UPS Hijacking: Did the Cops “Murder” UPS Driver?
By Attorney Andrew Branca / December 12, 2019
Based on my Twitter feed, a sizable chunk of the people reading this post will answer that question in the affirmative—to them it’s utterly obvious that the police in Florida yesterday murdered a UPS driver Here’s an example of the kind of tweet I’m talking about, this one posted by someone who normally presents as a rabid Second Amendment supporter:
If that’s what a purported 2A supporter believes, you can only imagine what the cop-hating Progressive left has to say about the UPS hijacking shootout.
First things first—my expertise is use-of-force law, and that’s what I’ll talk about here, as I do everywhere I comment on these kinds of cases. Meaning, I’m speaking only to those moments in which the police are actively engaged in making use-of-force decisions. It’s extremely important to distinguish between use-of-force decision-making on one hand, and what we’ll focus on here, and general public policy issues or police policies independent of use-of-force issues on the other.
Should the police even be engaging in high-speed pursuits, doesn’t that represent a threat to the public? That’s not a use-of-force question, that’s a public policy question, and we won’t address it here. Shouldn’t the police have earlier deployed a spike strip to disable the hijacked UPS van? That’s not a use-of-force question, that’s a police policy question, and we won’t address it here.
Note that I’m not saying that public policy and police policies questions are unimportant—they are very important, and worthy of discussion and debate and informed decision-making. These should be studied, and perhaps doing so would lead to a better outcome in the next similar event. So they’re not bad questions, they are good questions. I’m merely saying that they are NOT use-of-force questions.
In other words, they are NOT relevant to the use-of-force decision-making that the individual officers closing on that hijacked van with the kidnap victim were compelled to engage in. It is those use-of-force decisions that are the focus of today’s show.
Rarely mentioned in any of these tweets and posts so critical of the police conduct in this gunfight is what actually led to this inherently hazardous situation in which two violent, gun-armed felons, armed robbers/hijackers/kidnappers, who had already engaged in a gunfight earlier in these events, buried themselves in a crowd of innocent bystanders rather than comply with arrest, threatening the lives of dozens of people as well as the responding officers. Here they are:
That’s Ronnie Jerome Hill on the left and Lamar Alexander on the right. If you’re thinking that they appear to be wearing similar outfits, you’d be right about that—they’re both wearing prison garb, because these are their mugshots.
Wait, how could there be mugshots of a living Hill and Alexander, when they were killed yesterday before they could be arrested?
You’ll be shocked to learn, I’m sure, that this was not Hill and Alexander’s first encounter with the law as a result of engaging in criminally violent behavior. Both are reported to have extensive records of criminal violence.
Hill has (at a minimum) done an 8-month prison sentence for burglary—maybe it was YOUR home he violated?—and Alexander has (at a minimum) done a 10-year sentence for armed robbery (that’s robbery with a deadly weapon and/or threat of deadly force). Both of these fine upstanding members of the community were released from prison in 2017.
As an aside was their release (just 8 months for burglary?) another benefit of “prison reform”? Get ready, folks, we’re about to see a flood of similarly violent criminals released onto our streets in the name of “kindness.” Are you prepared to meet them? Do you have your gun? Do you know the law? As my friends Mike Seeklander and Rich Brown at the American Warrior Society put it: The fight is coming … are you ready?
I sure hope so.
It’s important to note the obvious fact that the fuse on this day of violence was not lit by the police officers who, in the performance of their duties, were chasing down these violent thugs. The fuse was lit by Hill and Alexander when they decided to arm themselves with guns (note that both of these miscreants are prohibited persons for whom gun possession is against the law, another great testament to how effective gun control laws are).
They then decided to take their illegally possessed guns and conduct an illegal (duh) armed robbery of a jewelry store. While these two fine upstanding citizens were engaged in deadly force armed robbery, a—SURPRISE!—gunfight erupted. One of the employees of the jewelry store was injured, and Hill and Alexander violently hijacked a UPS truck and kidnapped the driver to effect their escape.
Note that no police officers were involved in these two violent criminals arming themselves with guns, committing a botched armed robbery, hijacking a UPS truck, kidnapping the driver, and deciding to attempt a high-speed escape rather than submit to lawful arrest.
The police pursued the two violent armed robbers/hijackers/kidnappers with their victims, making repeated attempts to stop the UPS truck along crowded roads, without success.
Could the police at this point have simply decided to let the fleeing armed robbers go? I suppose so. And what would have been the lesson to every other armed robber who found their robbery botched and the police closing in? Hijack a vehicle and seize a hostage, and the police will let you go.
Sound like good public policy to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Ultimately the hijackers buried their stolen UPS truck, along with the kidnapped driver, into a crowd of dozens of vehicles containing innocent bystanders waiting at a traffic light. It was at this point that the gunfight erupted, resulting in the deaths of the violent criminals, the UPS driver, and an innocent bystander.
We’re still in the “fog of war” period of this event, of course, so there are many details we don’t know. Many are asking, “Well, who fired first? Was it the police? Or the hijackers? If it was the police, couldn’t they simply have been patient and waited the hijackers out?
From a legal perspective, none of those questions are really very important, and therefore neither are the answers to those questions.
The only relevant legal question relevant to whether the police use of deadly force during those moments when the UPS truck was stuck amongst those cars is this:
Did the officers who fired reasonably perceive that the hijackers presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to innocents? If the answer is yes, the police use of deadly force against the hijackers is justified.
And that’s true even if that police use of force incidentally endangers innocents, as well. Why? Because the alternative would require the police to almost never fire a shot to stop an imminent deadly force threat. Virtually every shot fired by police in any circumstance involves a speculative danger to innocent bystanders. Bullets miss. Bullets over-penetrate. Bullets ricochet. Shooting guns in a populated space is always dangerous to innocent people.
Could the officers have simply sat back and waited to see how things developed? Well, perhaps. But then what’s the lesson to every other hijacker? Make sure you bury yourself in a crowd of innocent bystanders so that you’ll have a better negotiating position with police.
-- Continued in next post --
By Attorney Andrew Branca / December 12, 2019
Based on my Twitter feed, a sizable chunk of the people reading this post will answer that question in the affirmative—to them it’s utterly obvious that the police in Florida yesterday murdered a UPS driver Here’s an example of the kind of tweet I’m talking about, this one posted by someone who normally presents as a rabid Second Amendment supporter:
If that’s what a purported 2A supporter believes, you can only imagine what the cop-hating Progressive left has to say about the UPS hijacking shootout.
First things first—my expertise is use-of-force law, and that’s what I’ll talk about here, as I do everywhere I comment on these kinds of cases. Meaning, I’m speaking only to those moments in which the police are actively engaged in making use-of-force decisions. It’s extremely important to distinguish between use-of-force decision-making on one hand, and what we’ll focus on here, and general public policy issues or police policies independent of use-of-force issues on the other.
Should the police even be engaging in high-speed pursuits, doesn’t that represent a threat to the public? That’s not a use-of-force question, that’s a public policy question, and we won’t address it here. Shouldn’t the police have earlier deployed a spike strip to disable the hijacked UPS van? That’s not a use-of-force question, that’s a police policy question, and we won’t address it here.
Note that I’m not saying that public policy and police policies questions are unimportant—they are very important, and worthy of discussion and debate and informed decision-making. These should be studied, and perhaps doing so would lead to a better outcome in the next similar event. So they’re not bad questions, they are good questions. I’m merely saying that they are NOT use-of-force questions.
In other words, they are NOT relevant to the use-of-force decision-making that the individual officers closing on that hijacked van with the kidnap victim were compelled to engage in. It is those use-of-force decisions that are the focus of today’s show.
Rarely mentioned in any of these tweets and posts so critical of the police conduct in this gunfight is what actually led to this inherently hazardous situation in which two violent, gun-armed felons, armed robbers/hijackers/kidnappers, who had already engaged in a gunfight earlier in these events, buried themselves in a crowd of innocent bystanders rather than comply with arrest, threatening the lives of dozens of people as well as the responding officers. Here they are:
That’s Ronnie Jerome Hill on the left and Lamar Alexander on the right. If you’re thinking that they appear to be wearing similar outfits, you’d be right about that—they’re both wearing prison garb, because these are their mugshots.
Wait, how could there be mugshots of a living Hill and Alexander, when they were killed yesterday before they could be arrested?
You’ll be shocked to learn, I’m sure, that this was not Hill and Alexander’s first encounter with the law as a result of engaging in criminally violent behavior. Both are reported to have extensive records of criminal violence.
Hill has (at a minimum) done an 8-month prison sentence for burglary—maybe it was YOUR home he violated?—and Alexander has (at a minimum) done a 10-year sentence for armed robbery (that’s robbery with a deadly weapon and/or threat of deadly force). Both of these fine upstanding members of the community were released from prison in 2017.
As an aside was their release (just 8 months for burglary?) another benefit of “prison reform”? Get ready, folks, we’re about to see a flood of similarly violent criminals released onto our streets in the name of “kindness.” Are you prepared to meet them? Do you have your gun? Do you know the law? As my friends Mike Seeklander and Rich Brown at the American Warrior Society put it: The fight is coming … are you ready?
I sure hope so.
It’s important to note the obvious fact that the fuse on this day of violence was not lit by the police officers who, in the performance of their duties, were chasing down these violent thugs. The fuse was lit by Hill and Alexander when they decided to arm themselves with guns (note that both of these miscreants are prohibited persons for whom gun possession is against the law, another great testament to how effective gun control laws are).
They then decided to take their illegally possessed guns and conduct an illegal (duh) armed robbery of a jewelry store. While these two fine upstanding citizens were engaged in deadly force armed robbery, a—SURPRISE!—gunfight erupted. One of the employees of the jewelry store was injured, and Hill and Alexander violently hijacked a UPS truck and kidnapped the driver to effect their escape.
Note that no police officers were involved in these two violent criminals arming themselves with guns, committing a botched armed robbery, hijacking a UPS truck, kidnapping the driver, and deciding to attempt a high-speed escape rather than submit to lawful arrest.
The police pursued the two violent armed robbers/hijackers/kidnappers with their victims, making repeated attempts to stop the UPS truck along crowded roads, without success.
Could the police at this point have simply decided to let the fleeing armed robbers go? I suppose so. And what would have been the lesson to every other armed robber who found their robbery botched and the police closing in? Hijack a vehicle and seize a hostage, and the police will let you go.
Sound like good public policy to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Ultimately the hijackers buried their stolen UPS truck, along with the kidnapped driver, into a crowd of dozens of vehicles containing innocent bystanders waiting at a traffic light. It was at this point that the gunfight erupted, resulting in the deaths of the violent criminals, the UPS driver, and an innocent bystander.
We’re still in the “fog of war” period of this event, of course, so there are many details we don’t know. Many are asking, “Well, who fired first? Was it the police? Or the hijackers? If it was the police, couldn’t they simply have been patient and waited the hijackers out?
From a legal perspective, none of those questions are really very important, and therefore neither are the answers to those questions.
The only relevant legal question relevant to whether the police use of deadly force during those moments when the UPS truck was stuck amongst those cars is this:
Did the officers who fired reasonably perceive that the hijackers presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to innocents? If the answer is yes, the police use of deadly force against the hijackers is justified.
And that’s true even if that police use of force incidentally endangers innocents, as well. Why? Because the alternative would require the police to almost never fire a shot to stop an imminent deadly force threat. Virtually every shot fired by police in any circumstance involves a speculative danger to innocent bystanders. Bullets miss. Bullets over-penetrate. Bullets ricochet. Shooting guns in a populated space is always dangerous to innocent people.
Could the officers have simply sat back and waited to see how things developed? Well, perhaps. But then what’s the lesson to every other hijacker? Make sure you bury yourself in a crowd of innocent bystanders so that you’ll have a better negotiating position with police.
-- Continued in next post --
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