point 1: addressed above.
Point 2: Yes, there are far more clear videos of bad cop behavior, this one is less clear. That said, this one has sparked the Mexican government to petition ours to change the way our officers act. That's a big deal.
Point3: you are correct, he can't tell for certain that the suspect is unarmed, but can tell for certain he has no arm in his hands, and he never sees anything (even a bulge) that might be an arm. Assuming he's armed is somewhat reasonable, but I want them to actually SEE a weapon before acting as if they're threatened with one.
Point 4: Yes, the guy was an idiot criminal that nearly killed himself and others by drunk driving and speeding. Had he caused an accident, that would be 100% his fault...but that's not what happened. He did give the officer an opportunity to see him as threatening and shoot....opportunity is not a need.

Again, I only want to see officers TRY to not use deadly force...and that means TRYING other things first...and not just commands, actions. I n this case, walking backwards for 20 seconds may well have de-escalated the entire situation and we would never know this stop happened.

If the man had started to run...shoot. If he pulls out a weapon...shoot. If he shuffles at you slowly with hands on head...back up. That's my entire point right there....one I derived in part from the position of the Mexican government, not just out of my ass.

He could have backed away, or closed his door. Is that so hard?
The title said "shuffling in his direction", it did not portray him as a person randomly shuffling around shot for no reason.
You said it in the next sentence...the officer ALLOWED him to get too close, he had options to not let that happen that don't include homicide. That's the point I, and the Mexican government, wish to make clearly. There WERE other, non deadly options that keep the officer safe, they simply didn't try any of them and went with deadly force as a first option when verbal commands didn't work.

Stabbed or shot him with WHAT? His hands were empty, and in fact he was totally unarmed, and too drunk to win a fist fight.

Yes, moving towards the officer can be seen as threatening, but a threat that is easily avoided without using firearms in numerous ways, like walking back or closing his door, either of which would keep him 'safe'.

HOLY SHIT!!! Now just putting your hands down is a shooting offence! I'll simply disagree on that, and hope I'm not alone.

I'm flabbergasted that the officer is being seen as doing the right thing by people here for shooting instead of retreating to a safe distance, people who's opinion I value, no less, not just our local cop excuser. I watched again to see if I see what you guys do, and I just can't see it. I must admit, it seems I'm a minority in that...at least in this country.

I guess people better do exactly as the officer says, and if you have two officers telling you to do opposing things, (for example- "FREEZE" AND "GET ON THE GROUND"....which do you do?) well, you're hosed, because one of them can shoot you for not obeying, making you 'threatening'.
Oh.

I agree with lucky760 here. This guy was not a compliant person shot for no reason.

I'm someone who thinks cops should be held to extremely high standards and I've commented such on other cop videos on videosift. But in this case I'm not really sure what else the cop could have done. He needed to engage the guy physically. He was walking toward him. That might sound innocent enough but the closer he got to the cop the more dangerous he became.

Even if there was a real language barrier and the guy didn't understand what he was being told this is just obviously not OK. He wasn't behaving right, maybe he was high or whatever but he was a physical threat to the officer.

Portraying him as just a person shuffling around being shot for no reason ignores the fact that he was shuffling right up to an officer who had his weapon drawn. If the officer allowed him to get too close he could have attacked the officer. Even if the officer got a clean shot adrenaline could have driven the guy on a step or two and he could have stabbed or shot the officer. That distance separating them is important. Moving toward the officer in this situation is a threatening act, regardless of where your hands are.

The officer did not shoot on numerous occasions when the guy put his hands down, an act which under the circumstances could legitimately be seen as a threat to his safety. He waited until the guy had gone way too far and got way too close. This wasn't a trigger happy cop out to back a Mexican, it was an unlucky cop in the wrong place.

Except that's it's not my assessment, it's the Mexican government's assessment.
EDIT: When the Federall'es (SP? Mexican police) say your cops are out of control, it's time to take another look.

It seemed to me that the guy was a belligerent drunk, who at one moment complies (standing with his hands on head), then turns to argue, tugs on his shirt collar (in a failed attempt to show he's unarmed, or telling the cop to shoot him there?) and shuffles slowly towards the cop. If he was trying to suicide by cop, he did it in a way that made it look totally unthreatening to me. No quick movements, hands on head, no weapon, no threats, no fists...where's the threat in a slow moving unarmed suspect?

I agree, once he was in arms reach and still advancing, he's a threat...but you must completely ignore the cop's ability to move away to make the killing in any way justified. The cop had every opportunity to keep safe distance by simply moving away slowly...why didn't he? Stand Your Ground?
EDIT:Or, the cop had the opportunity to close his car door and lock it, making him 100% safe against the unarmed drunk until backup arrived 20 seconds later.

I didn't see it that way, I (and others, including the officials in the Mexican government) saw a drunk, acting inappropriately, being belligerent when he sees the gun pointed at him and asking the officer "You gonna kill me?", to which the officer replies "no, I'm not going to kill you", then reports on the radio "He's saying 'kill me'". He did not say "Kill me.", he said "Are you GOING to kill me?" as I heard it.
I never saw him reach UNDER his shirt, only tug at the collar of his shirt, and at one point turn around and put his hands behind his back touching his shirt (but NEVER under his shirt). I don't know where that idea came from (except maybe from the cop's statement), please watch again.
I think if an unarmed man slowly advancing on you with hands on his head is a 'deadly threat to the officer's safety', we have HUGE problems, because that theory makes it legal to shoot anyone that comes near them....they don't know if they're armed and attacking, or just passing by, right?
Cops are supposed to de-escalate problems, not exacerbate them.

As for the 'murder' designation...if a citizen shot this man in the exact same circumstances, he should face murder charges. I don't give people a pass on homicide based on their job.

Disagree with your assessment on this one, Newt.

The guy's intention was to suicide by cop. The cop clearly wasn't hoping to have to shoot the guy, and he made the right call in my opinion after trying repeatedly to get the guy to stay away from him while also calling for backup.

It matters not that the guy was "shuffling" in the cop's direction. Once in close enough proximity it wouldn't take much to engage in fisticuffs and potentially subdue the officer.

The guy wasn't just being stubborn or unruly. He was intentionally demonstrating that he was a threat by reaching under his shirt multiple times then asking to be killed while threatening the officer's safety by advancing toward him.

Thank goodness the cop wasn't charged for murder. He's no cowardly murderer.

The tax level in Norway has fluctuated between 40 and 45% of GDP since the 1970s. The relatively high tax level is a result of the large Norwegian welfare state.

You literally dwarf the US tax rate per person, almost by double the amount.

You have a VAT tax of 25%, among the highest in the world. My equivalent is sales tax, which is 8.25% on the dollar, and it should be 2.5% lower than that, but Austin is a super-left city that taxes extra to cover all their feel good plans.

To be clear, the average Norwegian household pays roughly $70,000 per year in tax. Including the state’s oil income, government tax revenue exceeds $100,000 per household.

Discretionary spending is kept to an extreme minimum, because you don't have much left after taxes. The cost of living and recreation in Norway is through the roof compared to other countries.

Workers come to the office, punch a clock, shuffle papers, and go home. There is no cultural drive to work hard and get promoted. Norway has created a system that makes it virtually impossible to pull ahead of your peers financially. In fact, culturally, there is a thing where you are NOT supposed to do better than someone else.

What major worldwide innovations or brands do we get out of Norway? None that I can think of offhand, but here is a list of some of their more important companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Norway.

So, you get taxed a ton, cost of living is incredibly high, there is no incentive to do better than anyone else, and in return you get to have free stuff like healthcare and education. Not that it matters really, because once you get out of school you get to become a worker bee drone. Unless of course you move to another country and get to achieve something there.

So, yeah, enjoy your hive mind country. As screwed up as mine is, at least there is a chance to become something if you work hard and invest correctly.

You are quite right @MilkmanDan - after seven random shuffles the chances of the top card staying at the top the whole time would be 1/128, which should be sufficient - it would probably sink down a bit sooner, and thus be distributed evenly throughout the deck when you shuffle it that many times. The top card and bottom cards each have a 1/2 chance of staying where they are after a single riffle shuffle.
And I do have a quite decent riffle shuffle; I just had a silly math brain fart.
But hey - what would the sift be if everyone thought things thoroughly over before posting?

I disagree with the insinuation that that is intuitive...

I think to answer @Zawash 's concerns, the seven riffle shuffles is probably close to the "sweet spot" because even a card on the very bottom or very top will likely move at least 1-2 places away from those extreme positions (top or bottom) in a single shuffle. Then, on the second shuffle, it is likely to move even further -- the probable "distance moved" is even higher and goes up rapidly away from the extreme edges. By the time that you've riffle shuffled 7 times, it should easily have shifted far enough away from either extreme end to be sufficiently "random".

Sorta like the old elementary school math question of would you rather have a million dollars NOW, or one penny today and then double that amount each day for the next month. We tend to underestimate the value of option 2 (over $5 million after 30 days, $10m+ for 31) because our brains are much better at grasping/predicting geometric growth than exponential growth.

That doesn't have anything to do with "inability to perform a proper riffle shuffle", just a very human tendency to underestimate exponential changes over a few iterations.

The maths is 7-11 riffle shuffles result in a random deck. Your inability to perform a proper ripple shuffle doesn't change the maths.

Your video, The Best (and Worst) Ways to Shuffle Cards, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*science. I myself combine riffle shuffling and overhand shuffling - a couple of riffle shuffles, a couple of overhand shuffles, repeat.
The riffle shuffling has a really, really bad and particular weakness: Cards at the top of the deck tend to stay at the top of the deck, and cards at the bottom of the deck tend to stay at the bottom. So - riffle shuffling alone (even 7 times) isn't good enough. So - if you start with (for example) the ace of hearts at the bottom, it will tend to stay at the bottom even after seven riffle shuffles.
This should have been mentioned - it is simple math.

Yeah, it's a bitch. I didn't know I was an alcoholic until I was running away from hard times. Then even after I had gained a marginal amount of success, the alcohol remained. Fucking alcohol. It really does make you a different person. Sometimes a very very excellent, if not womanizing person. But sometimes a monster. Best I avoid the stuff beyond what I think I need or can handle, one drink at parties. Parties can be bad if I violate this. Or good -- it's a gamble lol.

You know what though, it's addiction period. I stopped drinking, my life improved; but, I replace it with something else. I am addicted to video games. I do 80+ hour, no sleep binges playing a game I'm seeking to master. Addiction.

Pretty soon I will have to go cold turkey even on things like marijuana, which make me mellow, happy, heightened senses, and artistic/creative focus/drive, and which my peers claim is not addicting. Nah, everything in my life is an addiction. Even creative endeavors or day to day work -- it commands my utter and impenetrable existence, allowing my world to fall to shambles, meanwhile I create art or engineer new false existence. A system of dice I throw forever for no real reason other than I am addicted forever to throwing dice. Boom. Boom. Cards. Mmm, yeah, gambling is fun and bad too, and consume entire weekends. Sex. Typing things. It's ALL addiction to me.

The only thing I get from typing my mind is the rush and addiction to the finality of saying the truth, regardless of the consequences. It just comes out and the fists raise my adrenaline and I'm fighting now. Haahhahahahahaha!!! Addiction! Adrenaline. Energy. I'll run for 4 hours straight to achieve a moment of elation and existence outside of the day to day shuffle. Addicted to life? I sit at my desk addicted to death? No, life. I am addicted to EVERYTHING.

They forgot these:

- Cabin service so frosty it makes a Moscow winter look like fucking Maui. (See: Icelandair)

- Fist-swinging free-for-all trying to grab aisle seats near the front of the plane (See: Southwest).

- The prepaid-for seat shuffle where the seat you reserved three months ago gets taken from you and you're reassigned somewhere near the head at the back of the plane. (See: Alaska Airlines)

- "Aww, Sweetie, did you want a sandwich on this 7-hour trans-Atlantic flight? THAT'LL BE 30 FUCKING EUROS PLEASE. Oh, you want to pay in dollars? Ok, that'll be 45 bucks at the current exchange rate plus conversion and transaction fees. Here, enjoy this three-day-old reindeer meat sammich that's dryer than the twats of the frigid cabin crew who served it to you." (See: Icelandair (again))

- Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for the 6g maneuver our former Air Force pilot is about to pull in order to avoid having to do a go-around because we were too busy discussing the new stewardess' tits to watch the glide path. Please keep the screaming in terror to a minimum as he startles easily . . ." (See: Delta)

- "Ladies and Gentlemen, we've now arrived in Scranton . . . oh, fuck, this isn't Pittsburgh!" (See: Delta (multiple times))

Yeah -- I just LOVE flying.

Slight of hand and misdirection.

For example, the "pick a card" segment...

With a bit of practice, anyone can make a certain card stay on the top or bottom of the deck while shuffling. Practised talents like this gentleman can then pull that same card out and show it no matter where he seems to pull it from the deck. She actually made it easier for him by choosing the top card. It was always what he was going to show her.

Everything else is just pickpocket talent and shell games.

Yup, I used to have one of those decks. There's a million tricks you can do with them. Just don't let anyone else shuffle it. =)