Les Whitenaugh
Jul 23, 2017 · 1 min read

The legal precedents have propped up the arguments that shift the burden of responsibility away from law enforcement, unlike the position of most other professions. Good Samaritan laws protect those who do inadvertent harm when trying to assist, but the bar is much higher for doctors and those who have been trained in medicine; yet, law enforcement officers who are supposed to be trained to respond in crises where citizens dare not go are sheltered, because every event contains elements where any reasonable person would feel threatened. Pulling a trigger is the final step in a progression of preparatory steps, and takes a fraction of a second. The several seconds it takes a suspect to fumble in an ambiguous position and situation may or may not lead to an actual deadly response, but for certain the perpetrator is not going to be able to lean into a vehicle, acquire, reposition, aim and fire a weapon accurately faster than an officer, already aiming on target, needs to just pull a trigger. And that is what should be the standard of responsibility for those trained in life-or-death responses.

    Les Whitenaugh

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