Not obeying any police officer's order is both stupid for the suspect and raises the level of the situation for the officer. Disregarding an officer's orders automatically escalates a situation because of the disrespect of his orders and by placing the officers personal safety at risk. Ignoring the authority of the police and them suffering the resulting consequences because they walked away or reached for "anything" out of view of the officer just invites action from the police.

Poor behavior begins while growing up. It's the Parents/Community's real fault if they fail to teach respect for authority. If you don't agree with a law/policy then speak at a city council meeting or use your vote to elect people that support your views. Crying because a suspect gets hurt because he failed to obey an officer is not logical.

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I was taught to respect authority. My uncle lived a block away from us, and was a cop/detective for Milwaukee.
The fact that so many today are not taught that is why there is so much crime.
The innocent white man that was pulled out of his truck, beaten and kicked in the head, what NBA team is going to “protest” how he was treated? He was a TRUE innocent person! He wasn’t breaking any law, not going for a weapon. What about HIS rights?
Wrong color skin I guess. True racism. I guess his life doesn’t matter.

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What happened in Kenosha was wrong. I don't agree with shooting someone numerous times in the back. That being said. I have several perspective points to make.

When you listen to the videos, you can hear hysterical screaming. We're all football fans here. Why do we scream at the top of their lungs? Well, because it knocks the professional athletes off their game as it distracts them and makes it difficult to communicate.

You see officers attempting (unsuccessfully) to apprehend Blake behind a vehicle. The fact that Blake refused to be apprehended adds hostility to the situation. I watched that part and asked myself, how is it two or three officers couldn't subdue him? Then I asked, I wonder if their go-to training tactic teaches them to put a knee in the back to subdue, but with what happened to George Floyd they avoided that tactic in fear of a knee on the neck due to him struggling? (the thought there is they attempt to put a knee into his back, but since he's struggling it knocks the officers knee toward his neck)

You see officers instructing Blake to stop as he walks around the front of the vehicle and opens the drivers door.

Let's stop for a moment right here. We have a situation that required officers. We have hysterical screaming. We have an individual refusing apprehension. And now this person is attempting to get into a vehicle. How can this hostile and tense situation be deescalated?

What if officers let Blake get into his vehicle?
Maybe he drives the children home to a care taker and turns himself in?
Maybe he slams on the gas and runs over the child near the sidewalk?
Maybe he has a gun in the vehicle and is feeling all is lost so takes his life, or more horrifically, takes the lives of his kids and then himself?

If Blake would have harmed himself, or anyone else after getting into the vehicle or grabbing something from the vehicle, then police would be eviscerated for not doing enough to deescalate the situation. Blake put himself and the officers in a no-win situation -- I feel.

I come back to how does this get deescalated? While I opened with it was wrong and don't agree with shooting someone in the back numerous times, I don't have a satisfactory answer. I feel Blake put the officers in a horrible situation in an already hostile environment. No, I am not saying he deserved to be shot. I'm saying Blake didn't do himself, nor his kids, nor the bystanders any favors by his actions.

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A knife was in his car... did he ever touch the knife or any other weapon? If no, then this should of been handled in a different way, period.

If he didn't have a weapon, in theory, this should have been stopped before he even got to the car, but I can give them a pass on failing to physically engage with the numbers advantage, as I think they were shocked/surprised he didn't stop and pay attention when they pulled their weapons. Though if he didn't have a weapon, they still should have attempted that with the clear numbers advantage.

I know the article says the police say he admitted to be in possession of a knife, but in legal terms, that potential could simply mean it was in the car, as technical everything in your car and house is in your possession as Z. Smith found out when he was allegedly charged with possession of what he claimed was one of his passenger weed that was in his car when he got pulled over for speeding.


That being said, a lot of people like to cite statistics, suggesting blacks get hurt/kills by police officers at a higher percentage than whites (and it's true), but if someone were to do a full and complete analysis looking for all trends, I'm willing to bet the biggest trend they'd find is that those whom either resist arrest or don't comply with officers orders are clearly the highest injured/killed.

Lots of people are saying it's race, but I actually think it's culture. Whites/Asians cultures are much more prone to promoting submitting to authority figures (unless it's taxes), where other race cultures don't promote submitting to authority figures.

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They said the cops tried to taze him, but it didn’t stop him.
As I already said, what else should the cops do?
The man didn’t obey the cops, and what happened to him was his own fault. It isn’t “racial injustice”. Had a white man done the same thing, chances are it would have ended the same way.
I listened to the radio this morning, and they are making it sound like the police just grabbed a random black man off the street and shot him for no reason.
Almost all the black men that get hurt or killed by the police end up that way because they didn’t obey the police.
The only way anything will change is if the black community gets its collective ass together and starts teaching its young black men to not fight the police. If they feel they were treated wrongly, do what the cops say and take it up legally later on.
But I don’t see that happening. It’s too easy to play the race card and victim card.

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When an officer says "STOP or FREEZE" you don't continue on as though you never heard it. Doing so just supplies an officer with a reason to escalate to a higher level. The suspects "reasoning" for not complying does not figure into an officers immediate concerns. He has an uncooperative person that has disobeyed his orders and may be acting to put his life in danger. Walking around a car and then reaching from a concealed position back into that car would cause any officer take action. As for being tolerant, the officers allowed the suspect the freedom to walk from one side of the car to another before the suspect began to reenter the car, where a KNIFE was later discovered. He is lucky to be alive following his stupidity.

I don't like aggressive cops myself, but were they supposed to wait until one of them was injured to take action. Some dumb bastards just deserve what they get.

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Maybe he should have stopped when told to.

Maybe the officer shouldn't have shot him.

Maybe both are equally true.

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Nope. I don’t agree.
He should have stopped when told to. Anything that happened to him after that was his own fault.

Please tell me.....what other action was the cop supposed to take after the man ignored the cops orders?
The tazer didn’t work. Was he just supposed to let him get into the car? Where the guy might have hurt or killed other people?
Both are NOT equally true.

Had he obeyed the orders of the police, he wouldn’t have been hurt.
His OWN actions escalated the situation.
Again, obey the police, you don’t end up hurt or dead. That shouldn’t be hard to grasp.

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