The average private citizen knows vanishingly little about the complexities involved in deadly force encounters. Self-defense is not something you can master from reading books or watching John Wick movies. It’s something you must experience, something that requires hands-on training. And yet, while looking at a screen from the comfort of their reclining chair, the average private citizen feels equipped to pass judgement on those who are forced to make split-second decisions—or risk being killed.
Think of it this way: have you ever looked at something and said “that’s easy!”—only to get wrecked when you tried it yourself? A humbling experience, right? That same humility should be a million times greater when judging those who are forced to make split second decisions or risk being killed. The Supreme Court agrees. The knowledge, training, and experience of an officer produce a unique perspective that qualifies an officer to make said decisions, and grants them expertise the average citizen simply does not possess. In United States v. Cortez (1981), a case involving Border Patrol officers and their justification for an investigative stop, the Court observed that, “[W]hen used by trained law enforcement officers, objective facts, meaningless to the untrained, allow for permissible deductions from such facts…” so that “a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions—inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person.” In other words, not all perspectives are created equal. A lack of training, knowledge, and experience can lead to uninformed or misinformed decisions and judgments by the general public.
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