I don’t know if the shooting was justified. If we assume that the cops are telling the truth that the kid had a gun in his right hand when he popped out from between the dumpsters, I think it was justified. I want to see the full bodycam footage to make sure there is a gun next to the kid on the ground when they go up to him after the shooting, but that’s my first reaction seeing the video. The bodycam footage shows the applicable part, but it is too fuzzy for me to see anything other than a vague blotch of pixels that the cops are saying was a gun of an unusual color. Basically whether or not the kid had a gun at that point and the cop is telling the truth about why he reacted like he did is the key issue there.

Regardless of that, running over the cop was unjustified. For one thing, he wasn’t even from the same department. For another thing, this never helps.

I get it. Any father in that situation would react like that, on some level. It honestly doesn’t even really matter if his son was “guilty” or not. I can’t even imagine. I get it. But this will not make justice, it won’t make the police behave, it won’t motivate politics or mass opinion to sympathize with your side and make things better. It will give ammunition for the next ten years for anyone who wants the police to be able to do the same to you.