There's a "Yeah, but... " present though.
Hate to say this pal but you are pulling a Jean Chretien and talking out of both sides of your face.
On one hand you are saying that a skinny little accountant, alone with his pregnant wife and toddler son who had already noticed two, as yet unknown, two scruffy people approaching them , one standing 6'4" and 300 lbs wearing a mask... in a vacant underground garage late at night "with purpose") should waste potentially valuable seconds, drop whatever protection the closed window might provide... to confront or otherwise engage with who they could reasonable already formed and are reacting with some level of uncertainty if not outright fear. and recite some perfunctory statement? And issue a threat of their already formulated plan of aggravated assault? And sorry, but unless they were in a gull wing Mercedes, Tesla or Lambo how are they going to knock down anyone at the drivers door?
But yeah, I can see how some criminal or aggressively panhandling junkie pair are going to pee their pants or apologized over that threat.
Fuck that!
As I said elsewhere. About the ONLY thing that I am afraid of is CRAZY people. They are the most dangerous ones.
FIRST rule of personal safety when dealing with anyone who you feel is acting crazy or otherwise in a threatening manner is to NOT ENGAGE with them. You cannot reason with them. Engaging only opens the door to further encourage them to continue the encounter. That's why for example, touts and other street creatures often come up and try to engage in some opening conversation. IGNORE THEM. And don't make eye contact even with what may appear to be benignly metally compromised street people. Yes, it could seem uncaring and cruel but if you make eye contact with them, they may see that as a threat of challenge
Since when have potential robbery victims have the obligation to communicate their potential defence strategy with potential assailants, robbers, car jackers?
I'll tell you when. NEVER!
Might I remind you that sophisticated, organized crime carjackings and high end vehicle thefts are a major crime crisis then and to this day.
And defense counsel said in his opening statement that the family said they were afraid because the memory of a family of hijab wearing Muslims was run down by a nice innocent looking 21 year old white nationalist terrorist in a pickup truck in London not even a month prior.
But let's turn this around to the professions, trained in public interactions.
There is no accusation that the defendant had any intention, motive nor even mens rea to kill a police officer. Everything seems to point to him not thinking they were police... including the spontaneous utterance of the wife.
So it may be reasonable to assume that the police officers' attempt to communicate that they were police and posed no threat to the family was inadequate to say the least. That is if you take them at their potentially shaded testimony that they only considered the family as a witness, not the bearded brown man as a suspect resembling the actual stabbing suspect the police had summoned all hands on deck to look for? Cops were called in off other assignments to flood the area. The miniivan was zooming around the parking lot already, looking for the suspect.
Mebbee they are covering their tracks by not admitting they did consider him a suspect? Maybe they approached him in a manner consistent with how you would approach a potentially dangerous suspect? "With purpose"? Agressively, stealthily, catch him by surprise before he could take out a weapon?
How many times has a young black man wearing a hoodie been agressivelytaken down'detained' because he resembles a hot suspect at large?
So, I'd say that the driver had no obligation to lay out his defensive plans in a threat, and the police failed in their actions to clearly communicate they were police and posed no threat to the family.
That's the needlessly dead cop. That's the reason you make the accused take those extra steps.
If there was no dead cop, the accused could have booted it out of there and no one would say anything negative.
Even if you call BS on me I hope it was fun and exciting to read as it was for me to remember!
is the Real McCoy.
But from pre-amalgamation days. You can still buy them all over the place.
