Its not attempted murder.
Claiming attempted murder means there was an intent to cause death to the person that you "attempted" murder on.
This was just an officer stopping a fleeing suspect through use of physical force, based upon the best information available to him at the time of his actions.
To sit back and be a monday morning quarterback and nit pick at the actions of another person in a situation where you have all of this information
A. He wasn't the proper suspect.
B. The cop's actions put the guy in a coma.
C. He didn't have any weapons on him AT THE TIME.
Information that the police officer did not have at the time.
I fear that if the police acted according to the way some members of the public wanted us to react, we would be nothing more than meat shields, afraid to properly act for fear of lawsuit and retribution in the even that the information we have was wrong.
Then of course, when we fail to act aggressively and a suspect causes harm to the public, then we'll get blamed for that too.
BTW: If you shoved someone like that you would not go to jail for attempted murder if you had just cause to do so. Stop being so melodramatic.
A few things I'd like to note.
First, this is the information I base it on. This information was available to the officer at the time he made the
attack:
1. Suspect was
no longer running. He was walking, almost stumbling.
2. The Cop was running full speed still even though the suspect was no longer fleeing. He made no effort to slow his momentum. He made no effort to do anything else
but slam forcefully into the suspect.
3. The suspect was ending his resistance. Drawing a weapon and stopping would have been less risky to both people than lowering one's shoulder and slamming into him would be.
This wasn't a "shove". That's 100% disingenuous. That's like calling hurricane Katrina, "Rainstorm" Katrina. A shove doesn't involve the shoulder. A shove doesn't propel someone off of their feet. That's a tackle with extreme force on a
formerly fleeing suspect. The suspect was no longer running.
Next: I
did get arrested once for tackling someone. The guy threw a brick through my friend's window while he was having a party. I was outside and I chased and tackled the guy. I was
arrested for this and charged with aggravated battery, which in Illinois is a class D felony. I spent a couple of days in jail over it.
And the guy I tackled wasn't even harmed by it. The only reason I beat the charge is because some of the other party goers came out to attack the guy and at that point I defended the guy from getting is ass kicked. The guy who I tackled ended up not pressing charges, but I didn't find this out until a 1/2 hour before I was supposed to have the charges filed the following Monday morning. Since it happened on a Friday night, I spent all of Saturday and Sunday in the clink, for not doing anything wrong.
Had I put the guy in a coma, you can be damned sure I would've gotten attempted murder over it. And I would have been
convicted of it as well. Because the only reason I got off the other charge was because the guy was not in a coma.
I'm not being anything close to melodramatic.
Of course, I didn't hit my guy with that kind of force. I didn't hit my guy into a concrete wall. I caught him from behind
while he was still running and dragged him down. Of course, I was actually more interested in
stopping the guy than I was in
harming the guy. The cop can't say that one.
When I was a kid, I ran from cops quite a few times. I got caught a few of those times.
Nothing pisses a cop off more than running from him.
And you know what they did when they caught me? They typically beat the living **** out of me. If not beat the **** out of me, they'd, at the very least, do some things specifically to cause pain such as driving their knee into my neck while I'm lying face down with my arms spread out wide. Why? Because they were
pissed that I made them run.
And I know this because
as they inflict the pain they always, invariably, say, "Why you runnin', huh!" as they hit me or drove their knee harder into my neck.
This cop only applied that much force because he
wanted to harm the suspect. He wanted to show him who's "boss", like every damned cop that uses excessive force on the planet does. Sure, he wasn't trying to put the guy in a coma, but he wanted the guy to feel pain. That's a guaran-****in'-tee.
And if you are being honest, you'll admit that this goes through a
lot of cops minds at the end of a chase. They don't want to put someone in a coma, but they definitely want to teach the guy a lesson. That lesson is that you don't run from cops.
That was the intent of the force used by this cop. Not anything else. The violent way he jerked the guy's arm around after he hit him lets you know 100% that he was angry.
Also, I've dealt with a loved one being in a coma before over a skull fracture. I know what kind of force is necessary to cause that kind of damage. It's a LOT of force.
Here's a few things to consider as well related to you "Monday morning QB" comment:
1. I don't care if this was the right suspect or not. The force was too excessive for the level of threat that existed at the time that the force was applied.
2. Even if he
wasn't put into a coma, the force is too excessive.
3. If he had actually had a weapon and the will to use it, the cop would have been dead or damaged over his stupidity. He had ample time to draw that weapon during the chase and could have turned and fired when the cop was bearing down on him. The cop's
stupid and arrogant actions would have cost him his life had that guy actually been a threat.
So the things you assumed were the cause of my views are actually completely irrelevant to my views. I would feel the same way if none of those were true.
I feel that the cop should have stopped and drawn his weapon instead of tackling him. If, at that point, the guy had reached anywhere except for the sky, the cop would have been justified to fire that weapon, IMO. I wouldn't accuse the cop of
any wrongdoing if that's how things went down.
