Few things. Apparently there was a gun in the room but I’m not sure it was visible. Cop going to backyard on welfare check of open front door is weird. He told her to put her hands up and then fired through the window seconds later.
I had a long chat with someone about this the morning. This is someone fairly in touch with the south Fort Worth community. Some of her comments surprised me a little bit. They definitely think the cops were wrong but there is a lot of blame being put on the neighbor who called 211 (non emergency services). Some people think he holds culpability for her death because that is a low income high crime area so the police are always on edge and it is dangerous to call them out for something like this.
That is pretty damning that a community with a high crime rate does not believe in calling the police because they know it is likely to end up with someone being shot.
My biggest problem is the police have no opportunity for the residents of that home to acknowledge they were there. They didn’t go to the front door and knock/call out, which seems like what one would do in a welfare check. Not go around to the backyard and shoot people through a window.
They had no report of any crime at all. They should have acted accordingly.
I REALLY hope I’m not cursing myself on this, but AFAIK we haven’t had a blatantly “bad” shooting in our area for a long time - and there are a metric shit-ton of idiots with guns here. No bad reports of police brutality, that I’m aware of.
I’m surprised (and shouldn’t be, I suppose) that there is anywhere that allows a shooting to be investigated by their own department. We have four main agencies here (Reno PD, Sparks PD, Sheriff dept and NHP) and from what I can tell the first thing that happens with an officer involved shooting is that one of the other three agencies does the investigation. Not perfect, but it’s a start.
I’m kinda hopeful this is another step in the direction of holding cops accountable. I don’t recall hearing of a case where an on duty cop was fired within a week of a shooting, and I certainly don’t remember a case where the police chief was so open and adamant about how bad a shooting was. Elected DAs and mayors have occasionally come out hard against a cop after a shooting, but never a chief or sheriff. Maybe I’m just feeling uncharacteristicly optimistic today.
It’s just another avenue for prosecution. Feds wouldn’t have jurisdiction over this case without civil rights laws, and if I recall correctly civil rights violations carry the same sentence as the underlying crime. So yeah, it would carry the same weight at murder. This was how the feds were able to prosecute klan members when their klan buddy prosecutors refused to charge them under state law.
Antagonizing cedes the moral high ground to the pigs, but fucking with them can be entertaining and profitable if you know your rights and the limitations of their authority.
I am pretty surprised how quickly this came to be. Something really had to be extraordinarily off for everyone to move so quickly to reach a murder indictment on a police officer.
I am certainly glad this is what happened but the expectation in even the most egregious police action is not this swift.
I have connections to this union through a previous job and attended several annual conferences. I’ve had a drink with Sam Cabral a few times. The training sessions they conducted there on defending officers who shot people were absolutely horrifying to the point I once had to leave the room.
Everyone keeps calling POTUS “the most powerful position in the world.” POTUS cannot literally throw you in jail for looking at him the wrong way. But any beat cop can in USA#1.
I had guns drawn on me nearly twice in the span of a few minutes.
I used to work in an extremely upscale, secluded neighborhood pretty late at night. My car was in the shop so I had been biking to work. I got off at 2am like usual and began my route home.
Unbeknownst to me there had been a break in in the neighborhood an hour before I got off work and the neighborhood was on lockdown, with cops at every street when you went to exit. I normally took the alleys on the way back and they had cops posted at every odd street through those alleys.
Minding my own fucking business I encounter the first cop and he immediately goes for his gun (doesnt draw) and yells at me to stop and get off the bike, put my backpack down, and put my hands behind my head. Then i got pat down before he even asked me a single question. After we sorted out that yes, I wasnt doing anything even remotely wrong, I got back on my bike and continued.
Get to the next intersection and I sort of surprised the next cop somehow and he freaked the fuck out. Gun drawn, pointing at me, doing the kind of frantic screaming GET ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW GET OFF THE BIKE DROP THE BACKPACK GET ON THE GROUND type of rapid fire commands. I complied immediately and went through the same shit i had literally gone through a minute and a half before.
After I sorted that one out I kind of sarcastically asked him to radio the other guys so I wouldnt have to go through this 8 more times and he didnt like that much but must have done it because no one hassled me again but my heart was pounding the whole way home. I really in that moment thought I couldve been shot and looking back I think it was closer than I probably realized and i didnt even do anything remotely wrong.
Cops are trigger happy cowards a lot of the time and unfortunately out of the high crime of the 80s/90s we allowed the unions to become so fucking powerful and bred this insane culture. That said I do have enormous respect for the good ones - I think they are out there in larger numbers than we realize. I’ve met several. But the guys like the second cop that drew on me are the ones that make the entire profession look terrible.
I think it’s right to acknowledge there are good humans doing this job, and the job itself is a problem that often amplifies the worst human instincts. Policing is deeply flawed.
Police represent the status quo of a broken system, largely there to protect the property of white people.
My uncle is what I would describe as a “good” cop and even he has his very serious flaws. He is racist and kind of a jerk but I think the job forces you to become that way. However, I know of multiple stories about him in which he was completely within his rights to use lethal force and he relied on his judo and navy seal background to get him out of situations instead. Afaik he’s never fired his gun on duty in 20 years. That’s a good cop and even he has his serious flaws.
Been around a lot of off duty cops and they’re totally normal people but you can tell the job changes you a lot.
No question. Watching a couple of now former friends transform into deplorables after beginning work as prison guards made it clear that authority position bring out the worst in people.
The problem is that the “good ones” I’d very much like to respect and appreciate are never anywhere to be found when someone needs to call out the bad ones. It’s like magic.
And I agree about them being trigger happy cowards far too often - it’s how they’re trained. “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6,” is a thing I’ve heard from cops I’ve known. The whole reason we’re supposed to have such respect and admiration for them is that they risk their lives for us. But the reality is most of them when faced with any risk whatsoever would much rather err on the side of blasting an innocent, unarmed person inside their own home than take the 1 in 100 chance of letting a bad guy get off the first shot because they waited to make sure it was an armed bad guy.
That needs to change, and it needs to change ASAP. 2021, hopefully.
