A few thoughts on Michael Byrd and his shooting of Ashli Babbit

Official story doesn't hold up to video evidence

So by now everyone knows that Michael Byrd has come out and identified himself as the shooter of Ashli Babbit. While a white officer who kills a black man ends up in jail, the black officer who kills an unarmed white woman gets to go on national television and claim to be a hero.

Now on the surface there seems to be some logic or justification for what happened. At least on the surface and if you take everything being said at face value. But the truth is that much of what is being stated on the surface does not appear to be true. 

Byrd claims that they believed that the rioters had shot people, in spite of the fact that nobody other than Byrd used a gun that day. He could not have personally heard any shots and there would have been no official reports of shots being fired (as there were none). 

Byrd claims that he believes his saved lives. Again, none of the rioters that got into the building had been violent. Nobody inside the Capitol building (other than Byrd) was even seriously injured. There is no reason why Byrd would have received any credible reports of violence in the building, as there had not been any. Lastly, neither Babbit or the people with her were armed. Byrd and the other officers were. 

Byrd claimed to have provided several warnings to Babbit. This is disputed by others who were there and there is no video evidence that Byrd had made any real attempts to warn Babbit of anything. Watching the video, Byrd was out of view and around the corner in another hallway as babbit came through the window. Byrd appears to come out into that hallway long enough to fire a shot, and then went back around the corner. Byrd was far enough away to had waited to see if Babbit was armed or looked as if she was a credible threat once she got through the window. 

What seems the most likely is that Byrd simply panicked. After watching bloody riots all summer and seeing the violence from both sides, he likely assumed that there was some sort of armed violent killer making their way through the window.  He may have been under the false assumption that there really was an armed insurrection taking place. He simply didn't have the restraint or the patience to correctly assess what was happening. 

This is bad judgement that lead to an awful mistake made in the line of duty. I don't believe this is necessarily murder (as a matter of practical law) just as I didn't really believe that Chauvin's back restraint was murder. But the reality is that in 2021 if a Cop makes a bad judgement and someone dies because of it, they certainly face the very real possibility of being charged with a crime.

At the end of the day there is certainly a different set of standards being applied for Michael Byrd that most police officers do not enjoy. At best he is an unseasoned police officer who panicked and an unarmed non-violent military veteran is dead because of his judgement. I can live with the idea that a white cop goes to jail and a black cop doesn't.  But there is little practical reason to believe that this does not warrant him being relieved of duty. He is obviously not fit for duty.