I'll attempt an honest, non-sarcastic, totally responsible answer. But I'm not making any promises A.S.
Expressive of hidden motives or purposes
I was recently involved in a little chase. A coworker was cruising a parking lot for a shady motel in a rough part of town and found a car that was stolen in a carjacking. They nabbed the driver and the passenger took off, jumped a fence and hot-footed it out of there.
Luckily, Bluedreax was nearby in his fighter jet and flew over to help.
Two apartment complexes, two streets and four fences later the passenger was just plain tuckered out and gave up.
Now I need you to just make believe with me for a minute, because everything from here out is make believe (the guy really just gave up and sat down with his hands in the air). Let's suppose that Bluedreaux finally catches up with the guy. I know a few things about him already....
1-Either he's the bad guy who violently car jacked some people OR
2-He has no real problems hanging out with violent car jackers
3-He definitely doesn't want to go to jail
4-If you put 1-2-3 together, common sense would indicate that the guy might be willing to be violent to stay out of jail
So I catch up with this guy in a dark parking lot without any backup and nobody really knows exactly where I'm at anyway (because "west.....fence.....streetname....fence didn't do them a whole lot of good in tracking me down). Dude turns to face me and there we are, the running is over so dude is either gonna fight or give up. I tell dude, "Dude, don't move." At that point dude starts reaching in his waistband under his shirt.
This is where "Expressive Of Hidden Motives Or Purposes" comes into play. I don't know what dude's plan is. His motives are hidden. I can see two likely options....give up or fight. When dude starts reaching under his shirt into his waistband he is making a furtive movement. He is expressing to me what his plan is through his actions. That's what makes the movement furtive.....the movement is revealing to me what his plan of action is. He may not be pointing a gun at me, but his actions are revealing to me that he's about to.
So when I say "I shot him because he made a furtive movement", what I mean is "I didn't know what he was going to do. But then his movements revealed to me what his plan was. I was scared to death of his plan because his plan was to shoot me and getting shot is painful and likely to kill me and I don't want to get killed in this dark, lonely parking lot. So I shot him first so none of that would happen."
But for whatever reason cops refuse to talk in normal language and refuse even more to admit that they're scared of something. Personally, I talk and write at work just like I'm talking and writing here. And I'm not afraid of saying that I'm afraid of certain things, because that's what it is and any sane person would be afraid of the same things.
So there it is. When cops say that they shot because of "furtive movements" they mean that they shot because of "movements that expressed a hidden purpose (to kill me)". But for whatever reason they just can't say things in plain English.
BUT you say....what about the cop who shot someone making a "furtive movement" when the person was just reaching for their wallet. That's easy. Those cops are stupid. And it sucks that they're cops and if it were up to me they wouldn't be because those guys are dangerous. I don't have an easy answer for how to get rid of those cops or how to keep them from being cops to begin with. You can't really weed those guys out in the academy because in the academy everyone knows that they're not gonna REALLY get shot. But you put some folks out in the real world on their own and they get real hinky and make stupid decisions. You can't know how some people will act in certain situation until they're in those situations. And then you say, "Oh crap, did you see what Officer JimBob just did?!?!? Let's fire him!" But then it's too late because Officer JimBob already did his stupid thing and everybody on the 24HRCF is already talking about it. But the bottom line is that Officer JimBob made a terrible decision and shouldn't have been a cop to begin with.
