I didn’t mean to imply that you did. However, some folks around don’t distinguish between protesters and rioters, so I wanted to make the distinction clear.
nm
“I like chocolate ice cream” is an opinion.
“Probable cause doesn’t exist anymore” is not. It’s a totally dishonest statement.
That’s not what the Supreme Court ruled. Snobo knows it, and made a dishonest statement about it anyway. Which makes it a lie, and certainly not a debate.
Well, I’m reading claims that there are witnesses who say the victim was unarmed, and that the video shows a silver object coming out of his pocket (a cell phone), unlike the black gun claimed to be the weapon. But I can’t confirm primary sources.
It’s small potatoes compared to some of the stuff in this thread – no one got killed – but a cop in suburban St. Louis has been charged with a dozen counts of burglary. Officer Brian Barker of the Edwardsville, Illinois Police Department is accused of burglarizing several businesses and one home. Prosecutors say that Barker committed some of the burglaries while on duty and in uniform. Barker was also charged with having possession of six stolen guns.
The Edwardsville PD has had some, uh, issues. A former chief went to prison in 2013 for embezzling from the city, and another officer was accused in 2012 of secretly videotaping women at a tanning salon.
I would happily let my home get burglarized weekly if it meant cops stopped shooting so many people in this country. Please, burgle my house, if shooting someone is the alternative. Seriously.
Agreed, it looks like he has something in his hand, but if someone were to show me that video by itself and I had knew nothing else about the case other than the video, there’s no way I’d say, “yeah that’s clearly a gun.”
That said, it’s really hard to see what else it could be. Do people really think the kid was so stupid he’d decide to point his cellphone at an armed cop in a tense situation in an area where cops have a reputation for overreacting to perceived threats?
Here’s a story and video about a guy who did NOT follow the usual recommendation – he reacted violently to a routine traffic stop and resisted arrest. Congrats to the cops whoavoided murdering him.
Sorry if “encounters between law-enforcement and civilians” is the wrong thread: though in plain-clothes the resistor was himself a cop.
The perp was white. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
An independent investigation performed by St. Louis County Police confirmed that Martin pulled a gun on the officer who was responding to the call for shoplifting.
During the conference, Police Chief Frank McCall said the individual who was with Martin at the time confirmed the same. He told police that he fled for fear of his life because he didn’t know if he would be shot.
Police say several witnesses also said Martin was armed and did attempt to fire his weapon at the officer.
The protesters are idiots.
Clearly the Berkely Mayor, Police Chief and every other person in that video are racists and the Mayor and Chief ordered the police to actively hunt down young black men for funsies.
For some reason, some NYPD officers threw a man to the ground after he danced behind them.
The video is a bit jumpy, and not all of the altercation is clear.
IMHO the protesters would do their cause great service by being a little more selective about who they choose to make poster boys in calls for police reform. As someone who is very sympathetic to that cause, I can only cringe and wince at the protesters’ reaction to the latest shooting in St. Louis.
I think a good rule of thumb is: if the best evidence available suggests that someone was shot after pointing a gun at the police, don’t protest that event as an example of out-of-control policing. Doing so severely weakens the credibility of your message.
[
](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5a5e7a397c244bbeaf372c354947a3c9/killing-montana-man-police-eyed-coroners-inquest)
So basically, in America, the land of freedom, anything you do that is not actively cooperating with the police is grounds to kill you. That’s lovely. Home of the free AND the brave? :dubious:
Not anything, no. Reaching for something the officer can’t see, then refusing to show your hands, yes. Imminent threat and all that.
Serious question: what does “independent investigation performed by… the [p]olice” mean? I mean, I would think from the phrasing that “independent investigations” would be performed by disinterested third parties. Is there a specific meaning here I don’t know?
Interesting article about the views of minority NYPD officers. One tidbit: most of them have experienced racial profiling and other bad behavior at the hands of police (while off-duty), and most who reported these bad experiences either had these complaints dismissed or were actually retaliated against by their supervisors.
You have a funny definition of “imminent.” Sounds more like a hypothetical threat at that point.
Agreed. While I don’t think that police should wait until they are fired upon before they can use deadly force, the current standards yield too many false positives.
The standard has to be something greater than just the potential that someone might have the means to harm the officer.
From the article:
I remember talking with a former coworker of mine. We lived relatively close to each other and worked at the same building, so we basically drove the same route to work at around the same time. We drove price-equivalent cars which were the same color, and wore similar work clothes (we both shopped at Brooks Brothers so there was probably a 80-90% overlap in our wardrobe). We were similar ages, and we had identical driving records (neither of us had ever had a ticket). We had similar education backgrounds, similar income, etc. etc. etc… In the 4 years we worked together, I never got pulled over for any reason. He got pulled over a couple dozen times. Based on that, can you guess our races?