Ep. 19 - Deadly Force Standards Explained with Civil Rights Attorney Dave O'Brien

Two deaths in Minneapolis put the use-of-force spotlight back on the law that governs split-second decisions. We sit down with civil rights attorney Dave O’Brien to unpack what “objectively reasonable” really means, why context can flip a verdict, and how video and policy collide when officers use deadly force. From Section 1983 and Bivens claims to the steep climb of qualified immunity, we sort the civil pathway from criminal prosecutions and explain why the burden to show a clearly established violation often decides whether families ever see a jury.

We look closely at vehicle incidents through Tennessee v. Garner and the duty to use the least force that will work. What about slow-moving cars, blocked-in alleys, and officers stepping into danger? Dave details the doctrine against officer-created jeopardy and why courts are shifting focus from the last two seconds to the totality of circumstances. We also examine practical evidence like speed estimates and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data that undercut “car as weapon” claims at low speeds. And no, shooting the tires isn’t a safe solution; training directs center mass only when a true deadly threat exists.

The second case tests the edge where Second Amendment rights meet police authority. Possessing a firearm is not, by itself, justification for deadly force. We explore why observable, aggressive movement with the weapon matters, how ambiguous shouts of “gun” fit into the legal analysis, and where courts have drawn, and blurred, the lines. Finally, we confront contagious shooting: when one shot triggers many, each round still needs its own legal footing. We talk policy, supervision, Monell liability, and the leadership choices that reduce risk before sirens even start.

If you’re ready for a clear, grounded take on deadly force, qualified immunity, and what evidence actually moves courts, press play. Then share the episode, subscribe for part two, and leave a review with the one reform you think would save the most lives.

Transcript

Dave’s Background In Use Of Force

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome, everybody, to the Radical Moderate. I am your host, Pat O'Brien, and today I am joined by Civil Rights Attorney Dave O'Brien. Dave, welcome to the show. Thank you. So, for those wondering, we share the same last name, and that is because we are actually first cousins. Uh, we don't hold that against each other. We we get along just fine. Uh, but Dave, I wanted to have you on today specifically because of your specialty, which is use of forced cases involving law enforcement. So if you would just give the audience a little bit of your background, like how much do you know about the topic, et cetera?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Well, it's it's my area of expertise in the law. It's essentially the only types of cases I handle. Um, I work pretty much exclusively in the state of Iowa, and I do excessive force cases against police officers and some related type of matters. It's a highly specialized field of law, and I've been doing it for about 20 years, and it's all I do anymore.

Two Minneapolis Deaths Set The Stage

Civil vs Criminal: Claims And Codes

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Wow. Well, when we first talked about doing a podcast, and we will get to this, uh, but we talked about just doing kind of what you do for a living in general, you know, do the cases you have and how it all works. But then in January of 2026, we had two deaths, one of Renee Good, the other of Alex Predi. And these are things that I bet every American pretty much has seen the videos on these and probably has formed an opinion. And I said, Well, I got a go-to guest uh for this. So if you would, I don't know how you want to frame it. I don't know where you want to start, but these two cases, you know, tell it, give us some context here. How does all this stuff work from a legal perspective and and just just start telling us what all is involved and what's what would we expect to happen next in these cases?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Well, you got to remember that we're we're talking about civil claims uh from what I do. Uh I don't have any control over the criminal justice system. That's up to prosecutors. And because uh the cases in Minneapolis, the Good case and the Pretty case, uh involve uh federal law enforcement officers, that would be potentially a Bivens claim under, which is the name of a Supreme Court case that allows uh federal claims to be brought under a particular code section. These are generally referred to as 1983 cases, and that's not a year, it's 42 USC 1983 is the code section. And then the Bivens case allows these claims to be brought against federal officers. Um, and and that's uh, you know, that's where it all starts. You're looking at whether you got a federal claim or not, and then you're looking at uh potential related state claims, obviously, uh typically assaulting and killing someone without justification in most states that I'm aware of is uh a violation of civil law. And you can bring those claims civilly, but you you're not doing anything from a criminal perspective. That's entirely up to prosecutors.

Objective Reasonableness And Context

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So, yeah, and that that's a great point. And we might during the podcast touch on potentially like what could happen, if anything, in a criminal matter. But let's go with what is publicly available evidence. Certainly the video footage is publicly available, but I don't nobody's trying to do a rush to judgment. We we weren't there. There's gonna be witness statements. I'm sure this thing takes a long time to figure out. But just based upon the circumstances that has and and the facts that have come out publicly, particularly the video, why don't we start with the Renee Good case? And I know, you know, one of the things I especially some of my more conservative friends are asking is, well, we want to know, you know, what happened an hour before the video or five minutes before the video. And I guess I'd start with of the things we don't know, like what what do you want to know? And and does it matter if she was blocking traffic or being, you know, acting in a capac trying to act in a capacitated uh capacity as an activist? Does that matter, not matter to the to the situation?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Well, to answer your last question first, uh, given what we know about the case, I don't think it really makes much difference. Uh, you're always asking the question, uh, was uh the use of deadly force reasonable, uh, objectively reasonable? It's not just whether what this officer thought, it's not a subjective analysis. It's what would the objectively reasonable law enforcement officer do in that case? And but your point is well taken. Uh it that depends oftentimes on what's going on before. So, for example, uh shooting uh someone uh who has uh fits the description of someone that just ran robbed a bank and they turned towards you while making a move from their uh from their waistline um might be entirely justifiable, where uh pulling a person over for a traffic stop and they reach uh to take their seatbelt off and you shoot them might not be reasonable at all, even though the movement is essentially the same. Uh so there is context that has to be put in place, but in this particular case, it's pretty clear that she's uh, you know, trying to uh inhibit the law enforcement officers in some way, uh, which means she might be guilty of interference with official acts or some other criminal matters. And if she had simply been placed under custody, uh arrested, handcuffed, and taken away, you, you know, nobody'd be talking about it. There'd be a criminal uh inquiry and uh some sort of uh probable cause determination, and she'd have a trial if she thought she was innocent, and it would be the normal course of business. The thing that takes it out of that is, of course, the officer responded with uh with deadly force. And then the question is, is that justified? Uh would a reasonable officer have used deadly force in that situation?

Vehicles As Weapons And Gardner

SPEAKER_01 6:04

And so within that kind of legal framework, how much of it, what what standard or what duty is there on the law enforcement official to use lesser options? And you know, it is is that just all wrapped up in this idea that the whole, it's the totality of it, it's the whole situation. And yeah, if you got a lesser, it is there a bridge that gets crossed when you pull a gun on, you know, law enforcement pulls a gun, or is it no, it's it, it's all just whether it's reasonable. Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Well, they they used to have what called what they called the use of force continuum. That was in a lot of when I first started doing this kind of case, these kinds of cases, that was right in uh a lot of the policy manuals for different law enforcement agencies. So they'd start out with the use of their voice making commands, and then it would go to uh you'd get to hands-on, and then perhaps baton, and then taser, and then at the bottom would be use of deadly force. They got away from that because uh it and it was clear under the law that no officer has to go through the whole list to get to deadly force. If somebody turns and points a gun at you, you you have to respond. And so you can skip right to the end. But the rule is to answer your question, is you have to use the lowest amount of force that will handle the situation. And so you can't use deadly force if uh if a taser would work. You can't use, uh, you can't lose use deadly force if simply grabbing the person. And and the uh U.S. Supreme Court has clearly held in Tennessee versus Gardner that you can't use deadly force just to stop a person from escaping. It doesn't matter what they're accused of. That is never reasonable. Uh so in the Gardner case, the young man was shot in the back trying to climb over a fence. And uh they said, no, that you can't do that. That's it is better uh that a person escapes uh than somebody gets shot and killed. And so that's the rule.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Yeah, one of the things I've heard in some commentary and some articles was that if she was committing a crime, that law enforcement beliefs she was committing a crime, let's just say obstructing justice somehow, uh a law enforcement proceeding, does that change their duty? Because and and I'm not saying that she was committing a crime. I I've heard people say that that might be a justification. Does that factor in?

Officer-Created Jeopardy And Barnes

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Well, it factors in the same way we talked about initially, but but not really. You still have to, even if she's a horrible person that just robbed a bank. Um, in the case of use a car, a vehicle to justify the use of deadly force, the officer has to objectively reasonably conclude that she is using her car as a weapon trying to kill him or seriously injure him or a bystander. And, you know, I I've got three of these cases pending where the officers shoot, kill people uh because they claim the car was being used as a weapon. And in all three cases, the video show pretty much what this one shows, which is it's a person not acting correctly. I never don't, nobody out there get get the idea that it's a good idea to try to drive away from police officers. It's not, but that doesn't mean they get to shoot you. And uh, but and and it's justified if they're actually using the car as a weapon, trying to hurt them. And the other factor that comes into this, and uh this is uh just not too long ago, a U.S. Supreme Court case, unanimous, this current court that doesn't agree on much uh anymore, but they did agree in Barnes versus Felix that uh what I'm gonna call officer-created jeopardy does not justify use of deadly force. There's been case law out there that says, look, you can't, you can't go over to somebody's house and they're backing out of their driveway as an officer, and you stand behind the car and say, oh, they could run me over, I get to shoot them. So that's self-that's officer-created jeopardy, that's not allowed. In the Barnes v. Felix case, uh the U.S. Supreme Court essentially supported that position. That was a case where a guy was pulled over for parking fines. Uh, so they had his license. He's on a highway of some sort, and he's off on the shoulder, and he gets fed up and decides to drive away from the officer. Bad decision, but it doesn't mean you get to be executed. And the officer jumps up on the running board of his vehicle, and then um, as the guy starts to pull away, the officer is uh about to go on to traffic at a higher rate of speed and he shoots, shoots and kills the guy. And the circuit court in that case said it was justified because in the two seconds before he decided to shoot, um, you know, he was in danger because the car was accelerating and moving away. And the Supreme Court said, no, you have to look at the totality of the circumstances and whether he created that jeopardy. And you cannot, you know, officers cannot create jeopardy and then use it as a justification for the use of deadly force.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

And you're saying that was a 9-0 decision?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

That was 9-0 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. I don't even remember.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I didn't hear about that one, but I you don't hear about 9-0 decisions in this current Supreme Court at all.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah, and they didn't decide it finally. So I'm I'm guessing that maybe a few of those justices wouldn't necessarily, if they were deciding the case on the merits, ultimately would agree with the outcome, but they were saying, look, you just can't look at the last two seconds. You have to look at the whole, the whole reason for the stop, which was parking tickets. I mean, you know. Yeah, and the officer's decision to jump on the the running board. I mean, uh, is that did the officer create the position he was in? Uh, and I think there's agreement that if you conclude that that was what happened, uh, uh, you know, then it's not a justifiable use of force.

Speed, Injury Risk, And Evidence

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So one of the things you talked about earlier was objective versus subjective. So I think what you're saying, but tell me if if this is correct, let's say the officer who did shoot her, which we was he was generally in front of her car. I it to me it looked like he could he made that happen, but let's let's put that to the side for the second. Does it matter what he subjectively believed was gonna happen next in his own mind and his life experiences and all that sort of thing? Or is it you say, no, it is only what an objective officer should have done. It that's a big distinction. Which which is it?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Well, because certainly we're gonna we're gonna want to know as we go through discovery and try to find out what happened, what this officer was thinking about. But the standard to be applied to whatever his thought process was is would an objectively reasonable officer act in the same way? And that's all that matters. So the officer could say, Well, I thought my life was in jeopardy, but it wouldn't matter if an objectively reasonable officer would come to the opposite conclusion. I can tell you from I have a very, very similar case uh pending, two of them pending before the Iowa Supreme Court right now, uh, where vehicles were being claimed to be used as a weapon. In both of those cases, though, and I think this case in Minnesota, the the good case applies here, uh, the speed of the vehicle is clearly no more than 10 miles per hour. And in those cases that I'm handling, part of the evidence I put in is National Highway Traffic Safety Administration uh analysis of pedestrian vehicle collisions. And it's uh pretty amazing that uh all the statistics uh from NHSA are that they don't even keep track of pedestrian vehicular collisions under 10 miles per hour because the risk of any injury whatsoever is so minimal. Now, at 20 miles per hour, uh it goes up to about a 5% chance of some risk. And then at 30 miles per hour, it goes up significantly. By the time you get to 50 miles per hour, it's like 90% serious injury or death. So it's very dependent on speed. Uh, and one of the factors I'm sure uh the good family will be arguing is that her speed was at a low rate, even if he did get hit by the car, uh, he wouldn't be hurt, um, or at least not seriously injured or facing death. And that means he would not have been justified in using deadly force.

Why Police Don’t Shoot Tires

SPEAKER_01 13:54

I think I think that's a great point. What one thing that I just when I saw the video the first time, and the the question that popped into my brain was could they have just shot out some tires? You know, like maybe not even the officer who shot her, which he was right in front, but there was at least one, maybe two other officers who could see what's going on, and why not shoot the tire? Now, somebody could say, Pat, I mean, you're you've seen this thing 10 times, they're acting in the moment, but you know, from a training standpoint and uh just uh how do you, you know, how do you prepare yourself for these moments? What are your thoughts on on lesser measures? They couldn't taser, she's in a car. But if you were doing a class for law enforcement with this particular case, the good case, what are some of the things that you might say, guys, here's what we could have done, and nobody dies?

Trigger Pulls And Policy Duties

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Well, uh I policies that I've seen and and the uh police practices experts I've talked to would say, yeah, I I understand the the idea of shooting tires out or doing something else like that, but the the risk is so much greater that they would never do that and they shouldn't do that. They're that they never shoot to, you know, say, oh, why didn't they shoot him in the leg or or uh in the arm or you know, the old West, we're gonna shoot the gun out of his hand. No, um, these officers, uh handguns are notoriously uh difficult to become proficient and aving, and and anything under anything over uh 25 feet is oftentimes missing. They're trained to not shoot unless they're facing an absolute deadly threat, them or another. And they're claimed, they're trained to shoot center mass. They would never shoot to uh uh to take the tires out. I mean, particularly in a situation like this, I mean, those bullets aren't gonna stop when they hit a rubber tire. They're gonna ricochet around. Uh other people, I mean you the easiest case in the world would be some bystander happened to be walking by and they started shooting tire errors off on a car and they got uh seriously injured or killed as a result of a of a bullet uh ricocheting. Um so no, that that like that is not something that is part of what they're what they're trained to do. But in this particular case, what they were trained to do, and I believe I saw this online, and uh, you know, you have to be a little careful about what you see online these days, but it certainly looked like official DHS policy where they're saying, look, you have an obligation to get out of the way of a movie vehicle. And uh, and this gentleman who before he fired actually did that from what I could tell, but then he fired anyway because he's firing at the side of the car, uh, kind of through the front, the front window, the first bullet, but then the second two through the side window. And they have to, they have to be able to justify that analysis, objectively reasonable officer. They have to be to able to justify every single pull of that trigger. And and that, you know, that's the way it should be. Uh they have to, you know, don't pull the trigger if you're not, if you're, if you're not facing a deadly threat that you have to respond to.

Qualified Immunity And Precedent Gaps

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Well, and also, you know, everybody knows this, but these these are this is the government. You know, this isn't two individuals and and that they should have that we give them authority to use deadly force when it's un you know constitutional. And so, yeah, they should absolutely have a standard, uh, you know, a much higher standard than a citizen would. I I want to talk about the the pre case, but before we do, do you have an opinion or would you like to say something about the good case of, you know, like I'd love to be the civil rights attorney on that? I know they already have an attorney, but do you want to conclude or do you would you say, well, no, I I feel like it's still an open-ended question of whether or not it's a case. And by the way, how how strong does the evidence have to be to even win a civil case for the for that particular uh family?

The Predi Shooting And Second Amendment

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Well, you have to have pretty strong evidence. You have to show a clearly established comp a violation of constitutional principle. Um, for example, one of the cases I referred to, uh, we had it in federal court, and a federal judge in Iowa, it it I won't bore you with the it's not boring, but I won't provide all of the factual context. But the guy's in his pickup truck and he's blocked in an alley behind his house, stop sticks in front, car behind, and uh he pulls up and has a collision with a cruiser at under 10 miles per hour in front of him, and another officer on the other side of the alley shoots and kills him. And the federal judge in Iowa found that was a constitutional violation. It was a it was an unreasonable use of the of deadly force, but he said it was not clearly established. There was no other case that we found uh that clearly established uh that uh that constitutional violation prior to this officer engaging in that conduct. And of course, we were a little dumbfounded by that because sometimes, and there's law out there on this point, uh uh conduct is so outside the realm of reasonableness that nobody's ever done it before. And shooting somebody for being involved in a involved, shooting someone for being involved in an occupied, in a collision with an occupied police cruiser at under 10 miles per hour has never occurred to anyone as being a reasonable thought. But that's what this officer did. Now, this judge did remand the case uh back to Iowa. Uh and uh that issue is currently before the Iowa Supreme Court on whether that's an assault under Iowa law without justification. And I'm expecting a decision in that case anytime soon. But this case, the Marianne Good case, I mean, the video tells the story, and that's the beauty of these cases. Uh all these officers have or should have body cameras and cruiser cameras, and there's so many other cameras that are around. And nine times out of ten, that's good for the officers, Pat. I want to make sure people understand when they listen to this, that I've been doing this for 20 years, and my respect for law enforcement officers has actually grown as a result of that. I only get involved when something really goes bad. Uh, but most of the time when I look at video, uh, it supports the officer making the decision. And think about it, if you're an officer and you're not violating people's civil rights, which includes 90% of our officers, you want video because it proves you didn't do anything wrong. Um, and I know when I get in a case and they don't want to give me the video that this is one I better take a close look at because they're trying to hide something. Um so uh it's very difficult to win. Just because the video pretty clearly shows, in my view, a an unreasonable use of deadly force, that doesn't mean they're gonna win. They have to overcome qualified immunity. They're gonna have to come up with a clearly established case. And in fact, I'm in the Eighth Circuit too with Minnesota. Um, that case I just cited from the uh from the federal district court might be of some assistance to them. Uh, because this judge, prior to the shooting of Marianne Good, this federal judge in Iowa, uh, found it was a constitutional violation. It just wasn't clearly established. So I just that just occurred to me. It wouldn't necessarily be a controlling precedent. Uh, if it had been an Eighth Circuit decision, it would. Uh, but uh it's not a controlling precedent, but it's going to be supportive of their position. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Well, let's move to Alex Predy uh next. Kind of break down the the what happened there. I mean, it's a it's a very different situation. It just happens to be in the same city with the same ice, you know, buildup of trying to deport people, et cetera. Uh but kind of break that down factually and what do you you know view that as an independent case? What are your thoughts on on the pre case?

“Gun” Shouts And Legal Thresholds

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, it's uh very similar type of conduct that the uh that the victims are ultimately engaged in. Um and the justification, of course, is different. Uh uh there's no vehicle involved, so we are we're not talking about using a vehicle as uh as uh a deadly weapon trying to hurt somebody, but the gentleman is armed, and this becomes a very interesting topic uh because uh of Second Amendment rights in the United States of America. And uh typically speaking, those those uh those people that might be watching this uh podcast and concluding um that you know they're on the side of the officers, which is, you know, they're certainly entitled to do that. Uh perhaps the people that think that way also feel very strongly about their Second Amendment rights. And I've certainly found that to be the case. I I have another case of that very similar situation. I had a guy uh walking through a community, he's on an arrest warrant, he's holding a gun to his own head, and uh they shoot and kill him. And everybody agrees in this 10-minute standoff while he's walking through this community in Davenport, Iowa, um, he never moves the gun, never once moves the gun. And they shoot him anyway because they claim that he's approaching some bystanders. He's getting within shooting range of them, which shooting range of a handgun is 300 feet. So it's he's at shooting range the whole time of the incident. Uh, but I thought we were going to win that case. Uh, and uh the federal district judge threw it out on qualified immunity grounds and said, uh, even though we're agreeing he didn't move the gun because he took aggressive action in terms of turning to move towards these bystanders, that an objectively reasonable officer could have seen that as an escalation and therefore used deadly force. I appealed that to the Eighth Circuit, and they uh upheld the uh federal judge. And I was so upset about that, I went and got my uh license to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I filed a cert petition, which I've never done before. And they're, you know, it's one in a thousand chance of getting it. Um and uh uh my understanding, well, I know this for a fact, that we filed it late last year and the defendants were ordered to respond. They assigned us a case number. We're 25,660 in Clune versus Davenport. Um, that doesn't mean they've taken the case yet, but we're uh we went from like a one in eight hundred shot of getting it, bad choice of words, uh, one in a hundred chance of getting it to uh about a one in ten chance of of this Supreme Court actually taking this case up on cert. And in large part, our argument was this guy has a Second Amendment right that he's exercising. He's got a right to carry a gun. And Iowa law and federal law, in my view, is very clear that unless he uses the gun in an aggressive manner, moves it in an aggressive manner, you can't shoot him. And if you could shoot somebody just for like Mr. Prey, holding it to your head or putting it in your having it in a holster on your side, same thing. You have access to a gun, but you can't shoot him unless he actually makes an aggressive movement with the gun. And of course, Mr. Prey never did that from my view of the video. And in the case I just told you about, the gun was everybody agrees it was never moved. Um, and that's an eighth circuit case, too. So that might come in on the opposite side of that case in terms in this case, the Predi case, something they'll probably have to overcome. Uh, but uh who knows? Maybe, maybe I'll it'll be a one-a-million chance in the Supreme Court will take that cert petition, and I'll be uh watching some really smart lawyer from Washington argue that case next year.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Let me on the Predi case, let me uh throw out this as uh what if it's established at a trial that the reason Predi ends up getting shot is not because he makes a move for his gun, because it does it just doesn't look like he does. He's on the ground getting beat up pretty good. I think he just got pepper sprayed. But let's say that that kind of gets established at trial, but that what becomes clear is someone screams gun. And so then, I mean, you're you're a law enforcement officer and you're in a close situation and somebody screams gun, that to me probably means somebody's about to shoot me. It let's say that that we don't know what's gonna happen. Let's say that becomes the fact pattern, and it's pretty damn clear. Is that gonna be a good enough offense that I heard gun, so I just started shooting the guy who might have had a I don't even know if gun means it could have been a gun from somewhere else, right? It could have been there's a gun in the area. What if that's the fact pattern, what do you think happens next?

Contagious Shooting And Accountability

Training, Policy, And Part Two Tease

SPEAKER_00 26:07

I don't think just hearing somebody say gun or he has a gun justifies the use of deadly force. And again, if it did, say goodbye to the Second Amendment. I mean, if if if law enforcement officers can shoot you because you have a gun or they have a even a reasonable belief that you have possession of a gun, uh then we don't have a Second Amendment right to bear arms anymore. Um, and and you know that's that's a very important right to a lot of people. And you have to, the the rules for the law enforcement officers, again, again, it's objective, uh, is that gun has to be moved and used in some aggressive fashion, uh, or at least reasonably perceived to be moved in some aggressive fashion in order to justify the use of deadly force. And there are cases out there where people haven't even had a gun, where uh they pull out a cell phone out of their pocket, but it's maybe dimly lit. And the uh and the officer thinks it's a gun. And would a reasonable officer think so? Then maybe it uses. There are cases where there's no weapon at all, but where the person reaches towards their waistband or turns in a particular way where the officer uh believes they're crouching, it looks like they're turning around with the gun. I mean, they don't have to wait until the gun is pointed right at them. Um, they they have to have a reasonable belief that they have a gun and they're gonna use it. And again, that goes back into well, what are we looking for? Is this just a person who we who we think jaywalked, or is, or, or do we have a report that a person wearing a red sweater like this person who just uh robbed a gas station down the street armed? And and so you kind of put all that into context, but knowing the information that the officer has at the time, not after-the-fact justifications, you can find out all the nasty stuff you want about that person, but it doesn't justify shooting them unless they uh unless you reasonably perceive them to uh be a a ser a threat of serious injury or death to you or another. And you know, I look at that video and I don't see it. Um, but uh, you know, you have to do discovery, you've got to get to the bottom of the facts of the case and try to figure what had what happened. I would also add that that case to me, the the saddest thing about that case, there's everything about it is sad. Uh the first shots, I don't, I think they're gonna have a hard time justifying that first shot, but the rest of the shots, it's they fell into what's called contagious shooting. And I mean, the guy's laying there face down, and there's what, six, eight shots afterwards, other officers just join in and start firing away. And that's called contagious shooting. And again, every trigger pull, they need to to justify that use of force. I I don't you get into question of which shot caused the death and all that kind of thing. And that'll be up to the you know, to the uh autopsy to doctors. And um, but but yeah, that it it just it's just a horrible situation. And then those officers that were firing after the fact, after the initial shot, I I don't know what possibly could be their justification. Uh a guy laying face down on the ground. Um hard hard to figure. But uh again, they have qualified immunity that'll have to be overcome. And these officers, you know, we we give these officers uh a badge and we tell them to go out and enforce the law. And that includes doing something that you and I might get arrested for if we did. If we grabbed somebody, it would be an assault. And we know them that's part of their job. So we have to protect them when they're doing that, reasonably so. And and the good news is most of our officers are out there doing their job without violating civil rights. That's been my experience. The the bad news is that uh, you know, in the ICE situation, we have kind of a whole force that that may be being trained and actually getting supervisory uh direction to uh to do things in violation of people's civil rights. And if that comes out, ultimately we could also potentially civilly hold the those uh people up the chain of command liable for making and providing those order orders and implementing that policy. Uh that's uh the Minnell uh case from the U.S. Supreme Court that allows supervisory responsibility if there's a pattern practice policy or ratification of the law of well, and I'm gonna I actually ran into a hard break here.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

And I you there's a couple things you just had in that last part that I want to dive into. But look, we're gonna do that in part two of this episode. I I hope that I got a ton out of this uh, this this podcast on on uh what's going on in Minneapolis. But I'm gonna conclude this episode and I want to uh thank Dave for being on, and and he'll also be on next week for those that uh listen every episode. But for this week, I want to thank the audience for listening to the POV of POBIC.