Was it Reasonable Force or Outright Murder - Cops on Trial For Shooting Woman Armed with Claw Hammer скачать в хорошем качестве

Was it Reasonable Force or Outright Murder - Cops on Trial For Shooting Woman Armed with Claw Hammer

Melissa Perez, was a 46-year-old woman who was suffering a **schizophrenic episode**. She was killed by three San Antonio Police officers in 2023. They were fired. Her family sued. A federal magistrate dismissed their excessive force case. The state indicted all three for the killing. The sequence of events was as follows: Perez spoke to officers while they were outside her apartment. She then abruptly walked back into her apartment. One of the officers attempted to gain entry by reaching through a window to unlock a patio door. Perez came toward the officer, **wielding a hammer**. A verbal exchange followed, captured on body-worn cameras: the officer shouted, “You're going to get shot,” and Perez responded through the open window, “Shoot me". The officers’ stated motivation for deciding to enter was their claim that the hammer posed a **threat to Perez’s friend**, who was bedridden inside the apartment. According to details from the civil case: The officers discussed using **non-lethal weapons**. Instead of deploying non-lethal methods, they decided to try and *grab Perez* at a moment when she set the hammer down on a nearby couch. The actual shooting occurred after Perez **picked up the hammer and charged**. It is relevant to note the controversy surrounding the threat assessment: SAPD and prosecutors concluded that Perez did not pose a threat to the officers because there was a **locked glass door between them**. However, the federal magistrate judge in the later-dismissed civil case wrote that "the presence of a glass door between Perez and the Officer Defendants does not make the use of deadly force excessive".