A police officer from Ohio is being praised for restraining himself from using force against a double murder suspect.
On Thursday, Jesse Kidder had a confrontation with a double murder suspect who has been allegedly accused of killing his fiancé and his best friend. The confrontation had been heard from his body-camera video where Kidder shouted, “No man, I’m not going to do it!” Then he ordered the suspect to get to the ground but instead the suspect moved forward towards him shouting “Shoot me, shoot me!”
Investigators have said that Michael Wilcox killed his fiancée in their Brown County Ohio home and then he killed Elsmere, his best friend. A Brown County investigator had spotted Wilcox on Thursday night at around 8 p.m. and had taken attempts to stop him but it was claimed that the suspect had a gun and had been reported to drive away. There had been a car chase through counties on the Ohio-Kentucky border before Wilcox had been caught and arrested by the New Richmond police.
The confrontation had been captured on video and has been brought to light as a great example of the proper way of handling police officer encounters. Ever since August 2014, the use of deadly force by police had been a topic of great scrutiny and protest. A white police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri and since the police officer was not wearing a body camera, a lot of questions have been raised regarding the circumstances which led to the shooting of the teenage boy.
“For him to make the judgment call that he did shows great restraint and maturity,” New Richmond Police Chief Randy Harvey said. “This video footage, it eliminated all doubt that this officer would have been justified if in fact it came to a shooting.”
