1.) They could have politely woken a slumbering Rayshard Brooks up, moved his vehicle out of the drive-thru area, and then continued to let him sleep.
2.) They could’ve moved his vehicle and called him a cab and or an Uber.
3.) They could’ve gotten him some water and kept an eye on him until he was sober enough to drive home on his own.
4.) They could’ve have driven him home themselves without handcuffing him.
5.) They could’ve called a tow truck to have his vehicle impounded and then done two, three, or four.
6.) They could have realized a man who was so drunk he passed out in his car posed no immediate danger to them.
7.) They could have realized for a majority of the interaction, Rayshard Brooks was compliant with all of their requests.
8.) Being in firm possession of his keys, his ID, and his car, they could have let then very drunk, very scared man run away, because how far is he really gonna get?
9.) If they weren’t going to let him run away, one of the two officers should have been able to catch up to a very drunk man and not shoot him twice in the back, even if he did point a Taser at them.
10.) Realized that black lives matter, and not every interaction that turns physical with a black person who has broken the law demands bullets and bloodshed.
Then again, if they realized that, they wouldn’t be cops in the first place.
These are cops on their best behavior, knowing that the world is currently paying attention. And they still couldn’t help themselves from shooting him.
One of the seemingly least controversial things police could do to ease tensions would be to radically cut back on vehicle stops, traffic enforcement, and pretty much anything to do with cars.
These situations are typically in the top 2-3 scenarios where cops are killed, cops generally hate them, but almost nobody asks why they do so many and why they are handled in such a confrontational manner.
You think of people like Brooks and Sandra Bland dying, or Sterling Brown getting tazed, and there simply was no reason for things to be escalated the way they were, or often why they happen at all.
99% of the time a cop could video an infraction and send a ticket to the owner, or in rare cases boot the vehicle and be done with it, The whole drama of interrogating the driver, forcing them out of the car, searches and all the rest is all about intimidation, which is mostly why it happens, of course. But if police leadership simply went to a policy of passive enforcement of vehicle laws except in extreme cases, anywhere from 10-50% of bad encounters would end.
I think there’s enough evidence across multiple police forces that the cops are physically out of shape and can’t pursue suspects on foot or properly utilize their own bodies to restrain people so they are overly reliant on their tasers and guns which inevitably leads to these murders. Because these cops are mentally weak as well, because they know they could be physically harmed by anyone slightly stronger than them, they resort to blubbering about fear for their lives.
As has been pointed out, if you’re so afraid of a taser as a cop, why shouldn’t a civilian react in the same way?
As I understand it, once you pass the initial physical in some police departments, you’re not ever required to stay in any kind of shape.
But still; if you can’t catch a man too drunk to pass a field sobriety test on foot, then that’s on you. And as I mentioned, they had his keys, his ID, his wallet (I think) and his car. They knew where he lived. Worse case scenario is that somehow this guy evades arrest for the rest of his days on this planet, which seems highly unlikely.
That’s also as I understand it. I’m of the opinion that needs to change if we’re to rely on them to catch bad guys and rapists (big /s).
You are absolutely correct that the cops could have let him run off and charged him with some bullshit like “leaving the scene of a crime.” They had extensive video of his face and if they wanted they could have offered a reward for his arrest. They could have mosied on over to his house and made a big show of embarrassing him in front of his neighbors the next day.
The police assume that every black person is their property once they’ve tagged them and there’s no way their pride is going to let their “lesser” get away.