quote:

Originally posted by mike28w:
To digress a little.... Through and through shot to the lower abdomen.... In looking at the expanding blood stain on his jeans....it surprises me that neither the aorta, vena cava, iliac arteries or spine were hit. Probably broke the pelvis and ruptured bladder ??

The report included in the Appeals Court ruling states that one bullet missed and hit the ground, and the other bullet "transected his colon and internal iliac artery, and punctured his small intestine".

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Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

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Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
Really interesting discussion here. I side with the folks who think the cop overreacted. The officer isn't clearing rooms in Mosel, why is he so jumpy around the public?

I'm curious if the courts would have judged this a reasonable use of force if the shooter had been a CCW instead of a police officer. My gut says no. Cops should be held to a higher standard than "untrained" citizens reagarding use of force but apparently they aren't.

No person with a CCW is going to be dispatched to stop an erratic driver on the interstate. The cop pulled up just as they were pulling off the road - you can see the brake lights come on as the SUV driver is putting his vehicle in park. The cop is thinking that the SUV driver is either impaired or a road rager who just caused a conflict with an 18 wheeler. The officer never knew that there was an accident involved.

Unfortunately the OP is not changing the title of the thread and a lot of people are thinking the original scenario is still what happened (that the SUV driver self reported a fender bender and has been sitting patiently waiting for an officer to arrive and the officer pulls up hot for no reason). If the original scenario were true I very seriously doubt the court would have ruled the way it did. The major reason they cite for the ruling is based on the reason the officer was dispatched and the fact that he rolls up thinking the SUV driver is impaired or a road rager who just caused a conflict with an 18 wheeler. When the driver immediately jumps out, reaches behind him and brings both hands together in front of him the officer reasonably is expecting the worst due to the nature of the call he has been dispatched on.

Fixed it for you. Sorry I was working. I still think for CCW holders my original title holds true. If we are in an accident and call police while carrying some overzealous or panicky cop might shoot for some perceived threat. As the judges said this was a "disastrous mistake" by the police. I will tell you in my line of work if I make a "disastrous mistake" and injur or kill a patient I will be found liable. If you as a CCW holder shot a person getting out of their car holding a wallet you would go to jail it's that simple. As far as the erratic driving goes that should have no bearing on the outcome. If you are on a ladder cleaning your gutters and a motorist driving by calls in a burglary the police should assess the situation before shooting you for reaching for handkerchief. The biggest mistake this cop made shooting this kid before giving him time to both process and respond to his commands.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:

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given the environment in which LEO's work

That's the very same environment the rest of us live and work in every day. I don't know about you, but I'm never overly concerned when I head out the door in the morning. If I can face the world unafraid, so can others.

No, is is not the same environment that "the rest of us live and work in every day."

However, if you wish to play being obtuse, let me ask you a couple of questions:

Let's keep it simple by picking just one year. I imagine that by now, the statistics for police officers killed in the line of duty should be available for, say, the year 2015.
In 2015, how many police officers in the United States were killed in the line of duty? How many people in your line of work, a1abdj, were killed while on the job?
If, rather than raw numbers, you feel more comfortable citing the death rate, please feel free to do so. Using either method, the numbers will be comically lopsided.

When you approach a customer for the first time, are you trained by the professional organization governing your profession that there is a measurable chance that your customer will try to shoot you with a gun or run over you with their car?

Are you, on a daily basis, inundated with messages that the people in your profession are murdering, racist pigs? Are organizations such as Black Lives Matter marching in the street chanting that they want the people in your profession to die, being "fried like bacon"?

How many members of your chosen profession were murdered in Dallas, Texas on July 7th, 2016? Five police officers were murdered in cold blood and another nine were injured. How many safe installers were killed on that day, a1abdj? What's the highest number of safe installers killed on any given day?

When you go out for lunch in your uniform\vehicle\whatever which signals to people around you your profession, do you find yourself concerned that waitstaff will refuse to serve you, call you a racist pig and put foreign substances into your food?

When you respond to a call for your services, what are the chances you may encounter armed, belligerent people at the end of their rope, who don't care about their own life, much less yours? What would you think might be the chances for the police to encounter such things?

Hello?

McFly??


Now, can you answer these questions? Because I'm really curious to see how you think even for a millisecond that the world police officers exist in these days is like your world. None of this would matter, of course, if you didn't have an established reputation in this forum as a cop hater, which you consistently deny.

I think many are blurring the line between the legal would have, should have, could have (fantasy), and what was really happening (reality).

There's no doubt in my mind that what the officer did was legal. Doesn't mean it was right. Doesn't mean it reflects reality.

The driver was unarmed, posed absolutely zero threat to the officer, and was shot based on the fantasy of what might have been as opposed to the reality of what really was.

We have a similar situation going on locally, and it's a mess of the highest order because all involved are police officers.

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Originally posted by ulsterman:

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If the officer was my son, I would hold the same opinion

Doubtful

And your disagreement here is based on what? Please provide some evidence or reasoning for your position.

I do not believe the officer was guilty of any criminal misconduct, I do think the officer was guilty of poor judgment, which led to notable damage of an innocent person. Accordingly, the city should be held financially liable.

I would feel the same way if my son was either the officer or the victim. To suggest otherwise means your standards of right and wrong are not constant, rather, they are self-serving.

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However, if you wish to play being obtuse, let me ask you a couple of questions:

Not playing, not obtuse, and I can back up everything I'm about to say with facts.

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Let's keep it simple by picking just one year. I imagine that by now, the statistics for police officers killed in the line of duty should be available for, say, the year 2015.

In 2015, how many police officers in the United States were killed in the line of duty? How many people in your line of work, a1abdj, were killed while on the job?

If, rather than raw numbers, you feel more comfortable citing the death rate, please feel free to do so. Using either method, the numbers will be comically lopsided.

Which line of work are you referring to? Current, or past? The "safe salesman" that gets thrown around here on the forum, or other family businesses I'm involved in?

For example, one of our family businesses is the refuse business. Granted, I'm not out on a truck picking up cans, but those are are face a much higher risk than police officers.

You talking about when I was in the repossession business? When I was shot at several times, and ambushed once by a crazed man with a shotgun hours after the repossession?

What about when I was in the nightclub business, and had to get hands on with drunks on a daily basis?

My current occupation is covered under locksmiths. Just had one shot and killed here locally not long ago while making keys for a car that a bad guy decided he wanted. Several are shot, or shot at, each year changing locks on houses after divorces or during evictions.

Hell, just getting into your car and driving someplace is fairly close to the statistical death rate of police officers.

So if you want to talk some specific numbers, I'd be happy to start posting them. The numbers don't lie.

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When you approach a customer for the first time, are you trained by your professional organization governing your profession that there is a measurable chance that your customer will try to shoot you with a gun or run over you with their car?

There is a measurable chance that a random person will shoot me on any given day. The fact that I work in one of the most dangerous cities in the US, in some of the worst neighborhoods, around a lot of items people like to steal increases those odds.

I have never been shot at as a "safe salesman", but have been shot at, at close range, four times in previous work. I suspect that's more than the average police officer. I never whined about how dangerous it was. After the ambush, I decided to do something else.

Only roughly 1/4 of all police officers, throughout their entire career, will ever fire their weapon in the line of duty.

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Are you, on a daily basis, inundated with messages that the people in your profession are murdering, racist pigs? Are organizations such as Black Lives Matter marching in the street chanting that they want the people in your profession to die, being "fried like bacon

Well I'm not, but then again neither are most individual officers. Individually, I have been threatened by the very same people you're talking about.

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How many members of your chosen profession were murdered in Dallas, Texas on July 7th, 2016? Five police officers were murdered in cold blood and another nine were injured. How many safe installers were killed on that day, a1abdj?

I don't see the relevance. People of all professions are murdered on the job every single day, and many of those professions at a higher rate than police officers.

Why focus on a specific day, time, and occupation? How many taxi cab drivers were shot that day at that time and that place? How many convenience store workers?

I saw a doctor was shot and killed the other day. How many police officers that responded were also shot and killed? Seems that in that particular place, at that particular time, being a doctor was worse than being a police officer.

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When you go out for lunch in your uniform\vehicle\whatever which signals to people around you your profession, do you find yourself concerned that waitstaff will refuse to serve you, call you a racist pig and put foreign substances into your food?

Yes. Clearly only police officers have their food tampered with.

Am I concerned about my food being tampered with? Sometimes. But it has nothing to do with my profession. I understand why the police wouldn't want to eat from a trusted restaurant. It seems that often many of the employees are customers of the police. I don't do business with people I have bad blood with, and wouldn't expect officers to either.

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When you respond to a call for your services, what are the chances you may encounter armed, belligerent people at the end of their rope, who don't care about their own life, much less yours? What would you think might be the chances for the police to encounter such things?

When I was in the repossession business? 100%. Sometimes more than once in a single day.

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Now, can you answer these questions? Because I'm really curious to see how you think even for a millisecond that the world police officers exist in these days is like your world. None of this would matter, of course, if you didn't have an established reputation in this forum as a cop hater, which you consistently deny

Answered every one of them in detail. Need more facts? More proof? Copies of police reports? What would it take to satisfy you?

To some people not treating police officers as demi-gods equals hate. As I have mentioned here before, I have friends who are police officers. I've done business with (and favors) for some who are members here. I'll be at the one of the local police academies this upcoming Thursday.

Applying a bit of logic, if I truly hated officers the way you claim I do, I wouldn't be exposed to them as much as I am. Right? I mean I do have a choice. I don't have to do business with them. I don't have to do them favors. I don't have to donate to them. I don't have to do any of those things, yet I do. I must hate them a lot.

You see (well you may not), I don't hate the police. I don't even dislike the police. Do I dislike certain individual police officers? Sure. I just don't think they as a group are any different than any other group. I judge misdeeds individually, just like I judge outstanding acts individually. It's not the police that do good or bad things, it's individual police officers. Just like every other person, and every other occupation. All equal in my eyes.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Applying a bit of logic, if I truly hated officers the way you claim I do, I wouldn't be exposed to them as much as I am. Right? I mean I do have a choice. I don't have to do business with them. I don't have to do them favors. I don't have to donate to them. I don't have to do any of those things, yet I do. I must hate them a lot.

I have no idea how much contact you have from day to day with law enforcement. I am, however, certain that these donations you make to law enforcement, that you've mentioned more than once, are entirely benevolent and lend to you in no way any sort of advantage, and are not calculated to forestall some future and now unforeseen problem. Why would I think otherwise? It's not as if your sentiments towards the police- which seem always to be accompanied by a smirk- belies your professed attitude.

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I have no idea how much contact you have from day to day with law enforcement.

Weekly to several times weekly. Professionally and personally.

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I am, however, certain that these donations you make to law enforcement that you've mentioned more than once, are entirely benevolent and lend to you in no way any sort of advantage, and are not calculated to forestall some future and now unforeseen problem.

Are you claiming I'm paying off the police? Seriously? For what exactly? Do you believe that somebody in my line of work, with my reputation, is running some sort of criminal enterprise?

How about I get a tax deduction, and much of it is for good causes?

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Why would I think otherwise? It's not as if your sentiments towards the police- which seem always to be accompanied by a smirk- belies your professed attitude.

I have no idea why you think what you do. I understand why some officers do. If you don't shower them with love, then you must hate. Is that your reasoning to?

I'm neutral on anybody that I don't know. They aren't good, they aren't bad, they are just there. When they do something good in my eyes, then they're elevated to good. When they do something bad in my eyes, they go into the bad category.

I treat all people equally and respectfully, then adjust my behavior towards them as needed. May be a foreign concept to some, but it's the way I was raised.

So ALL of this aside, in this specific topic that I have commented on, do you agree that the person who was shot in this story deserved it? The the officer who shot him, morally not legally, was in the right?

Because I haven't once proclaimed that police are bad, that his department is bad, or that he is bad. I haven't "hated" on anybody other than to say that while he was right legally, he wasn't right morally. Many others have pointed out the same, but I can't help but notice none of them are accused of hating the police.

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Originally posted by parabellum:

No, is is not the same environment that "the rest of us live and work in every day."

Actually it is. Non-LEOs get in car accidents with drunk and/or road rage assholes all the time yet we're not barking commands and blasting them away the second they open their car door. Furthermore, non-LEOs don't have the advantages of getting a call from dispatch explaining the situation, can't run plates or criminal history checks or call for backup (which by the way, if this situation was so dangerous why didn't the cop run the plates or call for backup when he arrived on scene?).

Isn't it evident that this shoot was highly questionable when the sigforum LEOs are relatively silent on this one?

Frankly I don't care what challenges and public bias any job brings. If you don't like your job, quit. Just because a small percentage of the population have hatred towards the police doesn't give any officer the right to treat the rest (and majority) of the population like we're all out to get them because we're not. The technology, training and resources give a strong advantage to the police and this officer clearly didn't use any of them.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:
Are you claiming I'm paying off the police?

Only if you consider things such as donations to political campaigns to be payoffs. I myself do not think of such contributions in these terms, nor am I the one who introduced the subject of patronage into this conversation. I fail to see what this proves in terms of the subject at hand.

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Originally posted by Dead_Eye:
Isn't it evident that this shoot was highly questionable when the sigforum LEOs are relatively silent on this one?

Most likely because whatever input they give is ignored or minimized.

I pointed out a couple of pages ago that an IA investigation, prosecutor's investigation, and not one, but two trial courts investigated this.

We live in an overly litigious society. Trial courts hand out 1983 money like candy. The insurance carriers often keep it from getting to that point by handing out go away money. The insurance companies look out for insurance companies. They pay because it is cheaper to give out $50,000 to $100,000 than it is to fight it. Even if the event is righteous. Notice no go away money was attempted to be handed out here? Notice the trial courts reviewed the actual evidence and refused to hand out a settlement?

Those facts alone tell me that there is much more to the story than what is noted in this video. Otherwise, a settlement would have already been reached.

There is something else to this. We may never know what it is.

No two jobs are the same, and law enforcement is not the same environment we all live and work in. It simply is not.

Here is an article about the most dangerous jobs. There are a number of lists out there, this one has a secondary graph for the likelihood of being murdered.

Are there more dangerous jobs than being a police officer? Yes. There are jobs where you are far more likely to be crippled or killed. But it still doesn't mean that police work is by any means "the same" as any other job.

The actual rates of death and injury are a matter of fact, but they can't account for the number of times a police officer faces the risks of violence.

My job is statistically more dangerous than a police officers, but so what, it's only one metric, and no one is actively trying to kill me.

I can take concrete safety precautions to reduce or eliminate risk, and I can also refuse to do something I feel is too dangerous. Can a cop do that?

Why is it important for people to insist that being a cop isn't as dangerous as XYZ? What is the point?

If it were me. If I was in that situation. If it were my son. Conjecture.

Most of this place has never been in a situation like that and I hope you never will be.

Did the officer make a sound decision? After watching the video numerous times, I would say no. But he didn't have the opportunity to watch it numerous times, he saw it once. In real time. On the side of the road, at night.

"No, is is not the same environment that "the rest of us live and work in every day."

Is police like most other jobs? Nope. In most jobs, you don't normally have to protect people from themselves and be responsible for the outcome.

Most people don't do the job for the money, they do it for the satisfaction of helping others.

There are several members of this forum who have an ax to grind with the police. That's your opinion and you have your right to that opinion. But you need to get out and do a ride along. You have no clue.

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Originally posted by jljones:

Notice the trial courts reviewed the actual evidence and refused to hand out a settlement?

Those facts alone tell me that there is much more to the story than what is noted in this video. Otherwise, a settlement would have already been reached.

There is something else to this. We may never know what it is.

I agree with you 100% there. Wish they would release more information to justify why there wasn't a payout. Then again, as others have noted if this kid was black the insurance companies would be on the phone begging their attorney to take a settlement.

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Only if you consider things such as donations to political campaigns to be payoffs. I myself do not think of such contributions in these terms, nor am I the one who introduced the subject of patronage into this conversation. I fail to see what this proves in terms of the subject at hand

That's how I read your reply.

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and no one is actively trying to kill me.

Most people aren't trying to actively kill police either. Which goes hand in hand with:

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Why is it important for people to insist that being a cop isn't as dangerous as XYZ? What is the point?

It's the other way around. People insist that being an officer is so dangerous that it justifies certain things. Others, like myself, will counter that it's not as dangerous as many proclaim, and using that as an excuse is BS under specific circumstances.

A story I have told here before. One of my friends, a police officer, attended a major local academy. He said it took him 6 months to realize that not every traffic stop was going to result in a shoot out. They nailed it into him so hard in training, that he was nervous during routine stops. He said it took him about 6 months to normalize.

He's been an officer for many years. Was in a major traffic accident. Still hasn't been shot at. I have another acquaintance who's a police officer. Went to school together. He was shot. By another police officer's ricochet at the range. Never by a bad guy.

Being a police officer does not justify anything illegal, immoral or unethical. I do not remember anyone saying or implying that.

He was not black, we had no protests, we had no riots, the President did not address this shooting, the news media did not have wall to wall coverage of this cop shooting an unarmed motorist, there was no payout to the victim.

He did not exit the vehicle quickly.
He in fact struggled pushing the door against gravity.

That movement on the ground was clearly him withering around in pain with hands clearly visible.
The last time the officer ordered him to stop moving, it was difficult to tell if he was dead or alive.

Do officers typically draw their weapon on reports or erradic driving?
Seems the officer may have predetermined the outcome based on lack of training, or just not being suited for his chosen profession.

I read the first post and then watched to video. Even knowing what I read about the video, I swear I saw a gun in the kid's hands when he got out of the car. It's clear relatively quickly it was the kid's wallet, but I also knew that from what I read before I watched the video. The officer didn't have that luxury.

Before you guys get too carried away:









..step into our shoes for a minute.

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Do officers typically draw their weapon on reports or erradic driving?

Peace officers draw their weapon when they perceive a threat.

People make choices, we react. Almost never is an officer making a decision, he's reacting to someone else's decision.

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He said it took him 6 months to realize that not every traffic stop was going to result in a shoot out.

...and at about the five year mark he'll be so lax that he'll actually get shot. That's statistically when it's most likely to happen, 5-8 years.

How many times was he not shot, or run over or dragged down the road or whatever because he WAS nervous? You'll never know.... but when he becomes complacent is when it will happen.

No traffic stop is routine. No contact is routine. No call is routine.

When we start to think they ARE routine, that's when cops die.

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Isn't it evident that this shoot was highly questionable when the sigforum LEOs are relatively silent on this one?

Sorry, we have real jobs... and my dispatcher gave the wrong forum address.

This kid is like 99.9999999% of other police shootings... even the ones where we DO shoot a bad guy... if he had complied immediately, he wouldn't have been shot.

Don't comply you probably will be shot... especially in the dark, alongside a road with something in your hand.

quote:

Originally posted by Dead_Eye:

Isn't it evident that this shoot was highly questionable when the sigforum LEOs are relatively silent on this one?

That should not be the conclusion drawn. I'm simply not willing to roll in this pigsty. It was framed with obvious bias from the beginning.

I just hope you aren't all unwittingly bashing me on here one day based on a bullshit thread title.