CHICAGO — In decades past, police officers who shot suspects as they ran away were more likely to expect praise than criminal charges. And while the legal landscape and public opinion have shifted in recent years, it’s never a certainty that such shootings will result in officer indictments.
Prosecutors moved quickly to charge a white officer with criminal homicide Wednesday in last week’s death of an unarmed black teenager who was shot in the back while fleeing a traffic stop near Pittsburgh. In Georgia, another white police officer accused of fatally shooting a black man who was running away was fired and jailed.
In two other fatal police shootings — on Monday in Galveston, Texas, and on Saturday in Minneapolis — it remains to be seen whether charges will come. Those shootings also involved people who were running away.
A look at some of the history and legal principles behind such cases:
via Shot in the back: When can police fire on fleeing suspects? — Chicago Sun-Times
We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident 
Must they shoot to kill? Maybe incapacitating the person than wilfully riddling them with bullets is a more sensible thing to do.
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Hi Jacqueline.
Law enforcement is trained to take down the “threat”. Once they pull the trigger, they are no longer shooting a human being but a “threat”. Leaving a “suspect” wounded is leaving a witness who can testify what they were thinking and doing. When they are dead, only the officer’s side of the story lives. There’s been a few cases where a “suspect” lived to tell their side of the story, but that is often because the officer’s aim was off and they were decent enough to stop shooting after realizing the “suspect” was unarmed and intended no harm.
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True. Dead men can’t talk.
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Jacqueline,
As they say in Wisconsin when agreeing, “There ya go”.
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I wish folks who are so adamant about protecting the 2nd Amendment worried about those whose rights are violated under the 4th and 5th Amendments.
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Mindyme,
Preach!
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