ATLANTA (AP) — An Atlanta police officer was fired following the fatal shooting of a black man and another officer was placed on administrative duty, the police department announced early Sunday.
Just a few bad apples.
The chief “resigned” to another position in law enforcement, not what you’ve made it sound like.
One hopes that the potential for criminal charges is pretty strong here.
She resigned as chief, after a career with APD that goes back to '95. They haven’t announced what new, if any, position she will have with the department.
But she wasn’t a bad cop, or a bad chief. And her resignation is testament to that, IMO.
I understand taking responsibility, but she appears from everything I have seen to be on the right side. If decent officers and chiefs resign whenever something goes wrong, then only the suck ups and careerists will remain. Gotta keep the people who are willing to reform working on the project.
And the bottom line is that deaths are going to occur in policing. This death was unnecessary because he only had a taser (taken from the cop) not a gun, but it is also not exactly the same thing as Floyd’s killing or even the tasering of the young Atlanta couple in their car.
Lots of reform is needed, but can’t we keep the reformers around to do the reforming?
“ One bad apple spoils the barrel ”
How long you want to give them? She was the chief since 2016. If we’re still seeing people end up dead from a situation that never should have reached that point, whatever she’s doing isn’t working.
This is why you’re seeing calls to straight-up disband some of these police departments, as the institution is so corrupt and unable to change through evolution.
If they get the right jury. The video from the Wendy’s camera shows the guy briefly pointing and maybe trying to fire the taser he grabbed just before the cop shot him. It shouldn’t matter because that’s a non-lethal weapon, and the cops knew he didn’t have a gun. They had already patted him down. But juries can be unpredictable. I hope they get a jury who can understand the difference and put that cop in jail.
It won’t be about that, though, it’ll be about the laws in place for the cops. Given the struggle and taking the taser, my money is on it being suspect that you even see charges for this, let alone a conviction.
There is absolutely no reason this man needed to be shot.
The police know how to use restraint.
This is in Virginia. This man had just murdered 2 women and a child. Choked a church employee. Assaulted others.
Jerry resists arrest.
Jerry steals officers baton.
Beats cops with their batons.
Steals their police car.
Police never fire a single shot at Jerry.
No stun gun. Nothing.
I understand why people protest but I don’t understand why people set businesses and other people property on fire
Because they’re getting gassed, beaten and shot by the police. Anger and frustration is going to be taken out on something, because all the peaceful protests done over the years have done exactly shit to change anything.
I’m hoping disbanding, defunding and the rest that’s been tossed around recently really means reimagining policing, not getting rid of it. Including taking responsibility away for dealing with homeless people, for example, and steering the money for that to social services programs. Further talk using “defunding” and/or “disbanding” only gives the occupant more to hammer Democrats with.
Citizens will always want assurance that when they dial 911 a cop will be on the way. You take away people’s feelings of personal safety, and you lose voters.
Two cops showed up at my door a couple of years ago because a neighbor phoned in what he or she thought was a burglary in process. It wasn’t. The neighbor didn’t understand what she was seeing, that is, home repair in progress. If there was someone else who was looking out for me other than police, I don’t know who it might be.
The critical point – I saw this made on a CNN interview with an expert – is that the cops had already patted him down and knew he wasn’t carrying a gun. The only thing he had in his hand was the stolen taser, which by definition is a non-lethal weapon.
Cops aren’t supposed to use lethal force unless they’re in clear danger of losing their lives or someone else is. If he had started to run before being patted down, the usual “he could have had a gun” would kick in. This is different. There is no excuse for firing a gun because the guy is running away and you’re afraid of a taser.
Do you have NYT access? Highly recommend this writeup from yesterday that lays out how the entirety of our policing has been built up around keeping black people down, and presents numerous examples of how this has been long known, and “reforms” called for for decades have gone nowhere.
No, nobody is saying that we get rid of all police. But most of what they’re doing can be done by other people (if it needs being done at all, we have way too many laws).
Not knowing the range of the taser, if he was within range I’d expect the argument to be that he was in lethal danger because had the suspect incapacitated him with the taser, then the suspect could have gotten his gun and shot him.
Also, a taser can be very dangerous in the hands of someone not trained to use one…esp if you’re an overweight cop with heart disease.
Plausible, if a bit of a stretch if the cop was alone. But he wasn’t. There were two cops there, both chasing him.
No disagreement at all on the face of it. Should never have happened. Just given the history of cops killing people who literally did nothing but follow instructions and not getting convicted, I have no expectations that they’ll face consequences where the guy did resist arrest and faced off with them with a taser.
Unfortunately, being too inept to take charge of the situation before it got to that point isn’t a chargeable offense.