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Man shot reaching for license.
- Thread starter 3506string
- Start date
If not for the camera, the guy would probably have been charged with a crime, and gone to jail, and court, and paid a stiff fine, (if he survived), and maybe even spent some time in the slammer for assaulting the officer. This happens a lot.
Was pulled over once for speeding or some such thing and had my ID in the glove compartment. Learned a lesson that day; the state trooper that saw me reaching for the box was on the passenger side of the car in two shakes with his weapon drawn on me. My hands went up real quick. We later had a nice chat in his vehicle and told me why he did what he did and I told him I completely understood and would henceforth not move in such a manner again. No ticket was given for the speeding.
It's best to move real slow around cops, even good ones get a little bit like Barney Fife from time to time.
It's best to move real slow around cops, even good ones get a little bit like Barney Fife from time to time.
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Well, I don't understand and I don't endorse what he did. He and his colleagues have training. We as civilians don't. So the cops that are SO VERY AFRAID that we civilians will shoot them could tell us how to act, but they don't. They say "show me your license" when they could say "move slowly, keep your hands visible at all times, make no threatening gestures and tell me every detail of what you are about to do before you do it". Yeah, it's stupid and cumbersome, but at least I wouldn't get shot. I understand that I need to act as if I live in wartime and that I need to go out of my way to avoid being killed or injured by the peace officers all around me, so I will do that to the best of my ability.
Of course I didn't move suddenly or in a threatening way the time in LA that I was handcuffed and made to stand behind my car for 30 minutes or so while my infant daughter lay in her baby seat in the car. They thought I might have stolen my car because my last name is Das (a name probably more common than "Smith"). Not sure what I should have done there. There was no apology, but at least they didn't shoot me that time. There's always next time I guess.
Unless things have changed the military gives an MMPI to people applying for jobs that would put them in the up close and personal to danger category, but I know of at least one case were a PD tried to initiate the same requirement and were sued as being "excessively intrusive" in their vetting process.
There is also the way the FBI trains their hostage rescue teams, put them through the "shot house" where they are on both the giving and receiving end of live fire. They get to be the shooter when actual lives are at stake if they screw up, then they get to be the "hostages" while their fellow rescuers shoot near/past them to hit the bad guy targets.
There is also the legendary tale of George Patton sticking his head up over the rifle range butts during live fire when he was a student at West Point. When asked why he did it, he replied that it was a personal test to see if he had the courage to face bullets coming at him.
Even with all that there is no 100% foolproof method to weed out the chaff ahead of time. it is only at the moment of truth that the ability to be cool in the face of fire will come out. The FBI seems to think their method does make the outcome in the field a certainty and so far they have not been proved wrong, but I can imagine a myriad of problems trying to put every LE prospect through that kind of vetting process, especially after a few got shot by some nervous nelly.
Strictly a personal opinion, but I think until someone does go through an actual live fire test, they shouldn't be allowed to carry a weapon they may have to draw against a citizen of these United States. Unfortunately that would drastically reduce the number of cops on the beat, or add enormously to the cost of training. I believe the actual problem with such a rigorous course of training would be the prohibitively high washout rate which would again come back to less butts in patrol cars.
That said, I understand that as imperfect human beings we should be pragmatic enough to accept that not every situation will have a good outcome. While I abhor the idea of sentencing an innocent to death, I realize that as imperfect humans we will occasionally make that mistake, but since the system we have in place includes the death penalty, we either need to accept the fallacy of the system, along with the idea that an occasional innocent will die, or abolish the death penalty so it is impossible to kill an innocent. But then you run the risk of putting an innocent in jail for the rest of their natural life so the question then becomes which is most acceptable, killing an innocent or robbing them of their life by forced confinement. If I had to choose one or the other I'd take a quick death over years of staring at walls and bars, but that's just me.
Sorry to go off on this tangent, but IMO there is not a whole lot of difference between a court condemning an innocent to die for murder and giving an iffy individual a firearm and the legal authority to put an innocent to death on the side of the road without the benefit of due process. I understand people make mistakes, but IMO the mistake should lie in being too rigorous in training rather than going into CYA and apologetic mode after the fact.
No, they don't. They sometimes get away with it, but they are NOT authorized by anyone to do that.
It's pretty much a fact that cops shot dogs and people for fun.
Yet another case of some ******* cop abusing his power, makes me sick. Yet I have no faith in the justice system to do anything about this. If this happened in Europe on the other hand......
I don't think they fit the definition of a firefighter if they start fires....... Also I have never met a great priest
I don't live in the USA but there's a a couple of good reasons why I stay as far as possible from cops.
This, is one of them.
This, is one of them.
couple of problems:
- when the US was founded there was no such thing as a standing police force in the US or thr UK. the populations wouldn't stand for it. amazing those societies somehow survived. law enforcement was expected of everyone.
- cities and towns use traffic law to profit off the population instead of using it to enhance safety...police ticket quotas. this puts the police at odds with citizens.
- when the US was founded there was no such thing as a standing police force in the US or thr UK. the populations wouldn't stand for it. amazing those societies somehow survived. law enforcement was expected of everyone.
- cities and towns use traffic law to profit off the population instead of using it to enhance safety...police ticket quotas. this puts the police at odds with citizens.
The FBI and the Secret Service have the most stringent hiring procedures in the country, and probably the world, and there are still numerous examples of members of both agencies getting caught doing illegal things. When you add in that there is no standardized training from state to state (with the exception of field sobriety testing), the lack of standardized candidate screening from state to state, and the "trial by mainstream and social media" phenomenon, and it makes it easier to paint all law enforcement with the broad brush. Some law enforcement academies are only a few weeks long, while others are upwards of 6 months. I personally think that a person should not be eligible for a law enforcement career until they're at least 25 years old. Preference should be given to candidates that are married, and college should be a requirement. I also don't think that candidates with prior military experience should be given special credit towards hiring (I'm not bashing the military, but a lot of their training is in direct conflict with modern policing, and military personnel have a higher probability of PTSD). Better access to candidate medical records (to check for PTSD) is a good step also. These things alone could cut down on a lot of the issues we see today. And contrary to popular belief, in the good ol' days of law enforcement, there was far more corruption than you see today. It just wasn't widely reported on, and local incidents were kept local.
Look up John Orr. He was an arson investigator in California, and an apparently prolific arsonist.
How can the cops expect our respect when these things happen over and over again? I want to respect them but I'm losing it.
What are hey thinking? They're behaving more and more like we're under martial law. Got body armor, will go on the offensive.
What are hey thinking? They're behaving more and more like we're under martial law. Got body armor, will go on the offensive.
It's not just cops that go on a power trip. Ever read anything about the Stanford Experiment? It's a real eye opener.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Put people in charge of others, and they will eventually abuse their power in some way. Very rare to encounter a person that does not take advantage when given an opportunity.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Put people in charge of others, and they will eventually abuse their power in some way. Very rare to encounter a person that does not take advantage when given an opportunity.
The number of criminals far exceeds the number of police officers. The number of people who have illegal guns exceeds the number of police officers. Hell, the number of car thieves is greater. If the victim hadn't moved to get his ID in the way he did, this would not have happened. He's not without blame in this. The cop's reaction was for self-preservation, but he probably would have survived being shot, assuming a shooter doesn't get a head shot.
I think the cop over-reacted, but it remains to be seen if he had a negative attitude toward Blacks or other minorities before reaching any conclusion. The victim should have stood there and done what he was told, unless the cop completely went off the rails in the exchange (not referring to the shooting, just a "normal" traffic stop. Don't fight, don't argue, don't try to start a major scene. If the ticket is unwarranted (if the guy took his belt off on the street, it WAS warranted, technically), he can fight it in traffic court. It costs time and money, but it's far better than being shot dead.
Other people were at the station- if the cop had cuffed the guy and felt threatened, he should have called for backup before doing anything else but the victim did cause a reaction. He didn't comply- if he had stood there, doing nothing, I doubt this would have happened.
