Leon Davis appeared anxious and confused the morning of March 14 at a Federal Way hospital, where he had admitted himself two days earlier for alcohol withdrawal syndrome.
He repeatedly left his room and threatened to jump from a window. Staff called security and eventually police. Eight officers wrestled him into handcuffs, knelt on his arms and legs and held him face down, grinding his bloodied face into the linoleum floor and covering his head with a mesh and fabric bag called a spit hood.
Laughter could be heard as Davis cried for help and said he couldn’t breathe. Several nurses and at least one doctor looked on. Thirty-five minutes later, Davis was dead on the hospital floor.
We just had a strange police shooting occur locally.
This occurred yesterday at a Super 8 motel in Henrietta, NY. A man in his sixties (his name has not been released) was reported as threatening to kill himself with a box cutter. The police arrived and repeatedly ordered him to drop the box cutter. When he refused to do so, two police officers shot (and killed) him.
There are a lot of questions here.
Suicide by cop?
Do you have a link to a news report?
Thank you. I am seeing no reports that he came at them or that he threatened anyone but himself.
Yes, you would think if there had been any factors like that involved the police would have wanted to make sure they were presented to the public in the initial reports.
Usually, they just claim it, and then video surfaces that says it isn’t true. But, at least they claim he was threatening them before shooting him.
All I can say is, thank god they shot him before he had a chance to <checks notes>, uh, kill himself and no one else.
I’ve thought that police working in pairs ought to have one be a “point man”, unarmed but dressed in heavy protective gear, who initiates contact. The other hangs back prepared to shoot if things go seriously wrong.
Not gonna happen when the goal apparently is to win the “Bang! Bang!” Game. There are no points for the cop who plays peacekeeper role.
A few days ago a Flock camera spotted a homicide suspect. Multiple officers caught up with her and pulled her over, at gunpoint, on the freeway. Turns out she wasn’t a suspect, the local police chief blamed another PD for the mistake. Turns out it’s the second time she’s been pulled over like that in a week.
This from the chief:
Garcia said the stop was consistent with “components of reasonable suspicion, probable cause and objective reasonableness.”
That’s bizarrely vague. To me, that means they couldn’t make it any less vague without mentioning the use of Flock cameras since that’s the only way they would’ve spotted her car on the freeway.
Also, I ran across this:
Flock. They are not even trying to hide the fact they think of everyone as sheep.
I used to do that back when I was working. (Granted we usually didn’t involve guns.) I would go down and talk to the guy while other people were getting ready to roll on him.
It actually worked more often then you would expect. It turns out that a Plan A of talking become a lot more persuasive when the guy knows that Plan B is getting ready.
I think it’s cheating to be the only team that has guns.
Funny, I never heard of those before today, when the NY Times ran an article about them (gift link):
They’ve been around for a while. And they’ve been abused by law enforcement also for a while.
In fact, I was going to suggest we might need a separate thread just for those cases.
Interestingly, a local gun shop has a bunch of them on their property. I’m genuinely curious how the right wingers feel about that one. How does the “you don’t need to worry if you’re not doing anything wrong” crowd feel about the cops knowing who goes to the shooting range/gun store?
They’ve been there for at least a few months, probably closer to a year, but recently a youtube video about them got some media attention and the owner took them down. Or rather, he asked Flock to take them down, but they wouldn’t because of their contract, so he took them down himself.
Regarding Flock, in general, the backlash does seem to be slowing them down a bit, but I think it’s going to take some Flock based mistakes, against the ‘wrong’ (read: Right) person for the rest of the RW to realize that maybe these things aren’t worth the trouble.
It’s too bad, used properly, I think they have the potential to be a good thing, but without some major changes in how they’re used*, it’s just going to be one problem after another.
*At the very least, warrants…they should require a warrant. Instead of being able to scribble down “test” or “sus vehicle” or “related to case” in the reason section that no one will ever see, how about you convince a judge why you need to whatever it is that you’re looking for. I mean, if cops aren’t doing anything wrong, they don’t need to be worried about it.
John Oliver did a good piece on them this week.
Police in Wisconsin used Flock cameras to track a man leaving Wisconsin (where weed is illegal) and going to Michigan (where weed is legal) and used that as a pretextual stop to search his car when he came back. Guess what they found?
In a few months I’ll be traveling from Missouri through Arkansas and I’m pretty sure my Missouri license plates are going to be used for a cop to gin up a reason to pull me over as soon as I cross the state line.
Fortunately I’m not that dumb and will be leaving my legal Missouri doob at home.
Well, he didn’t serve his full 20 years; he was just killed by his own ass.