When in doubt, shoot the black guy who is complying! That's the ticket. yeah, yeah,....... I am cornholio!!!!!!! Are you threatening me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKP-bVViPX8
I wonder how brutality apologists will pin the "he's no angel" tag on a behavioral therapist who was in the midst of helping a client.
I just saw this before coming here. I'm glad they are all alive, but this is really heart breaking. If the officer really said "I don't know" then this looks like it was an accident. An accident that should never have happened. Even if you think the man might have a gun, his hands were in the air. At that point, wouldn't it be more sensible to, even if you keep your own guns pointed at him, to not even have your finger resting on the trigger? Finger on the trigger, anything from catching a glimpse of a small black object near the person to getting stung by a bee can result in a premature or accidental firing. That's, of course, if we fast forward past a bunch of other questions. Like, why the officers thought that this man was the one described in the 911 call? Or what took them so long to see that the obviously mentally handicapped man was obviously mentally handicapped? Or, if they did realize this, why it didn't change their protocol even in the least bit?
I'm not sure what the typical protocol is for responding to a man with a gun threatening suicide. But, I would imagine, one would first want to determine if the men you've approached 1) have a gun 2) are threatening suicide. I'm not suggesting that the police should have heard this guy explain that he was a therapist and just walk away. But that seems like a pretty plausible statement that, at a minimum, means you should take fingers off of triggers. But it's nice to know that if a person is armed and ready to shoot themselves that the Miami police are ready and willing to show up and shoot them first even if they are not presenting a danger to themselves or others at that moment. I'm not anti-cop. But this is one of those situations where anything less than an indictment will be really infuriating.
I think what I find especially disturbing is that the police may have been shooting at the autistic man and simply missed. That's pretty messed up. But I can imagine if they had hit him it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that he might have reacted differently to being shot which could easily have resulted in more shots being fired. I'm just glad both men are alive and Mr. Kinsey is expected to make a full recovery.
Video shows Austin officer hurling black teacher to the ground during traffic stop Another incident: Video shows Austin officer hurling black teacher to the ground during traffic stop | Dallas Morning News My gosh!
OK, so the apologists are out and saying that 1) he was aiming at the autistic man and 2) they thought the fire truck was a gun and he was going to shoo the guy that the police ending up shooting. All of this despite the fact that the alleged victim. They were trying to save was screaming that he was a behavioral therapist at a group home, the other man was a resident with autism and, repeatedly, that the only thing he had was a toy truck.
Why in the hell would the cops shoot the autistic guy? I mean that makes no sense. I doubt the officer/shooter in this case will be keeping his job....I mean when the guy you shot asks you why you shot him and you say, I don't know that seems to be an open and shut case to me.
Ugh. I'm just glad that the victim a making a full recovery. The other thing I worry about is the autistic person who witnessed the whole thing. How is he reacting? Gotta be troubling.
I'm also not sure why the police union seems to think "Well, he was aiming at the guy he thought was the aggressor he just accidentally hit the guy he was trying to save" is a good defense. This wasn't some Die Hard, bad guy has the good guy in a headlock and one well placed bullet through the bad guy's forehead ends the issue type of situation. These guys have about 5+ feet between them. Three rounds fired. One hits the wrong guy and the other two are just clear misses. Oh, and the guy you were trying to "save" was yelling at you that the "aggressor" was his patient and he only had a toy truck.
The absolute least negative thing I can possibly think to say about the shooting officer is that, if I am to believe his statement, he is way too stupid to be trusted with public safety. Then again, the statement was released by the union who must have mulled it over for quite some time before releasing it. Therefore, whoever at the union is responsible for the release is also too stupid. How about a little remorse, please? Seriously.
The Union says that the police did not hear the guy yelling? But I can hear it from the shitty cell phone mic of whoever is recording the confrontation. Plus, the shooter is a member of the SWAT team. I mean, wow...he does not deserve to have a police/le job. Period.
One of the problems with the whole "Police v. BLM" scenario is this sort of nonsensical defense. It undermines the credibility of any actual investigation. I would respect the police unions if they said "Listen, this guy is innocent until proven guilty, an investigation is underway, if he really did this no-good terrible thing then we don't want him to be part of our special club." Instead it's more like "Nope, he's totally innocent. The video of him doing that bad thing is misleading. He had no choice. He felt he was in imminent danger. Anyone who says otherwise is a cop-hater." I'll be curious to see how this whole thing plays out.
I'm not defending the union, but their sole job is to protect it's members. It's like when people complain that teachers unions don't care about children when some teacher accused of molestation is still on the payroll. Same thing. Wanting the Union to do the right thing by the victims in this mess just won't happen. I didn't get the cop hater tone from them, but yeah its a bad optic...again though and I'm not defending the Union or the Cop who did this, I'm just saying Unions do what Unions due. BLM has nothing to do with this either. It's police incompetence pure and simple. Not racism. It looks like the caretaker will make a good recovery, good for him. And that was a very brave thing for him to be out there with the Autistic person. Why were the cops at the scene? I'd like to hear the 911 call that summoned them to the scene and how that was described.
I have a very good friend who is a labor relations specialist for a union. She once told me that she had a member, a school bus driver, come in and complain to her. He was suspended after he slapped a student on his bus. He was caught on camera. Everyone saw it. He admitted it. He demanded to know what his union was going to do for him and what all of his paid dues were going to buy him. Her response: "I can help you compose your resignation letter if you like." Her job is to protect the union members. Part of that responsibility is protecting the broader membership from individuals like that. When you don't then it makes your entire membership vulnerable to legislative reprisal. Look at NYC when the NY Times revealed that tons of teachers sat, at full pay, in the "rubber room" where they were simply expected to show up daily until their cases made their way through the process to either return them to the classroom or terminate them. The response was swift and people were calling on revoking recognition of the union entirely to prevent this sort of abuse. Well, it does have something to do with BLM in the sense that it was an unjustified police shooting involving a minority. BLM attracts a variety of people who come to the movement for a variety of reasons. Are there black supremacists in the mix? Almost certainly. But there are also people who view BLM as a general way of moving toward greater police accountability. Black Lives do matter. And haphazardly shooting a black person is just as deadly as shooting them out of outright racism or as a symptom of racial bias which has been ingrained in a person, and maybe even a society, for many years. Because movements evolve. All of them do. BLM may have started as a response to perceived racism. But it is lately, at least in some incarnations, focusing on the lack of police accountability. For better or worse the movement has resulted in additional scrutiny of police involved shootings. Michael Brown, well, there were some questions there. Eric Garner was fully on camera. That SC cop who shot the man in the back and then planted the weapon was also on camera. The initial question might be about racism. But then it becomes more of "Wow, what that guy did was really wrong, why isn't the system designed to bring that person to justice?" I think it's natural for that question to change slightly and for the scope of a movement to evolve as new events unfold. This guy's response was 100% solid. He went out in the street. He fully complied. He out himself in harm's way for his patient. This guy, in my opinion, deserves an award for his actions. I'd like to hear it too. I saw one report that said this guy was on the phone with 911 himself at one point. If a person is suicidal then, perhaps, a SWAT team is not the most appropriate response.
