I wonder under what circumstances a LEA is allowed to use excessive force against a civilian, I mean even if she was trying to stop a investigation which I don't see it does that give LEA to use force like shooting or maybe like trying to avoid that? I mean we can see the officer took the video of number plate which they can run and find out who that person is, I've recently created my account on DMV in Florida and I ordered car registration, all I had to do was logged in and put my license plate and all my information came right away, which means LEA must've that information too right?
I cannot answer that for everyone; each department has different guidelines and SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). I can only refer to my old PD, and what I know is that Federal LE had a more tightened SOP than us.
For my department, use of force (I mean deadly force) is the last resort; as is if you don't use force there are life and limb (yours or others) involved that require to that level, in this case, you would have to consider if the car is going to hit you or if the car is going to hit somebody else, not until you have run out of all possible solutions before you can use deadly force, for me, if I fail to retreat from a sticky situation, that's on me, not on the person who created that situation. Also, someone pointed out DHS (what ICE under) policy is you cannot discharge your weapon solely to stop someone from fleeing, so it's not going to be good enough for the agent to claim she is getting away, it has to be her car line up at a path, either to him or someone else and he cannot get away in time, then the use of force is allowed.
First of all, you don't EVER create a dangerous sitaution by running in front of a moving vehicle, you don't stop people from driving off by standing in front of it, that's why LE in my department were taught if you are doing a traffic stop, you go either from the passenger side (recommended) or the driver side (If there are hazard in the passenger side) if I know someone will drive off and I stand in front of the vehicle on purpose, like you see in many TV show, that's actually no allowed and there are court case saying this is not allowed.
Second, you don't pull people over without probable cause, if someone is blocking the road, you can't even search the vehicle because that is not a probable cause for anything other than a moving violation, it's the same thing as speeding, I mean you don't have cop pull you over for speeding then proceed to yank out your door and get you out of the vehicle, right? That alone would not even be able to be a reason to search her vehicle, let alone detaining and arresting her, in my PD SOP, you get out of the vehicle, ask her to move, if she does not, issue her a ticket, and call a tow.
Finally, the deadly force used has to be proportional, and you have to consider all circumstances, whether or not this is the only option is number 1. and what about the other people, would that be an issue if I fire my weapon, you don't just go do a shootout and discount all the people around, it's not how it done, you need to make sure there is a clear line of sight, and there are no obstruction, which in this case, you can see from the video, there are agents and pedestrian all around the vehicle, it's very dangerous to shoot at that situation.
So, in this case, this is undoubtedly in my mind a bad shoot, which means this should not have happened, but it did, he could have just asked her to move and stand far away from the car, or he could have just back off and issue her a ticket afterward, this is what we called "multiple escalation" by the Law Enforcement agent in order to do his job, first, they try to detain her when they don't have to, and frankly not authorised to, and then by pulling the door handle, it escalate the sitution that she flee, and use of force happen, that is not how it goes in Law Enforcement, you only escalate when the subject escalate, so this is going to be a bad shoot, just how bad is it is the issue, because a good faith bad shoot (as in I don't know or anticapated it will get to that point but it did) will get you an administion punishment (Losing your job) or a lawsuit with your department, a bad faith bad shoot (as in I intentionally doing all this to provoke a shoot out) will get you a jail time, as I said before, I believe this is going to be the former, rather than the latter
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