Teen fatally shot by officer sitting behind him in car

Alligatorob

Alligatorob

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Location
Northern Utah, transplanted from Florida/Louisiana
Yet another one of these awful events. This time it is harder for me to judge the policeman. Body cam shots from several policemen are shown.

Inquiry as teen fatally shot by officer sitting behind him in car
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65197857

Dalaneo Martin, 17, was asleep in a parked, stolen SUV when officers opened the door on 18 March, say police.

Bodycam footage shows police stealthily entering the vehicle to make an arrest. The suspect, who was black, speeds away with an officer in the back seat.

After telling him to stop, the officer opens fire on the teenager from behind.

"The loss of a life is always tragic but is especially heartbreaking when it involves a child," the department of justice said in a news release on Wednesday, announcing the civil rights investigation.

It called the bodycam video "extremely upsetting" and extended condolences to family and friends of the teenager.

He was shot by an unidentified officer with US Park Police - the law enforcement arm of the National Park Service - during an investigation with Washington DC Metro Police.

Footage released on Tuesday shows police officers conferring on how to arrest the suspect as he apparently dozes in a car with a running engine. It was just before 09:00 on a Saturday.
 

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"The loss of a life is always tragic but is especially heartbreaking when it involves a child," the department of justice said in a news release on Wednesday, announcing the civil rights investigation.

In many states. You can be prosecuted as an adult at 15 and up. And by 17, I'm sure he knew more judges, cops and lawyers then I ever will
 

Alligatorob said:
Yet another one of these awful events. This time it is harder for me to judge the policeman. Body cam shots from several policemen are shown.
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It's harder for me, too... for the simple reason that the kid drove away with the officer in the car ... and I'm thinking that if he saw no way out of having been caught, his choice may have been to kill the officer and himself as often happens... by purposely crashing. And the officer warned him that he needed to stop the vehicle or he'd shoot. Just my personal opinion, but this one is different from others because it was a hostage situation.

That doesn't mean it's not sad... it's horribly sad and no family should ever have to go through losing a child like this. But I can't really see anyone sitting in that car as a hostage and thinking "oh well, I'll just sit here and enjoy the ride." That's not realistic.
 
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Was the 17 year old intoxicated on drugs? Behind the wheel of the vehicle. The cop is in the back, no seat belt. That vehicle crashes or gets rolled, it could cause serious injury.

I can't say this was the right move. The 17 YO is fatally injured.

The idea of first blocking the vehicle is a good one. It looks like they were looking for the element of surprise. It didn't work to say the least.
 
First, I am almost always on the side of the police but ...

Why on earth get into the back seat of a stolen car with a teen driver and expect it to end well? And they knew that, they talked about him panicking before they got in.

From another article:

Along with the moment of Martin’s death, the video shows the officers contemplating how to arrest the teen, noting that he was likely to freak out and drive away if they weren’t careful.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/05/bodyc...black-teen-dalaneo-martin-dead-in-stolen-car/

And that is exactly what happened.

The youth should not have stolen the car and the cops should not have gotten into the car, IMO. And why is the park police doing this? Shouldn't it have been a different PD? Maybe something is left out of the story but it doesn't make sense to me.

DC is going to pay a big settlement in this one, I think.
 
It was justified. The cop tried to give the kid an out by asking to be let out but the kid didn't take it. The kid might very well have been armed and the cop was fearing for his life.

It turns out, the teen was a parent already. It goes without saying: an unfit parent. His parents were probably unfit. These criminals are the products of generation after generation of unfit parents. And with all the new abortion bans, there are going to be even more unfit parents and children criminals.

I wish these stories would focus on the home life of the teenage criminals including mass shooters. 9 times out of 10, you can trace the problems back to the parents, or that's how it seems, anyway. I haven't seen studies that focus exclusively on the environment in which the criminals were raised.
 
SeniorBen said:
It was justified. The cop tried to give the kid an out by asking to be let out but the kid didn't take it. The kid might very well have been armed and the cop was fearing for his life.

It turns out, the teen was a parent already. It goes without saying: an unfit parent. His parents were probably unfit. These criminals are the products of generation after generation of unfit parents. And with all the new abortion bans, there are going to be even more unfit parents and children criminals.

I wish these stories would focus on the home life of the teenage criminals including mass shooters. 9 times out of 10, you can trace the problems back to the parents, or that's how it seems, anyway. I haven't seen studies that focus exclusively on the environment in which the criminals were raised.
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If the kid was white would the cop still have shot him?
 
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mrstime said:
If the kid was white would the cop still would have shot him?
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Who knows? The cop might not have feared for his life if the kid was white, even though the risk would have been the same, and not have fatally shot him or maybe not shot him at all. He might have tried to talk some sense into him.

On second thought, that's what he did. He tried to get the kid to let him out. It's the kid's fault he suffered the fate he did. Nobody else's.
 
SeniorBen said:
Who knows? The cop might not have feared for his life if the kid was white, even though the risk would have been the same, and not have fatally shot him or maybe not shot him at all. He might have tried to talk some sense into him.

On second thought, that's what he did. He tried to get the kid to let him out. It's the kid's fault he suffered the fate he did. Nobody else's.
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I agree here !
 
SeniorBen said:
Who knows? The cop might not have feared for his life if the kid was white, even though the risk would have been the same, and not have fatally shot him or maybe not shot him at all. He might have tried to talk some sense into him.

On second thought, that's what he did. He tried to get the kid to let him out. It's the kid's fault he suffered the fate he did. Nobody else's.
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I agree, @SeniorBen . Stolen car, police officer hostage, tried to get the driver to stop and let him out, warned he was going to shoot... why does the COLOR the driver make a difference? You don't sit there and let someone kill you in an accident that would turn out to be murder/suicide! Only difference as I see it, if it would have been a white kid or an Asian kid, or a martian kid is that we probably wouldn't hear about it because this is what the media does to divide. (By the way, he wasn't a kid anyhow... he was old enough to know how to make a baby.) As a side note, I see his family immediately set up a gofundme. :mad:
 
"Authorities say a gun was found inside the SUV, although it is not clear if the weapon was owned by Martin. It has also not officially been revealed whether the vehicle was in fact stolen or who it belonged to."
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/family-...-involved-in-shooting-that-killed-17-year-old

I wonder why police don't render the car undrivable instead of doing all sorts of dangerous things like cutting through the plastic used for a rear window and sneaking in. All it would take is a valve stem remover or a knife through one of the tires to make the vehicle undrivable. Then they could have just waited him out.
 
Over and above the decision to execute the kid is the issue of causing it to run into a house. Many more people could have been killed. Police have to take care not to cause even more harm by going all out to stop the bad guy. On the other hand he had to act quickly after plan hatched with others went bad. Whoever was in charge should carry the most responsibility.
 
SeniorBen said:
"Authorities say a gun was found inside the SUV, although it is not clear if the weapon was owned by Martin. It has also not officially been revealed whether the vehicle was in fact stolen or who it belonged to."
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/family-...-involved-in-shooting-that-killed-17-year-old

I wonder why police don't render the car undrivable instead of doing all sorts of dangerous things like cutting through the plastic used for a rear window and sneaking in. All it would take is a valve stem remover or a knife through one of the tires to make the vehicle undrivable. Then they could have just waited him out.
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Not really, criminals always drive with flat tires. Not as fast, but still drive away, even on the rims.
 
Sippican said:
Not really, criminals always drive with flat tires. Not as fast, but still drive away, even on the rims.
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With him driving on the rim, the police could have just followed him until they could perform one of those maneuvers where they push the rear end of the suspect's car and make him spin out... whatever that's called.

I looked it up. It's called the PIT maneuver (precision immobilization technique) or TVI (tactical vehicle intervention).
 

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