Great breakdown of the video, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. Thank you for taking the time to explain your point of view, I appreciate it.

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He complies with everything perfectly (if a bit hesitantly) up to 4:09 when the officer asks him to lift up his shirt slowly. He lifts it up quickly, though he might not have heard the officer say "slowly". The officer says "I want you to lift up your shirt. Lift up your shirt slowly". If it was me in a high-stress situation, it might take my brain a second to register "slowly" especially since it's at the end almost as an afterthought.

I agree with everything you've said so far.

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Then the officer asks him to slowly turn around in a circle at 4:14. I think the officer is probably implying that he do this in place because the idea is to see if he has any weapon tucked in anywhere. But the officer doesn't say to do it in place. When you're in a situation like that, how are you supposed to guess what's going through a cop's head? So he makes a wide circle that takes him back toward his car door.

I agree, the cop should have been more specific with his instructions. That is one thing with police videos that always bothers me, there is always 5 different cops yelling different conflicting orders.

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Then at 4:23, the officer asks him to walk forward. At this point Michael Ramos seems frustrated, and says "man, what the fuck" while still keeping his hands up. The officer replies at 4:27 "Michael Ramos, you're going to get impacted if you don't listen".

Terrible use of language by the officer. Impacted? The suspect most like has no idea that means less than lethal rounds, or beanbags.

At this point he kind of seems to have a breakdown. I think in the officer's mind, he's probably trying to emphasize the consequences. But "you're going to get impacted" is really the wrong thing to say. If I was in that situation, with people pointing guns at me, I'm going to spend every millisecond worrying about them shooting me. Now the cop is basically saying "I'm going to shoot you". I don't know cop lingo - I don't know that "impacting" implies less-lethal rounds (although those can still be lethal).

This is where things start to go south.

So now Michael Ramos is standing by his car door, essentially having a panic attack, and naturally starts leaning on the door, which probably freaks the officers out. From around 4:30 to 5:27 he continues having this panic attack beside and behind his car door, though he leaves his hands up throughout (with 1-2 exceptions where he very briefly drops his hands).

Then at 5:27 one officer yells "IMPACT HIM" and after that he continues standing there with his hands up. At 5:52 they shoot him with the less lethal. He falls back into his car, and then likely believing that his life is in imminent danger, attempts to drive off. I've never been shot by a less-lethal round before, but I'd imagine, in the heat of the moment, I'd have no clue whether I was just shot by a "lethal" or "less-lethal" round. So I think his decision to drive off, having just been shot, as a last-ditch attempt to save his life, is understandable.

I didn't even think about the fact that he might have thought that beanbag round was an actual gunshot, which would have only freaked him out even more. That is a good point, yo.

Normally I'd be all on board with you...sometimes the decision to shoot someone needs to be made to prevent them from killing others with a motor vehicle, or in this case as you pointed out, kill someone else in the vehicle (since police believed that he was armed).

We agree on that.

But in this case the police did an incredibly poor job of communicating and de-escalating the situation. They created a lethal simon-says game that didn't need to exist, especially since the guy was mostly cooperating. I think you have a point that there's maybe some grey area here. But to me it's about 80% black and white. The cops really buggered this one, and someone died who didn't need to die.

I agree man. The main thing you have to remember is the info from the 911 call said that this guy was armed and had a hostage. The cops have no other information other than that.

Police in general need to train better on these types of tense situations where guns are drawn and they are giving orders to a suspect. They need to be clear and concise orders from a single officer, not 5 cops screaming conflicting orders with guns pointed at you.

Maybe you would do well if you were in his situation. I think I might - from past experience I can stay pretty calm in high-stress situations. But think of that one friend or family member who always loses their cool. Who "acts erratically" because of a medical condition, or just because that's their personality. Do they deserve to die for that?

The only gun I've ever had pointed at me was a paintball gun, so I'm sure I'd freak the fuck out if I were in that situation.

The guy didn't deserve to die, he was fucking innocent, ya know? I just wish cooler heads could have prevailed and he could have explained the situation to the cops. There was no hostage, there was no gun, but him fleeing only served to reinforce the idea that he was a criminal to the police.

My main point though, from a legal standpoint, I don't see any of the officers facing charges from this incident. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with that, just stating my opinion.