Posted on 01/05/2014 9:05:36 PM PST by servo1969
Two North Carolina parents are in shock after local police shot and killed their 18-year-old son in their own home, while they watched helplessly.
The family called police because they were worried about their son, Keith Vidal, who is schizophrenic and suffers from depression, according to local news. Vidal, armed with a small screwdriver, was apparently having a psychotic episode. Mark Wilsey, Vidal’s father, called the authorities to help deal with the situation.
An officer from the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office and another from the Boiling Spring Lakes police department showed up to the house soon after. Eventually, a third officer from the Southport police department entered the home as well, and ordered the use of tasers to subdue Vidal. According to Wilsey, Vidal was pinned on the ground by two of the officers when a third said, “we don’t have time for this,” and shot Vidal, killing him.
Vidal had just turned 18, and weighed a mere 90 pounds. He couldn’t have hurt anyone with the screwdriver, and had no history of violence according to family and friends.
“There was no reason to shoot this kid,” said Wilsey in a statement. “They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help and they killed my son.”
After her son was killed, Vidal’s mother suffered a mental breakdown and was treated by medical staff.
The New Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office told The Daily Caller that no statement has been released yet, but the district attorney and state investigators are looking into the shooting.
A similar thing happened to a Georgia family in October. (RELATED: Family calls 911 for medical help, cops show up and kill son)
Depends on what YOUR intentions were for posting that passage. Did you intend to justify the shooting or just posted it for the entertainment value?
Sad. RIP.
“I noticed before leaving that cops in America were morphing into jack-booted thugs. It has been a dramatic change, beginning in the 90s, or earlier.”
***************************************************************
It’s happening at the national level also with the FBI under Eric Holder’s direction.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3108883/posts
And I’ve said wait for the investigation. You ought to know that reporters embellish stories a lot. Just wait until the investigation is done. I hope and pray it wasn’t like the way it was reported.....if so it makes me sick to my stomach.
Very unfortunate incident but the thing that catches my eye is the 40 witnesses testifying in front of a grand jury. We don’t know what they hear....we’re not privy to what goes on behind closed doors. I’m not taking the officer’s side in this but I wasn’t on that grand jury. It looks really bad on the officers involved though.....I’ll give you that. My heart goes out to that young man’s family.....:(
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD/WOT and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take. It is these clowns who give credence to the wry bit of “humor” that there is no situation than cannot be made worse by the presence of the cops.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a chat with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
My intention was to clarify that you can't jump to conclusions based on someone's physical size. We don't know the full story and we only have the "word" of the parents. I would be withholding judgment until all the evidence is in.
*ouch*
The “All cops are evil thugs” chorus is not only totally untrue, it’s really strange to see how many people jump on this crazybus.
All thugs are bad, right.
NOT all cops are bad.
If all LEOs stopped working for two weeks, these “all cops are bad” would be wetting their pants at the incredible mayhem that would result.
Best comment on the thread imho.
If you Google the Sandy Deputies name, you can find his video taped testimony. I encourage you to look it up, but I will summarize for you:
“The person staggering down the road was icky, I didn’t want to touch him. He was making animal growling noises and not following commands. My command was for him to lay down on the hot asphalt with 1st, second, and third degree burns on a summer afternoon. The animal would not comply, jumped onto the hood of a police cruiser then lunged at me so I shot him.”
Never mind that the subject was horribly burned and out of his mind with pain. How many injured motorist, (head injuries are notorious) attack first responders? Answer? A bunch. Why? They are out of their minds with pain. Cops know this. They are not usually inclined to shoot them. But this guy looked real icky, and they didn’t want to touch him. Something about burned flesh hanging off him and oozing wounds and sores. So they shot him.
Many cops respond to several such calls per shift, and you think they aren’t any more likely to be involved in a violent confrontation than Joe CCW?
“More likely” How does that matter. We're talking here of HOW the violent encounter is handled after contact? People get into violent confrontations by the thousands every day. Some of those results in calls to 911, some don't. Citizen involvement is nonstop everyday all day.
You damn well DO NOT want to shoot someone on the thin to ludicrous pretexts that cops seem to do lately AND THEN have to explain the need for deadly force to them. Hell, I don't doubt for a second that I'd end up in cuffs if I fired ANY legal gun at an attacking dog in my neighborhood. Possibly I'd walk if the animal was over the top hydrophopic BUT I WOULD NOT WANT TO BET MY LIFE ON EVEN THAT.
“Vidal had just turned 18, and weighed a mere 90 pounds. He couldn’t have hurt anyone with the screwdriver, and had no history of violence according to family and friends.”
Are you serious? A statement like that is idiotic on its face. To say “He couldn’t have hurt anyone with the screwdriver” as if it were a fact shows how horrible this reporting is. They aren’t quoting someone saying it they are saying it. Anyone with a screwdriver can indeed hurt someone, no matter how much they weigh or how old they are.
I am not condoning the cops here, but for a reporter and an editor to say he couldn’t have hurt someone is nonsense.
Correct. However, USA has <1M cops and >300M non-cops.
The total of violent situations faced by non-cops each day is probably somewhat greater than the total faced by cops.
The number of such situations faced on average by each cop is, however, much greater than the number faced on average by each civilian.
That's what happens when group A outnumbers group B by more than 300:1.
I'm a non-cop closing on 60, and have had to deal with exactly one potentially violent situation in the last 40 years. If I had spent that same time as a cop, I strongly doubt that would be the case.
Your rather restrained reaction to violent official miss use of power is why it still occurs. We as a nation are way past measured responses. The time now is to be jumping up and down with our head on fire while we can still do something about it.
Oh well, just another dead dog. Oh well, just another dead grandma. Oh well, just another home invasion and shoot out with or without a warrant. OH WELL.
For the record though I just turned 55 and I can't count the number of times someone came at me out there raving and screaming and promising mayhem. Seriously, I would have to sit down and try to remember but have probably forgotten half of them (I work in NYC). A thing which I have learned calms them down is my saying “Buddy, I'm gonna’ defend my self the best I can and then win or lose YOU are going to jail...and I WILL sue you. No joke, this works, I recommend it.
How dare you accuse me of that. I am strongly opposed to any kind of violence by anyone! The words “oh well” don’t even fit me. I’m incensed by the increasing violence in our society and scream from the rooftops to anyone who will listen! IF that is what happened...I mean REALLY happened to this young man then I would be the first person to bring that officer to the chair and strap him in myself,(I wish we still had the chair). There are cases where officers go over the line....no doubt about it but I still maintain they are dealt with and pay for their crimes one way or the other more times than not.
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