“F— your breath!" or more police behaving badly

Surprised there haven't been threads about these incidents.


Tulsa Deputy Charged With Manslaughter in Shooting
White reserve sheriff’s deputy who killed black man says he thought he was holding stun gun, not gun

And last week in California:

California sheriff suspends 10 deputies following brutal beating of suspected horse thief

The militarization of the police isn't just an argument against their fancy new toys. The mentality of an occupying force instead of public servants enforcing the law of the people has been creeping in for quite some time.

It needs to stop from the top-down.

Two thoughts:
1. a fucking horse thief? What century is this?
2. one of the comments said when your skills diminish it's time to hang it up.
Totally agree! Some professions demand you stay at the top of your mental/physical game, like the military -
firefighters - athletes in certain sports, etc.

The Tulsa guy is a 73-year old reserve deputy whose full time job is CEO of an insurance company.

He donated money to the department so he could be a reserve officer.

Let him be a reserve officer, but without a gun or behind the wheel of a police vehicle.

Barney Fife had to keep his one bullet in his pocket. Might be a good idea with a few more of these deputies.

Saw the horse thief video. Those cops really fucked that guy up, one of them kicked him in the the gooch. THE GOOCH.

He also shot the victim after he was already taken down to the ground and under police control. Even in a fucked up world in which tasers are seen by the police as compliance tools rather than as alternatives to lethal force, that's criminally negligent homicide/manslaughter since shooting him with a taser would have been just another criminal assault.

And any officer in that department who agreed to work with Bates in that situation is ipso facto completely unqualified to be a law enforcement officer. This also points out why you'd like to have the police have a real union with some real strength rather than whatever crap union they have in Tulsa: buying your way onto the force and into sting operations would never happen with a decent union.

I'll take "What the Fucking Flying Fuckity Fuck?" for $1,000, Alex.

[Alex Trebek] Its a Daily Double! [/AT]

@John Castle would have loved this thread!

Nah. It's not like an Amazonian officer squeezed a suspect to death with her enormously muscular thighs. Which, come to think of it, has at least a 50/50 chance of being a planned scene in his genre-confused detective novel.

I just saw the horse thief video. I must say I object when when people say cops are becoming "militarized" - it insults the military.
On the ground with his hands behind his back they kick him in the crotch, head, face, etc? If that would have been an enemy combatant
soldiers would have him searched, secured, and ready to bring in to to higher authorities in about two minutes without a scratch.
Then again we get in trouble when we mistreat the enemy, cops get a pass or at least the benefit of the doubt.

Iv never owned a horse but i imagine i'de be pissed if someone stole mine. Steal my dog and you better hope i dont catch you.

I'm guessing you'd catch me pretty quickly if I was riding it through the desert for very long.

Horse thieving used to be a hanging offense. Guess these cops thought it still was.

Those cops were all about "payback" not professionalism. That whole crew are brutal, dangerous, cowardly, classless fucks who need to be imprisoned for a long, long time.
They were pissed off and frustrated and showed their true colors. They bring discredit upon good cops everywhere.

It gets worse:
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Sources: Supervisors told to falsify reserve deputy's training records

Supervisors at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office were ordered to falsify a reserve deputy’s training records, giving him credit for field training he never took and firearms certifications he should not have received, sources told the Tulsa World.

At least three of reserve deputy Robert Bates’ supervisors were transferred after refusing to sign off on his state-required training, multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the World.

Bates, 73, is accused of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Eric Harris during an undercover operation on April 2.
----------------
More at the link.

Looks like lots of people need to go to prison for this. Time for the Feds to take over the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office.

Three deputies did the right thing at least, by refusing to vouch for his training. They knew this "pay-to-play" was an accident waiting to happen.

Excuse me, but WTF is a 73 year old person out playing "Deputy Dog" anyway? Is that the very best they have to work with? Guess I'll NOT visit there anytime soon.

Definitely it's a good thing that those three did their job, and I should have included something to that effect initially. But it's a sad state of affairs that they should be commended for doing so, and this means the pay-to-play program was even worse than imagined. Pay-to-play is bad enough; forging training records including firearms certifications and disciplining officials who refused to go along with the forgery is enough to establish the people instituting pay-to-play as guilty of manslaughter or worse rather than just corruption.

I'm cynical enough to just plain expect corruption and be unsurprised, albeit disappointed, by it, but this I did not expect.

Exactly - getting a free meal or two from businesses (which you protect) is one thing. Falseifyin life-and-death type of training? Damn.

Man, there's a lot of weird shit going on with the Tulsa sheriff's department, it seems. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/16/tulsa-sheriff-hit-with-pro-wrestler-suit.html

And if you read the article ("Step-stool" Tommy D? WTF kind of a name....) in it's entirety surprise surprise Jeeeeeeesus name is dragged into the mud yet again.

Spaceballs and White people!

Check out the booking picture where all he had was one black eye. Oh, and this appears to be another case of a dirt bag criminal having his mother whine about him being such a good boy who was just getting ready to turn his life around.

"only a black eye" is a moot point. Whatever the horse thief did to get to the point of being apprehended is a moot point. Once a suspect is under control (which should not take long if you are well trained & conditioned& have superior numbers) the hitting stops, end of story. Cuff em' and stuff em' and move out smartly. Okay I'm not a cop, but I've done 22+ years in the military where our job is pretty much to take violence to the highest level. Maybe that's why I can tell a potential threat from a vanquished enemy. But that's just me.

This thread is a year old.

The trial seems to be set for April 18.

Oh. Well then, uh carry on.