tal , 4 hours ago

Ehhhh.

Iran: Woman left paraplegic after being shot by police over hijab

Okay, that sounds pretty unequivocal.

Arezoo Badri, 31, was driving home with her sister in the northern city of Noor on 22 July when police attempted to pull her over to confiscate her car.

The driver did not comply with the order to stop, prompting the officers to shoot, the police commander in Noor told Iran’s state-run news agency, without naming Ms Badri.

It is unclear whether Ms Badri was wearing a headscarf when she was stopped by police, but her car had a confiscation notice against it - suggesting multiple alleged violations of the hijab law.

So it’s possible, albeit not known, that she had previously violated the hijab law. And that’s why they were pulling her over.

But that’s not why they shot at her. She got shot because she didn’t stop the vehicle.

Like, you could say “shot for refusing to stop”, and I’d agree with that. Maybe someone would find that unreasonable as a matter of police procedure. I don’t know what the legal standards are for use-of-force in Iran. In the US, I’m reasonably sure that that’d violate law enforcement protocol in most states. A police officer can’t use deadly force just for not following an order; there are situations where it is possible to do so.

kagis

Yeah:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleeing_felon_rule

Under U.S. law the fleeing felon rule was limited in 1985 to non-lethal force in most cases by Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1. The justices held that deadly force “may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others.”[2]

A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead…however…Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force.

— Justice Byron White, Tennessee v. Garner[3]

If a suspect drives a car at an officer, the car is considered to be a deadly weapon, and it’s okay for police to use deadly force then.

But my guess is that just a refusal to stop, without some additional circumstances, wouldn’t result in authorization to use deadly force anywhere in the present-day US.

I can imagine someone saying that they think that Iran’s use-of-deadly-force law should be more-restrictive.

But I don’t think that this is reasonable to reduce this to “shot by police over hijab”.