Not sure why they even bother to âinvestigateâ at this point. May as well save a bunch of money and announce that they wonât charge while the police tape is still up.
The DA said, âWe must recognize that they are often forced to make split-second decisions and we must recognize that they are under tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances.â
OK, but that is a question that should be decided BY A JURY. It is hard enough to get jurors to convict police (Iâm not judging whether police ought to be convicted in any particular case), but to take the case away from jurors further insulates police from the law.
Related point: There needs to be a lot more discussion of the standards for officers using their weapons, and the way in which they fireâdo they REALLY need to discharge entire magazines every time they start to shoot?
Why is it that White folk who go on active shooting rampages are regularly picked up by cops making split-second decisions without a shot being fired, even though the individual has already demonstrated that they are armed and capable of killing?
I know it canât be any inherent racial bias, as we fixed all that stuff with the Civil Rights Act.
Killing someone you are sworn to protect means you are bad at your job. The officers involved should be fired even if they arenât charged. That goes for pretty much every police shooting of the innocent.
Well, in large part itâs how we train and equip them, as well as our overuse of them to enforce petty laws and ordnances, promoting an antagonistic relationship of âus v. themâ between cops and âciviliansâ.
If we changed mindsets to make things less antagonistic, and stopped making every traffic stop be approached as a potentially deadly encounter, less would.
Does anyone ever think to focus on why some people have a lot more interactions with the police than others?
It buys time for things to calm down, and for people to forget or get distracted by other things.
By âsome people,â you mean people with testicles, right?
The bias toward killing is reinforced from above.
Weirton terminates officer who did not fire at man with gun
After responding to a report of a domestic incident on May 6 in Weirton, W.Va., then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader found himself confronting an armed man.
Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at âthe whole personâ in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot.
âI saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me,â Mr. Mader recalled, noting the silver handgun was in the manâs right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.
The man was Ronald D. âR.J.â Williams Jr., 23, of Pittsburgh, and what happened in the seconds after Mr. Maderâs initial decision is still being investigated by Mr. Williamsâ family as well as the West Virginia Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Mader, who was standing behind Mr. Williamsâ car parked on the street, said he then âbegan to use my calm voice.â
âI told him, âPut down the gun,â and heâs like, âJust shoot me.â And I told him, âIâm not going to shoot you brother.â Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.
âI thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-copâ situation.
But just then, two other Weirton officers arrived on the scene, Mr. Williams walked toward them waving his gun â later found to be unloaded â between them and Mr. Mader, and one of them shot Mr. Williamsâ in the back of the head just behind his right ear, killing him.
âWe must recognize that they are often forced to make split-second decisions and we must recognize that they are under tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances,â Schubert said.
And they must err on the side of life. If they canât tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun, then what good are they? Shot him 7 times in the back because they were afraid of his cell phone!
Schubert said the decision not to file charges against the officers âdoes not diminish in any way the tragedy, the anger and the frustration that we heard since the time of his death.â
She added: âWe cannot ignore that there is rage within our community.â
Oh, Iâm sure that makes everything better.
Police should perhaps devote some resources to training their personnel to tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun.
Unlike young Mr. Clark, the police officers and their dept. managed to dodge a bullet.
However, a different outcome is quite possible in the inevitable civil litigation that will be forthcoming.
Sure would be nice if we had a political party that actually stood up for police accountability. Perhaps the one that claims to be the the best one for black Americans to vote for. Hmm oh yea, that one is too busy asking black folks to over look the black face and ân-wordsâ of their politicians.
But sadly it seems demanding black people just vote for you because youâre better than the alternative is the preferred approach of said party rather than actually standing up for black people when they get shot down by the cops (donât wanna be called âBLMâ by the right, might scare away your white voters now).
[quote=âold_curmudgeon, post:3, topic:85054â]
Related point: There needs to be a lot more discussion of the standards for officers using their weapons, and the way in which they fireâdo they REALLY need to discharge entire magazines every time they start to shoot?
[/quote]The Lone Ranger caught a lot of bad guys. I donât remember him killing any of them. I know, TV show. But, stillâŚ
Of course, he apparently wasnât a racist either.
From the article: Clarkâs shooting helped prompt pending state legislation that would allow police to use deadly force only if there if there is no reasonable alternative, including non-lethal force or efforts to calm the situation.
Not a panacea - but a good idea that should go nation-wide.
Re Stephon Clarkâs killing, worth mentioning that:
- He was NOT the suspect of the 911 call. The suspect was breaking car windows in the street. Stephon was just running to get back to his grandparentsâ home.
- He carried only a cellphone, not a gun when he was shot multiple times by the officers in his grandparentsâ back yard.
- Now at the press conference to announce thereâd be no charges against the police officers, the DA decided to make it about Stephon, his character and past. He was 22.
No justice today in Sacramento sadly.
America was founded by wealthy white men, most of whom were slave holders.
Their institutionalized culture of white male supremacy endures. This is just another example of it.
We need a revolution.
No democracy, no justice.
And yet if youâre black and male you live (hopefully) with the same fear, the same split-second decisions, and rapidly shouted commands that may come at you at any moment, whether out in public or on in your own apartment. And in most of these case the common denominator is that they are unarmed.
Maybe we should get an expertâs statistic on which is more expensive an 20 something black manâs life insurance policy or a 20 something white manâs?
In America the cops can execute you on the street, in your car, in your home, anytime they want. Thatâs country you live in. Remember that.