The cop who killed Shaver was fired. But he will receive a disability pension for the rest of his life because he claims he has post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Arizona Republic reports that the town of Mesa, Arizona, reached an $8 million settlement last week with the widow of Daniel Shaver. Shaver is the unarmed man who was fatally shot while crawling down a hallway on his hands and knees toward police officers, begging them not to shoot him.
In January 2016, Mesa police responded to a report of a man pointing a rifle out of a hotel window. It was in fact Shaver showing a pellet gun that he used at his exterminator job to a couple other hotel guests in his room.
Police ordered Shaver out of the hotel room and onto the ground, with his hands behind his head. But instead of handcuffing Shaver, officers—bizarrely—started barking confusing and contradictory orders at him to crawl toward them. As a clearly terrified and drunk Shaver tried to crawl toward the police, he appeared to reach toward his waistband to pull up his sagging shorts. A Mesa officer, Philip Mitchell Brailsford, shot Shaver five times with an AR-15, killing him.
The incident was part of a string of deadly police shootings of unarmed men caught on camera, including the killings of Philando Castille and Michael Slager. Shaver’s death brought national media attention and bipartisan outrage to Mesa. As David French wrote in National Review, “I have seen soldiers deal with al Qaeda terrorists with more professionalism and poise.”
This is the second large lawsuit settlement Mesa has paid out for Shaver’s death. According to the Arizona Republic, the town paid Shaver’s parents $1.5 million in a separate lawsuit.
In 2017, a jury acquitted Brailsford of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter. This is because juries are instructed to judge officers not by how a normal civilian would respond, but by how a reasonable police officer is trained to respond to a threat, real or imagined. As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum wrote, the acquittal showed that cops on trial benefit from a double standard: “Unlike ordinary citizens, they can kill with impunity as long as they say they were afraid, whether or not their fear was justified.”
The Justice Department began investigating the shooting in 2018, but there has been no update on the case since then.
Brailsford was fired from the Mesa Police Department for violating department policy. At the time, Reason‘s Scott Shackford offered readers a friendly wager: “Would anybody care to bet that he tries either to get his job back in Mesa or to get a job with another law enforcement agency elsewhere?”
Shackford collected his imaginary winnings two years later. Brailsford indeed challenged his termination, and in response, the city cut a special deal that allowed him to be temporarily re-hired so he could retire with medical benefits and a disability pension. Brailsford claimed that killing Shaver and his subsequent prosecution gave him post-traumatic stress disorder. Because of this, he will receive a monthly pension check of $2,569.21 for the rest of his life, courtesy of Mesa taxpayers.
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How hard would it be to find Brailsford and have a “talk” with him? Oh, who am I kidding. Drag his ass out to the desert, skin him, and leave his sorry ass for the buzzards.
It took me a minute to realize that is an evidence tag.
Look closely, the cop had the words “You’re Fucked” written on his service weapon. Can we agree this was somewhat premeditated?
Cowboy cops!
But scared and jumpy as rabbits.
Haven’t heard from Stfckr in a good while. He loved this story and thought the guy deserved to get shot.
I used this example just yesterday of the only police shooting I’ve seen more egregious than the piece of shit San Antonio criminal who blew up the kid eating a cheeseburger in the McDonald’s parking lot. That vile cur was just indicted for ag assault (which, as a public servant carries a maximum of life in prison) and attempted murder. Those are the correct charges.
But the bloodthirsty dog who shot the kid on all fours got off because the fucking JURY was not permitted to see the video of the incident.
I have absolutely no problem with clean law enforcement use of deadly force. It’s needed now more than ever. But these two cockroaches both deserve a very slow and very painful death. Most especially the cockroach owner of that AR.
See this is why we need killer robots. Avoid the lifelong PTSD payments to full on pieces of garbage. They’ll still shoot unarmed people though. Think of the climate savings.
proves the man had no real friends because the cop is still alive.
Maybe his family is very patient.
But probably not.
There are members of my own family I despise, but if they went under similar circumstances, the answer would already have come. I have no patience with things like this. There would have been no trial.
I saw the video of him being murdered by the cop. It is a travesty of justice that he wasn’t convicted and placed in general population.
I saw that video too, and it is very disturbing. The widow, who had to watch her husband grovel and be exterminated, should have had a settlement of $80 million. The cop should have earned a long prison sentence.
Yes. Eight mil is light.
Eighty would have been proper.
All Alex has to do is say he didn’t die, and boom. 8 billion for the widow and 30 billion for the “poor officer” and another 15 billion for the officers therapist.
>>>I saw that video too, and it is very disturbing.
Anyone who hasn’t seen that video needs to watch it.
I have a cop in my family who is a pretty reasonable guy… yet he saw nothing “illegal” in the shooting. It seems that if any degree of anxiety even crosses the mind of a police officer, it’s OK if he shoots the cause of said fear. I’ve never been a cop (or military), but it strikes me that the notion of a cop’s subjective anxiety giving him the license to kill is absurd.
The Shaver killing wasn’t Murder 1, but it sure as Hell was a crime – “negligent homicide” perhaps.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shaver+shooting+arizona
Premeditation is a requirement for all departments. They literally ask you if you are ok with taking a life in the course of duty. If that isnt premeditation then fuck it.
Hell, 19th century philosphers and some early 20th century philosophers would have field days with all the idiot cops murdering people that are unarmed then crying foul on their mental states after the shootings.
Fucken ROE on some deployments was waiting to be shot at before returning fire. Do the math.
Fuckboy should have been gutted and quartered after that execution he performed.
ZFG, out.
P.S. I do hope he has legitimate posy traumatic stress and I hope he dies a slow, painful death from what he did to that man.
Sadly, the tax payers are paying both sides of this.
Not that $2569.21/month is the lottery.
The town is going to pay the 8 million? Pretty sure it’s the taxpaying homeowners of that desert wadi who are going to be shelling out the payoff. I love how they make it sound like the town is some kind of Daddy Warbucks in these cases, like it just has to find the right checkbook in the credenza and scribble out a few lines with his Montblanc.
Meanwhile the residents of Cactus Verde Circle are suddenly paying 20K per year for a stucco rancher on 1/4 acre lot you can’t walk across barefoot.
Nice.
Reporting of settlements such as this often include the feel good “but most of the settlement will be paid by insurance”. As if the dumb shit “journalist” has not a clue about where insurance companies get the money to pay claims?
That fucken shit bag pig that shot him is still a free man. There is no justice for the man he murdered.
ZFG, out.
P.S. fuck stain cops and a shit justice system is how revenge killings come about.
First the citizens are victimized by being stolen from to pay for the monopoly goon squad, then they are victimized by the goon squad, then victimized again when they are forced to pay for the criminal actions of the goon squad, and apparently also when they are forced to pay for the criminal from the goon squad’s disability. Boy government services are wonderful.
Gotta be in the club.
and they’re FREE!!!!
So, if he happens to get offed by some.random feral street thug, will the taxpayers be off the hook for this POS?
Well … the folks in Mesa, AZ, should be lucky that they didn’t have to host BoyGeorge Floyd … or they’d have been on the hook for the $27+ million that his folks got when he OD’d on fentanyl and several other drugs in combination and committed SBC …
So the “cops”justification is a hypothetical based on a hypothetical!……not in most courts…….
And once again where are the states Attorneys General making sure the cops are following the law?….that IS THEIR JOB !not the state sanctioned ambulance chaser!…..
it is not often that i agree w/our old buddy anarchist ,who i suspect is either in a home or at room temperature but he did have a good idea about these situations —
when govt has to pay a settlement or verdict b/c of leo misconduct it should come out of the leo’s general retirement fund–
the other guys know who the bad apples are but it is just like any other job,nobody wants to snitch on their buddies –
i’m no fan of the shooter but i believe that the sergeant was as much or more culpable –he knew it too b/c he was very close to retirement & as soon as he hit his date he quit & boogied out of the country —
4 those of you who have watched the video,it was the sarge who was barking out all the orders,not the shooter —
the shooter was on a knifes edge & imo the tension got to him & he shot –the sarge could have had a couple of the other guys restrain shaver a couple of minutes b4 the shooting —
it would be interesting to hear what all you leo s on here think about it —
The kid on his knees was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought and had become INCAPABLE of following orders at that point. Frankly, a kick to the head would have been ugly and maybe questionable, but in that scenario borderline excusable. What happened instead was the inexcusable slaughter of an unarmed citizen.
Moreover, I would prosecute and imprison any cop in the country who defaced his duty weapon with words like what GNL posted above — presuming that is in fact the weapon used to murder the unarmed citizen.
And then the settlement would come entirely from the department’s allocated funds.
And yet again the only people who will suffer for this….aside from Shaver’s family….are the long suffering taxpayers
who must YET AGAIN foot the bill for the criminal incompetence of the badgemonkeys.
So long as we continue to staff law enforcement with psychopaths this sort of thing will continue to happen.
75 years ago, law enforcement shootings were relatively rare. That was before the militarization of police and the hiring of ex military psychopaths who are in this profession because they are attracted to violence.