Cop shoot, kills teen after he skips out on check at IHOP

The BBQ Pit
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I do believe, even given every benefit of the doubt, that the cop is culpable here, at least to some extent (unless some of the items stated as fact in this story turn out to be completely false). At the point when the cop decided to draw his gun and fire, he knew that there was more than one occupant of the vehicle. He knew that, even if the driver was at the moment committing a homicidal assault, the passengers were guilty of no more than stealing food. He then knowingly fired into the vehicle, killing one of the non-participants in the assault. That’s like opening fire into a crowd because one man therein has fired shots at a police officer. It’s not justified at all, no matter how much risk it places on the officer himself. That’s his job, remember?

One way or the other, I think the officer exercised terrible judgement, even in the worst-case scenario of a direct attempt by the driver to run the officer down. He shouldn’t have put himself in that situation to begin with, and when it hit the fan, he should have tried to get out of the way. I think he made a terrible mistake, and he probably feels awful about it. I’m certainly not going to advocate punishing him until we have all the facts, to whatever extent they can be determined, but I don’t see any way his actions could have been completely justified.

You’re around 15 years old, right? :slight_smile: That’s the only way I can explain your thoughtless apparently testosterone-fueled bravado. I’ve read many of your previous posts, and so far every one of them smacks of the cocksure struttery of an adolescent male. That’s not a common demographic here, AFAIK, though, so I thought I’d ask. If you are, I suppose you have an excuse for the garbage that comes out of your mouth. If you’re not, grow the fuck up.

(Incidentally, where the fuck do you get off calling the SDMB a “bastion of criminality”? :rolleyes: )

I get the feeling you’re speaking a little more harshly than you really feel (judging from the way you’ve toned down your rhetoric, and I certainly hope it’s so, for your sake), but I want to give brief address to your point anyway. Y’see, the whole idea of law enforcement is motivated by the goal of benefiting society - it is beneficial to apprehend and punish individuals who disrupt normal societal operation. Pursuing and apprehending criminals is not a cost-free endeavor, though. There are many risks, both to the officers involved and to the general public. It’s important to weight the risks and benefits of any law enforcement action. Continuing a high-speed chase through a school zone means the cops still have a shot at apprehending the fleeing driver, but would almost universally be considered foolhardy to do so. Nearly every sensible PD would let the perp go rather than put a whole lot of young lives at risk, unless there was a really good chance of taking him down forcefully before he became such a grave danger, or if there was reason to believe taking the heat off would not slow him down. In this case, the cop should have realized that after they entered their vehicle, almost any attempt to stop them on foot could lead to a dangerous situation.

You seem to be judging this person’s entire worth based on one petty crime. There is many a law-abiding citizen scummier than this kid. You’re also ignoring the fact that this incident (be it justified self-defense, poor judgement, or homicide) has deprived a police department of one of their officers, at least temporarily and quite possibly permanently? How about the fact that permanent removal from society is not even remotely a sanctioned punishment for the theft of some pancakes. A member of a community has received the ultimate punishment for a trifling infraction. Isn’t that a detriment to society? Or do you believe that even the most minor property crime makes a person a worthless shell who’s better off to us dead? I sincerely hope you learn a little perspective and compassion (oh, but wait, those aren’t virtues!), but since this is the pit: fuck you.

It seems to me that your preference for enforcement-at-all-costs is motivated not by a desire to benefit society, but by a deep lust for retaliation.
John Corrado, I’m sorry to hear this hit so close to home for you, and especially your friend. Maybe your comment was a bit over the top, but I understand completely. Having to help a good friend through this kind of grief is a heart-wrenching experience, and the callousness of a guy like Martin Hyde can seem especially galling.

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Simply idiotic comments, here.

First, you’re saying that if a police officer is chasing down a criminal, and the criminal turns on him and starts firing…the COP is at fault for giving chase?

He shouldn’t have tried to apprehend the criminal?

Because that would be the comparative situation if we have a case of the kids trying to RUN THE POLICE OFFICER DOWN.

Furthermore, the people in that car cannot be compared to citizens on a street. If the car had ran over and killed the cop then in many jurisdictions they would all be guilty of murder. If you rob a bank as a crew, and one member of the crew kills the bank manager, you’re all prosecutable for murder.

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You’re a hateful vengeful person, worse than I am even on my worst days, but with you it’s a constant state. I’d feel sorry for you if I even gave a shit about you at all.

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Maybeso dipshit, but only if the FELONY murder rule applied. Here no FELONY was commited by the BACKSEAT PASSENGER. So your analogy like everything else you say is full of shit.

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Whoa - I missed that. It sure fucking is. Traffic court is just a convenience - it’s criminal court when push comes to shove. And speeding tickets are arrests.

What’s the fucking point - you’ve already declared somebody a criminal without trial - and it wasn’t the shooter, it was the kid who maybe skipped out on a check, or maybe didn’t eat a damned thing.

You’ve said that the world is better off when a “criminal” is dead, regardless of whatever else that person may have done, or the severity of the crime.

It’s against the rules to wish death on another poster, but apparently OK to state the world’s better off when certain people are dead. The world would be better off without Martin Hyde.

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Not to my knowledge.

Anyways, I’ve never been pulled over for speeding, either.

I feel comfortable enough with the information at hand to assume he was a criminal. I’ve already said if that was not correct, I’d back away from it.

But there just isn’t near enough information for me to say whether or not the police officer is a criminal, he very well could be.

Anyways, I’m not a court, or the government. Me calling someone a criminal isn’t me being judge, jury, and execution. It’s just idle talk.

Indeed that is my understanding of the rules, otherwise the mods would have done something about people wishing death on U.S. soldiers long ago.

Interesting.

227

What’s a Theif?

228

God darn it, that was more than five hours late. Sorry, all.

229

In most places if you steal something and kill someone while escaping that knocks it up to a felony matter for everyone involved.

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Wrong dip shit. Felony murder only applies to felonies. Stealing is not necesarily a felony. There is no evidence that the kids were involved in a felony just dine and dash. Once they got into the car at worst they were fleeing misdomeanants. Deadly forece not justified. Then the driver may have escalated by trying to run down the cop(I don’t think so, but for the sake of argument) but that still doesn’t increase the culpability of the dead kid.

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…What? Can you even read? I said no such thing. I said, among other things, that no sane police officer would chase a fleeing vehicle through a school zone if he could possibly avoid it, and that it’s not a good idea to shoot into a crowd because of one individual who poses a threat. Did that confuse you, or did you simply think it would be easier to make a comeback if you misunderstood my words first?

If an officer is chasing a criminal who then turns and opens fire, then no matter how petty the original crime was, the cop is going to be absolutely justified when the perp winds up full of holes.

In a case like this, however, once the suspects were in their vehicle, the officer should have realized that an attempt to stop them would likely be more dangerous than was merited by a few kids defaulting on a $26 debt. Approaching the vehicle, commanding the driver to stop, these are reasonable responses. Throwing yourself in the path of the vehicle is not. He should never have come to the conclusion that it was appropriate to throw himself into a life-threatening situation and subsequently respond with deadly force, all because of a misdemeanor.

And my point still stands that the passengers in the car should not be considered fair game for killing because of the actions of the driver. A responsible officer of the law will not recklessly endanger bystanders simply because his or her life is threatened. In this case, the bystanders were not so innocent in that they shared the petty crime of check-dodging, but they had no part in the assault on the officer, if indeed any such thing occurred.

What’s your basis for this claim? If you could cite the law of at least a couple of jurisdictions, that would be helpful. I have certainly heard of laws that assign the responsibility for a murder to all members of a group if the murder was committed by one member of the group during the commission of a felony in which all group members were culpable, but that’s not even close to applicable here. Are you telling me that, in many jurisdictions, if Bill and Joe are caught shoplifting by Ted, and Bill pulls out a gun and kills Ted, Joe is also guily of Ted’s murder? I’m skeptical.

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So we don’t know.

Ok then.

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I’m assuming you meant to type “deliberately misled.” That’s the kind of thing that would be determined at trial, not while you were attempting to evade arrest by a cop who tried to detain you after catching you in the act. Had you been shot in that attempt, well, your reputation might be salvaged by those who are extremely soft on crime.

Um, “aren’t” is the word you want. I did, but doing enough of that tends to exclude the dine-n’-dash kids too, so I quit, because I’m all for your self-serving definition of crime. After all, I might be a rich sociopath someday, too.

Maybe so, maybe not, but why do I get the feeling that you do this A LOT? Besides which, your definition is self-serving because, so far as one can see, you think everything is yours.

Remember your Hunter Thompson: “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon.” I think it’s time for you to quit worrying about somebody else’s pancakes, hickory-breath.

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IF the kid had skipped out on his bill AND
IF the kid had been driving AND
IF the kid was trying to hit the cop rather than be arrested THEN the cop was justified in using deadly force.
ELSE he wasn’t.

Yeah, I don’t think this is being argued except by Mr Hyde. Do let Dr Jeckyll out once in a while, would you?

As for criminal matters, there’s lots of things that don’t get considered “criminal” except in a fairly nebulous manner unless the person actually gets arrested.

If you are speeding, you are committing a crime. It’s a traffic offense but it’s still an offense. Hyde, I hear you saying you have never been pulled over for speeding. That was not a statement that you have never been speeding.

But hey, let’s assume you’ve never committed a single crime. You’ve never driven a half-mile per hour over the speed limit, you’ve never jaywalked, you’ve never had a parking ticket from an expired parking meter, you’ve never driven barefoot, and you come to a complete and full stop at every stop sign.

Assuming that, can you also agree that not all of us reach that level of saintly perfection? If you consider a criminal to be anyone who has committed an offense on the lawbooks as illegal, then you are painting with a very, very broad brush. Most of the people you admire have probably, at some point, committed a minor crime. Some may have committed a major one. Does that mean that the world is better off if they’re shot?

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I clicked on this thing because I couldn’t imagine how this thread got to be this long. Now I know. (Although this always happens when people start debating a cop’s actions.)

Martin, I’d say you’ve got a black-and-white worldview, but… where’s the white? The kid, it appears, did something wrong and dumb. Forget whether he was a good kid or not, maybe he was thoroughly average. What difference does it make? You don’t know what a kid that age is going to do with his life. You seem to be assuming that ‘once a criminal [ran out an a check at IHOP], always a criminal [mob boss],’ but it doesn’t work here. I see you going on about the law, but you seem to have confused the law - by which standard he was a criminal or hanging out with some criminals - and justice. It is never just for anybody to die over a $26 tab at IHOP. It’s not worth a life, particularly a young one in which this probably should have been only a blip. And that’s why people are saying the cop should have gotten the license plates instead of pulling his gun: in the real world, there is such a thing as proportionality. It’s wrong to steal, but it’s also wrong to kill a kid for $20 worth of pancakes. Both wrongs may have occurred here. Your view, shall we say, lacks a little nuance?

I don’t know whether this shooting was justified or not; I’m keeping an open mind about it. I’ll look at the videos when I’m on a different computer, but I’m not sure even that will resolve anything. What’s alarming to read is that you apparently don’t give a shit one way or the other - you’re just glad it eliminated this teenaged threat to law-and-order. This kid’s death seems to be, at worst a convenient accident to you, as if a teenager getting shot over a bill at IHOP is just the price we agreed to pay to live in a society of laws. It comes across as repulsive.

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you seem to have particular difficulty reading the same page

So handling charges are specifically taxable, as are shipping in some cases. where do you get “tangible” and what definition are you using for it? if an item is shipped to you, seems clear that use tax is owed. Since you have even just on these pages totally misread/misinterpreted the law in your jurisdiction, you simply must forgive me if I don’t accept your stated belief that you’ve not violated the law.

I called you a thief. and yes, tax evasion is indeed a crime. Always prosecuted? no. but still a crime. as for the “mistake”, Richard Hatch tried that defense. It didn’t work.

Richard Hatch attempted to defend his evasion of taxes by saying it was all a mistake, he thought some other party was responsible, that he didn’t intend to evade. Didn’t work for him, either. remember, the amount of the theft is apparently irrelevant - the theft of $20 seems to be in the same category of offenses as a Mob boss or serial killer.

again, since your self serving self has repeatedly read the same fucking page of the tax code w/o comprehension, I simply in good conscience cannot accept additional self serving declarations of fact from you. Especially here, since you’re relying on your memory of your actions from the past year. When you’re not able to see the words in front of your face when you look at a linked page, I don’t have any reason to trust that you correctly assess information that isn’t right in front of your nose.

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wring - it will always be different when “they” do it and when he does it.

I admire your persistance, but you’re dealing with someone for whom logic and reality rarely intersect.

-Joe

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well, ya. But when he posts ‘shipping and handling arent’ taxable’ when it clearly states that handling IS, and shipping often is (my experience is that most times they’re boxed in together). I mean, come on, did he really think that I wouldn’t read my own fucking link?

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If it was only a blip, I’d say yes. But if it was a habit, I’d say that it was just for the world to be rid of someone who habitually steals resources from other people.

But we don’t know, and that’s the point of not favoring cowboy murders.

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You’re assuming there would be the trial. I doubt you have much real world experience with the IRS or you’d be aware their first response to noticing a possible discrepancy in someone’s taxes isn’t to call up the police and have you arrested. Furthermore you’re also assuming I’d flee from the police, which in itself is a criminal act whether I’m guilt of any other crime or not, I wouldn’t have done that because I’m not a criminal.

Furthermore, how would a police officer catch me in the act of tax fraud? That’s not the kind of thing a beat cop could catch in the act.

This doesn’t make any sense at all. Reading the larceny statutes in Virginia certainly would’t exclude dine-n’-dashers. And I have no idea what the rest of your weak attempt at an insult is supposed to mean. There’s virtually nothing to support the idea that this was an accidental walking out on the check.

Uh, no, I’ve never said everything is mine. Thanks for lying though.

I have no idea why you “get a feeling” one way or the other, I’ve never accidentally walked out of someone’s home with anything that belonged to them (nor intentionally) it was simply a hypothetical situation.

I tend not to read the writings of morons or the mentally ill, which is why I probably won’t read any more of your posts and is why I don’t read anything written by degenerate scum like Hunter Thompson. I also have no idea what the insult hickory-breath is supposed to mean, that must be a new one.

I’m not worried about IHOP’s pancakes, but I am worried about criminal being loose in society and am thus glad that the police officer tried to apprehend them.

Furthermore I want to thank you for the grammar and spelling corrections, because obviously being able to point out such errors on a forum where people type and reply in a casual manner makes you an exemplary person, you should be proud of yourself.