Posted on 04/14/2006 11:26:19 AM PDT by STARWISE
There has been a deputy-involved shooting and a cruiser crash in southern Hillsborough County this afternoon.
News Channel 8 says deputies shot a criminal suspect after a multi-car accident. It is unclear whether there was a chase involved.
The sheriff’s office says the investigation is underway near U.S. Hwy. 301 and Sun City Center Blvd, outside a Publix shopping center.
News Channel 8 said two deputies have been injured and at least one suspect has been shot several times. There may have been a second suspect.
The deputies were not suffering gunshot wounds, and their injuries were not life threatening. They were transported by ambulance to the hospital.
One suspect was airlifted for treatment.
At least one vehicle is overturned at the scene, but it is unclear what role the crash played in all this.
U.S. Hwy. 301 is currently closed. Images from Eagle 8 show it is littered with debris from the multi-car crash and crime scene tape is strewn for yards across the highway.
One suspect was airlifted for treatment...which begs the question: Why?
Suffice it to say that I've seen the chopper land a few blocks from my former home to take someone to a hospital a few miles away -- devoid of any obviously good reason for doing so except from the perspective of the owner of the chopper who sent a bill to an insurance company for his services. Then, why, I suspect you'd want to do so as often as possible...which is pretty much what happens in that neighborhood. It gives the local talking heads something to talk about.
Also very common are deputies unloading their service revolvers into "suspects."
Deputies haven't carried 'service revolvers' for twenty years. And there are two tendencies in shootings - one is to fire one shot, the other is the shooter empties the gun. Based on the number of poeple who empty the gun, it's a human reaction and hard to argue with it.
Whatever it is, a bunch of them were used to put 42 bullets into a guy stopped early one Sunday morning on I 75. He was reaching for his registration.
Overzealous, steroid-saturated,power junkies is how I'd describe the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department. I wouldn't trust them with your goods, much less mine.
Do I like it? No.
A wise cop told me that you don't know why the cop pulled you over. Your description could match anything. Maybe a white guy with short, blonde hair in a brown Infiniti just shot five people in Lake Worth. Maybe the cop just had some idiot pull a knife on him and he's on hair trigger.
Maybe the guy's wife just left him and he's having a bad day at work, only when I have a bad day, I take it out on the boxes in the warehouse I run. The cop has to deal with people who usually aren't happy to see him.
I'm not justifying the shooting based on this, but when people get hired as cops, they don't become perfect. Their first priority is to survive the shift. Sometimes they screw up and an innocent person gets hurt. Sometimes they screw up and they don't survive the shift.
BTW, I was an EMT for many years. I will trade absurd medical airlift stories with you some day.
I don't disagree with you. I once did some work for a deputy who said with a very haunted look in his eyes that if I saw what he saw I'd run for the hills.
But I've seen too much abuse of power to not expose it.
When I first became an EMT, I was on a volunteer squad in a well to do town in New Jersey. The other members of my crew were very smart, very experienced people.
One day, I asked Jane (a nurse) what was the scariest thing I would see when I did this job. I was expecting a story about a flaming car wreck with body parts all around and screaming relatives, etc.
She looked at me and said, "The scariest thing you'll see is how many nuts live in this town."
I didn't think much of that at the time, but over the years, I watched those nuts murder their children, murder their parents and set the house on fire to cover the crime, rape women, beat women, beat men, try to shoot cops, crash cars into cops, and kill themselves.
I don't think I'm cynical, I think I'm realistic.
No matter how pretty those eyes, you never really know what's behind them.
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