Louisiana police officer runs red light at 79 mph, kills one man — gets out on bail and paid leave the same day

Every jurisdiction I have ever heard of (in the United States, at least) allows emergency vehicles to disregard traffic rules when they can do so safely. This is why you will often see that speeding police/fire/EMS vehicles with lights and sirens activated will still slow down for intersections, and then speed off once they have safely cleared the intersection.

The officer in this case was probably permitted to drive as fast as they were driving, and to drive through a red light, however they had a superseding duty to operate their vehicle safely. It doesn’t matter what kind of an emergency they’re responding to, that doesn’t give them the right to cause harm along the way. If the officer could not know with reasonable certainty that they would not collide with another vehicle (or pedestrian) when going through that intersection, then they shouldn’t have proceeded through the intersection at that speed.

Similarly, police officers are permitted to carry their guns under circumstances where most people would not be allowed to carry a gun. However, if they accidentally shoot an innocent bystander, they are still liable for that shooting. They can’t go waving their gun around just because they’re allowed to have/use guns under specific circumstances. Sounds like an extreme example, but cars can be just as deadly as guns.

① The man killed was deaf, as reported in the article.
② Whatever the emergency, even with lights and sirens, police plowing though red lights at high speed is irresponsible.

Since when are police allowed to run red lights? They have a device to turn them green.

The killed driver was deaf. If the light was green for them they had basically no way of knowing a car was about to run it. Even people that can hear would have a difficult time with modern cars and all their sound proofing.

If the sirens are on the police are allowed to run red lights

You're right, but the act of having your siren on should not absolve a policeman from the consequences of not paying attention in a risky situation like running a red light.

I live in Louisiana. Most police I've personally seen do that still slow down when they approach a red and observe the traffic around them, and that's just to confirm that the other drivers are following the law that requires them to stop when they hear or see a siren. In this case, the other driver was deaf.

Not to mention that Louisiana law has speed limits 10-20 slower everywhere than the rest of the country, and the typical speed limit in the context of an intersection with a light is like 40mph.

There was no reason for that cop to be blasting through going 80 without at least trying to see the other vehicles, even in a shots fired situation.

Choosing not to fly through an intersection at 79mph.

The other driver being deaf isn't as important as the fact that they were driving excessively fast through an intersection. Even an audible warning wouldn't be enough to let people approaching the intersection have time to figure out where it is coming from, and people shouldn't need to anticipate a cop flying through an intersection when they hear a siren.

Don't blame the victims, blame the cops that are making things unsafe.