Posted on 09/21/2016 4:37:43 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
I believe stopping your car in the middle of the road and refusing to comply with the commands of law enforcement officers while behaving and appearing to be drugged removes a person from the normal sphere of operations.
If you refuse to comply, your actions immediately become legitimately suspicious and you assume partial responsibility for your fate.
I disagree with you completely and utterly on the “open season on people who don’t obey the government” statement.
That isn’t what this is, and I hope you know that and are simply trying to buttress your argument.
As citizens, we live in a republic, not a democracy or a dictatorship, a republic, which is government by laws. This man wasn’t someone who disobeyed the government because of unfair taxes or persecution. This was someone who the “government” had very good and valid reasons for thinking that either a law was broken or there was a danger to people. There are people who are saying he wasn’t a danger to anyone-what is stopping your car in the middle of a roadway but a danger to everyone in the vicinity? And if they suspect him by obvious appearance (and documented actions) of driving under the influence of something, that makes him even more of a danger.
This is not some stupid libertarian principle of someone being bullied unjustly by their own government. They had good and valid reasons to pull him over, and after interactions with him, to have concern. And because we live in a republic, a government by law, we have given our law enforcement the right to compel people to comply if they think laws have been broken. As citizens, we agree to live by those laws we expect law enforcement to carry out. If we don’t agree, we get those laws changed, or we leave the country and live somewhere else.
So I fundamentally and viscerally disagree with your statement “The last thing we want is open season on people who don’t obey the government. So far, that’s all we have in this case.”
Look at where the officers are standing in the video. Is anyone certain they could see the windows were up or down in that light?
I think it is reasonable to simply consider that given the light, they might not have been able to tell from their vantage point.
But they could see that he might have looked like he was reaching into the car, even if he was drugged and didn’t even know the window was up.
I read that, too. I read that this statement came from the sister. Not sure how true it is. There is overhead video. That should settle the issue of the window up or down.
To me, no matter.....he didn't follow directions to stop and get down. If I were a cop, I wouldn't take the chance. The guy walked away from them and all the way to his vehicle. Why? If he was so innocent, why not just get down on the ground?
Whether you disagree or not, it still stands as the truth. So far, all we know is that he refused to obey a government agent. He didn’t display a weapon. At that point, he did not yet pose a threat to the agent or to the public. He was just uncooperative.
So you are essentially agreeing with me that he was refusing to obey the orders of a government agent. We just disagree whether that posed a viable threat.
Imagine if he was have a diabetic episode or he was deaf or he was on drugs for whatever reason. The lack of cooperation would not be grounds for shooting. You shoot only in self-defense, not as a way to persuade someone into obeying.
He may have been guilty of many things, drug possession, public intoxication, failure to comply with the cop’s commands, but none of that gives the cop the right to kill him. How is an unarmed man, standing 20 feet away, covered by three cops, in broad daylight, an imminent threat?
Just so I am clear, there is nothing personal in this. I understand your viewpoint, but the context here is where I differ.
Where we disagree, in my opinion, is that you are using a blanket statement that he refused to “obey a government agent” and equating this specific situation with a tyrannical and unreasonable one.
I feel their commands, given the authority invested in them by the law which has been created by our local/federal/state governments were, in this situation, neither unreasonable or tyrannical, and were lawfully invested in the police officers by law (as our elected legislators have put in place) and required by us, as citizens, to obey.
You and I both recognize (I hope) that it is not likely the man was in the throes of a low glucose situation, or deaf or any of those other things, and just happened to have PCP in the vehicle, if that is true. I understand completely using that to buttress your views, and agree it is well to keep those kinds of things in mind. If he were having a medical condition at that time, it would be tragic. And it is possible.
But it is equally possible (and far more likely given the circumstances) that the guy had his car stopped in the middle of the roadway, when the police query on the plate came back it said he was a felon, telling them he had been arrested for selling and using PCP, and in their interactions with them, and was displaying bizarre and unusual behavior, in additional to his physical appearance which was consistent with drug usage, and he was a large, physically imposing man.
When one hears hooves in Arizona, it is right, logical, and understandable to think horses, and illogical and wrong to think zebras.
In this case, sure, it is possible there was a medical situation that brought this to a head and resulted in this tragedy.
Nonetheless, he did nothing to warrant a shooting. A shooting would be justified if he had a weapon and he posed a threat with that weapon. If he had a knife, you wouldn’t shoot him for having a knife until he posed a threat. It’s legal to have a knife. It’s legal to have a gun.
I have been to gun shows where people walk around with guns and the police don’t bat an eye.
If you arrive at a scene and quickly figure out you cannot overpower the person, you don’t get out and approach them unless they are doing something dangerous. You wait for backup. You don’t want it to escalate to the “I shot him because it is open season on black men” scenario that we now enjoy.
Because at some point, they are going to need to balance the scales and shoot some white people. Do you think Hillary won’t be tough with people that oppose her? I’m not saying they will gun us down but they are going to demand we follow orders. Or else.
I worked EMS when I was younger and we had plenty of encounters with people the police shoot today. We shot them with Ativan.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not condoning the shooting of this man. Anytime someone gets shot without a weapon in their hands and not directly assaulting someone, something has gone wrong. That is clear.
What I am MOST EMPHATICALLY stating that not only is the dead man NOT blameless, he shares significant responsibility for his own death.
There is plenty of blame to go around.
The dead man should have obeyed commands.
The dead man should not have been driving around under the influence of drugs with PCP in his car and stopped said car in the middle of the roadway.
The cop should not have shot him with her revolver.
The police department should have trained her better.
The black community should not foster and support acts of violence against the police and should not be supporting the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown by deliberately portraying them as blameless victims of tyrannical police racism and race-inspired institutionalized violence against them.
The Black Lives Matter and other race hustlers such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others too numerous to name should not be supporting the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown by deliberately portraying them as blameless victims of tyrannical police racism and race-inspired institutionalized violence against them.
The Department of Justice should not be supporting the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown by deliberately portraying them as blameless victims of tyrannical police racism and race-inspired institutionalized violence against them, and prosecuting rank and file policemen trying to do a difficult job in that environment.
The President of The United States should not be supporting the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown by deliberately portraying them as blameless victims of tyrannical police racism and race-inspired institutionalized violence against them, and prosecuting rank and file policemen trying to do a difficult job in that environment.
You probably noticed those last four are about exactly the same...it isn’t by accident.
OK, but it's no loss. He was a scummy drug dealing parasite. We'd already spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on him (four years in jail).
Every child's life is sacred, but by the time you a forty year old ex-con, driving around wacked out on PCP, he could easily have caused a fatal accident with his wacked out abandonment of his car in the middle or the road, or by driving it high on PCP.
So, who cares? Good riddance to bad trash. He's not the type of person I am going to spend 10 seconds mourning, and yes, I believe in a rational society this *would* factor into the investigation of the officer.
All lives don't matter. At least not to me.
I don’t know about that, the account I saw said he spent four years in jail as a convicted felon for trafficking in drugs, probably PCP.
It is a safe bet that he was either selling or using PCP IF it is true it was found in his car.
So I don’t know about violence or weapons offenses, but if a 250 lb guy with an axe to grind against the authorities and a history of using selling and/or using PCP is defiantly and persistently refusing to obey commands while exhibiting strange and unpredictable behavior...I fully expect someone who has experience in these things to deal with him as if he is high on PCP, weapons or violence offenses aside.
From a news site, it had this about his past: “Court records show Terence Crutcher has been convicted of drug trafficking, obstructing an officer, resisting an officer and petty larceny in the past. The documents also show that Crutcher has several alcohol and vehicle-related charges, including driving with a suspended license.”
I saw a more detailed record that showed multiple offenses of driving without a license, trafficking, and assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, obstructing an officer, and so on.
Maybe these offenses were a long time ago, at least before he went to prison, and he was turning his life around. But the fact is that he very much appeared (in this situation) to authorities to be under the influence of something, refused to comply with directions from LEOs, and had very hard and dangerous drugs in his possession, if they weren’t planted, which is very likely what we are going to hear. I reiterate: This man is NOT a blameless victim in his own death. He contributed to it directly.
Trump disagrees.
I don’t care. I live in Asheville so I’m more concerned with Charlotte.
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