NYC police kill unarmed man by firing 50 bullets

The BBQ Pit
81

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
Well, as has been established, these guys were unarmed, so I’d say that something like that might be the tipping point.
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I’ve seen a motor vehicle kill someone before, and it was quite effective as an instrument of murder. A vehicle represents a weapon to me, if used in that way.

Whatever wording the papers or anyone else uses not withstanding.

A lot of stuff I see people on the other side accepting as fact is just a claim, too. I’m not sure why people feel the need to crucify people before an official investigation, which is conducted by professionals and has a much better capacity for analyzing the facts than any of us, is conducted.

82

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
How about the 29 rounds that went into nearby houses, cars and AirTrain platforms? How many bystanders are you going to kill with stray rounds as you wildly attempt to pump bullets into the guy’s twitching corpse?

As I said before, I understand why the cops kept firing…they kept hearing gunshots and didn’t realize the gunfire was all one-way. They thought they were in a firefight and they kept firing in a panic. Which is a perfectly normal reaction, except cops shouldn’t panic in a firefight, and if they do they need to be retired.

And cops aren’t and shouldn’t be trained to shoot to kill. They are and should be trained to shoot to STOP. Which means shooting the target in the center of mass…it doesn’t mean you keep putting bullets into someone. Yeah, getting shot in the chest might kill the target, it might even be likely to kill the target, but the purpose isn’t to kill the target, it is to remove the deadly threat the target poses, and when that deadly threat is neutralized then the cops have no more justification to continue to use deadly force.

These cops fired 50 rounds, and only 2 hit the driver of the vehicle that allegedly hit the undercover cop, and it’s only blind luck that more people weren’t killed. The cops fucked up royally, again, EVEN IF events occured exactly as they allege.
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I think it’s probably fruitless to argue with you because I’m quite certain you had crucified these cops long before you knew any fact about the case, and you will continue to do so regardless of any facts that come out (you’ve as much as admitted to the latter.)

A professional can correct me if I’m wrong, but police are trained to not fire their guns unless it is a lethal threat, and if you’re firing at such a threat you shoot to kill. Which more or less equates to, “if you’re going to use your gun, you better have justification for killing someone, because that’s what a gun is designed to do, to kill.” Guns aren’t made to stop people, and to be honest they’re only really good at stopping people in one way, by stopping them dead.

You have no evidence whatsoever that the police kept firing long after the “threat was gone” or were “pumping bullets into a twitching corpse” and that kind of hyperbole just shows a strong anti-police bias and a blatant refusal to wait for or even acknowledge any facts in the case.

83

[QUOTE=Frank]
Anyone has a right to defend themselves. Are you suggesting that anyone struck by a car may fire 20-odd bullets into it?
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Depends on the circumstance (which is what I’m saying here.)

If someone knocks me over with their car and then stops it and starts to get out, obviously I don’t have any justification to start pumping bullets into their car or anything else.

If someone knocks me down with a car and then puts it in reverse and starts accelerating towards me again, that’s a wholly different scenario.

84

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
What about when said person in the morgue ostensibly tried to kill the police officer in question? That has to factor in. Although obviously we’re still not clear on what the situation was or what the motivations were of the driver.
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It’s only blind luck that the two passengers weren’t killed too. Did they deserve to die?

The contention that the driver intentionally tried to run down the cop and “ram” the police van are ludicrious. Take a look at the crime scene photos. The car hit the police van’s left bumper with the car’s left front bumper. He wasn’t “ramming” the van, he was trying to drive away from the guys shooting at him and hit the unmarked police van. He might even have been dead by that point.

Police are only justified in using deadly force if the use of deadly force will save lives. Firing 50 rounds into the neighborhood in an attempt to kill the unarmed driver of a vehicle is not such a case. If firing at a vehicle was an effective way of removing a deadly threat then the situation would be different. But it isn’t and wasn’t.

85

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I think it’s probably fruitless to argue with you because I’m quite certain you had crucified these cops long before you knew any fact about the case, and you will continue to do so regardless of any facts that come out (you’ve as much as admitted to the latter.)
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But, see, you’re doing just the opposite - refusing to accept any evidence that the police were in the wrong. I don’t think that one has to desire to crucify the police to accept that something smells fishy here.

86

[QUOTE=Frank]
Problem is, he continued to take her word long after all evidence showed that she was lying through her teeth, and still has not admitted that she was lying, or aplogized to the accused. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He’s going to have to do an awful lot of good to make up for that.
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Oh, yeah, from what I can recall at the moment about that case, I have no problem granting you that. I was speaking really about what happened initially. Also, there’s some of the “well, who really KNOWS–these are, after all, white men, whose words tend to be treated as more golden than the word of a black woman” stuff. Admittedly, I sometimes have to sort all of that out myself (a by-product, I think, of being black in America–not, mind you, that that’s necessarily pre-conditioned solely on being black), but yeah, I’ll concede your point.

And I will admit that it’s difficult to balance the Brawley case with all of the good that he has certainly done. If he hadn’t raised holy hell about the New Jersey Turnpike shootings, I might live in near-mortal fear of being stopped on the Turnpike *every single time * because I’m black and some officer feels like fucking with me based only on that criterion.

87

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
And I will admit that it’s difficult to balance the Brawley case with all of the good that he has certainly done. If he hadn’t raised holy hell about the New Jersey Turnpike shootings, I might live in near-mortal fear of being stopped on the Turnpike *every single time * because I’m black and some officer feels like fucking with me based only on that criterion.
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I’m perfectly happy to allow that you have a different balancing act than I do, and can legitimately reach a different conclusion.

88

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I’ve seen a motor vehicle kill someone before, and it was quite effective as an instrument of murder. A vehicle represents a weapon to me, if used in that way.
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Yeah, but I was responding to **E-Sabbath’s ** remarks/question about the number of bullets that were required to neutralize the threat. Otherwise, no argument here.

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
A lot of stuff I see people on the other side accepting as fact is just a claim, too. I’m not sure why people feel the need to crucify people before an official investigation, which is conducted by professionals and has a much better capacity for analyzing the facts than any of us, is conducted.
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As I allowed for in my follow-up post. And, given the situation, as it has been reported/described, it strikes me as quite logical that people might wonder if things happened the way that either side says it did. IOW, *I’m * not seeing the Stations of the Cross at this point. (And that’s while bearing in mind my admittedly mixed feelings WRT cops in general and, in particular, WRT their interactions with black men.)

89

I agree with Frank. On this board, I’m one of the more conservative posters on several issues. I’ve defended cops in various threads about controversial actions. In my professional life, I’ve had many dealings with cops in various situations. For the most part, my experience has shown them to be good people trying to do a very difficult job. Sometimes, they screw up. From the information we have so far, this appears to be a potential screw up of galactic proportion.

I’ve seen nothing anywhere that would justify the use of deadly force under the rules apparently in place. There is a specifc policy against shooting at cars the way this is alleged to have happened. There is no doubt that policy was violated.

90

[QUOTE=Frank]
But, see, you’re doing just the opposite - refusing to accept any evidence that the police were in the wrong. I don’t think that one has to desire to crucify the police to accept that something smells fishy here.
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No, actually I have repeatedly said the police very well could have acted in the wrong. I’ve only offered scenarios where I would find their actions justified, I’m not saying those scenarios are what actually happened.

In response to Lemur666 just like with the Alexandria case I’ll patiently ignore your expert analysis and the New York Time’s analysis of crime scene photographs and wait for the official report to come public. With that said I’m done here, I’m not going to be typecast in to this role of being “on the side of the police” in this case and argue against those who are against the police. I don’t have a side in this fight. All I’m suggesting, or even advocating, is that on a forum where just about every time any criminal of any type is brought up posters harp on about innocence until proven guilty, that we give police officers the same level of respect.

I think people who are so ready to crucify the police do nothing but cause some sort of divide to grow between law enforcement and the society that law enforcement is sworn to protect, and that is never a good thing for either side involved. There’s a fine line between vigilantly questioning authority and being blinded by anti-authority sentiments. The sheer amount of disinformation and misinformation I think all of us have seen in just about every major case of police excessive use of force is staggering, in both ways (as in info that gets out against the police that is just not true and info that gets out supporting the police that is clearly fabricated or spun.)

I also note how ready Lemur666 is not only to crucify the police but to say things that are patently without any sort of basis in the evidence we have. For example saying they were “pumping bullets in to a twitching corpse” or “firing them off into the neighborhood” you have no idea where the stray bullets and probably not even the layout of the place this happened (unless you happen to be from New York and are familiar with that particular area.)

I’m not refusing to accept evidence that the police are wrong because no one has any evidence. The random musings of journalists and pundits is not evidence. I’m going to wait for real evidence to come out that has actually been analyzed and looked at appropriately by experts. That sort of evidence unfortunately takes time, which is why media outlets are so ready to spew out so much garbage, because unfortunately for them the professionals who analyze these situations usually put an incredibly amount of time, diligence, and effort into their analysis.

But sometimes cover ups happen, and that’s why it’s not all bad that the press has their nose so deeply in these sort of things, what is an unfortunate side effect is how people confuse information the press picks up here and there with genuine evidence concerning the event that happened.

FWIW going on my gut I probably vaguely suspect that some of the officers will be found to have acted inappropriately and will lose their jobs, and justifiably so. But that’s just my gut feeling based on the very little amount of information we have, information that could be flawed since it has been processed and released very quickly.

And Li’l Puck I think the biggest problem people have with Sharpton is in many situations it feels like he’s saying, “you need to side against the police or my people are going to riot.” Martin Luther King used public protest as a non-violent way to protest an unjust regime. Whereas from all I’ve seen Sharpton does everything short of personally whipping blacks into near-riot conditions to scare whites into punishing police officers regardless of the facts at hand. I know the black community in this country has inherited a history of public protest that is admirable, I’m just not sure at what point the form of public protest became dominated by looting, murder, and wholesale mob violence as opposed to peaceful protest.

When civil rights protesters were brutalized by police simply for marching, it immeasurably strengthened their cause, they were obviously the victims and the authorities were obviously in the wrong. But it takes a whole new dynamic when the protest is little more than an excuse to steal television and beat people up.

91

[QUOTE=Frank]
I’m perfectly happy to allow that you have a different balancing act than I do, and can legitimately reach a different conclusion.
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Well, I guess it boils down to is this: When there are no other devils to dance with, you sometimes have to dance with the devil that’s available.

Not, mind you, that this is always preferable, palatable, or easy. (Thinking about Farrakhan here, for instance. Oy. Vey. Iz. Mir!) Or even that one doesn’t sometimes lose one’s balance. (Again, thinking about Farrakhan.) Welcome to America, and all that. :wink:

92

I’m sorry I didn’t check here sooner. I’m also sorry I don’t have a cite for my claim about the disappeared 4th guy with the gun. I heard that it was debunked yesterday during the early morning news (our local FOX affiliate). I searched for a cite on line, but cannot find one, so I withdraw my claim that it has been proven that there was no disappearing guy with a gun.
While I was looking for my cite, I found this. I remember when that happened. I remember thinking that firing 26 shots at a dog (and only hitting it 10 times while shooting your fellow cops in the process) was a big, red warning sign that there was something seriously wrong with the policemen in our fine city.

The crime rate in New York is the lowest it has been in, well,forever. But you’ve got cops pumping bullets into people for reaching for their wallets. Diallo is the one everyone outside of NYC remembers, but the cops of NY are guilty of beating a man to death for playing football outside his own house. Shooting dead a guy because he told them to fuck off when they asked him for drugs. . .

I don’t care if those police were ‘justified’ in shooting the dog. There’s a fucking problem here and it’s about time we addressed it.

93

The guy who got shot for turning down drugs.

The guy playing football.

94

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
And Li’l Puck I think the biggest problem people have with Sharpton is in many situations it feels like he’s saying, “you need to side against the police or my people are going to riot.” Martin Luther King used public protest as a non-violent way to protest an unjust regime. Whereas from all I’ve seen Sharpton does everything short of personally whipping blacks into near-riot conditions to scare whites into punishing police officers regardless of the facts at hand. I know the black community in this country has inherited a history of public protest that is admirable, I’m just not sure at what point the form of public protest became dominated by looting, murder, and wholesale mob violence as opposed to peaceful protest.

When civil rights protesters were brutalized by police simply for marching, it immeasurably strengthened their cause, they were obviously the victims and the authorities were obviously in the wrong. But it takes a whole new dynamic when the protest is little more than an excuse to steal television and beat people up.
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I certainly can’t speak to what people *feel * Sharpton is saying; I can only say that I’ve never heard him advocate or justify rioting or looting. And when there are folks who consider *any * group of upset, marching blacks to be tantamount to a riot, how am I supposed to respond to that?

And, Mr. Hyde, I really hope you’re not claiming that *all * black protest is **dominated ** by looting, violence, murder, and wholesale mob violence. I seem to recall that there were no widespread depredations during the Million Man March in '95 and that Washington, DC, still stood afterwards.

95

There is an old thread where I express my opinion on Al Sharpton very clearly. He’s scum, in my opinion. That said.

I consider a motor vehicle a potential deadly weapon, especially when used to hit someone.

As far as I can tell, all the stories have the cops opening fire after the car hits the first cop, hits the van, backs up, and hits the building near the first cop again. It is reasonably sure the man was not dead until after he put the car into reverse.

I await further information on this incident, especially other eyewitness reports. It is confirmed there were other eyewitnesses.

96

I really don’t have much too add - it seems there’s a real need to root through the evidence to find out what really went down. I will say this, as Li’l Pluck has previously mentioned, that I think a group of boisterous, possibly drunk Black men inspires a different response than a group of White men similarly inebriated might. No accusations from me but that’s what immediately came to mind.

Re: Al Sharpton. I think people really miss the point of what Rev. Al does. He ensures that the issue, whatever it is, gets on the front page of Newsday and on the news at 6. There’s an assumption that this case would get our attention simply because. Well, no, because Biggirl posted links to police brutality in NYC that I have never heard about, and I live 200 miles away. Truth be told, a lot of times the media passes on these stories because the victims aren’t squeaky-clean, because the viewing (and reading) public might not be as interested in the story. Think about Natalie Holloway and every other example of a White woman disappearing. There isn’t a need to call someone to help keep the case in the news because the media does it for you.

If you’re lower middle, working class, or poor, you’d better call on someone who can get the attention of the media and keep the focus on justice for your loved one. Bloomberg met with the family and has made statements about the case. Not to be cynical, but I wonder if Rev. Al’s involvement served as an extra incentive for the mayor to “get out in front” of the situation?

I know some people who have interacted with Sharpton and they say that he is very easy to access, many of the city ministers know him and refer their congregation members to him for help. It’s clear the Brawley case was a colossal cock-up, but I will tell you this: if I ever encounter a serious injustice where I feel that my race or class plays a role and I want attention brought to that issue, I’m calling Al. Hell, even Cornel West did it, and he was a full professor at Harvard!

97

Also note that although historically whites have raped black women in large numbers, I believe it was established in a recent pit thread that current statistics on white men in America raping black women is disporpotionately low.

98

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
Also note that although historically whites have raped black women in large numbers, I believe it was established in a recent pit thread that current statistics on white men in America raping black women is disporpotionately low.
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Please tell me you put this in the wrongest thread ever.

99

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
Well, I guess it boils down to is this: When there are no other devils to dance with, you sometimes have to dance with the devil that’s available.

Not, mind you, that this is always preferable, palatable, or easy. (Thinking about Farrakhan here, for instance. Oy. Vey. Iz. Mir!) Or even that one doesn’t sometimes lose one’s balance. (Again, thinking about Farrakhan.) Welcome to America, and all that. :wink:
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For the record I am not black and I am a registered Republican.

I have defended Rev Al many times on this board and in other conversations. If the only thing you know of Rev Al is the sound bites on the evening news and the false rape case, I understand everyone’s frustration with him. But, Rev Al has done much good, he is not a one issue politician, he is great to listen to in NPR interviews where the conversations get a lot deeper than the Six O’clock news or Daily Show. He more than held his own in some NYC debates. He has ensured cases that were going to get swept aside in NY & NJ got the light of day cast on them. He did much to end the racial profiling that was S.O.P. for NJ State Troopers. We had a very long thread on this last July. I will link to it if anyone really wants to see it.

As far a Farrakhan, he is at least as evil as Pat Robertson. There is nothing good I can say about this crazed racist jerk. He does very little good for black people as he himself is as racist as the come. He is the black David Dukes IMHO.

Jim

100

Biggirl, I don’t know if you noticed the conclusion of the choking case you cited, but the officer who choked the unarmed man to death went on to found a MARTIAL ARTS STUDIO.

That’s sick, dude!