Posted on 02/24/2013 8:55:24 AM PST by redreno
In the 14 months since Stanley Gibson was shot and killed by Metro Police officers, Gibson’s family has struggled with unanswered questions.
What was Gibson, a 43-year-old Gulf War veteran allegedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, doing out of the house that fateful December night when police approached him, his older brother Rudy asks. Why did a plan to remove Gibson from his vehicle with beanbag rounds and pepper spray end with him being shot seven times by police officer Jesus Arevalo? And why were police in such a hurry to end the standoff with the unarmed Gibson, whose vehicle was boxed in between two patrol cars?
“Why not give him another half an hour? The car wasn’t going to fly anywhere,” Rudy Gibson said. “I’ve been running that in my mind over and over and over again. It doesn’t make any sense. … This never should have happened.”
The family’s quest for understanding has yielded lots of closed doors but few answers.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
Why any tourist would ever consider going to a town with a police force like this one is beyond me.
Too many of today’s police demand instant and total compliance with any bullshit order on pain of summary execution.
And their bosses never eveb slap thm on the wrists.
We had a similar case in Topeka. A guy was sitting in his truck in his employer’s parking lot....catatonic....probably because he was having a stroke. Security called the sheriff, and the female deputy used her taser in cattle prod mode to get him out of the truck, pinned him to the ground and cuffed him. He died face down on the ground.
I should add that he had already surrendered his keys...so he was not a threat to anyone.
The sheriff went on the radio and said the deputy was ‘trying to help the man.’ I’m sure he would like his own father to be ‘helped’ like that.
To my knowledge, no lawsuit...yet.
IBTCT...
I seriously believe it’s two things.
1. I believe there’s a desensitization occuring via the mountain, MOUNTAIN of cop shows on television that show them doing whatever they want to do to the always over-the-top bad guys. the multiple csi’s, nypd blue, rookie blue, multiple ncis’s, the closer, JAG, Body of Proof, Bones, Criminal Minds, multiple Law and Orders, the shield, Flashpoint, etc. These are tv drama shows and not how actual work gets done. But it’s what happens when you buy the hype and start believing it yourself. Real cops think they can skirt the lines and behave like all the myriads of tv cops. Because they’re just trying to get the bad guy.
2. the entire mentality of cops have changed. They are not “peace officers”. They are “law enforcement” officers. Officer safety is now the highest priority rule for most departments. That means your life is sh1t, your dog’s life is less than sh1t and it’s shoot first and cover up later.
And it will be covered up unless you’ve recorded it and the recording device isn’t discovered and destroyed by the cops.
[Officers used two patrol cars to box in Gibson’s car, pinning him there for more than an hour. When Gibson continued to try to drive away and ignored police orders, officers developed a plan to use a beanbag round fired from a shotgun to break a window on Gibson’s car and then fill the cabin with pepper spray, forcing him out. . .When the beanbag round was fired, Arevalo fired seven live rounds from his rifle, striking and killing Gibson. . .Police have attributed the shooting to a miscommunication caused by a radio failure.]
There are some good cops, but you can't tell the difference by looking.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, while they are paid with the tax dollars from individual citizens, they are hired and their paycheck is signed by city bureaucracy, and that is where, ultimately, their allegiances lie.
Their allegiance is to each other.
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