hey come here hey take care of your pocket bro take your hands out of your pocket bro take your hands out of your pockets welcome back to the civil rights lawyer channel where worst case scenario you learn something about your constitutional rights we've all seen the recent shooting footage out of ohio but that may have been overshadowed by another recent case where body cam footage was just released from the lapd body cam footage reveals that just before officers shot an unarmed man holding an automotive part that one of the officers said to the others it's not a gun bro in a gun i censored the graphic parts but i left what you need to see for the legal analysis so take a look and then we'll talk about the law southwest division officers responded to a radio call of an assault with a deadly weapon suspect in the 4100 block of edgehill drive the suspect was reported to be armed with a black semi-automatic handgun by the way this is coming from youtube content that's being put out by the lapd like some other large agencies it's actually pretty well done and it's great for the public to be able to see these things but at the same time it's also coming through a certain lens so you have to pay attention to that these are the 911 calls that they presented in that video i don't know whether there were additional calls or whether these were the only calls received yeah hi i'm on a forward show drive and i got a guy with a dark seat guy with dreadlocks okay he has a clown shirt on edge hill and there is a male white black hispanic or asian he's black with dreadlocks he looks like he's a transient and i told him to leave and he pulled out a gun it was a black dub looked like a black semi-automatic gun in front of the trash cans i told him to leave and he asked me you leave i'll leave what i want you can leave and then all of a sudden i saw a pistol in his hand hi i just uh recalled about a guy who's walking around with a gun and i then saw police officers are looking for him and i don't think they see him but he just walks started walking up deadman just north of king and i just wanted to get that information d-e-g-n-a-n just north of kings and i i just thought in the other direction southwest 80w suspect they're now 4-1 edge hill drive such as the transient male black dreadlock screen long sleeve shirt and black pants threatened pr with a black semi-automatic handgun instant 3676-3393 standby for additional the reason the lapd wanted you to hear those 911 calls and the reason i wanted you to hear them is because as you'll read in any court opinion having to do with an officer-involved shooting or excessive force they will say we do not judge police officers with 2020 hindsight that's absolutely true what do they judge officers with well that's the information that is known to the officer at the time of the encounter generally that consists of whatever they were told by the dispatcher which may or may not be the same thing as was told to the dispatcher by the 911 caller which itself may or may not be true so a lot of times we're dealing with a whole lot of misinformation what is definitely clear here though is that there's a guy with a gun call and there is some allegation that he had brandished a gun or threatened somebody with it the officers didn't see any of that here we see what the officers actually did see once they arrived to the scene while driving to the call officers were several blocks away when they saw a person matching the description of the suspect walking on the sidewalk of martin luther king boulevard just east of bronson avenue that suspect was later identified as jermaine petit hey come here hey take care of your pocket bro take your hands out of your pocket bro get your hands out of your pockets in the lapd video they slow it down and they zoom in and show you what appears to be from their perspective a gun hey coffee when you use deadly force on somebody you want to be able to justify that force here if we look at where they slowed it down and they zoomed in on the gun yeah okay that could be a gun or it could be anything else here's really what they don't point out that is glaring to me is that that's not when the shots were fired he turned back around and he kept going straight ahead away from the officers and then the shots were fired at a time when he wasn't pointing either a gun or an automotive part at any police officer that i could tell and those are two different cases here and that could have a big effect on whether or not pulling that trigger was justified determining whether an officer's use of force violates the fourth amendment requires balancing the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's fourth amendment interest against the importance of the governmental interest alleged to justify that intrusion that inquiry generally involves an assessment of factors known as the graham factors the severity of the crime at issue whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others and whether he's actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight again graham versus conor in 1989 but in the context involved here a shooting case the supreme court has crafted a more definitive rule an officer may use deadly force to apprehend a fleeing suspect only if 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 tennessee versus garner a suspect may pose such a threat if there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm or if the suspect threatens the officer or others with a weapon capable of inflicting such harm so the key question is whether the officer had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that this suspect posed a threat of serious physical harm either to himself or to others the officer who fired here fired from behind at a suspect who was running away from the officer thus it would be difficult to claim that he did so out of fear for his own safety at the very moment that the shots were fired did the officer therefore have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that the suspect posed an immediate threat of serious physical harm to others the footage shows that no other individuals appear to be in immediate danger at the time the shots were fired one police cruiser attempts to drive up and block the suspect's path theoretically the officer or officers inside could be in harm's way though they also clearly were intentionally placing themselves in his path perhaps the best argument for justification here is what is known as the fleeing felon rule which arose out of tennessee versus garner an officer can argue that permitting the suspect to escape posed a threat to the general public a fleeing suspect's escape can pose a threat to the public when police have probable cause to believe that the suspect is committed a violent crime deadly force to prevent such an escape can be reasonable if the suspect is demonstrated that he's willing to injure an officer who got in the way of his escape or that he was willing to persist in extremely reckless behavior that threatened the lives of all of those around you can look at the 9th circuit case in oren versus city of tacoma from just a few years ago for a recent example usually this would involve a vehicle pursuit or some type of running gun battle situation where the suspect has already tried to seriously injure somebody including police officers although it was reported that the suspect pointed a gun at someone the officers didn't know that to be true for sure as of yet they had not even positively identified the person by that point they hadn't observed him threaten anyone with a gun they merely observed that he was holding something that could be a gun and then he refused to stop and talk with them there's no probable cause here for the officers to believe that this suspect had committed any serious crime certainly not the reckless vehicle pursuit where he's crashing into people trying to run people over or running gun battle anything like that now this suspect wasn't given any warning of the imminent use of deadly force by the officers and that has been required in prior ninth circuit cases to the contrary here the officers themselves were unsure of whether this man even had a gun as we heard on the body cam footage one of the officers said that's not a gun bro and it wasn't at the end of the day there is sufficient evidence here to deny qualified immunity and take the officer before a civil jury on an excessive force claim the jury can decide whether the officer's claims whatever they end up being whether they're objectively reasonable as always thanks for watching you'll find more information the link below to my blog at the civil thecivilrightslawyer.com if you have a video you want me to see please use the 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