The JAN 6th KILLING of ASHLI BABBITT was LAWFUL and APPROPRIATE to CIRCUMSTANCE

• CON concedes LAWFUL
  

• PRO agrees with CON that Byrd had no superior course of action
  

• Nonsense.  As Rehnquist wrote for SCOTUS' unanimous 1989 decision, Graham v Connor, 
  
• "The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.  The Fourth Amendment is not violated by an arrest based on probable cause, even though the wrong person is arrested, nor by the mistaken execution of a valid search warrant on the wrong premises, With respect to a claim of excessive force, the same standard of reasonableness at the moment applies: Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge's chambers, violates the Fourth Amendment. The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving -- about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation."
  
• The decision to kill was Lt. Michael Byrd's alone. The standard which authorizes Byrd's use of deadly force exclusively considers Byrd's reasonable belief  "that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury." 
  
• Not only is Byrd's immediate circumstance the single explicit determiner of LAWFUL and APPROPRIATE here, CON's suggestion that we bias our evaluation of Byrd's belief with hindsight information or indeed,  any other CIRCUMSTANCE is inconsistent with constitutional precedent as well as American criminal justice generally.
  

• No way.  By no definition of LAWFUL or APPROPRIATE would it be acceptable for us to apply any use of force standard except that standard to which Lt. Byrd had been trained for 28 years and on which he relied on Jan 6.
  
• That use of force standard is defined by the Oct. 26, 2016 Capitol Police Training Services Bureau Directive 1020.004
  
• This policy employs five escalating levels of force usage: 
  
• cooperative
  
• contact
  
• compliance
  
• defensive
  
• lethal
  
•  lethal force can only be used under the following two circumstances:
  
•  to defend human life, including the officer’s own life, or in defense ofany person in imminent danger of serious physical injury; or
  
• to apprehend or prevent the escape of a fleeing subject under certainconditions (e.g., the officer reasonably believes that the person to beapprehended poses an imminent threat of death or serious physicalinjury to the officer or others if apprehension is delayed).
  
• Let's understand that once Lt. Byrd had intel that the Capitol had been breached quickly followed by  reports of officers down, chemical agents deployed, [inaccurate] reports of shots fired on the House Main Floor,  Byrd's training required him to follow "active threat" policy, defined "as any incident or situationthat poses significant and immediate risk to individuals or buildings withinthe Capitol complex (e.g., active shooter, suicide bomber, chemical orbiological release, and vehicle-ramming)."  Byrd was required by well-established policy to warn the Sergeant-at-Arms that Congress was under attack, secure the Congressional Lobby, bar the doors, take cover, have his gun drawn, and  treat anybody who came through those doors as a suicide bomber or mass shooter until the CERT [Containment and Emergency Response]  team arrived.
  
• As Lt.  Byrd explains it, "all of the training ends the same way: if the [CERT] don't make it there to stop the threat, you're the last line of defense and its up to you to take the APPROPRIATE action."
  
• For any perpetrator breaching that last line of defense, non-lethal options were strictly off the table
  

• LESTER HOLT:  "What made you pull the trigger?"
  
• LT. BYRD:  "Last resort.  I tried to wait as long as I could.  I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors but their failure to comply required me to take the APPRORIATE action."
  

• In R1, CON proposed:
  

• and now suggests that CON's muddle should be interpreted as PRO's consent. 
  
• Obviously, PRO objects and reminds VOTERS that  CON agreed to the burden to prove "inappropriate beyond a reasonable standard" by acceptance of this debate's terms
  

• Nobody was better trained or positioned to make that call
  

the capital police use of lethal force [and active threat] policy is....unclear. 

• Byrd was not at liberty to use some other police org.'s policies
  
• By any reasonable standard, any assailant was an imminent and an active threat
  

• False.  Byrd correctly assessed the situation as an ongoing terrorist attack, FBI and Congressional investigations later concurred
  
• Babbitt was an active, voluntary participant at the vanguard of that terrorist attack.
  
• In hindsight,  we allow the visuals to color our assessment of the mob. 
  
• We see the grey hair and paunches
  
• the ten percent of women mixed in
  
• the degree of mental illness and intoxication in evidence
  
• the apparent haphazardness of much of the mob. 
  
• Byrd had none of that information to guide his evaluation.
  
• He had no access to news coverage. 
  
• Byrd had no visual on the invading mob. 
  
• He received some limited info via walkie-talkie and text but no characterization of the mob's nature or intent.
  
• We know Byrd's perspective from his instruction to the House and testimony:
  
•  Armed assailants had breached the Capitol in multiple places,
  
• attacked USCP
  
• Multiple reports of officers down (Byrd could not know whether those were injured or dead)
  
• Pipe bombs found
  
• one USCP's hand " blown off"
  
• Chemical weapons had been used on USCP (Byrd advised Representative and staff to don gas masks)
  
• Shots had been fired into the House Chamber( This later proved false but multiple contemporaneous tweets confirm everybody thought shots had just been fired)
  
• Byrd advised everybody to get away from any window or doors, to take cover under seat.
  
• Byrd advised Representatives to remove their pins and try to disguise themselves as staff members or reporters
  
• The 100+ people under his protection were readying themselves for bombs, gas, and guns.
  
• Byrd  could only estimate of the size of the threat based on the screams of USCP and the ever increasing cheers and chants of the mob approaching the final barrier to the House which was his duty to defend.
  

• How many beatings and chemical attacks, how many barriers breached, ignored lawful orders and reports of officers down an are needed to justify lethal force from the next line of defense? the last line of defense?
  

• Right or appropriate for a particular person, purpose, or situation.
  

• Which is CON's burden in this debate.
  
• CON has so far argued that Byrd should have issued verbal warnings that he intended to use lethal force before shooting, but 
  
• Byrd's use-of-force standard had no such pre-requisite.
  
• Byrd did not intend to use lethal force so long as the attacker stayed on the other side of the barrier
  
• Once Babbitt crashed the final barrier, ignoring many repeated lawful orders issued by many police for hours, Byrd did not have the luxury of offering Babbitt a verbal warning of lethal force since any such warning requires that officers then allow enough time for compliance, time in which a terrorist could deploy an explosive vest or chemical agent, tactics that Byrd was force to assume were likely given Byrd's available intelligence in that moment.
  
• .A verbal warning before shooting was never a course of action available to Byrd because of Babbitt's consistent failure to comply with many, repeated police warnings.
  
• CON has also argued that Byrd should have attempted to physically restrain or arrest Babbitt but
  
• Again, the necessity to treat Babbitt as a potential suicide bomber precluded non-lethal restraint. 
  
• Byrd was required to be in a defensive posture.  He had to assume that there were guns trained on him on the other side of the barrier and that to step out from behind cover to restrain or arrest Babbitt would get him and/or his backup shot, leaving no police to defend Congress against an assault by hundreds.
  
• Both of CON's suggested "superior" courses of action have been shown to be reckless and unwarranted by the circumstances of terrorist attack.
  

• In fact, the GAO report not only found no fault with Byrd's response or any other of the 293 uses of force by police that day but expressed the view that police hesitancy contributed to increased harms.  That is, in future,  under the same circumstances,  Govt oversight and USCP  consensus seems to be that increased use of lethal force would be the superior course of action/
  

• That's quite false. At the top of R2 PRO offered the 1989 unanimous SCOTUS decision as "the single explicit determiner of LAWFUL and APPROPRIATE here"
  

• Huh?  CON argued against  PRO's standard for APPROPRIATE in R2 and again 2 sentences from now?
  

noone gave me the memo that the Supreme Court determines what is and is not appropriate, rather than what is or is not legal. 

• So false.  Appropriateness is determined by a set of social rules, many of those rules are codified into law.  There are only a very small set of circumstances in which it might be appropriate to break the law.  The law is perhaps the single most important source of rules for appropriate behavior.

• False. Byrd's training and  immed. circumstance are paramount to "appropriate."
  

• CON can't make up his mind.
  

• VOTERS will recall that the BURDENS of PROOF were defined thus:
  
• PRO must support the findings of the subsequent Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the United States Department of Justice investigation.  [That Lt. Byrd's shooting of Ashli Babbitt was lawful and appropriate.]
  
• CON must prove that the shooting of Ashli Babbitt was unlawful or inappropriate beyond a reasonable standard.
  

• CON concedes LAWFUL and half the argument up front.
  
• CON tried to apply a USE of FORCE standard implemented in Camden, NJ at the beginning of this year, 2022- a year after the event and a jurisdiction 140 miles distant.
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to disregard this standard.  
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to rely on the standard established by a unanimous Supreme Court precedent set 33 years ago- that The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene and without resort to hindsight or other perspectives.  It is not fair to judge a policeman's split second decision with the reasoning of the safe and comfortable or with the improved perspective that comes from hindsight. 
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to agree that in the context of an officer defending legislators in the US Capitol during an attack trying to subvert a defined function of the US Constitution, application of  relevant Supreme Court precedent is the best and  wisest possible authority on the subject of appropriate use-of-force.
  
• In spite of CON's critiques, we many not judge Byrd's use-of-force using any other policy than the policy Byrd was sworn and trained to employ:
  
•  to defend human life, including the officer’s own life, or in defense of any person in imminent danger of serious physical injury; or
  
• to apprehend or prevent the escape of a fleeing subject under certain conditions (e.g., the officer reasonably believes that the person to be apprehended poses an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others if apprehension is delayed).
  
• further informed by Byrd's active threat policy
  
• as any incident or situation that poses significant and immediate risk to individuals or buildings within the Capitol complex (e.g., active shooter, suicide bomber, chemical or biological release, and vehicle-ramming
  
• Because of Byrd senior rank and long experience, Byrd was made the last line of defense in the event of any terrorist attack or active shooter.  His instructions were to do what was necessary to hold that line until the special tactics team arrived.  Ashli Babbitt was an unarmed woman wearing an American flag for a cape but she was also the vanguard of very violent terrorist mob in full riot.  Byrd could only know that much and could only treat Babbitt as he did: the first and thankfully only terrorist to break through that last line of defense.  
  
• PRO askes VOTERS to only hold Byrd accountable to his established policies, which Byrd followed to the letter.
• CON's argument against APPROPRIATE largely depends on two assertions:
  
• Byrd should not have shot without giving specific warning of lethal force but Babbitt's tactic never allowed for such an opportunity.  Before she crashed the barricade, Byrd could not shoot into the mob.  Once she crashed the barricade, Byrd could not afford to give the terrorist time to act.  Byrd knew bomb and chemical weapons had been deployed and could not afford to assume that a charging terrorist did not have such weapons hidden in her backpack or under her cape.
  
• Byrd should have attempted to subdue and arrest Babbitt but this would also have violated Byrd's training.  As the last line of defense, Byrd was required to defend from cover and not expose himself to enemy fire in the clear. Byrd had no information about what weapons were available to the mob beyond the barricade and an attempt to arrest would have made him prone to attack.
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to disregard both of these speculative plans as reckless and contrary to Byrd's established training.
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to agree with his standards and evaluation of Lt. Byrd's use of lethal force against Ashli Babbitt, and so concur with the findings of both the  Dept. of Justice and USCP investigations, that the shooting of Ashli Babbitt was sad, even regrettable, but an entirely lawful and appropriate response to Babbitt's determined, unpredictable, unlawful aggression at the final breach into the hallowed precincts of the House of Representatives.
  
• PRO asks VOTERS to further consider points for forfeit.
  
• Thanks, BDPGreat, for your clarity of argument.
  
• Thanks to all VOTERS for their kind consideration.
  
• Please VOTE PRO!