Police Contributing to Positive Race Relations. Again

This is a possibility. It could explain why the cop said he didn't know why he shot. Regardless, fire that fucker before he kills somebody next time or send him to England where he would only carry a billy club & radio.

Probably right.

If it was semi, then did he indeed fire three separate rounds and miss (the autistic target) every shot? If so, when did Stevie Wonder join the police force?

@Zombie suggested that maybe he fired a shot inadvertently and then in reaction fired two more. I suppose that's possible and it does account for three inaccurate shots.

They can't have been aimed shots, so it must be something like this. Perhaps some odd bump-fire situation?

Guy was making a move. He had to get it on.

Where's Demiurge? It was a bump-fire.

If Space Turkey had been there, he could have trapped the bullets in his leather jacket.

Actually, Space Turkey was all about disarming stabby people with a leather jacket instead of shooting them. I'm confident he could have used his leather jacket to get a toy truck away from a retard without anyone having to shoot anyone.

All that said, the end of "The Wizard of Oz" is important stuff. The whole bit about having a brain/heart/courage being just getting recognized. There are people who put cops on some kind of pedestal like they're some kind of masters. There was a reason Andy only let Barney have one bullet--and made him keep it in his pocket. Cops are people just like you and me. And they're less safe with guns than a lot of us who aren't cops.

You realize you just made the liberals' arguments for gun control for them? :

Of course the details as the police statement have made them out to be aren't really making them look any better. Them trying to shoot an unarmed mentally handicapped man sitting in the street and only accidentally hitting someone else isn't really an improvement over shooting the guy laying on his back with his hands in the air on purpose.

It's a myth that keeps being perpetuated that all police are trained to de-escalate situations, but actions like this show otherwise. There are plenty of cases of police being especially brutal toward people who are mentally ill or handicapped, and it seems to come down to them not immediately complying with what the officers involved are telling them to do. I think, as that "Rise of the Warrior Cop" book postulates, that if anything, police are trained to use overwhelming force to quickly "resolve" situations, and I can't help but wonder if there isn't a good portion of just wanting to assert their authority.

This guy was on the SWAT team. Would they have access to the M-16s that the Air Force uses? I remember they had a 3-round burst rather than full auto.

It may well be that there was no intent to fire at all.

That only police should be armed? How exactly?

Also not making them look very good. Actually that could be seen as just as bad or even worse.

I am talking about the settlement worth millions of dollars he would get here.

Juries love to punish cities for misdeeds. I bet he gets millions just for pain and suffering alone.

He's not going to get millions. They will settle out of court.

The system doesn't work like you think it does.

He can't even sue until he's filed a claim against the city and they deny it.

It's extremely difficult to sue a city, win, and then collect.

Not at all - he made an argument for cop control. Nine out of ten armed citizens would have handled this situation better, because their weapons would never have even cleared leather. Most liberals' gun control is based on the premise of citizens being so doorknob stupid or crazy that they shouldn't be allowed to have guns - except for cops, criminals, and private security to protect liberal celebrities of course.

Oh, there's plenty of that here. I knew one such power hungry twerp in the Navy who thankfully we has an admin separation for saying racist shit at the MPs that caught him being an ass, so that career's gone. From Virginia, because of course.

That article I posted is specifically about the UK and how they do policing with no guns. And coincidentally, there's a story of a young mentally handicapped man who was reported as violent, but upon arrival he seemed calm and the cops approached him as such and got him home.

You're brainwashed.

Goddamn, I know you're not stupid, but cops are to you what Jesus is to Dayton.

I give up.

It's actually more like the person who shoots the gun is like Jesus is to Dayton. His theology requires such a conclusion.

Stop attacking me and apply some reason here.

Let's suppose it was intentional, deliberate. How do you account for the shooter missing a stationary target a short distance away three times with a rifle? It sure doesn't seem like a justifiable shooting; none of the other cops fired. What does that leave? Malevolence? How do you account for the shooter not continuing to shoot until the target was hit? In the scenario you imagine, does this cop just suddenly decide to start shooting (in front of other cops, witnesses, etc.) but relents only after he doesn't put any solid hits on the target?

Now consider what unintentional shots would be like: inaccurate, spontaneous, unprovoked. Even if you don't believe it was unintentional, can't you see that is a reasonable possibility?

I'm perfectly willing to entertain malevolence as an explanation---if it fits what we know.

I don't think I'm the one who's brainwashed. I'm trying to come to a reasoned understanding of events. If you believe reason is just some tactic of mine to exonerate the police, well, I can't help you. Any non-reasoned way of looking at this situation is just...unreasonable.

So, you tell me: how are my arguments unreasonable? What is your interpretation--based on the evidence we have--of what happened? You can't claim I'm wrong (or brainwashed or Daytonesque) unless you can show where my reasoning is faulty or incomplete.

https://www.facebook.com/FilmingCops/videos/939573652744397/?fref=nf

What scenario are you thinking I'm imagining?

I know what I saw: two people, being calm and getting on the ground as a cop opened fire on the wrong target, several feet away.

You got the unprovoked part right. That's progress.

Of course not

I think to nearly every one else in this thread, including a good number of Guns for Everyone crowd and the You Don't Have to Fear Cops if You're Not Doing Anything Wrong lot, are failing to see the reason in how or why either of them deserved getting shot and no amount of mental gymnastics can justify the lack of common sense to survey the scene before jumping in hot.

My interpretation is an unarmed, passive man was unjustly targeted to be fired upon.

Oh, and a cop shot the innocent guy next to him. And he can't adequately explain why deadly force was justified. A guy like that in the Armed Forces would be considered for admin separation at a bare minimum, but as we learned in Ferguson, maybe one percent of cops get any kind of indictment. That's even lower than the laughably small percentage of rape cases that end with a prison sentence.

The thing is: this story made headlines because the guy that was shot was black. He may be the one shooting in the last few years where race may not have played a factor. Had this been a white guy accidentally shot, it wouldn't have made news and the police department likely would've swept it under the rug and the officer transferred to another precinct like the guy who shot Micheal Brown and nothing of value would be learned.

And that's the damn problem.

Not only that, but many times the amount of money you can sue a city government for is capped at something well below millions and millions of dollars.

Assuming sovereign immunity lets you sue in the first place.

I'll let you speak for yourself.

Did you see the actual shooting?

That's never really been in dispute.

No one is arguing that either of them deserved to be shot, and I have no problem with criticism of the police procedure here.

You specifically scoffed at my statement that it was possible the shots were unintentional. If they're not unintentional, they have to be...surprise!...intentional.

So was the shooting intentional or not?

You keep rebutting arguments I'm *not* making. I'm not claiming the cop was justified or even competent. I'm arguing that it's possible--in fact, likely--that this was accidental.

So, are you open to the idea this was accidental?

IIRC in Florida it is capped at $200,000 and anything above that has to be approved by the State Legislature.

Yes, it was accidental if it helps you sleep at night.

Happy?

It doesn't make the shooting any better to say he "lose control" or what every it is you're spinning for.

I'm done. Keep on shilling, but I'm not responding to it.

As a US citizen (race not a factor in this case since the cop might have been targeting the white guy sitting down playing with a truck for all we know) the very fact that there are cops who can't judge a threat any better than this guy (and the guy who shot the dude with his girlfriend & child in the car) terrifies me. When you take a dangerous job you better "grow a pair". I'm not saying you should run full-bore into an actual dangerous situation like you are bullet proof. But damn - take a few seconds to collect your thoughts. In some neighborhoods everyone you encounter might hate you and want to kill you - but they won't, or can't, because they don't want to die or go to prison. I get that - but that's part of the job! If somebody really wants to kill you you'll never see it coming anyway most likely. If you survive the first few seconds of an ambush you'll probably survive the whole ordeal - assuming the number of bad guys involved doesn't grow while your backup is on the way. So chill the fuck out and learn to stay that way or get a job you are more suited for. Maybe they can try hiring fewer cops but pay them more and train them more, and vet them better if need be to weed out potential weak links. That said 99 percent of the cops do a great (if thankless) job. It's that 1 percent that really fuck it up for everyone.

Ok, so this would be an example of the tort reform laws passed in red states in the 00's right?