Discussion: PA Officer Charged With Killing Unarmed Driver Who Was Laying Facedown

[seedeevee]

Biggest racist I know is from Small Town, Mass.

[seedeevee]

@LiberalRefugee

Until people start treating encounters with officers in the same way that they’d treat an encounter with an armed criminal, we’re going to see reports like this.

Very Sad But True.

[seedeevee]

From somewhere else:

“Her attorney, Brian Perry, said Mearkle acted in self-defense, and he warned the case could cause police officers to hesitate in high-pressure situations.”

If only.

[chuckm6421]

My thoughts as well awould, and Davey Jones misses the point. Yes, this appears to be an unjustified killing by another cop. But let’s let the facts speak for themselves without hysterical exaggerations like ‘routine traffic stop’. It wasn’t. It doesn’t justify the shooting but it harms the credibility of the innocent and the cause and the truth matters too.

[datora]

Residents here refer to it as “Pennsyltucky,” and have been for decades before I moved here in 1979.

Don’t hold out any illusions about Pittsburgh, either. In the very core of the main city it’s almost like a “typical” center-right leaning American city. By the time you get to the city limits and headed outward, you can hear the banjos all the way from Deliverance. It’s hard-core coal country out there, very difficult to distinguish from Kentucky or West Virgina.

[chuckm6421]

Hey now, bein’ the 12th generation of my lineage to live in the Mohawk Valley, I resemble that comment! Only a higher power knows how much cross-pollination has occurred. But you’re right about the trash problem. NYS has the 3rd highest number of hate groups in the US, so says the SPLC, and most are Upstate. and I’m in agreement.

[old_curmudgeon]

She incapacitated the guy with a stun gun, he was lying face down in the snow, she shot him once and then waited 4 seconds then shot him again, and it took 7 weeks to charge her?

I suppose that, with the video and all, they couldn’t figure a way for her to go uncharged.

[stevieD]

I’m confused. I thought everyone pulled over by the police was routinely shot and killed. This guy got off easy. In some towns they confiscate your possessions, kill your dog and put your children in foster care after they shoot you dead.

[Antigone]

He was white. Unfortunately, this is close to where I moved to a decade ago.

[mikev]

You can’t be a chicken shit if you want to be a good policeperson.

[Dawn_Rainbow]

@awould

Not that the guy deserved to be killed, but there certainly were some odd circumstances to try to paint some pollyanna picture of it.

They’re not painting a Pollyana picture but you’re attempting to for the cops. The family’s simply saying their loved one shouldn’t have been shot over a traffic stop?
What did you expect them to say, he deserved to get shot for panicking when he was facedown on the ground? Really? You’re the one painting the Pollyana picture. Someone constantly fleeing from you is NOT an aggressor here, no excuses!!
I wonder how you’d feel if that was your brother, son, father, loved one this happened too.
People really need to have a heart.

[Dawn_Rainbow]

@Old_Curmudgeon

I suppose that, with the video and all, they couldn’t figure a way for her to go uncharged.

That’s it exactly. The only time the police get charged is when there’s video & even then.
Luckily, this time the victim is white maybe that helped a little bit too.

This is unusual for the fact it was a female officer being this aggressive for usually females tend to be less trigger happy.
She prolly panicked, but she’s a cop so there’s no excuse.

[Dawn_Rainbow]

@lastroth

But Tamir Rice only got 2 seconds.

If that. They shot him as they were pulling up so…

[Dawn_Rainbow]

@LiberalRefugee

Until people start treating encounters with officers in the same way that they’d treat an encounter with an armed criminal, we’re going to see reports like this. At least as long as we keep training police to be soldiers and not punlic servants.

The message needs to get out to the public.

[borisjimbo]

Expired stickers. Sovereign citizen?

[dizcuzted]

That would be the BEST outcome from this case. No that it will actually ever happen, but it would be great.

[qwedswa]

When you make excuses for bad cops, it doesn’t help the good cops. There was absolutely, positively, without a doubt, no reason to kill this man. Unarmed, lying face down after being hit with tens of thousands of volts of electricity. It doesn’t get more helpless than that.

[smarish]

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t allow cops to carry guns. It’s obvious most of them are unfit.

[khaaannn]

She clearly shot him by accident the FIRST TIME, thought about it for a few seconds, decided she only had one chance to get away with it and that was to make sure only HER STORY would be heard, and then shot him again, killing him this time (Dead men tell no tales.)
If this is not First Degree Murder I don’t know what is.

[zlohcuc]

THIS is why Ferguson is important in the national discussion.If police can kill citizens with impunity ,no consequences under the law little wonder people feel they must be armed to the teeth to visit the local grocery store.When you consider virtually no officers are convicted in these sorts of incidents,it is reasonable to conclude that some officers are unfit for the role and training is woefully inadequate to those with such a pivital role in local communities across the US