What's next for officer who mistook acorn for gunfire?

all right so let's bring in Queen City News Chief legal analyst colif froess and first off that suspect says that as you can imagine that he's been traumatized by this whole situation traumatized ke work for lawsuit I mean you have to be at a point to damages him because he wasn't hit shot or injured in that um altercation but you have to be able to point to some type of Damages the only damages is the mental anguish of being just shot at but maybe 30 plus times I I looked it up most of those of

ficers um Firearms were hold 15 15 bullets he unloaded the entire clip his officer also unloaded so 30 plus rounds going into that car um so you can guarantee there's a lawsuit that is looming um and and it's weird that you have these types of incidents that are occurring um but you see officers wear the badges that say Protect and to serve the interesting portion is that they have no duty to protect you if you are not under arrest if they see you walking down the street and someone's assaulting

you you would think hey they have a duty to stop it the the Supreme Court has held number of times they have absolutely no duty to protect and serve you in that instance however if you're under the their custody if they are detaining you and you're in their vehicle like in this instance they have an absolute obligation a duty to protect you and so this person was under their care under their custody and then he could have got some arm from them a step even further so by all means lawsuit lawsui

t lawsuit well that Deputy has since resigned so besides a lawsuit against the police department probably that officer should he face any criminal charges here I think the criminality would be hard I mean you could in North Carolina it's assault if you place a person in the fear of IM B harm and so that would be a stretch I mean I think qualified immunity would protect the officer from some type of criminal liability but I think as the the sheriff said um that we have a duty to protect the publi

c that is not just ensuring that officers make it home and so he was laying the foundation that yes criminality maybe no but civil protection yeah I mean I would use that statement in any type of hearing that your own officer even we let you down we let the public down is what he said 100% And he he rolled his off he rolled his partner into as well because she takes the best information that she knows at that time when she hears him shooting he says I think I was hit I think I was hit and she go

es out there to go and protect her partner and start shooting I I think she did what she would expect any officer to do go out there and protect based on what she knew she didn't know that her her partner was shot by an acorn and not a firearm right this all happened within a matter of seconds here but this was actually a couple years ago and now this is all kind of just coming to light does that time matter here for for legal it doesn't and and you got to remember what a lot of these states hav

e done in the wake of you know a lot of protests from the the the outrage with police brutalities and shootings um at the hand of law enforcement they've enacted these legislations just like in North Carolina that you have to get a judge to release the the the the um body cam footage and so yeah this happened in 2022 but it's taken a number of steps to get access to the camera to get an attorney to be able to file a lawsuit and so we're in the process but no it won't diminish the claim at all al

l right a little bit of a bizarre and unique situation here but we'll see what happens colie thank you [Music]