young people to work their way into the middle class, without the need of going to college. I just hope that our government can continue to work on ways to create more of those opportunities for young Americans..

Personally, I'm tired of thuggish individuals bullying people. I certainly don't agree with the shooting, but you can't ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of American drivers would never have gotten into this situation with the officer in the first place! If i had been in the officer's shoes, I would have gotten punched or worse and Delrawn Shaw would have driven away and never been caught. I've lived on the East coast and this type of bullying goes on all the time and is never reported.

When Mr. Small left his car to walk around to confront Mr. Isaacs seated in the driver's seat of his car. . . and then actually 'blindsidingly' punching Mr. Isaacs in the face; Mr. Isaacs had every reason to expect that ANOTHER punch to his face/head would be forthcoming to cause him bodily harm. . . and accordingly, defended himself with the obvious mean available to him! In short- Mr. Small. . . with all of his own past life emotional issues aside. . . simply foolishly picked a fight with the wrong guy. Life itself is frought with many such instances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time- and in this specific instance. . . getting into a physical fight with the wrong guy!

And he was the one that provoked it by cutting the guy off. Good luck living with yourself. You have a stain on your soul officer and it’s there for good.

Time to disarm off duty police officers.

One thing that struck me in reading the various stories on police shootings (in this paper and elsewhere) is that the problem of using lethal force to respond to non-lethal threats cannot fairly be described as a problem between black men (such as myself) and "white police officers." Rather it is a more general problem between police officers (of any race) and black men, whereby almost any movement, protest or posture is considered sufficient to place an officer "in fear for their lives." It has been pointed out many times before, but the fact that someone live Clive Bundy can actually brandish weapons and make open threats towards law enforcement and live to tell the tale is almost unbelievable in light of the testimony of officers who claim to feel threatened even by unarmed, fleeing civilians. There is something inherently unreasonable about many of the videos of at least some of these shootings. Put plainly, it seems as if being an officer doing a dangerous job has become a justification unto itself for using lethal force in any given situation. The standard of what constitutes a reasonable fear needs to be fleshed out somehow because right now it seems like just about anything goes.

Seems to me the common ingredient here is a gun. Remove that ingredient and would we be reading stories about people who died in fits of irrational violence? Is there something about possessing a weapon that allows--no, encourages--these situations to become deadly??? Answer: of course. If we truly are a nation of neighbors--people who are in it together--then we can no longer allow ourselves to act sad or even surprised by gun deaths. Save your candles and poses for the cameras because this is what a majority (GOP voters + non-voters) of us ask for. You can't mourn the consequences of your decisions over and over again and still be taken seriously.

I believe that modern American society gives many police officers leeway in these types of incidents because police officers are the people we pay to confront violence (in all its forms) on a daily basis and, if you live in an upper class or upper middle class community, to keep violence out of sight and out of mind. It doesn’t seem to be about believing them or the accounts of an incident more or less so than the average citizens, but about a Faustian bargain between American society and its working class: “We will raise you and pay you to deal with the violence of our world and in return we will condemn you in op-ed pieces, disdain you over locally sourced dinners in Brooklyn and mock your lack of education and sensitivity over cups of single origin coffee with our co-workers. But when the violence catches up with you and you snap, break or use the training you’ve been given in a situation where others might have just walked away? We will silently look the other way and thank God that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in our neighborhood.”

Two men watching a Giants game at a bar...?!?! Seriously? Is that a relevant comparison in the NYT's way of thinking. The video showed the police officer legally stopped at a red light, no where near Mr. Isaac's car, at night in a dark location. It shows Mr. Isaacs leaving his vehicle and his family in the middle of said intersection, and full of rage, crossing multiple lanes and approaching the police officer's window withe some determination. It is clear that Mr. Isaacs was an aggressor and an assailant. The officer's reaction, was to move his car forward while using his side arm for self defense. It may not have been a perfect reaction, but that is not the standard. The standard is of a reasonable reaction. 12 people concluded that it was reasonable. The only lesson here is, don't go on getting out of your car full of rage to chase and confront other motorists on a dark intersection. I think it is a good lesson.

Untrained civilians must be perfect when encountering any police officer. They must know and obey the law, make no sudden movements, speak respectfully and never cause an officer to think about his own safety. Fully trained officers need never display any aspect of judgement, logic or restraint. Anytime any officer thinks he may fear for his life he is legally justified to shoot his victim dead. Like 12 year old Tamir Rice, or in NYC Mr. Akai Gurley was shot dead in a stairwell. But, not to worry, no officer will ever go to jail.

There is a misconception here, a drastic and, to this 79-yo man who, while physically very active, still finds terrifying in its implication: That all fights should be "equal". That if an aggressor -- and getting out of your car in anger to accost another is definitely aggression -- approaches you, clearly ready for battle, the only "manly" response is to fight him. Similarly in the described bar fight scene: If someone throws a punch and comes after another physically, only engaging in a fight is allowed; responding with a weapon is somehow illegal. That is ludicrous. If an aggressor persists in threatening another who is attempting to avoid the confrontation, the defender has every right -- indeed, often a perceived mortal need -- to use superior force -- a gun -- to end the threat.

Title gives the impression that Mr. Smalls was in the car while shot. In the middle of night after a dispute in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, he got out of his car and approached another motorist in an aggressive manner and through a punch. He got what was coming.

It's unfortunately going to take a very long time for juries and judges to realize that police officers are no more credible than the rest of us, and there is absolutely no rational basis for holding this belief.

America is unraveling. It was never the greatest country just the most violent. We should all be scared. Especially of dumb and armed cops. And they are everywhere.

i saw that video. this was murder. one can only hope karma comes into play.

2 men in a bar at watching Giants game is not a fare comparison. It's not remotely the same thing as a guy getting out of his car in the middle of a dark street and approaching you after nearly getting into an accident.

I wonder if fear of retribution from members of the NYPD played a roll in the not guilty verdict. The shooter was supported on a daily basis by officers in uniform. I don't think it is much of a stretch to imagine the jury feared they might face the same type of scrutiny, harassment, and possible retribution, that the young man who filmed the murder of Eric Garner on Staten Island was subjected to.

So if any of the rest of us are scared because someone bangs on our car window when stopped, and threatens us, it's OK to shoot them? I mean, who knows what they might do if they're not dropped on the spot? I certainly hope prosecutors and juries apply the same standards to civilians fearing for their lives and safety as they do to the people who have sworn to protect us.

If the police are so brave then why do they "fear for their lives" at every turn ?