Why do you think him raising the gun slowly in the air would have had any other result?
They panicked at the sight of the gun and killed him without assessing whether it was a threat. What position the gun was in seems irrelevant considering they killed him while he held it by the slide(?), pointing away from everyone.
Have you watched the video? He wasn't holding the gun, he had in his pocket cause ammurica I need a gun for self protection.
Yes, it's his right as any other American, but is it necessary?
Now some racist and/or scared ppl saw a black man with a gun (I guess you could see it through his shirt/pants) in/near a burger king and called the police, without thinking of the great second amendment, they where just scared because going around with a gun shouldn't be "normal" or a right.
He was a black man in Usa so the scare from some ppl was way more accentuated.
Now, for me the idea of having a gun for self protection is pure bullshit, at least I can barely get it in a home/store situation (barely because we have read multiple times of kids killed by playing with a parent gun at home, in Italy too), but just going around with a gun because you can is crazy.
If someone try to rob your phone on the street you just shoot him? That's the whole idea behind the second amendment?
Oh no, you shot him only if you fear for your life, and do you really think this will ever work?
I would like to see what's the good that second amendment has done in the history of the Usa.
Now, going back to this case, the victim was in the worst possible position (metaphorically and literally) and didn't helped himself going any better by his strange position and lack of communication. He was scared? Yes, of course you can say that by seeing the outcome and know the whole situation.
I've seen black mans got shoted by Usa cops without having any gun and with free hand raised in the air multiple times and I've seen a similar situation where the suspect wasn't receptive with lack of communication and when he had the chance he just assaulted the cops.
Being a cop isn't easy, this is why only who is extremely well trained should he a cop.
The victim in this case just followed the cop oderd to put the gun down because they just told them that there was "a black man with a gun" around there, so they assumed he was holding it for some bad reason, so the victim actually extracted the gun from a semi blind spot.
The whole situation was extremely confused.
I was saying: Just let him raise his (free) hands in the air and then tell him to lay down.
But this wasn't actually applicable because the victim was hiding his hands, he was in a strange position where you couldn't saw exactly his hands movement and the cop just assumed that he was holding a gun cause that is what they told them.
If you add the fast trigger super panicked cop you have this result.
We need to start to go at the head of the problem and think "what are all the causes that lead to that situation?"
And there are a lot of causes, most of them cultural, by absurd laws, by racism, by unfortunate circumstances, by lack of proper training etc.
Just saying shit like "Acab burn them all down" is the same insane shit you hear on muslims after a terroristic attack, it's just braindead nonsense.
Let's start do be constructive and not destructive, otherwise we will have this issue over and over. By just venting on the single cop (or all of them) without thinking at the whole situation that lead at that outcome is just useless and doesn't help fix the issue in the long run.
And don't call this cop apologizing or victim blaming, this is just trying to analyze the fact from multiple perspectives. If you just want to know if I think that the cop is guilty: yes it is, but at the same time I blame whoever put him in that position since he clearly can't do this job, whoever miscommunicated the situation and at the same time I blame the whole gun culture that does only harm.