There's a link Link Removed of the radio transmissions that it doesn't seem anyone is taking into account.
1) First officer assigned the call is informed right off the bat that it was the kid's dad who made the report and the dispatcher informed him that it was a "he got mad and took off" kind of family dispute call.
2) At 3:05 of the linked audio, another voice not that of the dispatcher's says, "If he's that reckless....coming into the college area, why don't you back off." This male voice can be heard over a siren, presumably one of the units now involved in the chase communicating with the lead vehicle. That transmission was not even acknowledged by anyone in the chase, and it continued "Southbound on Wallace."
3) 3:52: Another transmission male voice says, "We know the suspect, so we can probably back it off." No audio of this transmission being acknowledged either.
4) Only two out of six shots fired hit the kid on a crowded campus. The chase had ended. The cop who fired had ignored advice twice to back off due to pedestrian safety concerns. Where did the other four shots go? If the chase had been backed off from, those four bullets would not have had the opportunity to injure or kill more kids on a college campus. Would the evaluations of it being a "good shoot" be the same if one (or more) of those strays had found a flesh-and-bone target?
5) Today in Ames, IA, it is apparently a death penalty offense to have "...revved the engine and refused orders to turn it [the truck] off." That is what the Des Moines Register says happened. Nothing about trying to ram the cops again, he just revved the engine, which by the way, suggests to me that the truck wasn't even in gear. Conjecture about another attempted ramming of the cop car(s) in order to exonerate a cop for opening fire over what he knew at the time started as a relatively minor family dispute seems completely out of place here.
It's possible that the Register edited out whatever acknowledgement of the "back off" transmissions that may have taken place. Perhaps such acknowledgements, if they happened at all, would offer an explanation for why it was imperative to continue the chase onto a crowded college campus and then open fire on a kid revving his engine, but for the life of me, I can't imagine what "public safety" premise such an explanation would consist of.
I will never understand how people can jump to the defense of cops who open fire on unarmed suspects and kill them. Especially a cop who knew that the kid just had a minor argument with his dad and, given time to cool down, the situation would've most likely resolved itself before the day was over. I mean, if there's going to be conjecture about this killing, why not let it enure to the benefit of a dead kid instead of the trigger happy cop that killed him?
Blues