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...don't run!...don't even move!


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http://abcnews.go.com/US/dashcam-captures-south-carolina-trooper-shooting-unarmed-man/story?id=25749239

Personally, I think the guy would have been better off first telling the policeman that he would need to reach into the vehicle but, the officer did over react nonetheless.

This one just yesterday... WARNING..the video part is graphic and has foul language

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html?_r=0

 

Edited by heartstrings
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I find that in almost all of the videos I have seen of police either beating, shooting or throwing to the ground a citizen there has been a refusal to listen to a word the citizen has to say.  The training the police receive today is not the same training they received in the past.  The citizen is an adversary and the policemen approach the citizen accordingly.  In all the dealings I have had in my life with police officers I have had no problem because the issue has been cut and dried and I was guilty and I do not like to argue with a club and a gun, especially since I have the knowledge that I cannot possibly win the argument.  

Some citizens unlike me do not seem to appreciate the reality of the world today.  However the wrong thinking of the citizen does not justify the police roughing him up or shooting him.  The incidents you are addressing in the post are prime examples of bad training and cowardice ( a strong word which I think fits) on the place of the police officers involved.  Automatically "shoot first and ask questions later" is an axiom straight from Satan's realm and should not be observed in a civilized society.

Another case of stupidity, cowardice, and the axiom in operation:

 

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My son was fishing at a pond, with permission, and was mistakenly reported by a relative of the owner. When two deputys arrived one of them ran toward him with a loaded pistol pointed at my son's chest saying "drop the fishing pole". They then lied, saying the pistol was never pointed at him. So I had a serious conversation with our sheriff who first told me about the "low ready" position which is not "pointed" at the suspect. Then he explained that officers go into this zone called "lizard mode". Have you ever looked into the eyes of a lizard? That explains a lot.

Thankfully, in the past 33 years or so, I have been pulled over in traffic stops more times than I can recall for everything from speeding, to pulling a farm trailer without a tag (I have one now) to trailer tail light problems with no tickets or problems. But then I obey every command and a few "yes sirs" don't hurt either. :)

Edited by heartstrings
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I agree the training of cops these days is geared towards adversarial, military type training, which works well in combat situations and dealings in hostile territory but isn't suited for police to citizen interactions.

That said, while some videos clearly show the police actions to be right or wrong, not all do. In the case of the officer who shot the man running from him, the video began after the fight over the stun gun (what did that struggle over the stun gun amount to? Did the man try to take the stun gun away, knock it away, try to turn it on the officer?, all of this would play into the thoughts probable in the officers mind at the time) but from what is shown there doesn't appear to be any reason at all to use deadly force (the officers pistol). Why did the officer think shooting this man was a viable option or preferable to giving foot chase? Unless there are some serious things we don't know of (which I doubt since the officer has been charged with murder), this seems like a clear case of excessive, unwarranted force leading to death.

In the other video where the man reached into his vehicle to retrieve his drivers license, I can see reason why the officer might be fearful. The man moved rather fast both into and out of the vehicle, mostly with his back to the officer, which gave the officer only a split second to try and decide what the man had pulled from the vehicle and whether it may be a weapon or not. Given the rash of assaults on police over the past year or so I can see why he might be quick on the trigger. That doesn't make it right, but given police training today this officer likely has a reasonable argument to base his actions on.

If many of the liberalized laws that took over in the 60s and 70s were done away with and more traditional law enforcement was put back in place this would solve some, perhaps many to most, of the problems we see of late. Under the liberalized laws it's difficult to actually convict and lock away the real criminals. Under the traditional system real criminals were more easily dealt with and taken off the streets.

It amazes me when talking with police, or even watching a show like "Cops", how often you hear police say they KNOW who the criminals are, they KNOW where the drug houses are, they KNOW who needs to be in prison, but they can't go after them without jumping through so many hoops, which often require months or years to accomplish, that it's almost impossible to get at them.

The justice system, courts, prisons and police training all need overhauled but that's not likely to happen because too many people are getting rich off the current system and it's mostly "JUST the little people" who suffer from the current system.

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Obviously, the policeman in North Chas. murdered the man. What I don't understand is why it appears for just a brief second the man took something from the officer and dropped it on the ground as he ran away.

​I agree the shooting looks totally unjustified. There are a some questions that need answering as to the nature of their interaction before the man ran and the officer chose to shoot him down rather than engage in foot pursuit and call for backup.

Short of something totally unexpected coming forth I don't see how this is anything other than unreasonable use of excessive force which brought about a totally unnecessary death. I'm guessing the police and prosecutor sees it this way too since they have charged the officer with murder rather than some lesser charge.

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Obviously, the policeman in North Chas. murdered the man. What I don't understand is why it appears for just a brief second the man took something from the officer and dropped it on the ground as he ran away.

​On the video I saw, it seemed that the officer dropped the tazer  next to the man after he had been shot.  He then cuffed him while he was lying on the ground.  

The man was 50 years old and the officer seemed fairly young and athletic.  In our country in such a situation the officer would likely have chased him and brought him to the ground with a rugby tackle.

When I worked in London some years ago, there was an armed robbery on a McDonalds near our office.  One of the young women in our office saw a man being chased by some onlookers,  The man turned round several times firing shots at them.  As there were often films being made in the area, she looked around to see where the cameras were,  but there were none and she wondered if it was for real.  When I bought the evening paper on my way home, there was a report of the incident.  It seemed some members of Joe Public had chase the man who ran into a tube station and jumped on a train.  One of the pursuers followed him onto the station and called to the driver to shut the doors and keep the train into the station till the police arrived.  Which they did and arrested him.

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The man was 50 years old and the officer seemed fairly young and athletic.  In our country in such a situation the officer would likely have chased him and brought him to the ground with a rugby tackle.

​Britain policing policies and practices do seem to be a little more humane than in the U.S..  As a matter of fact they are more humane nearly everywhere else in the civilized world.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/american-cops-killed-people-month-march-uk-entire-20th-century/

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​On the video I saw, it seemed that the officer dropped the tazer  next to the man after he had been shot.  He then cuffed him while he was lying on the ground.  

The man was 50 years old and the officer seemed fairly young and athletic.  In our country in such a situation the officer would likely have chased him and brought him to the ground with a rugby tackle.

When I worked in London some years ago, there was an armed robbery on a McDonalds near our office.  One of the young women in our office saw a man being chased by some onlookers,  The man turned round several times firing shots at them.  As there were often films being made in the area, she looked around to see where the cameras were,  but there were none and she wondered if it was for real.  When I bought the evening paper on my way home, there was a report of the incident.  It seemed some members of Joe Public had chase the man who ran into a tube station and jumped on a train.  One of the pursuers followed him onto the station and called to the driver to shut the doors and keep the train into the station till the police arrived.  Which they did and arrested him.

​Proper police procedure is that deadly force is only to be used if the life of the police or others is in imminent danger. The 50 year old man had no weapon, he was running from the officer, no one else was nearby to be in any danger. From the video it's clear the 50 year old man was running clumsily and the officer could have easily given chase (as proper police procedure would be) and caught the man in short order.

The big question is: why did the officer decide to shoot the slow running, unarmed 50 year old man rather than simply chase him down and cuff him?

Whatever the answer, it would seem the officer ruined his life when he chose to shoot and kill that man.

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I have seen the rest of the video. Now that I have seen it, it most likely is the officer dropping the 'tazer' or at the very worst knocked out of his hand by the fleeing man. In any case this is purely murder from every bit of evidence I've seen. 

However, don't be so quick to condemn the U.S. police and embrace the "more humane" police tactics of European nations. We're going far enough to the left in the U.S. as it stands. 

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Actually, the closer we get to "the left", the worse the police will become. The ultimate product of their agenda is a totalitarian police state. Our founding fathers refused to put up with such abuses of power and we should as well.

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I certainly wouldn't look to a European model as the answer. A more traditional American model would my preferred point of building a new police foundation.

The Leftist agenda leads to a police state which enforces their view of tolerance in the most intolerant ways.

I caught about 10 minutes or so of O'Reilly last night as I was getting ready for bed and he cited statistics showing that black deaths by cops has dropped over the past several decades. According to Bill approximately (I don't recall the exact numbers) 120 blacks were killed by cops last year while about 360 whites were killed by cops. Those facts are not even close to what most in the media, as well as many politicians would have us believe.

I suppose in a country of 300 million those numbers might not be so bad, but still, on average, a cop kills a black person about once every three days, while a cop kills a white person about once a day.

Despite what the media would portray, the vast majority of these incidents are justified, involving armed, violent, dangerous, life threatening criminals. Also, it's clear by these numbers that cops around the country aren't targeting blacks to kill them as the media and race hustlers have claimed.

Interesting to note was how quickly, and within the law as established, the police and prosecutors moved to arrest and charge the officer with murder yet there was still a group of blacks at the press statement who started chanting "no justice, no peace". What are they chanting for when it's clear the cop who shot the unarmed, non-threatening man dead has been arrested and charged with murder? That's the justice system in action as they claim they want. Still, they seem to just have to protest and try to turn this into a racial incident when it's not.

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It seems that the US is more of a police state than many European governments.

 

"You have a broken rear light and are black so I will shoot you."

​That's not what happened.

The officer pulled the man over for a broken taillight. The officer took his license back to the police car to check it out. The man started to get out of his car and the officer told him to stay in the car. The man got back in the car. Then the man opened his car door again and took off running. The officer gave foot pursuit, called out "taser, taser, taser" as they are trained to do before using the taser.

At this point there is no video but some point of scuffle took place over the taser (stun gun), immediately following this the next video picks up showing the taser falling to the ground, the man taking off running again, the cop yelling at him, pulling his gun and then firing his gun.

It was the man stopped by the police which escalated the situation by disobeying lawful instructions by the officer and then by running from the officer, then by scuffling with the officer over the stun gun and then running again.

Even so the officer was wrong, not following proper police procedures when he pulled and used his gun on the man.

Proper police procedure would have been to give foot pursuit while calling for back-up. There was no immediate threat of violence or life threatening situation to warrant the use of the gun. As well, even if the young healthy cop couldn't catch the slowly running 50 year old man, he had the man's drivers license and car so he could have easily been tracked down later.

Two men made bad decisions and one died and the remainder of the others life is ruined.

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