Like I said yesterday.
Ex-FBI agent Stu Kaplan stated that ICE agents are bound by Customs and Border Protection use-of-force policy, which explicitly prohibits placing oneself in front of or behind a moving vehicle, except during limited inspection scenarios. He said this policy exists precisely because people may flee during stops.
He argued the agent violated that policy by stepping into the vehicle’s path, thereby manufacturing an exigent circumstance. In Kaplan’s view, the danger was created by the officer’s own actions, not by an intentional attack by the driver.
Kaplan emphasized that flight is foreseeable and legally anticipated behavior during law-enforcement encounters. Courts, including the Supreme Court, have recognized that officers must plan for the possibility of flight rather than positioning themselves in a way that turns flight into a deadly-force scenario.
He noted that the video shows the driver attempting to turn away, not drive toward the agent, and that the agent began drawing his weapon immediately as the car moved, despite having placed himself in harm’s way.
Absent evidence that the woman posed an immediate violent threat such as a prior violent felony or an attempt to use the car as a weapon, Kaplan said deadly force was not justified to stop a fleeing suspect for what appeared to be, at most, misdemeanor conduct.
His conclusion was that, despite being strongly pro-law-enforcement, this incident may constitute a “bad shoot” because the officer violated policy and then relied on a danger he helped create to justify lethal force.
Mike