I know that headline is unfair clickbait, but there are many things that could be said about this video. Here’s a Daily News story. I think it’s interesting primarily to show what can happen when officers fail to gain control of a situation: a mess. A lethal mess. A cop gets shot. Two of the…
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[See my previous posts 1 and 2 and about NYC.] It’s not unreasonable to believe — even when one knows the vast majority of police-involved shootings to be justified — that three police-involved homicides per day is perhaps two too many. Can the number of police-involved killings be reduced without placing officer’s lives in danger?…
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Uh, it’s his own gun. But headline aside (writers don’t write the headline), I like to think I make some good points in this CNN piece about Robert Bates, the Tulsa County “reserve deputy” who thought his gun was a Taser and shot and killed a criminal.
A 73-year old man, Robert C. Bates, liked to play cops and robbers. He thought he was going to get to Tase a bad guy. But instead of holding his Taser, Bob was holding his personal gun. Bang. You’re dead. Oops. Bates wasn’t a real cop. He was a “reserve deputy sheriff,” which isn’t necessarily…
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This is from back in 2014. This is not a good use of a Taser. It actually makes cuffing him harder. The two really hard parts — getting a guy out of a car and getting hands out from under a resisting person — are done. This the guy is still resisting, so it’s probably…
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Honestly, my eyes glazed over a little bit reading (most) of this. But you should still read it. In much of the country, it’s still kind of a legal gray area about whether or not you can record police. I did an L.A. radio show a while back and a cop called in with a…
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[See parts 1 and 3 and NYC] Using the data from killedbypolice.net, I looked at the race of those killed by police. Though before I give you these numbers, ask yourself this question: what percent of those whom cops kill do you think are white, black, and hispanic. Forgive the callousness, but we’re talking numbers.…
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I thought we all knew this by now, but apparently some people missed the memo. Responding to my Washington Postop-ed, a few people see rather upset that I wrote: In Ferguson, as the Justice Department made very clear, all credible evidence supported officer Darren Wilson’s account of a justified, legal and necessary shooting. Brown robbed…
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Two years ago a somewhat shadowy person or group began compiling all media accounts of people killed by police. It’s at killedbypolice.net. Best I can tell, he/she/it/they do a pretty good job. According to the site: “Corporate news reports of people killed by nonmilitary law enforcement officers, whether in the line of duty or not,…
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An op-ed of mine to appear in Sunday’s Washington Post: This one is different. Walter Scott was killed — shot multiple times in the back — by North Charleston, S.C., police officer Michael Slager last weekend. Scott, already running away, was no threat to the officer when the first shot was fired. He was even…
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