From this article.
In addition, it turns out that the same cop killed an 79 year old disabled woman in 1998. What the fuck is going on here? Are the cops going mad?
Add this to the cop who killed the dog and I’m starting to believe what my BIL (a cop) told me. He said: “Half these guys if they weren’t cops, would be in jail.”
Citizens don’t have to comply with plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles if they don’t produce some sort of identification that they are police officers.
I know i wouldn’t.
Detroit, alas, has a long history of cops being quite trigger-happy. Yeah, there are a lot of things for a cop to legitimately shoot at in that hellhole, but we constantly hear about cops waving guns around during routine traffic stops and firing guns when they are off-duty and the like.
Are the cops going mad? How many law enforcement officers in the country are there? And you’ve got stories about two? Hyperbole much?
Depends on the jurisdiction. The Metropolitan Police in DC seems to have (unwittingly) recruited a whole bushel of bad apples during the late '80s & early '90s. A few bad apples tend to cause problems for the entire orchard.
This is why the administration of New York State has declared that their state troopers cannot make traffic stops when driving an unmarked vehicle.
Some of them, at least, find some good ways to work off their aggression on their off-duty hours …
When I was going to school in Michigan, some of my friends and I had an irregular paintball team. We’d gotten pretty good with practice, we thought, and had had a very good showing against a top-notch opposing team on our previous outing. Ayup, we were ready for action! Then we got to the game site … and found out the opposing team this time were some cops from Detroit.
:eek:
I have never seen an ass-kicking in any sport in my entire life as thorough as the one we were subjected to that day. The first game we played, my squad leader had time to say two things to me before I was eliminated: “Keep your head down,” and “I told you to keep your head down!” I had no idea someone could put a shot between my eyes from that far away …
At the time, I was ticked at being ‘picked on’ by clearly much better trained and more experienced opponents. But maybe this should actually be part of the standard continuous education for police officers. One weekend a month, you go out and blast the hell out of some innocent college students for a couple hours. 
Camp Kent State!
I am so going to hell.
Hyperbole, certainly. But two cases, I don’t think so. These just happen to be two cases in the last week. Moreover, in both these cases I’m guessing that if the press hadn’t gotten hold of them, nothing would have happened (take the 79 y.o. woman as an example).
It just seems to me that there seems to be a whole lot more stories of police misconduct lately. Or at the very least, police stupidity where someone gets hurt. I know that we all do really stupid shit during working hours, but my stupidity at work ain’t gonna get someone killed.
For example, earlier this week in Dallas, the police used a taser on a guy who was going to jump off a bridge. Bad decision, as the police missed with one probe, and the man jumped to his death. Would he have jumped either way? Now no one knows. What is certain is that the cops denied using the taser until the Dallas Morning News produce photos clearly showing that tasers had been used.
Anyway, back to the point here. The police are held to a certain higher standard of conduct. When they fail in this, I am disgusted, and I post in the pit on this message board. Hyperbole, and all.
I’ve met some fine cops.
I’ve also watched a bunch of my folks drunken cop friends get criminally violent on numerous occassions.
The guy who repeatedly kicked another guy in the nuts in a fight over a woman really skewed my opinion of cops for a long time when I was growing up. I still think it’s bizarre that no charges were ever laid. WTF? Whenever this bunch of cops came over to our house, I knew things were liable to get out of hand. If they were non-uniformed violent thugs, I would have called the cops on them a bunch of times.
I guess some people are attracted to the job because it gives them an opportunity to get the violence out of their system with less chance of being taken to task for it. If these guys were screened out a little better, it wouldn’t be so common for some (non-criminal) people to hate and fear the police.
C’mon guys; tell the full story, or at least acknowledge there is one; it’s easy to sit here in our armchairs and criticise, but we have no idea what the woman was about to do to him with that finger.
Yeah, it might have been a terrorist finger.
Wonderful quote from another policeman about our troubled officer:
"He’s a man of faith," Konczal said. “He’s going to do what he needs to do to get the job done, and he feels for anybody who gets hurt. If there’s anyone who feels bad about this woman being hurt, I’m sure it’s A.J. He was getting the job done.”
I think I’d feel better about being busted by an atheist cop.
I agree that some cops need to be taken out and shot. These guys flagrantly abuse the power handed to them as Agents Of The Law.
Then again…
This past weekend in San Antonio, a man went berserk in a Denny’s; it seems he had forced his girlfriend to take him there at gunpoint because he wanted to have a little shotgun chat with a chap he’d seen her with.
Once there, he was seen to shout and abuse her in public. Since he was a great big guy, and didn’t seem too stable, someone called the cops.
Four officers were sent to the scene. The first two arrived quickly, investigated the situation, and talked some sense into the guy. He calmed down and agreed to behave.
(At this point, the girlfriend MAY have realized that she was about to be left alone with a big giant violent man with a shotgun out in her car, and MAY have said, “He has a gun.”)
Suddenly, without warning, the man spun and struck one of the officers in the jaw so hard, witnesses heard the detective’s jaw shatter. He then spun again and with his elbow, knocked the other officer into a brick planter, splitting the man’s scalp open. He overpowered the second officer, and shot him four times at point blank range. Nevertheless, the officer staggered out of the restaurant and ran to a nearby building and banged on the door.
At this point, two other officers arrived. One of them ran to his bleeding colleague and asked “What the hell–”
…at which point the big dude stepped out the door with the two officers’ guns and began blazing away.
One of the newcomer cops took a bullet to the neck and went down. The other took two shots to the hip and one to the abdomen. He nevertheless got his own gun out and began returning fire. This cop and the suspect, at one point, were literally in hand-to-hand combat, punching and shooting each other.
Finally, the big guy collapsed and died. On top of the cop, I might add.
Turns out he’d spent the last seven years in jail for his involvement in a drive-by shooting. Nice guy. One by one, the four cops have been getting out of the hospital all week. The fourth one, the one who killed the guy, is still in intensive care.
There’s no word on whether or not they cut the guy’s finger off or shot his dog or anything. The story didn’t make the national news.
Somehow, I don’t think I’m quite ready to outlaw cops yet.