Posted on 04/11/2015 5:56:39 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
I’ve read the first 32 posts on this thread and none come at this story from this angle which is WHAT ON EARTH WAS THIS COP THINKING WHILE HE WAS PULLING THE TRIGGER 8 TIMES?
Did he think at all? Did he think of his 8 months pregnant wife? Did he think of his child growing up without a father? Did he think of HIS family including mother, father, siblings? Did he think of HIS BEHIND being in jail forever? Did he think of MILLIONS in attorney’s fees? Was his brain capable of thought? Was his IQ so low that he should never been given a gun in the first place?
With SO MUCH at stake, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING?
This is arguably THE DUMBEST act of a cop EVER caught on tape!
Hands up,don't shoot!
facts later?
facts NEVER!
Sure, so lets focus on what happened at that time and disregard irrelevant things like the record of the dead man or the cop. That simply prejudices our thinking about the incident in question.
Unbelievable. Most white cops don't shoot people in the back. I'd say 99.9% of them or higher don't.
Your post is eff up.
The precedent was once that, if you ran from law enforcement, they would shoot. If you happened to be a known felon; it was entirely up to them whether they shot you on sight or not. Now a different precedent is fast becoming law. All the rights and protections are for the criminal. I would advise any wife of a white police officer to bring her influence to bear and get their husband out of what is becoming suicide. The police force that will evolve from this “pc” society won’t have any intention of “protecting and serving” anyone except those with money and perks or those who can benefit them politically; kind of like our politicians. The decline just keeps accelerating.
Scott had a warrant out because he was behind on child-support payments. I’m pretty sure that justifies 5 bullets in the back at 50 feet.
“If a really bad guy runs from a cop it’s OK to shoot him dead?”
If you’re a police officer you will usually have about three seconds to figure that out. A wrong choice will mean you don’t go home again or that someone else will be in danger. The law used to have a public servant’s back because of the nature of the job. That’s history now. It’s no longer about the public welfare. It’s all about votes, politics and social engineering.
“I am not at all convinced that we know the whole story.I’m gonna wait and see before I make up my mind. “
That’s not an unreasonable stance. We don’t know the whole story. We never do until the trial. But the video alone, no matter the prior circumstances, does in fact show the murder of an unarmed man (who we know was originally stopped for nothing more than a broken tail light) who’s being shot 5 times in the back at 50 feet as he runs away from an unharmed cop. NOTHING that occurred prior to that justifies what happened in the video. Nothing.
You will earn absolutely no points with most people by inserting facts into a volatile national debate! :) (Thank you!)
I think you've got America confused with the old Berlin Wall...
Hmmm...where to begin? All right...a simple question. Why is it that,in some trials at least,information about a defendant's past convictions (or matters concerning the defendant that are awaiting prosecution) are allowed to be brought up by the prosecution? Of course when such a thing happens it would mean that the judge determined that it was both relevant *and* did no unfairly bias the jury against the defendant.
Also,what thoughts (if any) do you have regarding the case mentioned in Post #30?
Being judge, jury, and executioner doesn’t seem to be working out well for the cop in question. That lynching thing hasn’t gone over with the public.
Clearly lynching isn’t as popular as Tupelo desires to portray it.
Since when do cops who file a incomplete or false report get arrested ...?
Suspended? Demoted? Fired?
There are huge differences between this case and your analogy.
I don’t recall the officers taking down PCP boy planting a weapon on his corpse even in the short video, and even in the short video it was clear that Rodney King was a huge muscular man in early adulthood. This was a fat middle aged guy. A fat guy who was not going to physically match the officer in question one on one.
Now, you make it clear that the whole weapon planting thing doesn’t make a difference to you, but it does to a lot of us who evaluate each case individualy.
This guy wasn’t committing assault when he died like Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin. Planted evidence would have convinced me, had the officer who planted it not been filmed planting it. But he was, and he wrote a false report before the video was released which pretty much proves obstruction of justice.
I have no respect for any creep defending our little Judge Dredd here.
When the false report covers up murder or manslaughter on their part.
It’s pretty much always been that way.
Cameras are a good thing.
If the dead guy had a history of lawbreaking or other anti-social or destructive behavior I *might* consider it possible that this was,in fact,a justified shooting.
Why not just hunt all them bad peoples down and shoot them...better yet line them all up against a wall facing backwards and execute them, they are bad peoples afterall.
Thank God you don’t have a badge....or maybe you do!
Excellent comments.
People seem to want to make the reasonableness of the cop’s shooting dependent on whether the shootee was a bad enough guy. The problem is that this (usually) is completely irrelevant. At the moment of the shooting the cop usually doesn’t even know the background of the other guy, so it’s stupid to give him a pass on the shooting because the guy was a serial child rapist and murderer. The cop didn’t know that!
Similarly, it’s equally stupid to assign greater blame to the cop because the guy was actually a wonderful human being just having a bad day or off his meds, or for that matter whose innocent actions were completely misunderstood. The cop didn’t know that!
It’s only reasonable to hold the cop accountable, positive or negative, based on what he knew at the time. Those who do this, whether pro or con to the cops, are using hindsight to decide whether the shooting was justifiable.
In the cases I describe above, the serial child rapist/murderer certainly deserved anything that could conceivably be done to him. But, as you say, that’s a whole other argument.
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.