BRPD has released new video from the July 5, 2016 shooting of Alton Sterling. It includes footage both from body cameras and security cameras. We’ll be discussing actions and tactics.

Like It Or Not, This Can Be a Training Event – So What Can We Learn?

This is a contentious event. A man is dead, an entire police department and its community (actually, the entire country) affected, and there is an ongoing debate about the righteousness of the shoot, the actions of the officers, the conduct of investigators and department administration afterward. Virtually all discussion is heated, sometimes past reason.

We’re not looking to continue that portion of the discussion. Nothing we, or you, say here will do much to mitigate the visceral nature of the event. We are looking to learn from what has already happened in order to affect what will without a doubt happen in the future. What we can do here is make an effort to break the entire event down clinically, as though it was a training event  — which in effect it is, or should be  — and ruthlessly, candidly, identify what we should keep and what we should throw away.

I’ll write more about the need for pragmatic, ego-less “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” in a future article. For now, let’s dissect this thing. Dispatch, the officers, the suspect, bystanders — what lessons can we learn, and how can we apply them?

We are not interested in stupid phraseology, memes, or simplistic drive-by comments. This includes police apologists, Alton Sterling apologists, or anyone who can’t be bothered to engage in beneficial discourse. Either make an intelligent, thought-provoking observation or fuck off to another site. 

Hic mortui vivos docent.

Security Camera Footage:

Body camera footage from Officer Lake.

Body Camera Footage from Officer Salamoni.