Man shot to death by Utah police. He was already handcuffed and managed to escape... for a minute.

Yes but I'm sure cops do this all the time without the suspect taking off and they get more complacent with it and eventually something like this happens. I was hoping the cops involved and other cops could just be reminded by the story to always be cautious and suspicious, so this doesn't happen where it can be prevented. I wouldn't have a problem shaking the officer's hand who shot Jeff and thanking him for his service. I'm friends with a lot of cops and I respect them for putting their lives on the line for us. I hate the bad rap they get, but I also hope they remain humble and learn from their experiences, instead of getting super defensive and pretending like they did nothing wrong.

I read a book a little while ago about a law-abiding citizen who was arrested for supposedly transporting guns illegally (he wasn't actually breaking any laws) he ended up going to prison for a few months before being pardoned by the Governor. Anyways, the part that sticks out in my brain is when he described turning himself into the bailef after the trial was over (since he had been out on bail). He looked professional and they didn't have him handcuffed because they didn't realize he was a convict. They let him walk through the courthouse on his own and the police eventually realized he was a convict and was supposed to be handcuffed.

He said he felt this overwhelming urge to run for it and live on the run, rather than go to prison. That was knowing the consequence to running would be: death injury and/or a lot more prison time to getting caught. He only had a 7 year sentence (very short with good behavior) but he was a father, a college graduate and couldn't believe he would be missing years of his life / son's life over the conviction. He described it like, he just saw the opportunity to run and didn't even think about how stupid it would be to until after.

The average law-abiding citizen felt an overwhelming urge to run when he got the chance to. Imagine someone high on drugs, at rock bottom, knowing they would miss their kids childhood, go through withdrawals in prison, and they had run from the police / gotten away with things in the past (he had the confidence). A few minutes before he made the run he had said to the cop "my life is over." I think he felt the handcuffs come off and just took off without thinking (or maybe he decided to take off a few seconds before they took them off, realizing it was about to happen). Also he was probably pretty angry with the cops (and he was hiding this to stay on their good side) for arresting him over a technical DUI, which probably made him care a little less for their safety.

I'm not saying I approve of any of his decisions... I just want people to empathize with his story. See it from his point of view. Imagine being in his shoes. All in all it was mostly his fault, but it could have been prevented had the police been a little bit more on point. The police have a job to protect the public and the suspects in their custody. They protected the public and their fellow officers, but they failed to protect Jeff the entrepreneur/Father from Jeff the drug addict at rock bottom.

We ask a lot from our cops and I appreciate their service, it's a high stress job and I can't imagine doing it on the daily. No, they didn't deserve to be blamed for Jeff's death or get in trouble from this mistake, but I do hope they learned from it.

/r/watchpeopledie Thread Parent Link - sltrib.com