I have no problem with this. The guys in the car were scumbag criminals. They learned their lesson (the hard way).
23 cops fired 377 rounds at two unarmed men inside a vehicle.
- Thread starter eznutz
- Start date
By 5 am every cop in South Florida was looking for that blue Volvo – intent on catching the man who had shot one of their own.
The above is where I take issue. A person is a person, regardless of whether or not they wear a badge. Police behaviour should be the same regardless; or at least, the attempt should be made.
I understand that the brothers in uniform may seem like family. Yet I wouldn't expect a police officer related to a recently killed family member be given leave to hunt down the perp himself. It's a conflict of interest. Obviously someone has to chase down a cop-killer, but zealousness in such a case should be criticized, not justified. Officers need to keep their cool, and if they lose their heads when another officer they don't personally know gets killed, then they shouldn't be cops.
The above is where I take issue. A person is a person, regardless of whether or not they wear a badge. Police behaviour should be the same regardless; or at least, the attempt should be made.
I understand that the brothers in uniform may seem like family. Yet I wouldn't expect a police officer related to a recently killed family member be given leave to hunt down the perp himself. It's a conflict of interest. Obviously someone has to chase down a cop-killer, but zealousness in such a case should be criticized, not justified. Officers need to keep their cool, and if they lose their heads when another officer they don't personally know gets killed, then they shouldn't be cops.
Shooting someone 'accidentally' after they do a takedown at the wrong address happens quite often in the US. It even happens in Canada.
In Ottawa a couple years ago, the police did a takedown on a private residence. It was a drug raid and they were after the lady that lived in the house, but found the boyfriend and his dog on the ground floor. At gunpoint, they had him lie down. The dog started growling, so a cop tried to shoot it but missed and shot the boyfriend in the leg and the bullet travelled up the leg.
The police officer was cleared of negligence since he purportedly had reason to draw his weapon. Missing and hitting a bystander doesn't count for cops. The boyfriend, who had noting to do with anyting sued the Ottawa police service for $750,000, but the cops settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
A Toronto SWAT team member actually got charged for accidentally shooting a suspect in the back with his MP5 submachinegun, while struggling with him on the ground. He was cleared of murder, but no mention of negligence: negligent use of a firearm is what he should have been charged with, since he should have at least had his safety catch on, or else unloaded his firearm before getting on the ground to physically restrain someone. Submachineguns are notorious for going off accidentally.
The standard is different between police and everybody else. If you or me should accidentally shoot someone at the range, you will be charged and convicted. For police, it's just part of the job, it seems.
Firearms safety doesn't seem to apply to cops. When a suspect is clearly disarmed and on his knees or on the ground, they contine to point the firearm towards the suspect with their finger on the trigger, and there is always a round in the chamber. Some guns like Glocks (Toronto Police Service) have no safeties.
This is merely the tip of the iceberg, and there are a few websites that compile all the stuff that happens in the US.
Just because you haven't seen it on the front page doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It happens too often and politicians are reluctant to control police excesses.
No, I don't know why you make that leap. When I lived in NYC which has strict gun control laws - an unarmed man was shot 19 times from over 40 bullets fired after reaching for his wallet. The man did not speak English was guessing (wrongly) what the officers were shouting.
This is all scary stuff. What do I tell my children when they get stopped by cops? Hands in the air, on the steering wheel? Should they have to fear for their lives? This is what happens when there are too many cops. I actually fear the regular beat cops more since they are hardly trained to do anything (more politics). The tactical cops should have the precision and control to defyae a situation.
I vote hands on the steering wheel - eyes straight ahead. Tactical cops are better trained but I'm guessing there are rookies whose only training film they can think of in this situation was actually a Dirty Harry movie.
For a comparison, the moving vehicle containing Bonny and Clyde was fired at with only 167 bullets - less than half of the total shots fired at this vehicle..
Police have become militarized in the US (In Canada, they just ape what they do in the US). It started in Los Angeles when they came up in the '70's with the idea of SWAT teams. It got out of hand since and every rinkydink municipal police service has one. Odinary cops don't deliver summons anymore: they send the SWAT team at 6 in the morning and put citizens in their underwear at gun point against the wall. It also has to do with the "war" on drugs. In a war, there is acceptable collateral damage and if you get shot during a takedown because they got the wrong address and you turned around while at your computer because you were holding a mouse (actually happened in Ontario), then that's too bad for you.
One town in the US disbanded their SWAT team (cut the police budget as the only way of doing so) because they were terrorizing local citizens with takedowns for minor infractions.
Ottawa Police service SWAT team stopped a van on Rideau street a few years ago because they had a report of two women who allegedly forced open a car door in a parking lot. At the traffic light short of King Edward, a cop in a helmet, black combat dress and an MP5 submachinegun pointed at them stood in front and told them to get out of the car. The ladies had no idea what was going on, and they thought they were facing a terrorist. It turns out that as she was trying to open her car door, the lock fell out because it was rusted out, and some passerby called 911 as they thought they were breaking in to steal it. Definitely overkill, as sending an ordinary cop would have been sufficient. As SWAT team operations increase, they of course want more money to justify their existence.
I just told you it was hard to take you seriously, why would you tell me a story with no references? I hear anti-police rants all the time and all kinds of "stories" about bad stuff they've done. I don't deny bad stuff has happened, I don't deny it will happen again, and I don't deny that they sometimes get away with it. I like to see cops who break the rules (and it does happen) be punished fully. It's your implication that the norm is that cops go around shooting people willy nilly and get away with it and the courts will decide its your fault on a regular basis that makes you hard to take seriously. Even if you referenced it, it's one story. Despite the claims to the opposite, cops don't always get away with this shit. Sometimes they're held accountable and I'm one the ones applauding loudly when they do. But the general attitude people have about cops is horrible and largely unjustified in my experience, and it's important to emphasize that I realize this is only my experience. I won't tell someone they're "wrong" for have a different experience, but I will disagree with them. However, you take it to the extreme, as some do, and that extreme is what I find so hard to take seriously.
Glocks have multiple safeties. They have entire group of mechanisms that all work in concert to form a complete safety system in fact. When I was a pilot in the military, I had a Browning 9mm Hi-Power with a manual thumb safety. Glocks don't have those, but they do have 3 manual safeties: a trigger safety, a pin safety and a drop safety. The only way to disengage all 3 simultaneously is to pull the trigger. You hear horror stories of accidental discharges because Glocks lack a manual thumb safety, but that's poor weapons training, not an inherent lack of safety with the Glock. If you pull the trigger, a safety shouldn't save you. It's one of the things that makes Glocks great. If police were still carrying revolvers and pulling the trigger only to be saved by a safety being engaged, then they should be failing their bi-annual re-qualifications. If you rely on a safety, you aren't being safe. If my Range Safety Officer in the Air Force had ever caught me pulling the trigger of my pistol, even if it was proven unloaded, without a reason, he would've beaten me senseless. The military has 2 types charges when weapons are fired unintentionally - accidental discharge and negligent discharge. Accidental would be something like the malfunctioning of the weapon. The C-7 Assault Rifle, for example, had a habit of firing even with the safety on, even without a round in the chamber, if you hit on the butt hard enough. For example, jumping out of a truck, losing your footing and using your rifle as a brace to catch your fall, butt first. The force of the motion would cause the action to travel reward, possibly far enough to clear the magazine and chamber a round when pushed forward by the springs, and the force of the impact was hard enough to cause the firing pin to still strike the primer and fire the weapon. It didn't take them long to retrofit the design with a stronger safety, but the point is the discharge was accidental. You'd still get in shit, but the MPs wouldn't throw you in jail. Negligent on the other hand, is jail time. And regardless of the circumstances, if you actually pulled the trigger, you were negligent. It doesn't matter if the safety was on, it doesn't matter if you thought it was unloaded, it doesn't matter if you pulled the trigger "by accident", a trigger is instant negligence. It's my understanding police follow the same rule. And it's also my understanding that negligent discharge of a firearm in the police is taken almost as seriously as it is in the military (except since police don't have their own jail or their own legal system, they don't end up in jail).
Here's an example of a guy that was cuffed and detained and managed to shoot out a police car:
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/2...s-from-handcuffs-shoots-out-patrol-car-window
Yes, the police obviously didn't search him properly, but you're taking offense to police going into a place with a drug warrant (and let's face it, drug activity is dangerous stuff they have no idea if the people inside are innocent bystanders or accomplices, maybe hired muscle), finding people there, and keeping a weapon trained on them until they've been cuffed and searched.
Let's take a step back for a second. One reason why people are upset with cops is because 1) they make a lot of money under the claim that the job is dangerous and 2) they kill more people than they are killed, sometimes when they shouldn't, and therefore their job isn't as dangerous as many others based on the statistics. And "sometimes" killing people they shouldn't is too much, only never is acceptable, and I agree; don't think I'm debating that. But if police started going around without rounds in the chamber, treating everyone as an innocent bystander regardless of the situation, lowering their guard before suspects were detained, a lot more cops would be dying. I don't want to see cops dying. I also don't want to see innocent people dying. We need to do a better job training our police. We need to do a better job holding them accountable when they fuck up. But we shouldn't take that to the extreme of criticizing them for going in to places that they suspect are dangerous with a loaded gun and waiting until they are sure a situation is safe before they holster their weapons. We're asking police to be reasonable, it's only fair if we're reasonable too.
