Story here. In short, a black man was stopped for not wearing a seatbelt. The man gets out of his car. The cop asks for driver’s license. The man goes back to his car to get it, and is immediately shot multiple times. He had his hands up after the first shot. And the whole encounter was captured on dashcam video.
Luckily, the man survived. The cop is charged with aggravated assault… I wonder why this isn’t attempted 2nd degree murder?
What the fuck was this cop thinking?
Damn, seatbelt laws are getting strict.
See how complying with a request for ID just makes everything go so well?
:dubious:
In the video, the kid is still calling him “sir” and apologizing after this fucking douchebag piece of shit shot him.
The cops can hope that sometime in the past this kid stole something from a convenience store or posted a picture of himself looking tough to Facebook. Then there will be some excuse.
Every single teenager posts questionable shit to facebook, none could stand up to the internet detective’s scrutiny.
What’s the over/under on how fast a donation site will be up for the cop’s defense fund?
derp. never mind.
Bit harder when there’s video and audio, isn’t it? Claiming that the unarmed victim made a threatening gesture, was holding what looked like a gun, or screamed “eat lead, copper!” becomes a tough sell.
I’ll assume that the cop’s defenders in this case will blame the guy for getting out of his car, thus creating a dangerous situation. If he’d only stayed seated, he wouldn’t be in this mess! (Maybe. Or maybe the wounds would’ve been fatal.)
Listening to the radio this morning, that’s pretty much what they did. Well, that and going back into the car. Never mind that the guy was getting out of his car before the cop stopped him, and leaned back in to get his license in order to comply with the officer’s command.
Oh, and before the defenderati jump on my having referred to him as a kid, I learned that the guy was in his 30s from the report on the radio. Mea culpa.
That’s the point. Seems whenever there’s a teen victim someone dredges up the most negative looking picture they can find. Not the pic in graduation robes or a suit for prom, someone find the pic of him goofing around looking tough. Then they can say-see he was a thug!
“Kid?” The man, Levar Jones, is 35 years old.
A lot of people are saying (Here but other online places too) “well, at least this time the cop was arrested,” and indeed at least he was. But to my eye, the tape demonstrates problems that go well beyond arresting this guy. The police officer, Sean Groubert, who is fully aware of the existence of the dashcam, instantly draws and begins firing the moment Jones does something. He apoparently had his weapon holstered at first, so he wasn’t looking to shoot anyone at first, but the moment he cannot see Jones’s hands anymore - something that obviously happened because of what the officer told Jones to do - he freaks out, is screaming with fear in his voice, and begins running and shooting like a crazy person, spraying bullets in a public area. Thank God he only wounded Jones, but thank God he didn’t shoot someone else. Or hit one of the goddamn gas pumps.
I mean, Groubert could just be a total psycho and maybe the other cops in his division are like “yeah, I knew something like this was gonna happen, that guy is crazy,” but a likelier story is shitty police training, leadership, and philosophy, the kind of training that puts way too much emphasis on pulling your gun and blasting away. Groubert is reacting in a way that to any cop I know where I live would seem almost Pavlovian in its irrationality but rapidity; suspect’s hands disappear, react in terror and kill him. Obviously I don’t know these people but it’s the sort of thing that makes me feel like this cop and his fellows are getting way too much training around “make sure you put a suspect on the ground with your gun if they do any of these things” and less training around moderation in the use of force.
So, what I suspect will happen is the SC Highway Patrol will let Groubert go to trial and get convicted, when what they SHOULD do (well, in addition to letting Groubert go to prison) is ask if there is some underlying reason, related to the way their officers are trained, why Groubert did this.
Too late.
See post #9… 
At least you didn’t call him “boy”.
Yeah, but if only he’d smiled and call the cop “sir”, none of this woulda happened.
But did he smile and say “sir”?
Actually it’s usually a picture of an entirely different person: someone older and larger, preferably carrying a weapon or doing drugs. On the face of it this cop should be prosecuted, and this is a good change from the recent precedent. Unfortunately in a separate case that was also in the news yesterday, a grand jury decided not to charge two officers who killed a black guy carrying a toy gun inside a Wamart. It’s possible the man who called in a totally erroneous 911 report will be charged, but I’m not expecting much.
Let’s not pretend that this is entirely down to poor training. I mean, training is required. But this is not just a matter of any old “suspect’s” hands. If these hands were white, there would not have been a panicked reaction.
Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that this “suspect” was suspected of a seat belt violation. If kid bothers you, let’s also maintain clarity before you start calling him the “perp.”
Well said. This is the kind of guy who should not be a cop. You can’t be a Nervous Nellie and carry a gun. I noticed that the cop also claims to have said “I told you to get out of the car”. I don’t hear that. I heard something to the effect of “Show me your license”. Damn poor guy. Doing precisely what the cop told him and winds up getting shot. And you know, if the guy did have a gun, that cop could be dead, because he’s such a bad shot. The cop deserves to be convicted. I cannot see any defense to argue otherwise. I do that along with him being convicted, the police force looks into both the training they give and the screening process for who they allow onto the force.
That’s why you keep your wallet in your pocket like normal people.
More seriously, that was an odd situation since the guy was already out of his car and the cop was far away telling him to get his license. Shouldn’t the cop be closer so he can watch him? And at the end he claims he only unbuckled when he pulled into the lot. It just ain’t your day, pal.
Yet another example of the positive effects of ubiquitous cameras.
I usually take my wallet out of my pocket when I sit down, including when I’m in the car.