Sonovabitch!:smack: An African-American witnesses police shoot down a 12 year old African-American child without warning, sees other cops arrive and do nothing that indicates that they find fault with the situation, and you wonder why he doesn’t go up to them?? When they release a report full of lies, you wonder why he talks to the press instead of walking into that police station to give a report?? Please tell me you take those blinders off before you drive home from work.
That’s not a reasonable conclusion to draw. Potentially true but not more so than other available reasons.
At this point I’m curious if you either ultimately acknowledge that you’ve been wrong in your adamant, vigorous and deep-throated support for this cop and his actions, or if you just slink off in silence.
I’ll write my prediction down and seal it in an envelope.
No doubt they had to use so many bullets to prevent the unarmed fugitives’ bullets killing numerous four-yr-old children several blocks away.
Incidentally, perhaps mentioned elsewhere, German police discharged 85 bullets in 2011, 49 being warning shots and 6 being fatal.
In many jurisdictions, including police and military, the onus is on the killer to show his actions were justified.
I don’t see that being photographed by the media whilst claiming the police are lying is a better way to avoid this, were it a realistic fear, than reporting it to whoever’s investigating this shooting.
If enough evidence surfaces that this case actually goes to trial, even if a guilty verdict isn’t reached, I’ll gladly admit I was wrong about there being no convincing evidence against the police.
In the somewhat unlikely event that such evidence surfaces, but a trial doesn’t happen, I’ll look at it and make my own decision. That decision, obviously, will be strongly biased towards the defendant, as is appropriate in any case.
Feel free to make me aware of any such evidence or trial, and to remind me of this post, should I not notice it.
Sadly that’s true. It’s pretty fucking disgusting that anyone’s expected to prove their innocence, though.
Then you should join us in condemning the death of a child who was executed before he even had the chance to prove his innocence.
You really are a fucking moron, aren’t you? The child hasn’t been accused of any crime, his innocence or otherwise is irrelevant.
As long as police release a report saying they followed all their internal rules, it doesn’t matter what the video shows, the eyewitness says, what experts say, what their own reports say about the shooter, and what fucking logic says about the possibility of their report even being possible, you wouldn’t give a shit if that kid rose from the dead with wings and a halo with the word "INNOCENT floating above his head…The Men With The Shiny Badges said it, you believe it, and that’s all there is to it. Praise the Precinct, and Pass the Ammo.
Steophan, you and others may not recognize calling someone a “fucking moron” as a defense mechanism, but that’s a symptom of something fairly serious (I don’t believe it’s a sign of simple but extreme immaturity). I suppose you’ll reject the idea of some navel-gazing/self-scrutiny, but particular type of reaction to someone merely making an obvious, not (in fact) irrelevant observation betrays something worthy of it. … or an ego so fragile that you can’t bear to have an observation shown to be flawed.
In short, presenting as an asshole isn’t always proof that you’re an asshole but instead something else.
What is using too many parentheticals a symptom of?
Not a special kind, but a general kind of stupid. It’s called being a pre-teen, and has little if anything to do with one’s actual I.Q. We all go through it.
I don’t know much about the event in question, but shouldn’t the officer have been better able to calibrate his response? I have heard something about how there was a red tip on the muzzle which was supposed to indicate that the kid’s gun was a toy, but said tip had been removed. The fact that it was removable was obviously a problem. Maybe the ultimate solution is to ban lifelike toy guns. I wonder if the NRA will allow us to do that?
Removing the tip would not have prevented this situation. The cops shot the kid before they even got a glimpse of any gun, and the guy who reported it indicated it was probably a fake.
Isn’t it possible that the child was completely innocent and shooting him was completely justified? Must every story have a Good Guy and a Bad Guy for it to work in your universe?
The cop isn’t “innocent.” The fact that he shot the kid is not in dispute.
The question is whether or not his actions are justified; putting that burden of proof on the killer is absolutely correct.
You can believe that the actions were justified, but the cop should have to prove it.
Probably because he was playing with it, rather than brandishing? And, of course, a real gun is considerably heavier, his arm and hand movement would have reflected that. Also, you don’t have to yell “Pow! Pow!”…
I just heard on the radio that a lot of replica guns are sold without orange tips online. If true, this is a problem that needs to be fixed.
In this country, Steophan, if you want to claim you killed someone in self defense you have to actually mount an affirmative defense. You can’t just sit back and say “prove I didn’t kill him in self defense”.
Yes, it certainly is true that if you’re accused of killing a dude, it is up to the prosecutor to prove that you did, in fact, kill the dude. You don’t have to put on any kind of defense, if the prosecution does not prove each and every element of the crime to the jury, then you will be found not guilty.
But self defense doesn’t work that way. And when you claim you yelled for the victim to put his hands up, and then claim that he pulled a realistic gun on you, and therefore you shot him in self defense, but the video evidence proves that this didn’t actually happen, then your self defense claim tends to fucking melt into thin air. Let’s see if the killer cop sticks by his story during his trial, or if he’ll admit he was lying in his first report, before he knew that his actions would be caught on video. But admitting you were lying at first, but now you’re totally telling the truth, tends not to go over so well with the jury.
Arguing self defense is not arguing that the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof of the elements of the crime, it is introducing new evidence. Therefore the burden of proof shifts to the defense to establish the new facts.
This isn’t about good guy verses bad guy. This is about two cops who where grossly negligent. They might very well be good guys, but when you’re grossly negligent like that, it doesn’t mean your feet shouldn’t be held to the fire just because you’re a good guy.
Take for instance a guy who donates his time to charity. He feeds the homeless and gives back to his community. Now lets say one day he had one too many drinks at the bar. In a moment of weakness and poor judgement, he decides to drive home when he really shouldn’t have. On the way home he kills a family of four in a tragic auto accident.
Now, do you think we should just pat this guy on the back and say to him: “Don’t worry buddy, we all make mistakes, just shake this one off and we’ll all forget this ever happened.”?
Or would it make more sense to hold this guy accountable for what he did?
Like anyone of us would be made to do.
Police officers are not above the law. They are not judge, jury, and executioner. If we allow them to act as if they are, then we’re submitting ourselves to a fascist police state.