Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

We won’t go back.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

We still have time to mess this up!

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

This fight is for everything.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops / It Ain’t Murder If You Got a Badge

It Ain’t Murder If You Got a Badge

by | 93 Comments

This post is in: 

Another day, another cop gets away with murder:

Police in Mesa, Arizona released disturbing body camera video on Thursday hours after a former officer was acquitted of a murder charge in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man.

The verdict cleared Philip Brailsford, 27, of criminal liability in the 2016 death of Daniel Shaver, of Granbury, Texas. He was also found not guilty of reckless manslaughter, reports CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV.

The shooting occurred at a hotel in the Phoenix suburb where officers responded to a report of someone pointing a gun out of a window. The video, obtained by KPHO, shows Brailsford pointing a gun at Shaver as Shaver lies on the ground, holds his hands in the air, cries and begs the officer not to shoot.

I don’t know how jurors could watch that and not convict of at least reckless manslaughter.

Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    I don’t know how jurors could watch that and not convict of at least reckless manslaughter.

    Two words.

    White Privilege.

  3. 3.

    MarkK

    Police State 101. Disgusting! When are we going to rise up and fix this? I’m a 62 year old (white privileged but broke) geezer and I’m ready to roll

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    The only explanation I can think of is that the defense somehow kept the video out of court. Or the cop is a Mormon in the very Mormon city of Mesa.

  6. 6.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Drinkin’ beer in the hot sun
    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won
    I needed sex and I got mine
    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won

    The law don’t mean shit
    If you got the right friends
    That’s how this county’s run
    Twinkies are the best friend I ever had

    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won

    I blew George and Harvey’s brains out with my

    Six gun!

    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won

    Gonna write my book and make a million
    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won

    I’m the new folk hero of the Ku Klux Klan
    My cop friend thinks it’s fun
    You can get away with murder if you got a badge

    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won
    I fought the law and I won
    I AM the law so I won

  8. 8.

    Dave

    This is an example of everything wrong with police training and culture. Everything about his approach was dehumanizing and escalated the situation. It’s disgusting…. I don’t even have words to many have conditioned themselves and been conditioned to interpret any ambiguous behavior as maximally threatening. I have nothing but contempt for that.

  10. 10.

    PJ

    Stone cold murder, and the perp walks. And clearly this cop had issues performing basic tasks, like handcuffing a suspect lying prone on the floor, not to mention articulating coherent orders – he orders the guy to crawl, and then starts shooting him when he starts to crawl.

  13. 13.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Thought I’d drop this here:
    The Worst of All Possible Worlds: Did Market Leninism Win the Cold War?

    Imagine an alternative universe in which the two major Cold War superpowers evolved into the United Soviet Soci*list States. The conjoined entity, linked perhaps by a new Bering Straits land bridge, combines the optimal features of capitalism and collectivism. From Siberia to Sioux City, we’d all be living in one giant Sweden.

    It sounds like either the paranoid nightmare of a John Bircher or the wildly optimistic dream of Vermont soci*list Bernie Sanders.

    Back in the 1960s and 1970s, however, this was a rather conventional view, at least among influential thinkers like economist John Kenneth Galbraith who predicted that the United States and the Soviet Union would converge at some point in the future with the market tempered by planning and planning invigorated by the market. Like many an academic notion, it didn’t come to pass. The United States veered off in the direction of Reaganomics. And the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. So much for “convergence theory,” which like EST or cold fusion went the way of most crackpot ideas.

    Or did it? Take another look at our world in 2015 and tell me if, somehow we haven’t backed our way through the looking glass into that very alternative universe — with a twist. The planet currently seems to be on the cusp of a decidedly unharmonic convergence.

    Consider what’s happening in Russia, where an elected autocrat presides over a free market shaped by a powerful state apparatus. Similarly, China’s mash-up of market Leninism offers a one-from-column-A-and-one-from-Column-B combination platter. Both countries are also rife with crime, corruption, growing inequality, and militarism. Think of them as the un-Swedens.

    […]

    Instead of converging toward Scandinavian soci*lism, the U.S. has been slouching toward illiberalism for some time now. The Tea Party bemoans the “nanny” and “gun-control” state, but misses the deeply sinister ways in which that state has been captured by the forces of illiberality. The United States has expanded its archipelago of incarceration, our homegrown gulag, so dramatically that we have more people in prison — in total and by percentage of population — than any developed country on Earth. Our political system has been taken over by a club of the rich — our own nomenklatura — with corruption so embedded that no one dares call it by that name and critics instead speak of the “revolving door” and “voter suppression” and the “influence of money in politics.” The deterioration of public infrastructure has, as in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, turned the country into an embarrassment of falling bridges, exploding gas lines, bursting pipelines, backward railroads, unsecured power plants, and potential ecological catastrophes.

    Add in spreading governmental surveillance and secrecy, unsustainable military spending, and a disastrously interventionist, military-first foreign policy and the United States is looking a lot like either the old Soviet Union or the Russia of today. Neither is a flattering comparison. America has not yet descended into despotism, so the convergence is hardly complete. But it might be only one right-wing populist leader away from that worst-case scenario.

    The article was written in early 2015. Prophetic.

    The thrust is this: history never ends and we seem to be expecting that authoritarian regimes (un-Swedens) in places like Turkey, Russia and China will eventually become more like the West: liberal and democratic. But China has surpassed our economy to become the largest in the world and doesn’t appear to be ready to end it’s one party rule any time soon. The article does end on a hopeful note. We are not slaves to history and can change our system to become something that is truly great and most optimal for everyone. We just have to want to and fight like hell.

    One of its flaws is it doesn’t talk enough about the effects of racism and general xenophobia, only in passing

  14. 14.

    HumboldtBlue

    You’ll notice that nearly every time there is a police shooting similar to this that if that action had been performed while in the military they would court-martialed. But here at home cops get to pretend they are still in Fallujah and the authoritarian mindset of white jurors will always side with police. The aberration is that fuckbag Scott getting convicted of murder in SC.

  15. 15.

    Dave

    @PJ: Ah but his hand moved towards his waist and that’s apparently enough for us to accept that the Officer in question reasonably feared for his life and was sufficient justification to end the victims life. This is enraging.

  16. 16.

    Dave

    @Citizen_X: When police are taught anything but immediate 100% compliance is justification to take a life. Even if the victim is attempting to comply but given contradictory instructions. We demand that random citizens be 110% perfect in these accounts and I’m not sure if we even have standards for officers. I’ve been in firefights with rounds impacting near me and was less afraid and showed greater control than that piece of shit when I didn’t have a positively identified target.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    @Citizen_X:

    When the fuck did making a mistake at this Simon Says bullshit become a capitol offense?

    The moment they gave that cop a gun and a badge.

  18. 18.

    Cacti

    I don’t know how jurors could watch that and not convict of at least reckless manslaughter.

    I do.

    It’s Maricopa County, Arizona.

  19. 19.

    TenguPhule

    @HumboldtBlue:

    The aberration is that fuckbag Scott getting convicted of murder in SC.

    No, he wasn’t. They deadlocked on it.

    He had to be brought up on CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS to get him convicted.

    And our SC majority has the balls to tell us that Racism is dead.

  22. 22.

    Spanky

    From Cole’s linky:

    MESA — Police in Mesa, Arizona released disturbing body camera video on Thursday hours after a former officer was acquitted of a murder charge in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man.

  23. 23.

    Spanky

    @Spanky: So a totally non-rhetorical question: How the hell could this not have been presented as evidence at the trial? If it was withheld by the police, is there (theoretically – it’s Arizona after all) a path to overturning the verdict based on new evidence?

  24. 24.

    MaxUtil

    @Dave: I would that is exactly what got the cop acquitted. The victim did clearly move his hand back oddly. It sounds to me like the cop’s super aggressive way of handling this got the guy so freaked out he couldn’t think straight.

    As is often the case, I think the bigger problem here is the training and events that lead to this situation. In that moment, I can see how they could justify the cop shooting. But he created this situation. Are all these cops on steroids or something? I’ve had no tactical training. But it seems like every one of these videos shows a cop in a complete panic state, unable to handle the situation in any intelligent fashion. I believe a lot of this comes down to the training they give cops too that they should treat ANY possible threat with overwhelming deadly response.

  25. 25.

    The Moar You Know

    The only explanation I can think of is that the defense somehow kept the video out of court.

    @Mnemosyne: They didn’t. It’s fucking Arizona. Those assholes will sign off on anything a cop does.

    The order to crawl was deliberate, he could then shoot with impunity, as he could then say “he was moving towards his waist” as that’s what crawling is. I would have kept my hands in the air and not moved. He probably would have shot me anyway. He was obviously there with the goal to shoot someone.

    The PD fired him and it seems the union didn’t fight it, which tells me a lot. He’ll get picked up by another department and keep shooting people.

    We do live in a police state, one so bad that even my Trump-loving relatives fully acknowledge that it’s a huge problem. I don’t know if that’s fixable.

  27. 27.

    TenguPhule

    @Cacti: And the Resistance is so disorganized that the Republicans don’t even have to pay off half to shoot the other half in the back. They happily do it for free.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: @Mnemosyne: @Dave: My understanding is that it is unclear who is doing the screaming on the video. From the better reporting it appears that the person screaming contradictory instructions was actually a sergeant behind the officer who was the shooter. So the officer who shot the guy would give one set of instructions and then the sergeant behind him would scream contradictory instructions. And this was enough for the defense to create reasonable doubt with the jury.

    That said: 1) This is a terrible shoot. 2) At the point that they had him on his face with his hands on his head with an officer aiming at him they could have sent another officer over to pat him down and either clear him or cuff him. They didn’t. 3) Arizona is an open carry (constitutional carry) state. One is allowed to wander around with a gun. 4) Most hotel windows do NOT open!

    Got tor run. Stay frosty!

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    @The Moar You Know:

    The PD fired him and it seems the union didn’t fight it, which tells me a lot. He’ll get picked up by another department and keep shooting people.

    Eventually the calculus is going to conclude that if you’re dead anyway, why not shoot first?

  32. 32.

    TenguPhule

    @HumboldtBlue: It was at that point I knew things are truly fucked. If a literal video of being shot in the back can’t get a murder conviction against a police officer, nothing can.

  33. 33.

    Mike J

    Hey Washingtonionites, be sure to check out De Escalate Washington. I normally hate ballot initiatives, but I-940 sounds like a good idea:

    This measure would require law enforcement to receive violence de-escalation, mental-health, and first-aid training, and provide first-aid; and change standards for use of deadly force, adding a “good faith” standard and independent investigation.

  34. 34.

    Dave

    @MaxUtil: They are trained into this and too many departments culture supports it. We are basically training officers to give themselves PTSD and pretending it’s a good thing. Or more accurately we are pretending that people can live in a hyped up state of anyone can kill me at anytime the populace is the enemy hyper-vigilance this isn’t even good for the officers and is a disservice to them let alone anyone that ends up becoming their victims. At a deeper level is the intense dehumanization that is occurring he didn’t see the guy as a person. And I agree it is what got him acquitted.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    @HumboldtBlue: Its funny how only the most right wing authoritarian backstabbing unions, police and fire, still have all their powers while everyone else got neutered.

    I remember a term for them that started with a Q.

  36. 36.

    Citizen_X

    Also not admitted as evidence: the fact that the killer had “YOU’RE FUCKED” etched/painted/whatever on his weapon.

  37. 37.

    sukabi

    @Spanky: if it was released AFTER acquittal, then it was probably not available as evidence at the trial…also guessing that someone in the department released the video to make sure the cop wouldn’t be welcomed back on the force and to help victims family in their civil suit…

  39. 39.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Cacti:
    The article was published in early 2015. Nobody knew Trump was running yet.

    The article also mentions the growing threats of fascist parties in Europe, even all the way back in 2015. In particular, the article mentions Viktor Orban’s turn away from the West and his authoritarian tendencies.

  40. 40.

    mike in dc

    Jury instructions based upon Supreme Court rulings also handcuff a jury to a great extent. So long as the officer fears he is in danger, it doesn’t even have to be a reasonable fear for him to be “justified” in use of deadly force. To change jury verdicts, change the case law.

  41. 41.

    Dave

    @Adam L Silverman: Fair. As you said terrible shoot regardless. There need to be consequences and changes in the department cultures that lead to these events. Given my own experience I have little tolerance for but he was afraid bullshit. It’s a scary job sometimes people with hyped up amygdala’s shouldn’t be doing the job in the first place but to reach the point where that officer is shooting that civilian requires significant failures at multiple levels.

    I’m going to run as well.

  42. 42.

    mike in dc

    If it weren’t for the endless War on (some people using some types of ) Drugs, would most officers even need to carry guns around?

  43. 43.

    germy

    @David Evans:

    According to BBC News the bodycam footage was released after the verdict, i.e. the jury did not see it. I wonder if that might not be grounds for a mistrial.

    but i thought the whole point of a body cam was for court cases like this.

  44. 44.

    Dave

    @mike in dc: Right that really is the topper to this. Is that by case law the jury probably did make the correct decision which is pretty damning.

  46. 46.

    Felanius Kootea

    Waiting for Trump to tweet his support for the officer and offer him a cabinet position if his department won’t hire him back.

  49. 49.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @? Martin:
    Exactly. But that was stupid the way those police handled it. Why didn’t they send an officer to handcuff them while being covered? It’s obvious the deceased was no threat and was scared out of his mind. Surprise surprise, it turns out screaming at someone while pointing a gun at them will freak them out and cause them to act as they otherwise wouldn’t. The victim made a mistake and got killed for it. That officer deserves to lose more than just his job.

  50. 50.

    Mike in DC

    @NotMax:
    I wonder what their growth rate assumptions have been. China’s growth has slowed and will continue to slow down. They have not yet had to deal with a serious recession and if and when it happens it may cause major social disruption there.

  51. 51.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    @TenguPhule: Annecdata but: I worked with a Black woman years ago who was just about to leave our office because she passed the LAPD entry exam and was about to start training. The joked about abusing her power and said a little too straightly “Once I’m a cop I’ll be able to I’ll be able to do whatever I want.” I fear that regardless of gender/race, the job attracts (demands?) a certain type of attitude like that.

  53. 53.

    TenguPhule

    @Mike in DC: Feds only come into play once the nuts stop paying their taxes or cross state lines looking for trouble. Local cops have to deal with them first.

  55. 55.

    The Moar You Know

    If it weren’t for the endless War on (some people using some types of ) Drugs, would most officers even need to carry guns around?

    @mike in dc: Yes, and you and the cops can thank the NRA for that. There are 330 million people in this country and over 350 million firearms. I think any cop in the country has to assume there is a gun at any scene they’re called out on. Which, of course, leads to police shootings and sensational headlines, which are quite beneficial to the NRA.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @mike in dc:

    Drugs are only an excuse to shoot people of color. If all drugs were legalized tomorrow, these exact same shootings would still happen.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @MaxUtil: (I haven’t watched the video.)

    As is often the case, I think the bigger problem here is the training and events that lead to this situation. In that moment, I can see how they could justify the cop shooting. But he created this situation. Are all these cops on steroids or something? I’ve had no tactical training. But it seems like every one of these videos shows a cop in a complete panic state, unable to handle the situation in any intelligent fashion. I believe a lot of this comes down to the training they give cops too that they should treat ANY possible threat with overwhelming deadly response.

    The bad training (and bad hires (h/t Kay)) aspect of these events has been clear to me since the Rodney King beating tape. There were a dozen or more cops standing around him, but the cop with the baton continued to wail on him because King wasn’t complying good enough. If the cops had some sort of genuine fear of King, they could have all sat on him and restrained him. That obviously wasn’t the issue. The issue was making the victim do exactly what they wanted or suffering the consequences. [Cartman] Respect Ma Authorita!! [/Cartman]

    It’s barbaric and it’s well past time that we stopped putting up with police departments that act this way. It’s a systemic problem that needs a systemic solution.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @The Moar You Know:

    From that story:

    Brailsford served as a Mesa officer for about two years before he was fired for violations of departmental policy, including unsatisfactory performance.

    Mesa PD knows this guy was bad news, and yet he’ll probably just get churned to another, smaller department where he can kill more people. That’s how the cop who killed Tamir Rice ended up in Cleveland — he washed out of being a cop in another jurisdiction.

  65. 65.

    encephalopath

    “He reached for…” is a magical incantation. There doesn’t have to be anything to reach for and there doesn’t have to be any visible reaching motion.

    Just saying the words mean justified shooting by a LEO.

  66. 66.

    cmorenc

    Why did the prosecutors *not* introduce the bodycam video at trial? They sure as hell knew it existed. There is no valid evidentiary objection to its introduction. It seems the prosecution deliberately tanked the case against the officer. Or else are so massively incompetent they should be fired as well.

  67. 67.

    Scamp Dog

    @Dave: Yep. Failing eliminating that sort of policing entirely, there ought to be a “not brave enough to be on the force” standard. Ok, you were scared, you won’t go to jail, but you’re not fit to be allowed the use of deadly force. Here’s the pro-rated fraction of your retirement, find something else to do now. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

  70. 70.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    Speaking of cops, LA Sheriffs woo hoo:

    The Sheriff’s Department’s roster of deputies, known as a “Brady list,” was compiled in 2014 under McDonnell’s predecessor, interim Sheriff John Scott, to keep track of officers with histories of misconduct that might affect their credibility in court. The list has evolved over time, and last fall the department notified several hundred deputies that their names were on the list and offered them the chance to object if they believed there had been a mistake.

    Times reporters reviewed a version of the roster, dated 2014, and scoured court and law enforcement records for details of how deputies landed on it.

    The documents reviewed by The Times offer the first public glimpse of officers whose misconduct the Sheriff’s Department has decided should be reported to the courts.

    The deputies have been identified as potential witnesses in more than 62,000 felony cases since 2000, according to a Times analysis of district attorney records. In many of those cases, the deputies’ misconduct would probably have been relevant in assessing their credibility.

    RELATED | Sex. Lies. Abuse. How these L.A. deputies landed on a secret 2014 list of problem officers »

    Law enforcement and court records show:

    One deputy on the list endangered the lives of fellow officers and an undercover informant when he warned a suspected drug dealer’s girlfriend that the dealer was being watched by police.

    Another pepper-sprayed an elderly man in the face and then wrote a false report to justify arresting him.

    A third pulled over a stranger and received oral sex from her in his patrol car.

    The list also includes several deputies still with the department who were convicted of crimes — one for filing a false arrest report and another who was charged with domestic battery but pleaded no contest to a lesser offense. In other cases, prosecutors sharply criticized the deputies’ actions but declined to pursue criminal charges against them.

  72. 72.

    frosty fred

    I was just on a jury panel for a couple of days; I was excused before I got the question (words to the effect, I didn’t take notes) “Do you consider members of the police or sheriff’s department to be more reliable than witnesses in general?” I was shocked by the responses, none of which was “Seriously?!” and most of which were tending towards “Yes, kind of.”

  73. 73.

    Duane

    I realize I’m talking about Session here, but surely there’ll be federal charges. That’s nothing but murder. Unacceptable.

  74. 74.

    laura

    But silently take a knee in public and that’s disrespectful and an affront to the flag and the troops and shitmidas.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @aznfg:

    I realize it’s a lawyer’s job to give a good defense, but I don’t know how that lawyer could watch that video and claim his client should pay no penalty whatsoever for killing a man as he begged on his knees for his life.

  82. 82.

    TenguPhule

    @Duane:

    I realize I’m talking about Session here, but surely there’ll be federal charges.

    Go back and read that statement again. One of those is not like the others. One of those does not belong.

  83. 83.

    TenguPhule

    @aznfg:

    The officer yelling commands quit the force and is now in the Philippines.

    Duarte saw his work and offered him a promotion and carte blanche.

  84. 84.

    Juju

    @MaxUtil: I would like to point out that the manner in which the victim was directed to crawl forward towards the officer is increadibly difficult under ideal circumstances. I would have trouble crawling in an upright on my knees position with my arms and hands held straight up, without moving oddly at some point. The victim had a jerk yelling oddly phrased directions and threatening to kill him if he did one thing wrong, while pointing a heavy duty weapon at him. It seemed like the officer was looking for a reason to shoot.

    I watched that video to the end and I missed that the victim put his hands near his waistband. If he did, it was probably a habitual tug at his pants to pull them up because he was crawling. I’d probably have done the same thing.

  85. 85.

    Dave

    @Juju: Yup and when these fear driven assholes killed you for that it would be used to justify their actions. Pretty fucked up isn’t it. And a fair number of people would be ok with that.

  86. 86.

    m.j.

    That was horrible.
    Really horrible.
    I can’t stop shaking my head. It’s so wrong.

    I read a book not too long ago by Mary Roach called Grunt. One of the topics she covered was the inability of soldiers to deal effectively with a stressful situation because their fight-or-flight response has kicked in and their higher brain functions have shut down. Apparently, the military has never found an adequate solution to this problem. Training can’t overcome evolution.

    Having said that, this cop was a zealous piece of shit who wanted desperately to shoot someone…anyone.

  88. 88.

    Ithink

    @germy:
    But to be fair, this victim is white & King is a white nationalist in all but name only. Its an absolutely awful outrage all the same, but that’s a key distinction & difference to his selective reaction.

  89. 89.

    Hellbastard

    What’s the line from cop apologists? The poor guy was reaching for a pistol? The office just wanted to go home to see his family at the end of the day? Absolutely sickening…

  90. 90.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    I thing previous posters have all missed the main issue. In criminal jury trials, the court is permitted (but not required) to instruct jurors that they can find the defendant guilty of the most serious crime charged, or of a lesser included offense of that crime. The real question is did the prosecution purposely overcharge the defendant and left lessor charges off the indictment thereby calculating the jury had no alternative to the charge of 2nd degree homicide other than acquittal? Said differently, if charged with the lessor crime of manslaughter he probably would have been convicted.

  91. 91.

    Redleg

    Jeezus f-ing kee-riste. I am now sick to my stomach after seeing this cop murder this guy. What’s up with the assault rifle? Are cops so paranoid that they need military style weapons now?

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