Reaction Paper On Clemmons Shooting

A recent event that occurred in my community was the shooting of a male by a Metropolitan-Nashville police officer on February 10, 2017. Officer Joshua Lippert attempted to stop Jocques Clemmons after he failed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. After stopping his car, Clemmons jumped out of his car and began running and not adhering to Officer Lippert’s verbal commands. After a short foot pursuit, Officer Lippert caught up to Clemmons at which time Clemmons still continued to try and get away from Officer Lippert while he was reaching into his waistband. A physical struggle took place and as Clemmons was falling to the ground, Officer Lippert observed a handgun fall out of Clemmons’ waistband and onto the ground. Officer Lippert gave verbal warnings to Clemmons to not pick up the weapon, but Clemmons did not adhere to the verbal commands and grabbed the
I do not feel the response from the public was justified because the public did not have all of the facts. Of course the media plays a major role in what they release in order to sensationalize the story. Without all of the facts and with what information the public did know, the immediate opinion was that Officer Lippert shot an unarmed and defenseless black man. In my opinion, the police response was justified because they waited until a thorough investigation was conducted. Even through the heavy scrutiny of the public and media, they waited until the investigation was completed before they fully commented on the shooting. They fully presented all of the facts to the public and stood behind their officer, even though it was not the popular decision by the public. The Metropolitan-Nashville Police Department stated that Officer Lippert had a “legally sufficient claim of self-defense” based off of Tennessee law of self-defense (Pleasant,