Whatever you do, don't hold a pen

[Synergy]

SAN DIEGO - The San Diego County district attorney released a video Tuesday that shows a police officer fatally shooting a transient seconds after the officer left his patrol car as the man walked toward him.
The surveillance video shows San Diego police officer Neal Browder driving a short distance in an alley with his lights on and his door open before leaving the car.

Fridoon Rawshan Nehad, 42, was shot about four seconds later about 17 feet from the officer.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis defended her decision last month not to prosecute Browder at an hour-long news conference. She cited witness accounts that Nehad had a knife and released other surveillance video that doesn't show the shooting but that she said portrayed Nehad as a threat.
The object he was carrying turned out to be a blue metallic pen.
"The officer didn't have time to assess whether or not it was a pen or knife," Dumanis said at the hour-long news conference. "In the heat of the moment, when things are fluid, you can't take the chance that it's going to be something."
...


The family says he has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/video-shows-san-diego-policeman-fatally-shooting-man-seconds-after-officer-left-patrol-car-363326851.html


Video of it: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9d9_1450825134 (some NSFW stuff on that site)


That's right, ladies and gentlemen, holding a pen in your hand warrants getting shot to death.

[Guardia Rossa]

In Brazil, a guy in a motocycle got shot because he was holding an hydraulic jack.

Military Police gotta be Military Police, I guess.

[John Nada]

Fighting in the DRA military against US puppets(that later became the Taliban) known for torturing and executing POWs, including tying them to dead bodies and leaving them to die of exposure, captured, reasoned with and released.

Same war hero in San Diego with a pen, executed on site.

I don't get how possibly the most powerful police state with nearly unlimited surveillance of its citizens(let alone non-citizens), almost in perpetual war, possibly largest prison population in history, and thousand of extrajudicial lynching a year, could still be called a "free country".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, holding a pen in your hand warrants getting shot to death.

Well, to be fair it was the possibility that he was holding some sort of pig-sticker that got the man shot. Of course, the thinking doesn't go both ways: workers are not allowed to gun down policemen because they're holding something shiny and might be racist lunatics with a proven tendency to kill people, particularly if they happen to be black, trans etc.

Which just shows how ridiculous it is to portray policemen as anything but inveterate enemies of workers and the oppressed everywhere.

[PikSmeet]

I love how they say "heat of the moment" as if that is an excuse, but does it apply here? The officer followed the person so clearly had time to assess the situation and if he didn't then is a very poor policeman.
I'm sure the family of Bonnie Dumanis would not agree if she was shot holding a pen, walking towards a member of her community, would the defence "you can't take a chance" apply?