Escambia County Sheriff's OfficePosted on 07/30/2013 3:37:37 PM PDT by neverdem
Escambia County Sheriff's Office
Early Saturday morning, Roy Middleton was rummaging through his mother's car in the driveway of his Warrington, Florida, home, looking for a cigarette, when he heard someone bark, "Get your hands where I can see them!" Middleton initially thought it was a neighbor playing a joke on him, but when he turned his head he saw Escambia County sheriff's deputies standing in his driveway. The next thing he knew, he says, they were shooting at him. "It was like a firing squad," Middleton told the Pensacola News Journal. "Bullets were flying everywhere." Middleton was lucky the deputies were terrible shots. His injuries were limited to a leg wound. "My mother's car is full of bullet holes though," he said. "My wife had to go and get a rental."
The deputies came to Middleton's house around 2:42 a.m. after a neighbor saw him reaching into the car and called 911. What happened after that, from the cops' perspective, is unclear. But let's say they were unnerved by Middleton's slowness in obeying the command to show his hands and feared that he was armed. Maybe he even moved in a way that suggested to the deputies that he might be reaching for a weapon. That scenario is in some ways similar to the one confronting Merritt Landry the previous night, when he shot a teenager who had hopped the fence in front of his New Orleans home. Landry said he shot the intruder, Marshall Coulter, because he seemed to be reaching for a weapon. Coulter was in fact unarmed, although there is little doubt, given his history of burglary arrests (his brother called him "a professional thief"), what he was planning to do after climbing the fence.
There are some important differences between these two situations, of course. Middleton was standing in the driveway of his own home, where he had every right to be. If anyone was intruding, it was the sheriff's deputies, who had a lot more firepower than Landry, more training in dealing with scary situations, and less reason to be afraid. Unlike Landry, they were not awakened in the middle of the night by a dog barking at a would-be home invader. But probably the most important difference between these two cases is that the deputies were acting as armed agents of the government, while Landry was an ordinary citizen anxious to protect his pregnant wife and baby daughter. That helps explain why Landry was immediately arrested for attempted murder, while the Florida deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. Although the fusillade they fired could easily have killed Middleton—an unarmed, innocent man standing on his own property—I will be very surprised if any of them face similar charges.
I am not sure Landry was justified in shooting Coulter, although he seems to have a pretty good defense under Louisiana's law allowing the use of deadly force to repel home invaders. But it seems even less likely that the deputies were justified in shooting Middleton. Assuming that both shootings are attributable to errors, the outcomes should be similar. If Landry ends up going to prison while the deputies remain free, it will confirm the double standard that lets cops make deadly or potentially deadly mistakes without facing criminal charges while giving regular folks no such leeway.
In the old days the neighbor would have yelled out, Hey Roy is that you!
These days they hide in their house and call 911 and have you shot.
Wait there is no way this story is true. The cops response time musta been 30 seconds which aint gonna happen.
There are a couple of FReepers who would be quite happy to see smokers shot on sight.
On second thought, that’s an exaggeration. They would rather that smokers were taken to education facilities and convinced to quit. Only if the reeducation didn’t take would smokers be lined up in a ditch and shot.
Good thing his dog wasn’t around.
Friggin Jack Booted Thugs!
I have read that many psychos start on dogs and move up to people.
It's the Nudge Squad in action. Government gotta stop people from smoking, y'know.
Jeez, more small manhood cops. I guess they didn’t have a dog to shoot so they blasted away at the innocent resident getting some cigarettes out of the car.
And what happens to them-—that peculiar government thing called “administrative leave”. Yes, more paid vacations for the government class.
Cops should stick to their primary duty:
Raising money for the welfare state from innocent citizens attempting to lawfully go about their day.
I agree
Not all that different from George Zimmerman; “If only he had stayed in the car, none of this would have happened”.
I imagine it went something like this:
http://klipd.com/watch/apocalypse-now/river-boat-massacre-scene
Another example of militarized cops in action.
Serves him right for not having a dog.
I read somewhere that cops are now trained to yell “drop the gun” while unloading their high capacity magazine at the perp. If so then what happened would make sense as the minute on of them yelled at the perp it triggered an automatic response in the cops to unload their gun in the general direction of the perp. That said the cops will be cleared and the guy shot will get whatever the going rate is for being shot (but not killed), here in LA it appears to be around $2M or so depending on how helpless the victim is (say a pair of little old ladies delivering newspapers versus some guy looking for a smoke).
ping
Nest time this guy wants to go look in the car at night, he is going to have to call the cops first and let them know the address, the time he expects to be outside, and what clothing he is going to wear.
Even so, they might still kill him.
Only way that happens is if this guy is across the street from the donut shop.
Did you accidentally post to the wrong thread?
Nah, he just needs to bring a dog with him to draw off the fire.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.