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.
Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate that you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette [Asleep at the Wheel version, original-Tex Ritter]
These deputies were not on the ball. At 2:42am, unless the vehicle was strongly illuminated, which is unlikely, a typical police approach would be to shine their bright flashlights on him, announce that they are the police, and that he should *not* move.
If he is rummaging around in a car, even if he was holding a gun, he is at a distinct disadvantage.
Police should not have said “Keep your hands where we can see them”, unless he was *seated* in the front seat where he could put his hands on the steering wheel or front dash.
You see the advantage of ordering him to freeze?
At that point he should have blurted out his business, and that this is his home, and the car is his mother’s car.
In any event, these cops need to be sent back to the minors for some seasoning.
>>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.
All of which would never get passed on the cops responding to the call anyway.
THEY shoot somebody, they get three days to sort their story out.
YOU shoot somebody, you’re in the box until you confess.
More Pig violence. These people should lose their jobs and pensions.
Time to go back to the old standard for LEOs: No shooting at ANYONE unless they shoot at you first. Period.
Woo! paid vacation time, in Florida.
I’m one or two counties east of Escambia,
depending on which of my properties I’m
visiting. The Escambia Cty sheriff is one of
the better ones and I would bet money these
deputies are toast for their current employment.
Dang if I can recall his name. Morgan I think.
Next sheriff east, Wendall Hall, outstanding.
Next sheriff east Ashley, scary self promoting
politician.
Time will tell where the good deputies will be employed
next. I’m guessing some small Alabama city.
In any event, these cops need to be sent back to the minors for some seasoning.
Thank goodness the man didnt have a dog.
Maybe he should have sent the dog out to fetch the cigarettes.
Well, fair is fair. In this case, at first they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. And I will admit, chasing possibly armed burglars at 2am would tend to make a lot of people jumpy.
Their errors were tactical ones, and being trigger happy. This shows less malevolence than just poor training and lack of experience.
Before the mid-1970s, police were trained with “Old West”-style tactics, which are a lot calmer, and guns are used with the assumption that if a policeman takes his out of his holster, somebody is going to be shot.
This was replaced with “SWAT”-style tactics, that has gotten a lot more people wounded and killed, including police officers. It has the concept that guns are used to establish dominance and control, which is a fundamentally flawed idea, and violates the old rule that “Guns cannot make a bad situation better, but they can make an okay situation worse.”
Police soon realized that brandishing a gun often is of no help at all, because guns only have three modes: holstered, brandished, and firing (and the forth mode, dropping it or having it taken away from you). This is not enough to deal with most situations, which is why many police adore Tasers, because they give the them more alternatives.
So, all told, in this particular case, the police department needs to pay the wounded man a big settlement, then send the two cops to get some better training under a senior cop with years of experience under his belt.
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