Summary
Matthew Huttle, a 42-year-old pardoned January 6 rioter, was fatally shot by an Indiana deputy during a traffic stop 6 days after Trump granted clemency to over 1,500 Capitol attackers.
Huttle, previously sentenced to six months in prison, was pulled over for driving 70mph (113km/h) in a 55mph zone and faced arrest as a habitual traffic offender.
According to newly released body camera footage, Huttle said “I’m shooting myself” before reaching for a loaded gun in his car, prompting the deputy to fire.
Prosecutors ruled the shooting “legally justified.” His death adds to mounting legal issues among pardoned rioters.
It is astonishing to see the amount of cheering on of a cop shooting someone who just announced they were going to kill themselves.
In any other circumstance, you’d all be up in arms over this. I am ashamed to be a part of this community sometimes. There are zero circumstances where a police officer should shoot someone dead unless their life is literally at risk.
Uh the officer’s life was at risk.
Are you implying the cop should have let the guy grab his gun?
Guy was a J6 rioter. By definition, stupid and crazy. Prone to making bad decisions, including a vocal declaration of suicidal intent to a police officer. What stops the guy from putting the gun to his head, then thinking “hey wait, I’m on Team Trump! Surely he’ll pardon me for this too!” And then shooting the cop instead?
Should the cop have run away? Now you’ve got a J6 rioter with a gun in a stolen police cruiser.
Please run us through the scenario in which it’s a good idea to let the mentally unstable rioter grab his gun.
And I’m not cheering the cop, either. I’m betting the cop is a fellow Republican, because…cop… but also because he foolishly trusted the J6 rioter to act reasonably and rationally. When the information presented by his computer stated this individual has a rap sheet and this situation was going to become an arrest, cop could have properly and immediately performed the arrest by standing between guy and car door then cuffing guy, thus not allowing guy the opportunity to make another stupid decision.
Cop treated this 70 in a 55 like it was a normal boring 70 in a 55 by a normal boring citizen, and this is what happened.
I’ll cheer anytime a traitor to the people dies, liberal.
The “othering” of opponents is how human deal with conflict and prepare themselves for violence since time immemorial.
Dehumanization is a really slippery second step. Fascists aren’t the only people that find themselves doing it.
This isn’t meant as an excuse, just an explanation. IMO, this fatal shooting is not an act to be celebrated.
Yeah, I really dislike how easy it is to dehumanized people. Regardless of this guys shitty politics, or what he did in the past, he didn’t deserve to be shot dead during a traffic stop.
This is actually in part an issue of a misunderstanding of the dynamics of one of the situation law enforcement and people forced into dangerous circumstances face. Ever played that game where you have your hands out and a person puts their hands under yours and you have to withdraw your hands before you get slapped? It’s the same principle. Reaction is slower than action. When someone states they have a weapon and they reach for it you could be dead in about a second, maybe two if they pull it and instead fire at you. This means your “safe” reaction space is about a second to a half second long.
If you duck out of the way you get a person with a weapon who can choose to turn it on bystanders or retaliate by getting you into another situation where you have even less reaction space. While it is realized that cops, particularly US ones tend to escalate situations more quickly in part that is because in the US there’s a higher chance someone is packing heat and in part because of a culture of standing one’s ground. When we are talking about ACAB events a lot of the time those deaths occur in circumstances where the cops either should not have been there at all, escalated far too quickly or the death happened when the person was restrained and no longer an active threat. In Canada for instance improper use of force applies to everyone. If you had to be violent as a citizen, including as a cop then you are vulnerable to legal reprocussions unless your use of force was judged appropriate to mitigate damage to life. Not property, only life. If you exhaust every other de-escalating option only then you are cleared to use violence but the initiation of this reaction window is the point of no return. People who experience this window basically operate strictly on instinct and often are traumatized to some degree after the fact.
In this instance the officer’s life was at risk the moment the gun was indicated to be in the vehicle and the person in question stated they would use it. Could the entire traffic stop have been a series of inappropriate escalations on behalf of the officer, yes. Is there zero justification for an officer shooting this guy? No. We don’t know the first part, you would have to pick apart the senario starting from when he stopped the car. But if you end up in a situation where you have a gun trained on you and you escalate the situation further by saying you are reaching for a gun then basically this is effectively how you suicide.
Hypocrites showing their true colors. It’s never been about wether the shooting was justified or not but rather how they feel about the victim.
Also if a bystanders life is at risk. That would be the ideal implementation in a similar system IMO anyways, I don’t think this is the way we should be dealing with problems as a whole though, e.g. every cop having a gun is unnecessary and harmful.