It looked to me like the officer was square to the target (suspect vehicle)
...and his shots are pretty straight on at the suspect vehicle...
.. The officer even took some shots two handed... He had a really solid target the second time.. ...
He had a solid target in his sights yes, and could say was aiming centre mass....but if you know anything about
the angle/degree of upward projectile deflection when firing through angled windshields...(and taking into account the distance of the target)
id say all his rounds went right over the top by a healthy margin.
Its highly evident from the video showing angle of gun and distance to target, that the officer is not skilled or
trained to effectively shoot through squad car windshields.
And from what I understand they don't train their guys to do such.
Once again, you are just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, and letting others waste time proving you’re wrong. It doesn’t work that way. The police just have to show that they acted reasonably under the time constraints in which they are operating. They are not expected to have an engineering degree and have trained through every theoretical scenario, because we all know (well, maybe not you), and courts recognize, that this would be impossible. Unlike you, the courts recognize that it is not a perfect world, and that dealing with criminals frequently requires contemporaneous improvisation without the benefit of lead time to come up with a perfect plan backed up by scientific research and analysis. Furthermore, your hypotheticals are imponderables if all we have is a video, because the appropriate analysis is based on what the officer in question should have known and what he actually knew, not what you or anyone else on this thread knows or should know. So, get some insight on that and share it before wasting time with hypotheticals.
Without getting in the weeds of discussing shooting through glass, off the top of my head, this situation appears (in my personal opinion only) to check all the boxes supporting the force used in a Graham v. Connor analysis, fits within the rationale of Tennessee v. Garner in support of the use of force on a fleeing felon, and also Plumhoff v. Rickard. Not on point, but demonstrating which way the wind is blowing, are Mullenix v. Luna (which, admittedly, only focused on the “clearly established” principle, not whether it was reasonable), S.F. v. Sheehan (elements of both prongs, coupled with poor briefing), White v Pauly (another “clearly established law” case), County of L.A. v. Mendez (this one should have wide ranging effect on “woulda, coulda, shoulda" analyses where no independent constitutional violation has occurred on the front end), and the latest Ninth Circuit smackdown, Kisela v Hughes (another “clearly established” case with the caveat that the court was not saying that the use of force was not justified). (Of course, there are a million picky points that are not worth discussing on the basis of a few minute video.) (Further, in the absence of a person harmed by the rounds (which could pop up), we really don't even have a controversy with respect to rounds that did not hit the bad guys.) Do you have some binding or trending precedent going the other way that fits this situation? Believe me, I want to see that stuff, and I will read it when time permits.
As I said in my earlier post, I can’t begin to project what a Nevada state court would say about this under applicable state law, or if there is some Ninth Circuit case on point. (I am in the Tenth.) I am just dealing with the Constitutional procedure as discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Your numerous posts about recklessness and scientific “perfect world” analyses appear to go in that direction and sound like deflection and scattergun plaintiff lawyer hyperbole. (I am not seeing anyone but spencer516 insinuating as an abstract principle that shooting back at someone who is shooting at you and trying to run you over cannot be justified on general self-defense principles.) Maybe in 5 years we will have some precedent on this one way or the other, and then we all will know. Stay tuned.
