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Originally Posted by secretsquirrel
I agree. But what cop doesn't say "he went for my gun"? Lets assume (for arguments sake that he "went for his gun". You have a right to defend yourself and shoot when during a struggle, but you don't have a right (or shouldn't) after that person runs away. An unarmed man is no longer a threat enough to use deadly force. Of course, this is assuming that he "went for his gun".
Its possible that the law does warrant a cop to shoot a person running away, but "moral law" dictates that you don't kill a man when he is no longer a threat. It similar to the fact that you can kill a man for running out of your yard with a stolen TV in Texas, but that doesn't make it right.
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I agree that someone who is retreating is a diminishing threat, not worthy of increasing force. However, as the scientific forensic evidence irrefutably proves, Brown's entry wounds were not in his back, they were in his front. Therefore, he was not running away when he was shot, he was turned around, and re-engaging / re-approaching the officer.
Struggling for a cops gun is a REALLY stupid thing to do, you might as well hold a sign that says, "I'm going to react in the most unreasonable, unpredictable, and dangerous way possible."
Having set that tone, at that point you cannot expect to be treated like a typical suspect for petty theft or anything.
You can't expect the cop to let you just leave without consequence. At that point, he had basically sealed his own fate. Even a black officer, who understood what it's like to be unfairly harassed as a kid, would be on the highest level of alert possible. A stress that most of us probably can't imagine.
If I was watching a tape of that encounter, and you paused it as Brown started to retreat, and asked me what happens next, honestly I would say, the guy is probably gonna be shot if he does anything but freeze with his hands in the air, and his back to the cop, in a least threatening posture possible. That would be true even if he was a white guy.