St. Louis: White Missouri cop kills armed black 18-year-old

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by Boreas

I agree that a "drop piece" is possible. It happens a lot but this kid looks like he was serious trouble and had a pretty nasty rap sheet that he accumulated in a rather short space of time. (One wonders why he wasn't behind bars.)

It also appears from the surveillance video that one of the group (the dead one?) was standing lookout in front of the convenience store and moved off when the police cruiser hit the lot. Were he and his accomplices about to hit the store?

Berkeley is not Ferguson. Most of the police and most of the elected city officials are black. The black mayor of Berkeley has said that, after reviewing the tape (or a tape), he's satisfied that the police officer acted appropriately.

The thing is this shooting has become the fifth in a "cluster" of other shootings in the St. Louis area. Several of the first four are highly questionable so it's tempting to view this latest one with a high degree of suspicion.

John

On a news show they were interviewing a black kid and he said when a cop accosts him he does not ask for ID. The cop asks 'are you on parole or probation.'

So if the kid had a long rap sheet the worst was some jail time. To me it is a mugs game that if you pull a gun you had damn well better be prepared to use it or you are a dead man.

[sheltiedave]

This one is, by all accounts, justified.

Merry lander is also correct that at. Louis has had multiple cases where gun plants occurred, bu this is not one.

[whell]

Originally Posted by sheltiedave

This one is, by all accounts, justified.

Merry lander is also correct that at. Louis has had multiple cases where gun plants occurred, bu this is not one.

That may be the case, but that doesn't stop folks - whose emotions on this issue have been rubbed raw by the constant harangue from the left - from acting out and taking out their aggression on cops who may have been just doing their job.

[sheltiedave]

Whe'll, if this were the end of a Redwings/Blackhawks game, this would only be a small tussle.

This is not a product of the liberal media, it is a product of politicians, governments, police, and communities not being ahead of issues.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by noonereal

you must be thrilled

merry Christmas!

Yep, looks like Santa Claus came early for Whelly.

[merrylander]

I have no quarrel with the police doing their job. I do have a quarrel with the manner in which some LEOs do their job.

Frex one of our feral cats 'somehow' got ito the neighbor's garage and 'somehow' died. She had wanted to kill them all since they were born. She called and said to come and get our dead cat. But then her weird son would not give me the body as he was keeping it for evidence.

Anyhow the police got involved and called at the house and one six foot plus one gave me a stern lecture on keeping feral cats. He was quite unpleasant about it but HoCo county cops are usually polite. He was the first one to be miserable.

Never did get poor Mouser's body for proper disposal.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by whell

That may be the case, but that doesn't stop folks - whose emotions on this issue have been rubbed raw by the unending stream of police shootings of young black males - from acting out and taking out their aggression on cops who may have been just doing their job.

All better now.

It must be so reassuring to go through life with such a convenient bogey man available to blame for every perceived ill in the world.

Sad, sad little man.

John

[finnbow]

We live in a country where significantly more law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in the single year of 2010 (177) as soldiers killed in Iraq in all years from 2010 to the present (118).

Yet, we expect them to make perfect split-second decisions at the risk of their own death or criminal prosecution if their split-second decisions prove incorrect after the fact. Furthermore, these decisions are made on the mean streets of the most dangerous country in the industrialized world with 300 million guns in circulation and a plethora of social problems. How would you like to have a job where your decisions had to be made in seconds and wrong decisions cost you your life, livelihood or freedom?

I've been to over 60 countries and the only places remotely as dangerous as the rougher streets of the American cities I've lived (DC, Baltimore and New Orleans) are Mombasa and Colon, Panama, and then only at night.

This is the backdrop for our laws which state that a cop must only reasonably perceive a threat (even if, after the fact, a threat didn't truly exist) before using deadly force. It's a chicken and egg conundrum. Some seem to contend that tough cops beget tough streets, whereas others seem to contend that tough streets beget tough cops. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in between, though skewed toward the latter IMHO.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by merrylander

I have no quarrel with the police doing their job. I do have a quarrel with the manner in which some LEOs do their job.

Frex one of our feral cats 'somehow' got ito the neighbor's garage and 'somehow' died. She had wanted to kill them all since they were born. She called and said to come and get our dead cat. But then her weird son would not give me the body as he was keeping it for evidence.

Anyhow the police got involved and called at the house and one six foot plus one gave me a stern lecture on keeping feral cats. He was quite unpleasant about it but HoCo county cops are usually polite. He was the first one to be miserable.

Never did get poor Mouser's body for proper disposal.

There was a time when HoCo police were a little edgy. This occurred in the late '60s and early '70s when the construction of Columbia changed the county from a small white agricultural backwater into a large semi-urban, semi-industrial county with a diverse population containing a significant number of urban blacks from Washington and Baltimore. It was a situation totally alien to the experience of the County Police. That gradually changed with the police force increased in size and diversity and trained to function in the new reality.

Nothing lasts forever, though, and there is now a siege mentality that has infected police everywhere. It's not surprising to me to learn that HoCo has fallen victim to it.

The cops have for years referred to the rest of us as "civilians". This always implied a distinct separation between the cops and the people they were sworn to protect. Cops have always felt aggrieved and misunderstood and, over the years, they've developed a mythology wherein they are an island of blue in a storm-tossed sea of at best profound misunderstanding and at worst lethal hostility.

It's reached the point where an atmosphere of fear and apprehension suffuses every interaction between "them and us". These encounters almost never end in a way that both parties would consider good. Often they end in profoundly tragic ways. Since the police are the ones who are always armed, the tragedies tend to accumulate on the "civilian" side.

John

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by finnbow

We live in a country where significantly more law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in the single year of 2010 (177) as soldiers killed in Iraq in all years from 2010 to the present (118).

Yet, we expect them to make perfect split-second decisions at the risk of their own death or criminal prosecution if their split-second decisions prove incorrect after the fact.

Please quit with this straw man, Pat. It's unworthy of you.

John