What part of hades do you hail from where the cops wouldn’t respond to an armed robbery in progress?
I read the article. As for the families of the robbers, justice was served. Violence begets violence. I’m glad that if someone had to die, it wasn’t the innocent people going about their lawful and peaceful business.
If the robbers had responded to the demand that they stop by saying “suck my ****” and then run off, the bystander wouldn’t have had justification.
I’ve had a gun in my ear in a subway station in 1991. All the fucking asshole got was my Chinese food dinner, my purse and a starring role in the nightmares that followed. I hate guns. I would divorce my husband if he wanted one in the house. I despise, loathe, abhor, cannot stand physical violence. I threw up after my dad dragged me to Rocky movies. I am completely against the death penalty.
But if I had a gun at that time, I would have gladly shot the fucker right in the head after he finally pulled that gun out of my ear. People who do shit like that get exactly what they deserve.
If and only If the shooter felt he or a member of the public was in immediate danger then this is OK, if all he was doing was shooting someone to stop a property crime then he did a very bad thing. Note I say property crime.
It’s possible we have different definitions of armed robbery. As far as I’m concerned, armed robbery – we’re not talking burglary, this isn’t solely a property crime – involves using a weapon (an “arm”) to hold someone under threat of death so that they give up their property (“robbery.”) And nothing stops the armed robber from killing – happens pretty regularly.
So, because someone has something these motherfuckers want, is justification for killing them? Or putting them in very real fear of their lives?
See, the question works both ways.
He used reasonable force in defending himself by shooting the persons who were threatening him with guns. All else is not relevant.
It does not matter that they had robbed a store, or that he could have run off rather than stood his ground. The simple fact is that they threatened him with guns.
Even being a liberal pansy I have to say that if you go out to rob someone with a gun (as Sailboat said, even if you don’t expect to have to use it the threat that you’re willing to do so is the whole point of taking a gun along) you can’t expect a guarantee that you’re going to make it home. Fuck them and their parents.
It sounds bizarre but it’s true. As a matter of law, the police are not responsible to prevent any particular crime. They could, from a legal standpoint, stand there and watch you get mugged and not lift a finger to help you or arrest the mugger.
Sounds insane but it actually is necessary for this to be true. Because if the law accepted the principle that the police had a responsibility to prevent crimes from occurring, it would make law enforcement impossible.
The reality is that crimes happen all the time. And for pretty much every crime it would be theoretically possible for the police to have prevented it by some action. If a patrol car had driven down First Street instead of Second Street, they would have seen a convenience store robbery in progress. But they drove down Second Street, didn’t see the robbery happen, and consequently did not stop it.
If the police had a legal responsibility to stop crimes, they would now be liable for why they had failed to do their duty. Why did they go down Second Street instead of First? There was no crime occurring on Second Street when they drove down it. In fact, if you look at the records for the last year, you’d see that nine crimes occurred on Second Street and eleven crimes occurred on First Street - obviously the police should have driven down First Street which has a history of more crimes. By choosing to drive down Second Street instead, the police were not following the procedure that was most likely to prevent crimes and were derelict in their duty.
As you can see, it’s fairly easy to make some argument the the police made the wrong decision and that led to a successful crime occurring. And it would be impossible for any police department to operate in a legal environment where they had to answer to arguments. No matter what decisions were made, some of them would be wrong (that’s certainly true now).
So the courts have basically said there is no responsibility. The legal principle is that the police are not responsible for negligent failure to prevent crimes. They can choose to drive down Second Street even if they know there’s a robbery occurring on First Street and they can’t be held liable for that decision.
Of course, in the real world the police officers who did this would probably get suspended without pay or maybe even fired. There are consequences for not doing their job even without legal liability. And it’s important to note that the police are liable if they do anything that’s illegal. If the reason they avoided First Street was because of a payoff, then they become legally liable for the crime because then they did something to cause the crime rather than just take no action to prevent it.
So, what exactly do y’all think the cops were gonna do? Politely ask these guys to please re-consider their life choices?
Which is exactly what the police would have done, as soon as they caught up with them: Point guns at them and demand they surrender. And if Medina and De Carr didn’t stop–if Medina and De Carr went for their guns instead–the cops would have shot them. It’s not like criminals don’t sometimes violently resist arrest–and these two showed themselves fully capable of deciding to go for their guns and try to shoot their way out of trouble–and it’s not like the police don’t generally shoot criminals who do that sort of thing.
Another story that happened this week in Chicago, dumbass tried to rob a store with a fake gun and got shot twice. He’s still alive and has been arrested. No update on whether the clerk is being charged with anything. What I could find of the story here. But this is only part of the story:
The rest of the story is that the clerk got two shots in before the gun jammed. Robber then grabbed the gun and pistol whipped the clerk before taking off, leaving the fake gun behind and taking the real one, ditching it down the street. So the robber isn’t just being charged for the attempted armed robbery, but also for battery of the victim.
I hope these are the stories that will make the news more often. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, make people think twice about whether robbing other people is such a good idea. Here, especially, as concealed carry is going into effect soon. The classes have been full from what I hear, despite the time and expense people have to go through to complete the qualifications.
I’m not really an advocate one way or the other for gun rights stuff, but I sure as shit don’t mind at all when victims or would-be victims are able to defend themselves. If the criminal ends up dead, well, it really is cheaper for the rest of us.
Might as well get my ignorance fought here: if the bystander (after calling the police) approached them with weapon drawn telling them to stop, and the robbers decided to just ignore him and walk away, are you seriously telling me you have no justification to pursue further action?
The family members said they are hurt by comments suggesting the alleged robbers were “thugs.”
According to Medina, William was “no big hard criminal” and was rather a family-man who loved his young daughter.
Robert De Carr was described similarly by his sister, Taylor De Carr.
“My brother was a good kid,” she told 69 News.
Well they may have been good kids but they certainly weren’t good adults. It’s sad they ended up this way but they brought it upon themselves.
When the cops arrived on the scene, I would expect they would train their guns on them and tell the assailants to drop their weapons, kick them away from their persons, get down on the ground and clasp their fingers behind their heads, handcuff them, arrest them and imprison them.
I think two armed police are way more intimidating than a lone bystander and their threats would get better results.
And what if only one armed police officer had showed up in time?
Yes - if by further action you mean shooting them on sight. He could give chase and try and effect an arrest, but you can’t just shoot someone for running*. You need to be in fear of your life or that of others (and not some vague feeling either). As soon as the moved for their guns (which apparently they did) - the shooter had no choice. Well he could have waited to see if he got shot, but no one is going to do that.
This isn’t a matter of them having committed a crime (although it plays into the thoughts of the shooter). If it was a movie set, and the shooter witnessed actors playing the role of robbers, they went outside and put their fake guns away - he yells “freeze and wait for the cops” and they reach for their “guns” - he still acted in self defense. They would still be dead and it would be legally justifiable.
There was a homocide - we know who pulled the trigger. Will any body be charged? Yes. Will it be the person who pulled the trigger? - no. He acted in self defense. Who is responsible? The get away driver is the only living member of the conspiracy to commit the felony that resulted in the death.
ETA: this might not be true in Texas or Florida - I don’t know
I’m pretty sure loss of a limb would make employment as a police officer impossible, other than maybe a clerical position.
In a nation where it seems every other damn day someone pulls a gun and opens fire in a mall or airport or theatre, it’s not unreasonable that seeing someone brandish a weapon in public, does, most certainly, present a very clear and present danger to the public.
If pulling a gun doesn’t justify drawing fire, what does, I wonder?
You’d have to be living under a rock not to be affected by kindergartens students being slaughtered, babies in strollers being shot and killed, etc, etc.
Isn’t this what gun advocates are always pulling for, an armed citizen, to step up and end the criminal spree? Why isn’t the NRA bragging on this, when it’s what they always propose as a solution? Shouldn’t they be standing up and defending the shooter?
Any chance he’s been charged, and they’re going through the motions, just to placate the family?
According to the story, the robbers also threatened the concerned citizen.
This is all splitting hairs a bit IMHO. A couple of scumbags robbed a store and got shot for their trouble. Justice served. Obviously we don’t want a society of rampant vigilantism, but people shouldn’t have to passively sit by and watch crimes happen either.
I’m not particularly surprised by the statements of their families. In their insular, narcissistic, clueless, self-diluding scumbag minds, their families probably honestly do believe they were “good boys”. It’s sort of like Karen Hill describing the mob wives in Goodfellas. At no point does she ever describe robbing and murdering people as “wrong” or question the morality of staying in their mob-marriages. They justify it as the mobsters are good husbands doing what they have to in order to provide for their families. Even though they are all shitty husbands, even if they weren’t criminals and there are other legitimate ways of providing for a family.
People have an amazing capacity for self-delusion. And no one wants to believe the reality that they are in a family of scumbags who probably got what they deserved.
I sincerely hope the taxpayer funded cops have better things to do with their time than placate people who breed thugs.
No. But if you get killed while robbing a store and threatening bystanders while holding guns, your corpse probably shouldn’t have a shocked look on its face. This wasn’t some dude hunting down crims. It was some dude defending himself.