Thread by @SethAbramson

Just so I'm clear on the time-space distortion you traveled through before writing this, you're saying that Adam Toledo both (a) tossed the gun and (b) put his hands up in 838 milliseconds? How long does it take you to brush your teeth in the morning? Is it measurable in seconds?

https://twitter.com/Patterico/status/1383906858398732289

(PS) If you believe someone can toss a gun *and* put their hands up in 838 milliseconds, especially when footage from a business across an empty lot shows the toss was a relatively slow underhand, please replace Ezra Miller in the next Justice League

(PS2) I guess another good question would be why did the officer tell Toledo to put his hands up? Why not just shoot him when he saw him holding a gun? What was it about the order to put his hands up or Toledo putting his hands up that made the officer or Toledo safer in any way?

(PS3) I guess another question would be, given that the officer knew Toledo had a gun from the moment he initiated his pursuit, what was it about the still image you're obsessed with that justified shooting him? Was he in a more confrontational stance in that moment? Be specific.

(PS4) Your premise—what you *want* the law to be—is a pretty simple one, and I wish you'd just state it clearly: the moment the officer knew Toledo had a gun, he was justified in shooting him when he caught up to him as long as Toledo still had it. No aggressive posture required.

(PS5) We know that this is your position because when you got to the far side of the time-space distortion that allowed you to count time the way you do, you insisted that Toledo holding a gun—whether in an aggressive posture or not—required that he be executed. Not SOP—anywhere.

(PS6) I can't for the life of me figure out why SOPs—as you understand them—wouldn't have justified an officer shooting Toledo at *any* point during the chase rather than just the end. The moment you eliminate the requirement of aggressive posture, why not shoot him much earlier?

(PS7) And why even tell Toledo to put his hands up? Was that just a sick joke, like a cat toying with a mouse? If it wasn't going to *matter* what he did after the order, why issue the order? If Toledo was eligible to be shot prior to the order, why didn't the officer just fire?

(PS8) I guess what I'm saying, @Patterico, is that you can find non-lawyers to use as straw-men debating partners here, but a better option, and I say this as an attorney, would be for you to get as *far* from this discussion as you *possibly* can and then *continue* to fuck off.

(PS9) I've got more questions. Was the officer required to consider the fact that when he told Toledo to stop running he did? And is Chicago PD saying the officer saw Toledo's hand in the millisecond it had a gun but conveniently *not* the millisecond in which his hand was empty?

(PS10) The lie from Chicago PD is in plain sight here: they're showing us a still image from a body cam so that we'll draw the false conclusion that that's what the officer saw. But when Toledo has his hands up, Chicago PD wants you to understand the officer did *not* see *that*.

(PS11) What we're being told by @Patterico is the officer saw a gun in Toledo's hand—held non-aggressively—for a millisecond, then made the decision to shoot him (and stopped "looking" at anything), then ordered him to put his hands up, then shot him. Anyone else see the problem?

(PS12) Though Toledo had just—moreover—complied with a lawful order to stop and *hadn't* turned around to face the officer with a gun in his hand, @Patterico says none of that was an indication Toledo was complying with *any* orders. Turns out he was complying with *all* of them.

(PS13) @Patterico is clearly only viewing this from the CPD perspective, rather than thinking about public policy and looking at both parties. Toledo stopped running, dropped the gun, turned around, put his hands up. Exactly what you want him to do and in exactly the right order.

(PS14) By saying this is a good discharge, the message to fleeing armed suspects is even if you do the right things in the right order you'll be shot. So why would a suspect in Chicago or anywhere else ever stop running or drop their gun? They wouldn't—in the world of @Patterico.

(PS15) If Patterico were honest, he'd say the mistake this 13 year-old made was in believing that a cop who'd told him to put his hands up wanted to actually see his hands. Patterico would say that Toledo wouldn't have been shot if he'd put his hands up *without turning around*.

(PS16) Putting aside the fact that a fleeing suspect is making decisions in seconds just like an officer is, I hope everyone here understands that if Toledo had put his hands up without turning around he would've been shot in the back.

And Patterico would've called it justified.

(PS17) As to my dispute over the milliseconds, my point is that officer shootings *don't occur in still frames*. If you watch the *video*, the light is shining on Toledo's hand as he clearly tosses the gun away. That's why CPD is using a still image instead. It *erases the toss*.

(PS18) Let's be very clear about this: Patterico is *certainly* making the argument the officer's lawyer would make if he were charged with a crime. But that's not how he presents what he's doing. He presents his argument as though it's what any common-sense individual would say.

(PS19) We know @Patterico is a radical because it's *not enough* for him to simply make the defense attorney's argument. Patterico has to go *further* and imply it's *good for public policy* that this situation was handled as it was. At that point we must call him an *ideologue*.

(PS20) I'm glad Patterico calls the shooting a "mistake," but in order for him to ensure there's no liability of any kind—serious or otherwise—for the officer, he must make the argument that the conduct complied with SOPs. But that fundamentally changes SOPs in a *dangerous* way.

(PS21) I agree with those reminding Patterico this is a trained officer—therefore asking Substack readers to put themselves in his shoes is preposterous/offensive. But it's beyond that. This *didn't* occur in milliseconds. The officer had half a minute to decide how to play this.

(PS22) I would never want to be in the position this officer was in. That's why I didn't become a cop, go through hundreds of hours of training, and spend half a minute chasing a kid I knew had a gun down an alleyway working through how to end the situation safely for both of us.

(PS23) The game @Patterico's playing here is the game I decry for an hour in the podcast ep below. He's taking a field of inquiry and practice he damn well knows is the province of trained experts and lying to people by saying "just use your common sense!" sethabramson.substack.com/p/adventures-i…

(PS24) In fact, *no*, I *don't* want a police officer to be no better at working through this situation (physically *or* mentally) than the average random reader on Twitter. He's being paid—including with a generous future pension—to be *infinitely* better at this than any of us.

(PS25) Notice I *haven't* said this is a simple case. I *haven't* said showing a still image of Toledo with his hands up is more fair than showing an image of him with a gun in his hand. It's not.

I'm saying that both I and Paterrico know better than what Patterico is shoveling.

(NOTE) The time from the officer opening his door to firing the shot is 23 seconds, so to be clear when I said "half a minute" I was referring to when he got the call describing the situation—which may actually have been slightly more than half a minute before the shot was fired.

(NOTE2) I also want to add that there's *much* more evidence that the officer was seeing what was happening in front of him when he fired the shot than in the moment the still image Patterico prefers was taken. Note that the officer shouts "Stop it!" as he's firing his weapon.

(NOTE3) In other words Patterico says the officer had better vision on the situation—and registered more of it—as he was just ceasing to run and raising his gun than he did 838 milliseconds later as he was staring down the suspect. That "Stop it!" is a huge problem for Patterico.

(NOTE4) If I were a prosecutor at this trial—God forbid; I never want to be anything but a public defender—I'd make sure the jury knew the officer's sequential commands before firing were "Show me your fucking hands!", then (as Toledo showed empty hands) "Stop it!" Then he fired.

(NOTE5) So 13 year-old Adam Toledo was killed, in summary, because he stopped running when told to do so, dropped his gun when told to do so, put his hands up when told to do so, then refused to "Stop it!"—a command that *referred to nothing*, but was used to justify killing him.