Delta4Embassy
Gold Member
As I'd hoped, someone had audio of the shooting (ok allegedly.) And as I expected, the officer shot in rapid-fire fashion as indicated on the tape. I'd figured that when seeing the autopsy results and noting the hit pattern on Mr. Brown's arm. The pause in the shooting audio being hyped up isn't surprising either. It's indicative of the officer either losing track of how many rounds he'd fired and reloading to be safe then resuming fire, or more likely, noticing his target isn't falling down correcting, taking a deep breath and continuing to fire.
While emptying your clip, reloading, and emptying another might seem excessive to laypeople, it's actually what officers are taught to do. My thinking is once he began to fire on Mr. Brown he reverted to his training model and did exactly as he'd been trained to do. Whether he reloaded or not is moot. Whether he paused and corrected and resumed fire is moot. He behaved as he'd been trained and the justification to use lethal force doesn't change or cease because you pause in the exercise of it.
While some are describing the audio as 'damning' I think it simply further vindicates the officer.
While emptying your clip, reloading, and emptying another might seem excessive to laypeople, it's actually what officers are taught to do. My thinking is once he began to fire on Mr. Brown he reverted to his training model and did exactly as he'd been trained to do. Whether he reloaded or not is moot. Whether he paused and corrected and resumed fire is moot. He behaved as he'd been trained and the justification to use lethal force doesn't change or cease because you pause in the exercise of it.
While some are describing the audio as 'damning' I think it simply further vindicates the officer.