Lilburn, GA — Dramatic video was uploaded to Facebook over the weekend showing Georgia Tech police shoot and kill a fourth-year engineering student from Lilburn, Georgia. The victim, identified as 21-year-old Scout Schultz was barefoot and holding a multi-tool at the moment cops opened fire.
According to NBC, at a news conference Monday, Schultz’s family’s attorney said the student was experiencing a “mental breakdown” on the night of the shooting.
“What was Scout doing that day?” said the attorney, L. Chris Stewart. “Standing there disoriented, having a mental breakdown and was shot from 20 feet away.”
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, police were responding to a 911 call when they confronted Shultz in front of the campus parking garage.
In the dramatic video, police are heard screaming at Schultz who is yelling back at police, “Shoot me!”
Screaming at a person with a mental illness is not only futile, it only serves to further confuse, frighten, and provoke said person — especially if that person is in the midst of a breakdown — like Schultz was.
As one officer appeared to show bravery and attempt to de-escalate the situation by calmly engaging Schultz, his voice was overpowered by the other voices demanding Schultz drop the knife.
“Drop the knife!” yell the officers, which only seems to further disturb Schultz.
“What’s your name!” repeatedly screams another officer as if that was going to help the situation.
Another officer yells to drop the knife one more time before Schultz takes a small step forward and is shot. Shultz’s screams were chilling. Shultz would be taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, but would not make it.
Stewart told reporters that Schultz was holding a multi-tool, which contained pliers, a screwdriver, and a “tiny, little knife.” Stewart also noted that the knife was never exposed while police threatened and eventually killed Schultz.
“That’s one of the biggest problems in this country is officer’s actions with the mentally ill,” Stewart said, adding that more training needs to be implemented for police officers.
According to NBC, William Schultz, Scout’s father, called his son “the greatest kid.” When asked what he would say to the officer who shot Scout, William Schultz said: “Why did you have to shoot? That’s the question. That’s the only question that matters now.”
William Schultz added that his child had a 3.9 GPA and planned to graduate in December, according to the report.
“Scout wanted to make new medical devices, and now we’ll never know what Scout might have come up with,” Scout’s mother, Lynne, said. And she’s right, thanks to untrained cops who were unable to think of any other solution to this incident other than deadly force.
Did the officers in the video below show courage and only kill Scout as a last resort? You be the judge.
If your answer to the above question is ‘yes’ after watching the video, perhaps you should consider the videos below.
Recent body cam footage from officers in the United Kingdom was released last year that shows how reluctant their police are to resort to deadly force. The stark contrast in violent escalation between UK cops and US cops highlights the dangerous overzealous nature of American police.
Northamptonshire resident, Lee Vickers proved to be an especially dangerous man last year after he grabbed a large butcher knife and charged after police. Had he been an American citizen, he would have been immediately killed. He presented a very real and deadly threat, and even non-police officers would have been justified in the use of deadly force against him.
However, two brave police officers disarmed him without harming a hair on his head. The level of restraint exhibited by the two officers in the video below sheds light on the sheer tragedy of so many senseless deaths at the hands of police in the US. Unarmed teenagers, men, and women are constantly being gunned down US cops who are trained to kill first and ask questions later.
How many mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters would still have their families if American police acted more like police in the UK?
For the naysayers who think that Vickers’ case is an isolated act of heroism, think again. The lack of deadly force is so common by police in European countries that it’s not only been documented multiple times, but it’s been caught on film multiple times.
It is high time this country looks closely at the way it trains its police force.
Information from the World Health Organization states that schizophrenia affects about 24 million people across the world, with a wordwide prevalence of about .7%.
It’s important to note that prevalence of a disease is different than incidence of the disease. A prevalence of .7% - 1.1% does not reflect how many people are diagnosed with schizophrenia each year. Rather, prevalence refers to the number of people who have schizophrenia at a given time, indicating how widespread the disease is. Incidence, on the other hand, refers to the number of people who are newly diagnosed with schizophrenia during a given time period and indicates the likelihood of being diagnosed with the disease. Because schizophrenia is a chronic disease and people diagnosed with schizophrenia continue to have it throughout their life, prevalence is quite a bit higher than incidence. The World Health Organization estimates that the incidence rate of schizophrenia is about 3 per 10,000 people.
So if we accept the fairly conservative estimate of 3 per 10,000 Americans with schizophrenia which shows up overwhelmingly in young adults, in a country of 350 million people, we can estimate that 105,000 people strongly biased toward college age young people will be schizophrenic at any given time.
Sometimes, we have to consider what the stats really mean, even when applied to such a huge population. The numbers do mean something.
Come now, anxiety and depression and phallic longings do not result in a man with a tiny knife charging fully armed police officers.
No, it results in a person (who has attempted suicide before) writing three suicide notes then calling 911 and telling the operator there's a student with a knife and gun threatening others.
Well, we can't rule it out. Suicide by cop is a Real Thing.
If the police report is true that the guy was telling the cops to shoot him, then it seems it was indeed suicide by cop. Of course that says nothing about the state of his mental health overall, other than he was having a really bad day.
But yes, as the other videos seem to make clear, his suicide by cop would only have worked in the USA. It does seem US cops are trained to shoot when the threat of a knife wielder (to whatever extent this kid qualified as one) is relatively low.
It does seem US cops are trained to shoot when the threat of a knife wielder (to whatever extent this kid qualified as one) is relatively low.
They are trained to shoot if a knife attacker is less than ~22' away from them.
Tactically, this can be defended as prudent. But it is too often offered as a defense for shooting people that are not physically competent to carry out an attack. As usual, the least capable police (women and inexperienced or undersized males) are most likely just to shoot (at people or pets) than to get scrappy physically with the perp even at the (minor) risk of a knife injury.
Granted it's because a wielder can become an attacker and close that distance before a cop could draw and fire.
They do behave according to their training.
Sometimes we should be looking at their training at least as much as their actions. The actions do come directly from the training after all. If the training is too quick to unleash deadly force, we can't be surprised if cops shoot first when they should be more prepared to mix it up physically with a perp who has run amok.
I'm not finding any great fault with the cops on this one so far.
If the training is too quick to unleash deadly force, we can't be surprised if cops shoot first when they should be more prepared to mix it up physically with a perp who has run amok.
There's no surprise at all. We know that's how cops are trained. Well some people know. The one's that don't are the ones like the kid in the park playing cops and robbers with real cops. Or the guy getting out of his car with his wallet in hand at an accident scene. It's why everyone should be taught in school about how dangerous police are.
I'm not finding any great fault with the cops on this one so far.
Well, they could have used tasers. If there's a good reason for that and guns were the only option, fine. They did what they were trained to do, and exactly what the kid was expecting them to do and wanted them to do. One could argue the kid actually outsmarted the cops.
They saw a knife but they had responded to the guy's own 911 call that said he had a gun as well.
To me, that is decisive in favor of the cops, no matter how much boohooing we get from the perp's family about how harmless he was and how much he loved flowers and puppies.
They saw a knife but they had responded to the guy's own 911 call that said he had a gun as well.
Without a doubt, the rules for taser deployment are much more easily met than are rules for opening fire with lethal firearms. If they weren't then it would be pointless for cops to carry tasers. In this case, cops woulda/shoulda/coulda have deployed a taser much sooner with no more than a single order for him to drop the knife.
On any given day, you can find more questionable uses of deadly force than in this one, considering where it occurred and the history of deadly massacres on the campus and the perp himself calling cops to say he had a knife and a gun.
If the cops would have pulled out a taser, the perp might have just as quickly pulled out a gun and shot one or more of them or a bystander. And if that happened, people would be criticizing them as fraidy-cops, unwilling/unable to use deadly force when needed to protect the public.
We should avoid constructing these no-win morality plays starring the cops.
I'll repeat: there is no perfect policing. Not even in a police state.
