... gets fired, sues, wins lawsuit! Good guys win for once. http://www.wtrf.com/news/crimes-and..._medium=social&utm_source=facebook_WTRF_7News The article's headline is misleading though, the suspect WAS armed, his gun was just unloaded.
Are you fucking kidding? They fired him for not shooting the suspect? Not that it seemed to save the suspect's life, but are they fucking nuts? We need a little bit more than a lawsuit there. Someone needs to come into that police department and fix it. There is a gigantic massive problem there and a danger to any person in that area especially blacks. I am glad the officer won but not good enough. If he de escalated that situation and then someone else came along and shot the suspect that is at least manslaughter.
It is a bit of a police thing. I remember during one of my arrests a number of police departments had been alerted to look for my vehicle. You had a couple of local town sheriff departments, the state police for the highways, and the parkway police for the taconic and saw mill parkway. A crossing guard had attempted to get in my car and I drove away and his ninety year old ass lost balance and fell in the road. He was a big shot in the town which was why they allowed him to be a crossing guard despite being way past the retirement age. This is a crowded area right around NYC in the local townships that have become little cities surrounding Manhattan in Westchester. No one died and the guy barely scraped his knee, but holy shit did they want my ass. So the first cop spots me entering a main highway and comes over and pulls me over. There was no Chase, and I was just playing stupid and not fleeing. So he realises the situation is under control and is questioning me while holding the keys to my car along a fenced in highway. I am going nowhere. Each of the responding districts sent police to come over and I guess watch me be arrested and get involved. I could understand the townie cops where the incident occurred and the state police being there because I was on a highway and that was state police jurisdiction. However by the time I was done there were two different turnpike police officers and five different town sheriffs not including the town I had the incident in. Each time a new cop came up they had to ask why I was not in cuffs and each cop came up like a drill sergeant yelling at the other cops telling them they should handcuff me. Each time this happened all the cops around told the New arriving officer I was surrendering and under control. Eventually there was a line of cop cars over ten long parked behind me and they put me in a cop car while they were deciding who gets to drive me over to the town of the incident. You would have thought I killed Hillary who lived right up the road. Now while I was in the cop car stoplights they had the little plexiglass partition with a little sliding door that was wide open. No cop was inside with me, and they were all outside doing cop things around the car. I looked and saw the unlocked shotgun up in the front seat which appeared as though I could have removed because the locking plate was wide open. It would not have been much of a problem and then one of the rookies looked at me and then at the shotgun and then back at me. I shook my head and sat back down and next thing I know they are cuffing me and putting me in back of a different cop car with padding d seats instead of the hard mastic easy to clean ones of the other car. For all their blistering about why wasn't I cuffed and how unsafe it was they left me near a shotgun. I was not armed but could have clearly grabbed a dangerous weapon and started shooting had I been scared or angry. Oh and that comedy of errors goes on through a trial where the court appointed attorney was a friend of the crossing guard along with the judge and prosecutor. Despite their attempts to punish my the DMV and probation were so slow to update I actually only lost Emily license for four months and only visited the probation office once. The nasty vile crossing guard got stripped of his post and I actually became the hero of the local school where he tormented the students. I would find out later the kids threw a party in my honor for ridding their streets of the nasty old curmudgeon crossing guard. It is a long and funny story.
one question - the cop that was trying to deescalate the situation was hoping that the distraught guy's gun wasn't loaded and guessed correctly? Or did he figure if it was loaded he wouldn't actually shoot him? Bummer it ended tragically. I can't believe the city would fire him though - who did he really endanger except himself if the guy had shot him? Way to throw him under the bus for making a reasonable judgement call. That city must suck. Just about a week ago we had a situation where a family getting evicted was armed & threatening to kill any cops who tried to get near them to get them out. The cops eventually deescalated the situation without bloodshed thank goodness. About Tererun being in the cop car unattended - we had that happen here a few years back. The cops didn't search a suspect's bag or rucksack and when they left him alone in the car and he fatally shot himself. One of buddy's son was left alone in a cop car with the logbook of an undercover drug cop! Yep, that quick thinking young man committed as much to memory as he could in the short time he had to skim through it. His defense lawyer used this as leverage - the undercover drug cop's mission would be compromised and informants lives would be in danger if this young man started leaking these names. Yada yada yada a ten year armed robbery sentence got reduced to two months "time served" in pretrial confinement at the county lockup. Ya just gotta love having the prosecution by the short hairs! When my son was arrested a few years back the rookie cop left some paperwork at the crime scene and had to leave the jail to race back and find it while my son was being booked. Then when I bonded my son out, the jail staff couldn't figure out where his car got towed to or even who towed it. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
This really puts the lie to the whole 'just a few bad apples' excuse used to cover the excesses of our state security forces. This shit is fucking systemic! Here's a guy trying to do the right thing, talking down a very distraught person only to have other cops show up and kill the guy. Then, he's blamed for failure, actually called a coward**, fired, has department circle the wagons and start a smear campaign against the good guy.... Yup, a few bad apples.... ** The irony here is the claim is always 'I feared for my life!!' so I shot them. Ok, so if this guy was such a coward, how'd he manage to stay calm enough to try saving the life of a person in crisis? Putting the safety and well-being of a stranger above his own? It's almost like the state security forces are actively trained and encouraged to kill first, ask questions later. The few good ones that make it through indoctrination and training are quickly vilified and kicked out.
Even though the guy got off, this is not a good look for police. At all. Imagine though, just for a second, if we didn’t bring race into the subject. Just sayin
The United States has a long history of fucking over non-whites, and black people in particular. We enslaved them, then when we freed them, we restricted them to poverty, and a lack of voice. We let this go on well into the middle of the 20th century. There are people still alive who were attacked by police for daring to demand the right to vote without being murdered, or just to eat at the same lunch counter as white people. There are people who, to this day, get upset because black people won’t thank white people for what they have. The myth of the welfare queen still persists in culture, and in government policy. The police in this country have shown a clear bias against black people, arresting and imprisoning more for minor crimes than white men. If you don’t want to see race brought into the subject, it’s best to start with the authoritarian bigots with badges, and not the people being shot for complying, or choked to death for selling cigarettes.
Not everyone brings race into the subject. Granted race can be a factor in this story if you want to focus on it. Maybe the cops who shot him were black? Maybe the cop that chose to shoot him was white. That said the title of the story doesn't mention race. But merely seconds in we have this: "According to a press release, the lawsuit challenged the termination of former Weirton police officer Stephen Mader's employment because he chose not to shoot and kill a black man whom he concluded did not pose a threat warranting the use of deadly force." Yep - the media had to go there. They note the shooting victim's race (because it must be important!) but not the cops' race. Any thoughts? This story would have been just as news-worthy without mentioning race straight out of the gate. Maybe my takeaway with the story is: no good deed goes unpunished. A very brave cop chooses brain over brawn (life over death) and is made out to be a bad cop. Some police forces (not all) are FUBAR and while the entire criminal justice/law enforcement system is a twisted circus, each city can still run it's police department (and set the tone for cop/civilian relations) in a good way or a bad way. This city has egg on it's face & rightly so.
