Julian Lewis didn’t pull over for the Georgia State Patrol cruiser flashing its blue lights behind him on a rural highway. He still didn’t stop after pointing a hand out the window and turning onto a darkened dirt road as the trooper sounded his siren.
Five minutes into a pursuit that began over a broken taillight, the 60-year-old Black man was dead — shot in the forehead by the white trooper who fired a single bullet mere seconds after forcing Lewis to crash into a ditch. Trooper Jake Thompson insisted he pulled the trigger as Lewis revved the engine of his Nissan Sentra and jerked his steering wheel as if trying to mow him down.
“I had to shoot this man,” Thompson can be heard telling a supervisor on video recorded by his dash-mounted camera at the shooting scene in rural Screven County, midway between Savannah and Augusta. “And I’m just scared.”
But new investigative details obtained by The Associated Press and the never-before-released dashcam video of the August 2020 shooting have raised fresh questions about how the trooper avoided prosecution with nothing more than a signed promise never to work in law enforcement again. Use-of-force experts who reviewed the footage for AP said the shooting appeared to be unjustified.
I was scared when I was a 19 year old doing a patrol through Sadr City in 2003, while manning the .50 cal and having dozens of kids suddenly show up and throwing rocks at me. Did I waste them even though I would have been justified because it wasn’t uncommon that patrols would go through markets and peopled start throwing produce and mix a grenade in?
No. Because I was well trained and realized that life is precious. And I was dealing with those rocks a lot longer than 1.6 seconds.
If the cops want to be militarized, they should be bound by the UCMJ and face the same consequences.
How dare you advocate for destroying the entire police force!
/s… Cause that’s what would happen. I’m pretty sure more than half would quit outright if they thought there was a possibility they’d see consequences for their actions.
Just one example https://voiceofsandiego.org/2022/10/04/police-union-says-sdpd-officers-are-quitting-because-of-oversight-commission-that-doesnt-exist-yet/
Because I was well trained
Well you see, many of these cops joined the force because they would’ve flunked or did flunk basic.
Yea, but I’m betting you had more training than this clown. Maybe the cops need more than a couple weeks before they are given the power of a firearm, maybe I’m crazy.
He had plenty of training. He PIT the dude’s car, and shot him in the forehead 1.6 seconds after stopping his car. Lots of training went into that.
It’s just the wrong training.
Very, very little training
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-training-requirements-by-country
Your restraint shows a great deal of character. I don’t know I’d have the same fortitude in the same situation.
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Oh man. My first IED was very strange. We were driving on what we called route kill zone, and there was some traffic. And then we came to an overpass and seemingly everyone else took the off ramp. Came out the other side and just blammo. I saw the vehicle in front of me get pushed a lane over and then disappear into smoke and dust. I locked up the brakes so I wouldn’t smash into them.
Turned out there was a sniper down the road and a can full of guys with RPGs on the bridge behind us. But we had no casualties or significant vehicle damage, so they apparently dipped. We hightailed it to a rally point that was literally 500 meters from where the attack happened. Front vehicle thought we were the ones that got hit.
“And I’m just scared”.
Maybe it’s time to increase Georgia’s police basic training up from ten weeks to maybe eleven or even twelve! Source: https://www.trainingreform.org/state-police-training-requirements
The fact that there isn’t a minimum of 2 years classroom work before they even get a ride along is fucking ridiculous.
As a German, the contrast in education and training for police is unfathomable. Yes, we still have a problem with some cops being Nazis, but cops don’t kill people because “I was scared” here. They usually kill them after an act of terrorism that killed a lot more people, or if they had a standoff for like 2h and the guy has a gun.
Which absolutely is the better way.
But ofc, banning guns is really helpful in the first place, because wouldn’t you know, banning a killing device rapidly decreases the amount of killings. Funny how that works. I would even argue it’s cause and effect and not just coincidental.
It’s worse than that here. There’s a famous “police trainer” who spends his time giving seminars to officers all over the country telling them they have to have a “warrior mindset” and not only is it okay to kill, they should do it first before they get killed. It’s not proper training, it’s a fear cult indoctrination. Given that cops are - apparently required - to not be the brightest, it results in the horrible situation we have.
Which. Is not helpful.
There’s a lot of them and, extremely unsurprisingly, they are right-wing lunatics themselves.
A good example of the brainwashing that comes out of these seminars was the cop who heard an acorn drop on his car and then immediately fell to the ground claiming he was shot before unloading his entire pistol into the back of his squad car where a suspect was sitting handcuffed.
Then they’d have to pay them more.
There’s still tons of places that police, firefighters, and EMT’s, like $35k a year starting. Everyone always talks about teachers not making enough, but forgets about the people who show up in 5 minutes in the middle of the night because you called 911 and have no idea what to do and need to get help fast. Firefighters and emts are exploited because of a love of the job and what it means to them. Police are often not of that same track. If you don’t want to just attract the guy who wants to walk around looking for trouble and have a gun, you’ll have to make it worth the money.
Oh trust me, I’m well aware how shit most (non cop) first responders have it. Round my neck of the woods, cops start at around 60k will full benefits. That’s still damn good money here, and they go up quickly.
Our firefighters don’t even make minimum wage. They finally just got a pension. Our EMS hardly makes more than minimum wage.
This got to be a joke ?
You can read it - no joke.
Already happening. Required training hours were roughly doubled a couple of weeks ago effective Jan 1:
That said, this was a state trooper. GSP have long been known for a culture of cowboy recklessness and special treatment codified into law. They report up directly to the Governor and are explicitly excluded from many of the restrictions put on local police (the moniker God’s Special People has been around for decades for a reason). They are one of the few major agencies in the state that still refuses to use body cameras, for example.
Institutionally, it’s a group set up to be and that views itself as special enforcers that are above the restraints put on others. GSP is routinely involved in high speed pursuits that end in either a fatal accident or a shooting.
More training is always a good thing, but I’ll just say I was unsurprised a trooper was involved here.
For Bacon, Lewis’ son, the lack of charges is an open wound. He worries no one will remember what happened given the passage of almost four years — and the number of others killed by police under questionable circumstances.
At this point, the damage is done. A child has to grow up without his father. They had the trooper in jail for 100 days, paid the Bacon family 4.5 million, and only agreed not to prosecute the trooper because he signed a pledge to never work in law enforcement again. So they know he F-ed up, but what’s with the slap on the wrist for the trooper? He shot this black man in the forehead, 1.6 seconds after stopping his patrol car. I don’t even understand why he got out of his car so quick after successfully pitting the guys car. The guys car is perpendicular to the road, in a ditch, with your squad car behind it. Why are you jumping out with your gun drawn? God, you’d think he’d be jumping out to make sure the driver was OK, but nope.
Someone driving intoxicated should be punished, not murdered.
He was jumping to make sure the driver wasn’t okay.
I really don’t get why people don’t start shooting police. As I understand it guns are allowed to “defend yourself against the government”. Police is the government and they clearly are out of control shooting people.
So either use your weapons against the government or make guns illegal if you don’t use them anyway.
So in the end there are less cops which in return means less people shot dead by cops or cops are less scared because people don’t have guns and so they also don’t get shot by cops.
What I am saying is: either use your guns or make them illegal if you don’t use them anyway.
Most people don’t wanna kill each other. And shooting back is probably going to raise the likelihood of getting murdered (i don’t have any source for this). That said it is still absurd how the police flagrantly disregard peoples liberties, extra judicially execute them and get away with it with impunity. The societal contract is dead.
In my opinion shooting back raises the likelihood of getting out alive as you are not just a sitting duck.
And I to think people generally don’t want to murder. But what people want more than not to kill is to not be killed.
So use your gun or lose your gun. Doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Okay, you just killed a cop. What do you think happens next? Do you think its over and done with, just go home for the day? No, you are, at best, going to be arrested and put on trial for murder. It doesn’t matter if you were justified or not. And when they arrest you, it will be at gun point. So, will you let them arrest you at gun point or will you start shooting the police again?
You’re also assuming your some badass who will walk away without getting shot also or in any way injured. Not to mention the emotional toll of killing someone has on most people.
You drive in the garage and give the stolen car a new paint job, and then you are back to zero stars.
Was it GTA we were talking about or real life?
The alternative is you’re dead …did u not read the story?
Okay so why have guns then for the average person when they don’t get used to defend themselves against the governing forces at hand? Shooting at random adults and children is okay but shooting cops is over the line?
Shoot governing forces or ban guns is my point. And everybody replaying just ignores the ban guns part.
How old are you?
You’re assuming that the cops percieve you as a threat and are guaranteed to kill you no matter what you do. I won’t deny that’s happened but its very far from the norm. In a lot of cases the cops are stupid, or negligent or scared and prematurely react without foresight. Add a civillian possessing a gun and and flagrantly threatening to use it and you turn a situation that could be disarmed into a inevitable violent conflict.
The problem is escalation. You fire your shots in self defence, they back off an extra 50’ and call in a “shots fired, officer needs assistance” call and suddenly 4 APCs, 20 cruisers and 2 helicopters are surrounding you. Cue sounds of 50 cal freedom suppressors being fired. And because you shot at them even though by the time its all over your body looks like a pile of spaghetti the shooting will be justified with barely a hearing involved.
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Even if you get away with shooting the one cop, now the rest of the gang wants blood.
People saying why it doesn’t happen. Tbh it might start getting this way, if there is no democratic answer to this constant injustice people are going to start shooting back. It’s only going to get worse with the constant militarization of cops.
At that point the people who shoot back will be labeled terrorist and the cops will just get worse and more people will become “terrorists”
I’m all about an eye for an eye at this point. Let his family hunt him down like the feral pig he is.
The answer to hate and murder? You guessed it! More hate and murder. I get the feeling but this is a really bad take if honest.
Civilizations lived by this idea for millennia
Civilizations strived on slavery aswell.
Maybe it is what some want for society, but i for sure do not. It is the other side of them same coin that has trigger happy and violent cops gunming down people.
Maybe i don’t get it because i am not american.
So you sympathize with slave owners and pigs. Gotcha
Branding cops as pigs is unfair toward those very intelligent and social animals.
If you think feeling the urge to kill anyone makes you a decent person you should think again.
Violence has it’s use and i see situations where violence against the authorities is warranted but even then i will loathe those who revell in it. Like those people out for revenge. Understandable emotion, despicable act.
Welp, if Butch Cassidy over there can’t be a police person anymore, maybe karma will catch up to him & he’ll catch a hot cop slug in the forehead for no good reason too.
Fuck that cop, but also, the guy was stupid enough to not pull over. He didn’t deserve death, but I bet he could have avoided death had he just done what he was legally obligated to do.
I’m very curious to see how many downvotes this rationale will get.
Stupidity shouldn’t result in death. And not following the law also shouldn’t result in death as long as lives aren’t actively endangered.
Aside from that, chasing the guy over a broken light was pretty dumb of the cop. Noncooperative vehicles are a BIG hazard to other traffic. Write down the number plate, visit them at home. The taillight will still be broken tomorrow.
We both know he was using the broken tail light as probable cause for a stop. He wanted him to pull over because he suspected he was drunk or on drugs or simply because he was black with a broken tail light.
As soon as the man didn’t pull over the cop got his hackles up and now he was definitely going to stop him. Escalation is the way with cops.
Nice whataboutism! Of course he should have stopped but that’s not even close to the point and fuck you for trying to make it the point when a man was murdered. You’re a bad person
You’re not entirely wrong, the guy should have stopped. A good cop, however, would’ve been able to handle the situation without firing his damn gun.
I was taught by a cop during drivers ed that you should wait to pull over until it is safe for both you and the cop, since the cop has to walk along the side of the road to come to you. Slow down and turn on your emergency lights to signal to the cop that you acknowledge, but then wait until there is a gas station or safe exit from the highway.
I’ve had cops yell at me for doing that and other cops thank me for doing that.
Don’t stop the moment a cop tells you? Death.
Seems reasonable and proportionate to me.
In Judge Dredd.
So it turns out that racially insensitive victim blaming and bootlicking is worth at least a few dozen downvotes. Congratulations?
What I said is true. The people downvoting need to examine themselves for the flaw in their thinking. And you’re a racist if you read any racism in what I said since I never mentioned race.
