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

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Really? There's no such thing as a "drop piece"???

Not since DNA, actual crime scene investigation and laws only holding officers to the standard of a reasonable person.

Why drop an actual gun when all you have to do is believe that they had one? In many ways, the belief protects your actions more than the existence of any actual firearm.

The very idea of a "drop piece" is naivete.

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Not since DNA, actual crime scene investigation and laws only holding officers to the standard of a reasonable person.

Why drop an actual gun when all you have to do is believe that they had one? In many ways, the belief protects your actions more than the existence of any actual firearm.

The very idea of a "drop piece" is naivete.

So is Santa Claus.

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by merrylander

You all assume that the kid was actually armed and the weapon they found was not a simple plant. Cops have been known to carry the odd weapon for just such purposes.

After reading this account I'm not so sure a "throw down" gun wasn't used.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...ay-he-made-bad

Cops have easy access to weapons like this, and as you said they've been known to use them before to cover their asses. I have no doubt that many are carrying them now that the spotlight is on them.

The officer was not wearing a personal camera and the video camera installed in the patrol car was not working, police said.

How convenient.

He said a 9mm pistol recovered from the scene and purportedly carried by Martin, bore a serial number that had been defaced.

How convenient again.

No way to trace it back to Martin............or

to the Cop that planted it.

The footage taken late Tuesday night, which appeared to show someone raising what appeared to be a gun

Many things appear to the cops as guns when in the hands of a black man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

[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 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

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by Boreas

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

Actually John the great majority of the cops here are OK. Florence happened to be openly carrying her 6mm air pistol openly - 1911 Colt replica and a good one. Young girl in an SUV parked across the road talking to her boy friend (he lives across the road) and she went nuts and called the cops. They arrived and we all had a good laugh. Even showed them my 6mm Beretta Cheetah replica. Mind you both exceed 500fps so ar not recommended for paintball as they have been known to draw blood.

[icenine]

The police have never stopped me from getting killed by an open carry maniac or burglar, serial killer, etc. Luck has. They do show up after the fact though. I would say the great deterrent is prosecution after the fact. But preventative law enforcement, unlike preventative medicine, is about as rare as being struck by lightning. If this is too complicated to understand I mean to say it is rare for the police to stop a killer during the actual crime itself.

After 50 years on the planet I have become cynical to some degree. I guess I could buy a weapon, but that would only serve me well by standing guard by my door at night with a round chambered, but I would be too tired to drive to work. The open carry clowns with their casual Starbucks brunch weapons in their holsters do not know if they ever pull that out of their holsters they better be ready to kill someone or be killed.

Plus I do not know if open carry transfers across race lines.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by icenine

Plus I do not know if open carry transfers across race lines.

In an open carry state, you can cruise a Wal-Mart with your Bushmaster and you're good to go..... if you're white.

If you're black, standing in that same Wal-Mart aisle with a BB gun (store inventory, by the way) gets you killed.

John

[Rajoo]

My perception is that by over committing their resources on a few cases, they cannot do a credible job of investigating other cases. So how is this deterring crime. To use a slang, it's all about the collar and not preventing crime necessarily.

[donquixote99]

Just had a kid in Cleveland executed for openly carrying an air gun. I call it executed because the shooter gave the kid no time to drop or surrender or anything....