Below I am going to share a YouTube video that shows a female South Carolina Police Officer accidentally shooting the suspect’s mother during an attempted arrest.

I am showing this video, because it is kind of funny, but also to give people some things to think about.

In my opinion, the female Police Officer shown in this video, she acted within the bounds of what Police Officers are supposed to do.  The Police Department that she worked for, after conducting an investigation, determined that she was not guilty of any misconduct, and she did not receive any disciplinary action.

I agree with her Police Department deciding in her favor.  Who would want to be a Police Officer, or perform any job for that matter, if under difficult, sudden, unknown, dangerous circumstances, requiring immediate action, everyone who wasn’t there was going to disagree and penalize you for what you did.

I am not saying that Police Departments should always stand behind Police Officers when they shoot someone, I am pointing out that if you expect Police Officers to do their job, which is often dangerous and requires immediate action, there are going to be some accidents and accidental shootings.

Here is my analysis after watching this video below several times:

When the female Police Officer arrives at this residence and she begins to question “Shawn” about a shoplifting incident, he appears to be young, physically larger, and likely physically stronger than this Police Officer.

She could have called for backup, but Police Officers are expected to handle many of their duties on their own.  It is probably not acceptable for Police Officers to call for backup every time that they respond to a call for service.

When this Police Officer began reading Shawn his Miranda warning, she was intending to make an arrest, although she may not have been clear to him that he was being arrested and was not free to leave.  When Shawn began walking away, she had the legal authority to detain him and arrest him.

This Police Officer could have used more physical force to detain Shawn when he tried to leave, but it was her choice.  She may have been correct in only grabbing Shawn by his arm, if she had used all the physical force that she had, it might have instantly resulted in Shawn using all his physical force to attack her.

Just because Shawn was able to escape this Police Officer while she was trying to arrest him at his front door, and he made it into his own house, this does not mean that the arrest is over, it only means that he has resisted arrest, the Police Officer has the legal authority to continue to try to make the arrest.

The long period of arguing back and forth between this Police Officer and Shawn inside the house, though this may look unprofessional, this Police Officer was able to keep Shawn in sight, call for backup, keep him there, and prevented the situation from escalating.

Though this female Police Officer might have appeared weak at this point, if a lone male Police Officer had pursued Shawn up the stairs by himself in this same situation, this could have resulted in a struggle where the Police Officer or Shawn were severely injured or killed.

Perhaps the only mistake that this female Police Officer made, was becoming impatient for backup to arrive, and going ahead trying to continue this physical arrest by herself.  When it got to the point that it appeared that Shawn was going to physically overwhelm this Police Officer and beat her down, she hesitated to shoot him, he got too close, and she could only get one frantic poorly aimed shot at him as he rushed her.

You will probably have to watch the end of this scene several times to figure out what happened.

Even though her one shot hit Shawn’s mother, I don’t think that this female Police Officer should quit or be fired.  I think that she can learn from this experience.

Shawn’s mother was accidentally shot during the mayhem, she survived but had many surgeries.  It doesn’t even look like Shawn’s mother sued anyone or complained, it’s like she felt sorry for the female Police Officer.