A local police officer was shot to death in the town next to mine the other night, during a routine traffic stop. Not by some maniac driving through but by a dude who actually lived in the town.
It’s a fucking tragedy for sure. Everyone is just stunned.
What’s a worse tragedy is that the driver is pleading self defense.
Four shots to the head…self defense…
I’ve never had to express recreational outrage before. How do I go about it?
Did the officer have his vehicle’s video camera turned on?
Marc
I hope that wasn’t a routine traffic stop.
unfortunately, no.
Was it SOP to have it turned on, or is it turned on at the discretion of the officer?
It’s funny how the number of bullets suddenly matter when it’s the officer getting shot, but not the other way around… (based on the comments on the news page)
No more details on the self-defense plea?
To be outraged at this, I’d have to feel fairly certain that the shooting wasn’t in self-defense.
-FrL-
With all due respect to your outrage, and to the family of the office, who my heart goes out to, if it was the other way round and he’d shot the motorist, you can bet the officer and/or his attorney would be citing self-defense.
And instead of 4 times, the guy would have been perforated at least a couple of dozen times.
I am so going to Heck for laughing at this.
Although I also agree with the more serious underlying sentiment.
But I still laughed.
I actually live about a mile from where this happened. The thing that’s so strange about this whole thing is that generally this is a pretty quiet area (as far as I know), mainly residential - it’s not in the “bad part of town”. Twinsburg does have one, of sorts, but it’s nowehere near there.
For the most part, the most that ever happens is just teenage mischief during the summer - the officer probably figured it was just some kid. The guy was pulled over just a few doors down from his house. My guess is we’ll find out he had some type of mental disorder.
Twinsburg crime stats: Twinsburg Crime Statistics: Ohio (OH) - CityRating.com
I work in Twinsburg and I was pretty shocked to hear about this shooting. Twinsburg has always been a low crime area IMO, at least lower crime than the city I live in.
One article I read said that he was a canine unit and did the traffic stop on the way to another scene that had dispatched the canine unit. It makes me wonder what the driver was doing that was so bad that he decided to pull him over while on the way to another scene.
I don’t know, but apparently it was worth his life.
I’m getting a blame the victim vibe from this thread and I’ve got to say, it makes me a little sick. You don’t like the cops, that’s fine. The next time some nutbar like this murdering scumbag comes a’knockin, call a crackhead.
With his gun in the holster, we’re gonna find out that the cop threatened to open the squad door and let his dog out, so this dirtball decides to shoot the cop 4 TIMES IN THE HEAD. That’s not self defense, that’s vengance.
Plus, he’ll be a hero in the joint.
Sounds like another candidate for the woodchipper.
What he said.
I agree that it’s more shocking because it was a cop who was shot…but buttonjockey said it right - 4 shots to the head is not self defense. No matter who you are.
I also think it’s odd that the kid lived in Twinsburg since he was 12 but graduated from Bedford High School. Bedford High school, while not the worst high school in the area, is not really one of those schools you make an effort to sneak in to when you live in Twinsburg. Twinsburg has fine schools and it’s a lot less tough than Bedford.
I’m guessing maybe the kid had some behavioral problems and got sent to Bedford. Maybe not - maybe he had a great reason to go there…but it just seems odd.
Right now, we have no idea whether it was self-defense or not. His attorney says he talked to a witness, so maybe this defense has something to it. We certainly don’t know that it was not self-defense, and i think it’s fishy that the officer didn’t have his camera turned on.
We’ll see.
As for the “blame the victim” vibe – that’s how it goes, without fail, every single time the police kill somebody.
Your vibe sensors need tuning.
-FrL-
You planning on growing mushrooms, or something?
Some reports make it appear that that wasn’t down to the officer’s decision.
It’s hard hard to make sense of that peculiar phrasing, but that doesn’t seem very sinister to me.
911 and police band recordings will be released in a couple of days - that should give a (slightly) clearer picture of what happened. As it stands, though - I can’t readily imagine a plausible scenario apart from what it appears to be: Buddy was pulled over on suspicion of impaired driving, and his judgement was impaired enough to make shooting a cop in the face seem like a practical response.
“Self defense?” I can’t wait to hear that testimony, that’ll be fascinating.
Either of you (or anyone else) want to paint a plausible scenario how it could’ve been a case of self-defense? And I mean justified, “I am in imminent danger of being murdered by this uniformed police officer if I don’t kill him first” self-defense, and not “I really don’t want to go to jail today.” I’m having a little trouble imagining the former.
Even if a cop has his gun trained on you (and reports I read said the cop’s gun was still in his holster) it doesn’t give you the right to start shooting.
What the fuck is this supposed to mean. You deny that blaming the victim is SOP for police shootings?