A former Marine with the Richmond Police department in Ohio encountered a confrontation with a suspect on Thursday last week. This could have very likely ended in the death of someone, but amazingly the officer was able to calm the situation down, and the suspect surrendered.
I’m sure many police officers out there would have handled this entirely different.
Kidder told CNN about the experience:
“He jumped out and he sprinted towards me. I had my firearm already drawn on me, and I told him to put his hands up in the air and he was screaming as he was yelling, ‘Shoot me, shoot me.’”
CNN pointed out that the situation was likely a textbook case for the justified use of deadly force:
If there were a checklist for when it’s OK to shoot a suspect, Kidder could have ticked most of the boxes.
- Double homicide suspect, check.
- Possibly armed, check.
- Verbally threatening police, check.
- Refusing to remove hands from pockets, check.
- Charging at an officer, check.
Kidder told Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT the reasoning behind his decision not to pull the trigger:
“Law enforcement officers all across the nation deal with split-second decisions that mean life or death. I wanted to be absolutely sure before I used deadly force.”
CNN reports Officer Kidder’s family purchased the body camera for him to use at work, this was following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
Now, with this indisputable video evidence, New Richmond police chief Randy Harvey has plans to obtain cameras for all of his officers.
