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Author | Topic: Police Shootings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
As first mentioned in Message 195, this past July Officer Andrew Delke of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department shot and killed Daniel Hambrick while he was running away. The murder was captured on video:
Delke has already been indicted for murder by a grand jury (hey, Hryo, finally an example for you of how grand juries actually fit into the legal process), but now Hambrick's family has filed a lawsuit asking $30 million in punitive damages. And just look at where Delke fired his weapon: in a residential neighborhood where anyone who was checking their mailbox or picking up their newspaper or walking their dog or children playing in the front yard would have been exposed to any of his shots. How far does a bullet travel after missing it's target? Would a mile be a reasonable guess? Officer Delke was firing bullets that could probably travel a mile or more before striking an object - or a person. He supposedly fired four bullets, and Hambrick was struck only three times. Do you think they ever found that fourth bullet? Since there were no other bodies on the ground besides Hambrick's we know it didn't strike a person, but it struck something. What did it hit, and how close did it come to hitting someone? Delke's likely just an average guy with average judgement and average emotions and average skills (actually, given that he hit a running Hambrick three times from a fair distance, I'd say he has above average marksman skills), yet he fired shots in a residential neighborhood full of families and children. He shouldn't be carrying a deadly weapon. That's no shame on him - very few possess the necessary qualities to carry a deadly weapon around in public. Poor schmucks like Delke are not to blame. Statistically in a large country like the US where we issue deadly weapons to all our police, incidents like this are going to happen to some police officer somewhere every day, and this particular day it was Delke's turn. It is our local governments and our society in general that allows our public spaces to be peppered with individuals carrying deadly weapons. Until it stops the police condoned murders (usually, though not this time) will continue. Source: Family of Black Man Killed by White Nashville Officer Sues Him and the City --Percy Edited by Percy, : Spelling.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Back in February six police officers in Vellejo, California, shot and killed 20-year old rapper Willie McCoy as he awoke after sleeping in his car. The police report laid all the responsibility for McCoy's death on him. I said we wouldn't really know what happened unless there was body cam footage. Well guess what - there was, six of them to be exact (be warned that it is disturbing):
The police were faced with a man sleeping in a car with a gun in his lap. As he groggily awakens he moves in a way that police interpret as reaching for his gun and they fire 25 shots. McCoy dies at the scene. These police were obviously unprepared for handling an armed waking man. I'm no police expert, but one idea is to have a sharpshooter train his gun on the sleeping man, then from a distance throw rocks at the car window until the man wakes up, for as long as it takes. When he wakes up you give him instructions with the understanding that a waking man, particularly one who might have been on drugs, will be groggy and disoriented. But if he is seen with a gun in his hand then the sharpshooter fires. The police also showed wanton disregard for public safety. The Taco Bell where this happened is within 200 feet of Route 80, and right on major artery Admiral Callaghan Lane. Within 1000 feet are a mattress company, McDonalds, Target, a jewelers, a nail salon, a clothing store, Panda Express, Bank of America, a diner, a Mexican restaurant, Applebees, Home Depot, Olive Garden, Black Angus Steakhouse, T-Mobile, PetCo, Bed Bath and Beyond, Michaels and more. As I said earlier, though it won't make up for the loss of their son, the McCoy family can expect a serious payout from the city of Vallejo. AbE: Rhetorical question: How is a sleeping man with a gun in his lap a significantly different danger than a man in an open-carry state with a gun on his hip? Also, why is it that open-carry requires more legislation and permits than concealed carry? People have a right to know who is armed on their streets. Firearms should be carried out in the open where they can be seen. The concealed carry people should have to wear a red warning sticker on their forehead. --Percy Edited by Percy, : AbE.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Just adding a little detail to the police murder of Willie McCoy. In my previous post I said Vallejo police were obviously improperly trained to handle an armed waking man and suggested that they should have followed a much less lethal approach, such as having a sharp shooter aimed and ready while they threw pebbles at the window of McCoy's car until he woke up, for as long as it took.
It turns out that this is pretty much part of standard police training in such situations. As the McCoy family pointed out in Police release body cam video of fatal Taco Bell drive-thru shooting, family plans to file lawsuit, other area police departments use a "time and distance" approach. Their suggestion was staying back a safe distance while using a loud speaker. In Willie McCoy Should Be Alive Today the ACLU makes a similar suggestion, saying:
quote: But it isn't possible or reasonable to expect all one million police officers in the US to have and maintain the necessary degree of proper training, not to mention the presence of mind to adhere to that training in stressful situations. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Answer: When it's a handgun.
The Bucks County District Attorney decided that a Pennsylvania police officer will not be charged after shooting an unarmed man with his handgun because he believe he had pulled out his Taser (Police officer 'excused' after mistakenly using his gun instead of his Taser to shoot unarmed inmate in cell, DA says). The man recovered. Eric Courtney Harris and Oscar Grant were not so lucky:
quote: Police firing their handguns when they meant to fire their Tasers: who woulda thought. Well, actually, this is what everyone should have expected. When you issue a million handguns to normal people there are going to be accidents, and innocent people (of capital crimes, at least) are going to die. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
I briefly mentioned the Justine Damond police shooting at the end of Message 191. Damond was shot and killed when she reported a rape, then walked up to the window of the police car when it arrived and was immediately shot.
The shooter, Officer Mohamed Noor, is now getting his day in court, and it's very revealing about police practices. From Minnesota officer says he fatally shot unarmed woman to save partner's life:
quote: Noor was a victim of his own department's training, putting him in a state of extreme paranoia and telling them to shoot first and ask questions later, otherwise they'd end up dead. Police without guns don't drive themselves into ambush situations for which they've been trained to shoot themselves out of trouble. No guns means police would be forced to adopt (and receive training for) a more careful and circumspect approach. Obviously the police are deathly afraid of guns. That's why there are so many cases of the police firing 10 or 20 shots at unarmed people. --Percy
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Being a Minnesota resident, this is one I hear about quite a bit (but haven't here followed your links or done any detail (re)checks).
It has the strange twist(s) that the shooter officer is a black emigrant from Somalia and the victim is a white woman from Australia. This brings up the situation that a white officer can get away with shooting a black, but not so much the other way around. Moose
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
3 children shot as Oklahoma police open fire on alleged robbery suspect
What more need be said? ”Percy
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Minneapolis Police Officer Convicted Of Murder In 911 Caller Death - TPM – Talking Points Memo
quote: More at source. Moose
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
I'm sort of both happy and sad. Happy because it *was* murder, and sad because I'm not convinced Noor should be the only one held accountable. Unless his characterization of police training procedures is false, his department should be held accountable, too.
Noor could be sentenced to prison for up to 12.5 years (I think - the article says he was convicted of both 2nd degree manslaughter and 3rd degree murder, so if he can be sentenced for both and the sentences do not run concurrently then it could be as much as 16.5 years). Sentencing will be June 7th at 9 AM. I assume he'll file an appeal. Damond's family is suing "his partner Harrity, former Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau, current Chief Medaria Arradondo and the city of Minneapolis. The family is seeking millions of dollars in damages over what it considers a violation of Ruszczyk's civil rights." (Noor guilty in Damond's killing: Here's what happens next). Even though police officers are almost never found guilty of manslaughter or murder while on duty, it's still extremely expensive and time consuming for their bosses and employers, though probably only the insurance companies pay. --Percy
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Minnemooseus Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Minneapolis agrees to pay $20 million in death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond
quote: More at source. Moose
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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This past March in Oklahoma City eighth-grader Lorenzo Clerkley and his friends wanted to play basketball, but it was raining so they gathered a few air-soft and BB guns and went to an abandoned house to play. A neighbor called in a report of breaking and entering with guns to police, also saying they weren't sure if the guns were real. The police arrived as Lorenzo was jumping out a window (the back door was locked). Police Sergeant Kyle Holcomb ordered "Show me your hands, drop it!" Six tenths of a second later, according to body cam footage, Holcomb fired four shots, hitting Lorenzo twice, once in the hip and once in the leg, neither life threatening.
Lorenzo's family has no health insurance and does not know how they will pay his medical bills. Lorenzo missed three weeks of school. Officer Holcomb was cleared of all blame and has already returned to work. The family has filed a civil suit. Some might remember that in 2017 Oklahoma City officers investigating a hit-and-run saw Magdiel Sanchez standing on his porch with a two-foot long metal pipe. They ordered him to drop the pipe. Neighbors yelled, "He's deaf, he can't hear you." Never aware of the police or their shouted orders, Magdiel descended the porch steps. Police opened fire, killing Magdiel. The officers were completely cleared. In another incident the same year Oklahoma City Sergeant Keith Sweeney and two other officers were dispatched to investigate a man threatening to kill himself. Upon arriving at the scene Sweeney found Dustin Pigeon armed with a Bic lighter and a can of lighter fluid. Dustin was ordered by the two other officers to put them down, and he complied. But Sweeney escalated the situation by approaching Dustin and threatening to shoot him. One officer fired a bean-bag round at Dustin, presumably because Sweeney had approached Dustin closely enough to be vulnerable to attack, then Sweeney fired four shots. Dustin Pigeon died at the scene. Sweeney was charged with murder and is still awaiting trial. None of these situations, not eighth-grader Lorenzo's, not deaf Magdiel's, not despondent Dustin's, required police to be armed with guns. If police did not have guns Lorenzo would not have been shot, and Magdiel and Dustin would not be dead. These situations also show that not only are police deathly afraid of guns, but also of pipes and lighter fluid. Source: Officer Opens Fire on Eighth-grader --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1045 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
So I stumbled across a story today from Detroit, which gives a slightly different angle on Percy's trigger-happy cops stories - police shooting dogs
9 year old Elijah was out walking his two dogs, but they got free and ran down the street. He summoned a passing police car to help. The police stopped, apparently decided one of the dogs was dangerous, and shot it in the face. As context, the story on Reason magazine discusses the department's history of shooting dogs (54 in 2017), and some of the law suits the city has been forced to settle as a result. This includes $225,000 paid out to the owners of three dogs shot in their own backyard. The police wanted to be enter the yard in order to sieze marijuana plants growing there, so they killed all the dogs. Drugs raids apparently account for about a third of the doggy death toll at the hands of Detroit PD.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Reports are sketchy thus far, but I would venture to guess that Pamela Shantay Turner was not an upstanding law abiding citizen. She was wanted on several outstanding warrants for assault and criminal mischief. And yes, my use of the past tense means she is dead.
A Baytown, Texas, police officer attempted to arrest Turner last night. A struggle ensued, he tased her, she fell to the ground, he moved to stand over her to cuff her, she grabbed the officer's Taser and fired at him, grazed him, the officer backed away, then drew his gun and fired five shots. Turner died at the scene. A video taken by a bystander has gone viral:
Now imagine the officer had no handgun, no Taser. He sees Turner, tells her she's under arrest, a struggle ensues and Turner breaks away. While the officer has no handgun or Taser he does have a handheld walkie-talkie and calls for assistance as he remains within visual contact of Turner. Another officer or two eventually arrive and together they take her into custody. I like to guess the payouts on these police shootings, and in this case I'll guess that Baytown, Texas, will pay out about $2 million. The officer will be found to have conducted himself properly and no charges will be filed, even though he failed to secure his Taser before attempting to cuff Turner. Source: Police Officer Fatally Shoots Woman --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
The lawyer for Pamela Turner is speaking out (see Message 223 for information about the murder). Turns out the police officer who murdered Turner is a neighbor who knew she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Based on this new information I'm upping my estimate of the Baytown payout: $10 million. I still think officer Juan Delacruz will not face any charges or discipline, but it's more iffy now. He's currently on paid administrative leave, but that's standard. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
This one’s almost too out there to believe, but apparently two Anaheim police officers fired 76 shots from their moving vehicle, many through their own windshield, while pursuing a suspect through a dense residential neighborhood. The suspect was thought to be armed but was found to be packing only an air gun. The suspect eventually brought his vehicle to a stop and despite the efforts of paramedics died at the scene.
Incredibly, neither officer will face charges, but one was fired and the other placed on paid administrative leave. These guys really shouldn’t have guns. Source: 76 Shots, 2 Cops, and a Deadly Chase Through a Residential Neighborhood ”Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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