That guy should NOT have a badge and a gun. He clearly asked to see the black guy's license and when he reached in his truck to get it, the cop overreacted and shot him! Holy cow!
You can hear the victim telling the cop that he had just pulled into the gas station. Plus it looks to me at the beginning of the video that neither the victim or the cop were on a public road. Plus the cop did not have his siren on so how was the victim supposed to know what the cop was doing?
At 3:14 you can clearly see the guy raise his hands - the officer fires the last shot after he raised his hands and had backed away from the car (following instructions).
It's doubtless that race will be portrayed as a factor but the truth is that could be any of us or our sons or daughters or nieces or nephews.
The cop's defense will be that the shooting was consistent with his training. And he will be telling the truth - the shooting was (very likely) consistent with his training.
And if there had been no video, no charges would have been filed. This is why cops are so aggressive at the scene when you tape them.
I need to correct my statement that I've never know a single cop like the guy in this case...because I did know one, just one, who was far far worse....he offed the witnesses whenever he could as well. Even if I used his nickname here, some one from my town would know who he was...and since he's retired on psych/medical grounds for years and years now, no reason to do so. He also saved many lives by his fearless work. He just went round the bend eventually. I also know other really good cops, great actually in terms of protecting citizens, who might be considered cruel...one for example used to use any syringe he found on a suspect to jab him in the thigh until he fessed up to what was going on and who did what. Another really good cop fiend of mine was homicidal for a while after he saw two partners of his 4 man team shot down in front of him...and he never got over feeling guilt for that, but his wife saved his life and demanded they move to the country literally and start anew..he did, as a carpenter while he attended law school, then as an attorney in a rural town. He is a noteworthy example of how morality can overcome anger when it counts...he was the man who arrested the guy who killed his two partners after a long manhunt. He did not kill the suspect. I would have.
I knew both survivors of the gun fight way back when and the condition of the guy shot in the head twice lying on the sidewalk made me worse than my friend...I just did not have a badge.
I have never, ever, seen a more bullshit shooting episode in my life...that cop is a punk who had ample time to disable the object of his stop, but pulled his pistol and fired. From a guy who has been in multiple gun fights, once called firefights, I will tell you that cop was over his head and scared witless...fear overcame his common sense. How did he become a cop? Fix that and you fix the problem.
Lewy...I know a lot of cops and I know not a single one who ever had training like that behavior exhibited by that cop in the video. Not. A. Single. One. But then again, most of my acquaintances were/are also combat veterans from Vietnam. A guy like that guy was far more likely to knocked to ground with a sap or Kel-light if he was reaching for anything other than paper. Maybe we learned things differently. The whole idea today that free fire zone meant war crime is bullshit (thank you John "Punk" Kerry) ...you still had your moral obligations to adhere to, even under fire...e.g., you did not just kill for the sake of it. Today we've lost sight of that on the civilian political side of things...and the gap between soldier and civilians and politicians grows wider by the minute. And we wonder why the gap for police and civilian grows wider as well? Please. Just please.
I saw this morning that a muslim beheaded a woman in Oklahoma. I knew it would happen here, I just didn't think it would be this soon and I thought it would be in a mall.
I expected it sooner than later...especially by a entitlement sucking melanin enhanced wanna be jihadi who figured 20 minutes of Islamic education made him an expert. Where I live, 90% Muslim, the street is very quiet these days...for good reason. No one knows who to trust. I am heavily armed now, 24/7, because I will not run....and I trust no one. Period.
That was not a justified shooting, from where I sit. The man was doing as instructed, getting his license, and the officer shot at him multiple times, once after he'd raised his hands. The man can thank God the cop was a lousy shot.
I have a serious problem with things such as "Seatbelt Laws." They are not there to protect anyone -- they are there to give police a reason to pull people over for no compelling reason.
I think it's safe to say they were BOTH lucky he was a bad shot ;-)
I'm with you about the seatbelt laws. About 15 years ago, shortly after they made it mandatory, I had followed Tom to drop off his pickup for repairs and we were driving home in my Ranger pickup, so I was driving. He didn't have his seatbelt on. We were heading north on 101 and it was completely divided from the southbound lanes by metal barrier and a big 8' ditch. We saw a cop coming from that direction and after he went by us I saw him hit his brakes and go for the next access to northbound. He pulled me over and gave us a ticket for a seatbelt violation. $80 bucks! I was so pissed! Not only that, he gave me shit for having a crack in my windshield (it was winter, it had just recently happened).
Matt, your comment about seatbelt laws got me wondering why they passed in the first place. Money, undoubtedly. And sure enough, I found this interesting article that speaks about it:
Actually, I was engaged in a discussion on this subject on another site although it was pretty civil as well. (That was nice, vehement disagreement but still being civil.)
Several people were saying it was the victim's fault for going quickly into his vehicle. Others were saying that an American Citizen should not have to play "Mother May I" when dealing with the police. Someone said that if the victim moved to slowly he could have been roughed up for not obeying the officer and if he moved too fast he gets shot. Someone else suggested that if you can get shot for obeying an officers command if you don't do it exactly the right way, then part of driver education should involve how to obey orders when confronted by police. The people who said it was the victims fault did not understand that point. However, it was a civil discussion.
Many of us just could not believe those who suggested that the victim in the case brought it upon himself for going for his ID. Somehow people are supposed to know to say "Sir, My ID is in my vehicle," Even when they had no idea they were even being stopped.
I think we have had some major disagreements on the Table. I would feel sick if we ever lost our civility, borne out of friendship and respect. On another site (Facebook, actually) someone accused me of valuing the lives of sexual predators over the lives of rape victims because I had the audacity to suggest that men accused of sex crimes should have proper legal counsel, especially in the light of the number of false accusations that are made. Somehow, wanting men to be protected against a political bludgeon is the same as wanting women to be attacked. I have no time for that type of discussion.
In another case (on YouTube!), someone pointed out how dangerous the U.S. is because of the number of guns. I point out a couple of things, including an EU study that said that the UK had the highest rate of violent crimes in the world -- twice that of Canada and four times that of the US. He came back and said, "I don't know where you got your figures, probably out of you ass...." I came back and said "My ass runs the Daily Mail? Who knew?" and gave a link. He then came back and implied that if the Daily Mail had the story then it must have been made up. At that point others took up the banner and I saw no need to wallow in it any more.
To point out that Obama is a disaster of a President is met with charges of racism. Such discussions are useless.
I can't take flame wars. Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching them ;-) But if I'm personally involved it makes me feel nauseous.
I comment all the time on articles but I don't get involved in discussions anywhere and don't respond to trolls or flamers. It's hard to have a civil discussion for the exact reasons Matt posted above. I personally blame liberals, they don't want to address the topic but instead use personal or ad hominem and straw man arguments. Life is too short for that useless garbage.
I mentioned the one discussion to my son when I saw him last week. He wondered why I do respond to such things, especially on Facebook.
Generally I do not. However, sometimes somethings strikes me as so egregious that I cannot let it go unchallenged. In the one case, someone posted how her granddaughter went into the military and if anything happened to her, they would have to deal with a pissed-off grandmother. While I understand the feeling, the underlying message was that US military men -- and men in general -- were a bunch of sexual predator brutes. I was not going to let that go by. Another thing I commented on on Facebook (three people from my high school posted the same thing) was a meme about how high the minimum wage was in such countries as Denmark, asking when the US would catch up. I broke it down and showed how, after taxes and cost of living, the person who made $21.00 in Denmark had less buying power than an American making $7.25 an hour in the US. I thought I could open some eyes to people who would be open to it. On the other hand, there was a post by someone we know from a blog long ago and far away. Someone made a comment that the reason the US Credit rating was downgraded was because the Republican House was not doing its job. I looked it up: the downgrade was in August, 2011. The Republicans did not take control until January, 2011. The Dems had it before that, and the Dems still had the White House and the Senate. I did not comment because these people just chose to be stupid and nothing I could say would make things any different. I could have pointed out that the Republican House had been passing budgets since that time, but it was the Democratic Senate that was not doing anything with them. Stupid is as stupid does. The YouTube discussion was one of those cases where someone was essentially saying, "Americans would all be safe if they only gave up their guns." Again, I figured I would not changed that guy's mind, but I wanted to post some facts to people who where undecided on the issue. For the most part, though, I am not going to join in on something just for grins and giggles. I don't really enjoy reading flame wars. The libs involved usually are going out of their way to prove that they are very adept at self-proctology.
The "discussion" I was having was on the topic of the Hong Kong protests, and was at the Financial Times.
British publications are overrun with Chinese trolls who love to rant openly about whoever opposes the CCP, either domestically or internationally, will get crushed. Anyone who wants democracy is a western stooge, the troublemakers will all be rounded up, Taiwan will be strangled, Japan will be taught a lesson, the CCP will lead China to a glorious destiny, blah, blah, on and on...
...I feel like I'm experiencing what it would have been like if low level Nazi party hacks and junior SS officers had had twitter accounts in 1937 or so.
Pure ad hominem is against the house rules at the FT but I got away with it last night. This Chinese propagandist was ranting about how the Hong Kong students had been "emotionally groomed" by the west, and I told him:
If anyone has been "emotionally groomed" by the west, it's you and your ilk - combining the paranoid hostility of a John Bircher with the sentimentalized victimology of a vegan hippy. How efficient.
Sometimes it feels good to just let loose.
[I'm aware that I wasn'ty entirely fair to the John Birch society, but I had to go with the accessible metaphor. There wasn't room for subtlety.]
SEAT BELT VIOLATION???
ReplyDeleteThat guy should NOT have a badge and a gun. He clearly asked to see the black guy's license and when he reached in his truck to get it, the cop overreacted and shot him! Holy cow!
"SEAT BELT VIOLATION???"
DeleteYou can hear the victim telling the cop that he had just pulled into the gas station. Plus it looks to me at the beginning of the video that neither the victim or the cop were on a public road. Plus the cop did not have his siren on so how was the victim supposed to know what the cop was doing?
My jaw is on the ground. The little punk had no reason to shoot that man; he was only doing what he was asked to do.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that the punk has been charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
Plus he got fired.
DeleteI watched it several times.
ReplyDeleteAt 3:14 you can clearly see the guy raise his hands - the officer fires the last shot after he raised his hands and had backed away from the car (following instructions).
It's doubtless that race will be portrayed as a factor but the truth is that could be any of us or our sons or daughters or nieces or nephews.
The cop's defense will be that the shooting was consistent with his training. And he will be telling the truth - the shooting was (very likely) consistent with his training.
And if there had been no video, no charges would have been filed. This is why cops are so aggressive at the scene when you tape them.
F**k the police.
I need to correct my statement that I've never know a single cop like the guy in this case...because I did know one, just one, who was far far worse....he offed the witnesses whenever he could as well. Even if I used his nickname here, some one from my town would know who he was...and since he's retired on psych/medical grounds for years and years now, no reason to do so. He also saved many lives by his fearless work. He just went round the bend eventually. I also know other really good cops, great actually in terms of protecting citizens, who might be considered cruel...one for example used to use any syringe he found on a suspect to jab him in the thigh until he fessed up to what was going on and who did what. Another really good cop fiend of mine was homicidal for a while after he saw two partners of his 4 man team shot down in front of him...and he never got over feeling guilt for that, but his wife saved his life and demanded they move to the country literally and start anew..he did, as a carpenter while he attended law school, then as an attorney in a rural town. He is a noteworthy example of how morality can overcome anger when it counts...he was the man who arrested the guy who killed his two partners after a long manhunt. He did not kill the suspect. I would have.
DeleteI knew both survivors of the gun fight way back when and the condition of the guy shot in the head twice lying on the sidewalk made me worse than my friend...I just did not have a badge.
I have never, ever, seen a more bullshit shooting episode in my life...that cop is a punk who had ample time to disable the object of his stop, but pulled his pistol and fired. From a guy who has been in multiple gun fights, once called firefights, I will tell you that cop was over his head and scared witless...fear overcame his common sense. How did he become a cop? Fix that and you fix the problem.
ReplyDeleteLewy...I know a lot of cops and I know not a single one who ever had training like that behavior exhibited by that cop in the video. Not. A. Single. One. But then again, most of my acquaintances were/are also combat veterans from Vietnam. A guy like that guy was far more likely to knocked to ground with a sap or Kel-light if he was reaching for anything other than paper. Maybe we learned things differently. The whole idea today that free fire zone meant war crime is bullshit (thank you John "Punk" Kerry) ...you still had your moral obligations to adhere to, even under fire...e.g., you did not just kill for the sake of it. Today we've lost sight of that on the civilian political side of things...and the gap between soldier and civilians and politicians grows wider by the minute. And we wonder why the gap for police and civilian grows wider as well? Please. Just please.
ReplyDeleteAnd please, just one person here tell me how they'd like it in their community with absolutely NO police presence?
ReplyDeleteI know how I'd react because I've been there done that. Wars do that. Y'all ready for war at your front door?
OT
ReplyDeleteI saw this morning that a muslim beheaded a woman in Oklahoma. I knew it would happen here, I just didn't think it would be this soon and I thought it would be in a mall.
They are calling it "workplace violence".
I expected it sooner than later...especially by a entitlement sucking melanin enhanced wanna be jihadi who figured 20 minutes of Islamic education made him an expert. Where I live, 90% Muslim, the street is very quiet these days...for good reason. No one knows who to trust. I am heavily armed now, 24/7, because I will not run....and I trust no one. Period.
DeleteThat was not a justified shooting, from where I sit. The man was doing as instructed, getting his license, and the officer shot at him multiple times, once after he'd raised his hands. The man can thank God the cop was a lousy shot.
ReplyDeleteThe cop can thank God the cop was a lousy shot.
DeleteI have a serious problem with things such as "Seatbelt Laws." They are not there to protect anyone -- they are there to give police a reason to pull people over for no compelling reason.
I think it's safe to say they were BOTH lucky he was a bad shot ;-)
DeleteI'm with you about the seatbelt laws. About 15 years ago, shortly after they made it mandatory, I had followed Tom to drop off his pickup for repairs and we were driving home in my Ranger pickup, so I was driving. He didn't have his seatbelt on. We were heading north on 101 and it was completely divided from the southbound lanes by metal barrier and a big 8' ditch. We saw a cop coming from that direction and after he went by us I saw him hit his brakes and go for the next access to northbound. He pulled me over and gave us a ticket for a seatbelt violation. $80 bucks! I was so pissed! Not only that, he gave me shit for having a crack in my windshield (it was winter, it had just recently happened).
img:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y117/floranista/emoticons/muttering.gif"
Matt, your comment about seatbelt laws got me wondering why they passed in the first place. Money, undoubtedly. And sure enough, I found this interesting article that speaks about it:
DeleteThe Fraud of Seat-Belt Laws
You know I love you guys but sometimes y'all are just too... civil. Sometimes I miss a good flamewar.
ReplyDeleteEngaging in one right now on a mainstream site. If I get banned, remind me I thought it was worth it at the time...
Actually, I was engaged in a discussion on this subject on another site although it was pretty civil as well. (That was nice, vehement disagreement but still being civil.)
DeleteSeveral people were saying it was the victim's fault for going quickly into his vehicle. Others were saying that an American Citizen should not have to play "Mother May I" when dealing with the police. Someone said that if the victim moved to slowly he could have been roughed up for not obeying the officer and if he moved too fast he gets shot. Someone else suggested that if you can get shot for obeying an officers command if you don't do it exactly the right way, then part of driver education should involve how to obey orders when confronted by police. The people who said it was the victims fault did not understand that point. However, it was a civil discussion.
Many of us just could not believe those who suggested that the victim in the case brought it upon himself for going for his ID. Somehow people are supposed to know to say "Sir, My ID is in my vehicle," Even when they had no idea they were even being stopped.
I think we have had some major disagreements on the Table. I would feel sick if we ever lost our civility, borne out of friendship and respect. On another site (Facebook, actually) someone accused me of valuing the lives of sexual predators over the lives of rape victims because I had the audacity to suggest that men accused of sex crimes should have proper legal counsel, especially in the light of the number of false accusations that are made. Somehow, wanting men to be protected against a political bludgeon is the same as wanting women to be attacked. I have no time for that type of discussion.
In another case (on YouTube!), someone pointed out how dangerous the U.S. is because of the number of guns. I point out a couple of things, including an EU study that said that the UK had the highest rate of violent crimes in the world -- twice that of Canada and four times that of the US. He came back and said, "I don't know where you got your figures, probably out of you ass...." I came back and said "My ass runs the Daily Mail? Who knew?" and gave a link. He then came back and implied that if the Daily Mail had the story then it must have been made up. At that point others took up the banner and I saw no need to wallow in it any more.
To point out that Obama is a disaster of a President is met with charges of racism. Such discussions are useless.
I can't take flame wars. Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching them ;-) But if I'm personally involved it makes me feel nauseous.
DeleteI comment all the time on articles but I don't get involved in discussions anywhere and don't respond to trolls or flamers. It's hard to have a civil discussion for the exact reasons Matt posted above. I personally blame liberals, they don't want to address the topic but instead use personal or ad hominem and straw man arguments. Life is too short for that useless garbage.
I mentioned the one discussion to my son when I saw him last week. He wondered why I do respond to such things, especially on Facebook.
DeleteGenerally I do not. However, sometimes somethings strikes me as so egregious that I cannot let it go unchallenged. In the one case, someone posted how her granddaughter went into the military and if anything happened to her, they would have to deal with a pissed-off grandmother. While I understand the feeling, the underlying message was that US military men -- and men in general -- were a bunch of sexual predator brutes. I was not going to let that go by. Another thing I commented on on Facebook (three people from my high school posted the same thing) was a meme about how high the minimum wage was in such countries as Denmark, asking when the US would catch up. I broke it down and showed how, after taxes and cost of living, the person who made $21.00 in Denmark had less buying power than an American making $7.25 an hour in the US. I thought I could open some eyes to people who would be open to it. On the other hand, there was a post by someone we know from a blog long ago and far away. Someone made a comment that the reason the US Credit rating was downgraded was because the Republican House was not doing its job. I looked it up: the downgrade was in August, 2011. The Republicans did not take control until January, 2011. The Dems had it before that, and the Dems still had the White House and the Senate. I did not comment because these people just chose to be stupid and nothing I could say would make things any different. I could have pointed out that the Republican House had been passing budgets since that time, but it was the Democratic Senate that was not doing anything with them. Stupid is as stupid does.
The YouTube discussion was one of those cases where someone was essentially saying, "Americans would all be safe if they only gave up their guns." Again, I figured I would not changed that guy's mind, but I wanted to post some facts to people who where undecided on the issue.
For the most part, though, I am not going to join in on something just for grins and giggles.
I don't really enjoy reading flame wars. The libs involved usually are going out of their way to prove that they are very adept at self-proctology.
The "discussion" I was having was on the topic of the Hong Kong protests, and was at the Financial Times.
DeleteBritish publications are overrun with Chinese trolls who love to rant openly about whoever opposes the CCP, either domestically or internationally, will get crushed. Anyone who wants democracy is a western stooge, the troublemakers will all be rounded up, Taiwan will be strangled, Japan will be taught a lesson, the CCP will lead China to a glorious destiny, blah, blah, on and on...
...I feel like I'm experiencing what it would have been like if low level Nazi party hacks and junior SS officers had had twitter accounts in 1937 or so.
Pure ad hominem is against the house rules at the FT but I got away with it last night. This Chinese propagandist was ranting about how the Hong Kong students had been "emotionally groomed" by the west, and I told him:
If anyone has been "emotionally groomed" by the west, it's you and your ilk - combining the paranoid hostility of a John Bircher with the sentimentalized victimology of a vegan hippy. How efficient.
Sometimes it feels good to just let loose.
[I'm aware that I wasn'ty entirely fair to the John Birch society, but I had to go with the accessible metaphor. There wasn't room for subtlety.]