When police storm your house, and you wake up dazed and grab a golf club, the sentence is death:
That man was nowhere near a cop, was not given a chance to get on the ground, and they shot him to death. This must be the new professionalism Scalia was talking about.
This was a state-sanctioned murder. Period.
WereBear
Just think, if he’d listened to the tea baggers, he would have reached for a gun.
And there would be no repercussions at all.
Silver
Very professionally done. Just like a Tom Clancy novel.
God Bless America.
Nellcote
Cops need to be drug tested for steroids and other substances the way pro athelets are.
GregB
Herein lies one of the big contradictions in contemporary American thought. We have pushed for decades to “take the hand-cuffs” off of law enforcement.
Yet now much of the current debate is about the abuse of government power. Giving the government, police are the government, the right to raid, shoot, taze, wire-tap and torture are really big government. Especially when there is little or no independent review or oversight.
Here in NH, the new alleged small government GOP leadership plan on pushing for new laws that expand the death penalty. They also want to create some sort of Arizona ID law. Big, big government actions.
Yet these issues rarely are reported in the context of big or small government.
These issues need to be pointed out over and over again.
KG
why are they doing a drug raid in the middle of the night? breaking down a door in the middle of the night is exactly what you want to do if you want someone to respond like this guy did.
fourlegsgood
I guess the “war on drugs” is actually now a real-live shooting war with armies of cops and casualties.
Someone tell me again why america is so exceptional?
teak111
Just like Rainbow 6 or Modern Warfare. Sure that wasn’t ok with some of the boys, da sgt, he’s a little trigger happy.
kdaug
“Legally justified under Utah law…”
Hmm. Looks like point-blank murder to me.
What, precisely, under “Utah law”, are cops not allowed to do?
Tuttle
What, precisely, under “Utah law”, are cops not allowed to do?
Fuck with rich people. Duh.
KG
No, that’s the practice in Maricopa County known as “second paging.” The police arrest someone without any priors, so they only arrest him on two counts, because the judge would otherwise give them low bail, then after they post bail, the police arrest him on additional charges (from the same series of transactions, which I have to think is unconstitutional). Then they go back before the judge with “priors” and the judge makes them post $1m bail. And usually also done on drug charges.
WereBear
Don’t forget: Utah has blood atonement in its history.
PurpleGirl
From the HuffPost article:
Since the war on (some) drugs began, this side of it has become more and more important and disturbing.
Roger Moore
@GregB:
There’s no real contradiction. The real goal is to use the government to enforce white rule. “Big Government” means welfare programs that help out poor, disproportionately minority, people. “Taking the hand-cuffs of law enforcement” means giving the police the power to harass, arrest, and even kill minorities.
PeakVT
The goal of a police force (in a democracy, theoretically) is to preserve the peace and safeguard the population. Not seeing that here.
General Stuck
Dear God, shoot first ask questions later policing. And the cops know they will likely get away with it, because of what GregB said.@GregB:
freelancer
I feel sick.
Roger Moore
@Tuttle:
Or go against the wishes of LDS elders.
Calouste
@ PeakVT:
I think “democracy” is where your assumption goes wrong.
Alice
Wanted to find a link about this that wasn’t HuffPo for twitter. The search came up with a link about the same thing happening in Boston earlier in the month.
I love this country.
Dennis SGMM
This will work out beautifully. They can just have an organ harvesting team accompany the cops and voila! Depending on how many organs people like Cheney happen to need at any given moment we should be able to shoot people dead for a parking ticket.
Culture of Truth
In essence, their health care plan is to tell you to just die already.
Law enforcement plan, too.
TuiMel
Am I the only one who thinks these cops are creepily like the Borg and the point really is “Resistance is futile”?
geg6
I cannot watch this murder, John. I just can’t.
@Nellcote:
And this is something I’d love to see done. Way too many of them are on the same insane shit weightlifters are on (hell, a large number of them are weightlifters). And there is no doubt in my mind that it contributes to their crazed rage in these situations.
This is a sick, sick country. Far sicker than anyone (except us lonely lefty blog denizens) ever admits.
morzer
@Dennis SGMM:
Is shooting the most economically viable approach? Shouldn’t we make sure that there is minimal tissue damage?
Mark S.
Dear fucking god that is one of the most sickening videos I’ve ever seen. What the fuck country are we living in again?
Sir Nose'D
Do we know if the footage contains any scenes of the victim’s countertops? I will reserve judgement until then.
JC
It’s good to keep pointing this out, but, I lost most hope in ‘your home is your castle’, when a freaking mayor’s house is broken into, dogs are shot, the wife and her mother are forced down to the ground, all from a ‘mistake in the house’ from another county’s cops coming in.
I don’t think there was any disciplining on this. It was accepted, this is just ‘how things are’. And this was a fairly liberal area, I believe.
I don’t know what will change the current ‘hey mistakes are made, cops risk their lives to protect us, necessary to protect us that cops given leeway’, attitude, that is current prevalent, and prevents accountability, allows cops impunity with regard to violence.
Comrade Mary
These reckless, repeatedly lethal and boneheaded night raids have to stop. Jesus fucking wept.
I mean, the cops can’t even justify their actions in the one way I think has even remote credibility: that in the heat of the moment, they saw a figure holding something long and thought it was a rifle or a shotgun. That is still no way near an exoneration — do these adrenaline junkies simply have to bust down doors in potentially dangerous situations versus just arresting the guy before he steps out of the house in daylight? — but it would have made sense as an understandable (and unnecessary, if they planned ahead) human reaction of fear.
From a news article published at that time:
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. They say they saw a golf club — not even bothering to say that they thought it was a gun — and added in the blatant claim that he was “coming at them”, which the video disproves. Not even a “the officers THOUGHT he was coming at them”.
Fuckers.
Judas Escargot
@Roger Moore:
You mean… there’s a difference?
Dennis SGMM
@morzer:
I’ve given that careful thought: shooting is fast, simple and effective. If they ruin the odd kidney or perforate a liver they can just go on to the next address and be careful to take a head shot.
scarshapedstar
Baghdad, Utah, it’s all the same. God bless America.
morzer
@Dennis SGMM:
How about tranquillizer darts? Allow a certain period of time for the drugs to leave the system, then send in the harvester droids.
zmulls
Looks just like a video game. Which is where many people get their crisis training.
General Stuck
@Comrade Mary:
Plus, those cops had modern body armor covering about every square inch of their bodies. Cops scare me as much as criminals, if not more. There are some good ones out there, but they don’t exactly wear a seal of approval.
Roger Moore
@Dennis SGMM:
Sounds like a great way of discouraging people from letting anyone know their tissue type.
polyorchnid octopunch
It’s not just an american problem, though we don’t have nearly the incidence of ‘no-knock’ home invasions that you guys do. Here’s a video of a takedown in Kelowna, British Columbia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-IDF9hzvug
There’s the real face… do everything you’re supposed to and get assaulted by the police. This happens a lot more than people are willing to admit.
Watch the whole thing… you can tell that the officer is surprised and quickly becomes deeply worried when he realises that he was filmed during the assault. Fortunately for the person taking the footage, he’s not just a guy with an iPhone, but is a very well known local reporter who works the police beat.
There is a very serious problem with police impunity in North America. Since the complete clusterfuck that was the G20 in Toronto, the media up here seems to have decided to take a closer look at what’s really been going on, and so far people aren’t liking what they’re seeing. There’s a good chance that multiple officers from the Ottawa Police Force will be facing charges in the near future, due to ongoing fallout from the Stacey Bonds case (you can find multiple articles and see the police station video that started that particular ball rolling). Even serious neoliberals (that would be the real term for what you guys call neoconservatives, btw) like Steve Paikan are deeply disturbed by what they saw at the G20 and we seem to be seeing a change. Cases are coming to light in most major cities in Canada. The police apologist trolls are out in force on the commentary sections of the news websites, but it’s become very clear to everyone that they’re in the minority, and that people are no longer buying what they’re selling.
scarshapedstar
Also, too, they could have tased him if bleeding-heart liberals didn’t outlaw tasers, or whatever. So really it’s both sides’ fault.
Gin & Tonic
@Dennis SGMM: SF author Larry Niven wrote about this quite some time ago. The death penalty came to be used for more and more infractions, just to keep up the (needed) organ harvest.
rapier
The police have a license to kill but they don’t use it very often. More police are killed every year than citizens they kill I would guess. There is no question that policing can be a very tough job in many ways. Beyond the occasional but very real possibility of violence against them police are constantly seeing very very bad things. Often closely involved with very bad or very damaged people. Often one in the same of course. When you see the worst so often how can one not imagine the worst in others, by default.
In this specific instance it is policing out of control. The militarized group setting increasing the probability of just shooting going sky high. And almost never can fault be put upon them.
There is a certain relationship between the inability of the judicial and political system to even begin to find fault with police and the inability to begin finding fault with our political elites. All benefit of the doubt is given.
The rarity of police violence with absolutely no justification is exaggerated by the fact that it rarely happens to anyone of high status. Your chance of being essentially murdered by the police is vanishingly small but it could happen. So it goes.
Citizen_X
Jesus, that’s sickening. “But…he had a GOLF CLUB!”
I say we take a cue from the teatards, and show up “armed” at rallies…armed with four irons. Seriously. This should not be forgotten.
Chris
@GregB:
Because the people who want the hand-cuffs taken off of law enforcement expect that law enforcement to be directed only against certain people, and are aghast when they find out that it can also be directed against them.
The “hand cuffs off” approach was supposed to be directed at unruly minorities in the inner cities in the wake of the 1968 urban riots. All through the 1970s and 1980s, people nodded approvingly when cops cracked skulls and howled in outrage when they were restrained by the law. Then, in the early 1990s, a couple incidents happen at Ruby Ridge and Waco. All of a sudden, the heartland’s ringing with calls of abuse and totalitarianism.
You’d think that would force them to reconsider the “hand cuffs off” approach, but not at all; they only bitch that it’s not being directed at the right people. Just like the reaction to the TSA thing last November wasn’t “stop groping people,” it was “go and grope these people.” Just like they’ve never objected to federal subsidies when they go to red states, or Medicare when it goes to elderly teabagger protestors, they “just don’t want their hard-won money subsidizing lazy Mexicans.”
jrg
Wow. When anyone else breaks into a house and kills the occupants, it’s considered the most egregious of crimes. We’re talking BTK killer type stuff. But when a cop does it, it’s just dandy… After all, the perp had marijuana!
GregB
Telling the man who was just plugged 4 or 5 times in the chest to “stay on the ground” was also a nice touch.
How soon before these actions are the subject of pithy and witty commercials the way tazering has now become a national joke?
*Chris, I always point out to my gun cult friends that they were never outraged about the policy of stop and frisk in urban areas. I never saw any tea-party or right wing outrage over that horrendous police state policy.
sukabi
Aggravated murder is the only crime subject to the penalty of death under Utah law. … unless you happen to be the victim of the local PD…
ed drone
@Dennis SGMM:
Larry Niven wrote that story as science fiction. Too bad it turned out real.
Ed
morzer
@Citizen_X:
Just think how Tiger Woods feels today..
Black, possesses golf clubs, sleeps with white wimmins…..
BGinCHI
Both sides do it.
Redleg
I grew up in Weber County. From what I could see in the video, the cops did execute a suspect.
Moonbatman
We can only hope that the Police Union will help undercover the truth of what happened.
The Eurie Stamps Investigation Goes Into Lockdown
I’ll bet this gets settled out of court.
Is Murder Legal? Yes, if One is Wearing a Badge and a Proper Costume
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Or what Roger Moore said. Your choice.
celticdragonchick
@Roger Moore:
Rich white people are no longer immune either. Ask that mayor in Prince William County who very nearly ended up dead alongside his machine gunned dogs…over a mis-delivered package.
joe from Lowell
Very professional. One of them shooting while another yells “Get on the ground!” That guy didn’t “come at” anybody.
They came in like commandoes, and killed him because he’d grabbed a golf club when he heard people breaking into his house.
Of course people are going to react to protect themselves when someone breaks in and doesn’t recognize the police! Somebody needs to ask the police some questions here. Is three bullets to the center-of-mass the plan for that oh-so-rare contingency? Or did something go wrong here?
Bring on the DoJ.
Roger Moore
@sukabi:
Number 1: You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a crime
Unless it was done by a police man or aristocrat.
Chris
@Comrade Mary:
More to the point, of course the guy is going to come at you with a motherfucking golf club; it’s in the middle of the night, and all he sees is intruders in his home (worse, his bedroom).
Remember the story about the guy who beat an intruder with a baseball bat and was sued by the intruder? That’s exactly what this shit is.
And what the fuck is with night raids? What is this, Baghdad?
GregB
There are also moves afoot to prevent citizens from video-taping police conduct in the public square.
I think Massachusetts has already arrested someone for doing as much.
Horrifying and totalitarian.
Immanentize
I love how the fucking shooter goes to the body and says: “Get on the ground.”
We are so fucked.
Dennis SGMM
@Gin & Tonic: @ed drone:
I’ve only read Niven’s “The Mote in God’s Eye,” so I never caught that one. Figures that someone would beat me to it.
Joseph Nobles
School shooting in L.A.
Obviously, if we would just stop complaining about violent rhetoric, the shootings will end.
Original Lee
@celticdragonchick: It was Prince George’s County. The Washington Post did a followup on the anniversary.
joe from Lowell
Let’s not forget, the investigation that culminated in this raid, with the body armor and Doom-like room clearing, wasn’t about a serial killer. It wasn’t a hostage situation. No squad-sized group with heavy-duty hardware was occupying a building. There were no suicide bombers about to walk into city crowds. They knew there were no girls tied up in the basement.
They were enforcing drug prohibition. This type of dynamic-entry-gone-bad is almost exclusively associated with drug raids.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: was being sarcastic, and linking to Utah’s death penalty statute info… Utah will ONLY execute persons convicted of aggravated murder, drug charges don’t fall remotely under that umbrella — unless there was a murder involved.
This was clearly a case of aggravated murder BY THE POLICE. From the looks of the video, there wasn’t a scenario that could have played out in those circumstances that wasn’t going to end up with someone in that house being killed by the police. It happened so fast that the person shot point blank could have been a kid.
Dennis SGMM
If they shot this man dead for wielding a golf club, what would they have done if he was exercising his “Second Amendment rights,” killed his whole family and a couple of neighbors?
Chris
@rapier:
I would throw in the military as well; if you think police raids on voting citizens are bad, imagine how Iraqis were treated during the occupation. (And when soldiers complain that the ROE are making their job too hard, as we saw in Afghanistan, we agree unquestioningly).
@GregB:
Color me utterly unsurprised. Do you gun cult friends ever have any rationalization or reason for that, just out of curiosity?
@celticdragonchick:
Perversely, that might be the best hope we have of getting the majority to recognize that cops’ powers aren’t always exactly peachy.
OTOH, it’s just as likely that white conservatives and moderates, as with the TSA, will simply go “damn those uppity colored people for making those police powers necessary and damn those do-gooder liberals for applying those powers to clearly innocent me”!
morzer
@Dennis SGMM:
Probably called in a drone missile, razed the village, shot the mayor for talking to the Taliban…
Oh, sorry, forgot we were in the USA for a moment.
Scott
@Dennis SGMM: Don’t give them ideas, please.
SP
Why 3 shots? I guess it’s better than 41, but still…
And they’re called the “Strike Force?” Clearly the commander who modeled this group on The Shield forgot that it’s supposed to be Team, not Force. Same quality methods, though.
D. Mason
@rapier:
A guess is all it would be. Police Officer is one of the least dangerous of the “dangerous” jobs – falling behind pizza delivery driver.
sukabi
@morzer: well, since drones are coming to law enforcement in Florida you’re probably not far off… foot in the door with an unarmed drone, next step is armed.
Shinobi
@polyorchnid octopunch: Wait… a journalist, doing actual journalism? That’s crazy talk.
creature
Cops have been brutal for quite some time, and they are just more blatant now. There are just more people to beat, tase or shoot now. That’s why it seems more apparent.
I have had my share of night-stickings, macing and sap-glove work-overs at the hands of Officer Friendly. Sometimes, it only took a look of disgust in their direction to start the beating.
What really sucked, is when they would shake me down for the payoff (drugs, money and/or guns), and still kick my ass. At least I didn’t get arrested those times.
None of this nuttiness suprises me.
Cassidy
@geg6:
Standard supplements really don’t contribute to this kind of behavior. That was all about training, plain and simple. Those are military tactics. If the police train like soldiers, then no one should be surprised when this crap happens.
Roger Moore
@sukabi:
And I was quoting The Clash (Know Your Rights).
singfoom
That’s just fucking sick. Even if he had understood what they wanted him to do, he had no time to react before he was killed. “Put your (bang bang bang) hands down!”
The War On Some Drugs needs to stop, now.
Chris
@Cassidy:
This.
The militarization of society proceeds unhindered.
patrick ii
the cops are getting as paranoid as every one else.
morzer
I’d like to know how many cops are ex-military, and how many might have done time in Iraq or Afghanistan. They certainly seemed mighty quick on the draw, and it made me wonder just what their prior experience was.
Rex
Make sure you include some obligatory dig at Balko, John. Especially considering you probably wouldn’t even know the phrase “new professionalism” if it wasn’t for his blogging.
Mark S.
Well, you Obots were right. The crazies are primarying Obama.
You might be surprised, however, which crazy it is.
Brisbane Belff (formerly G. Nelson Buttnergle (formerly Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))))
Yeah, well I’m sure he had it coming. Even if he’d been innocent of this crime (whatever it was or wasn’t), I’m sure he’s (or was) a bad guy. Why else would the police have raided his house? The 5-0 don’t make mistakes. After all, conservatives know that’s why we don’t need any Miranda warnings: if you aren’t guilty, you have nothing to fear. We’ve never coonvicted anybody wrongly in this country, thank you. We’re exceptional. You can tell we’re exceptional, because we tell everybody we’re exceptional.
Cermet
And for years people in the inner cities viewed cops as enemies as well as protectors; live (or die) and learn in amerika home of the police state – Stalin has a smile in hell. Wait when things get really bad as prices climb, jobs vanish and the super rich own all the p[olice forces after peak oil – baby, who haven’t seen nothing yet.
MonkeyBoy
From the video it was hard to tell if Todd Blair was black or not. From this cached version of Leavitt’s Mortuary & Aultorest Memorial Park it seems that most of his acquaintances were of Mormon heritage. I guess Blair was no longer a Mormon since he had no Church funeral, only one at Leavitt’s.
Brisbane Belff (formerly G. Nelson Buttnergle (formerly Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))))
@GregB:
No, no, no. “Big Government” only refers to taxes and social welfare policy. As long as the police didn’t levy any taxes on that guy in Utah, he wasn’t getting the shaft from Big Governemnt; he was just the victim of a harmless mistake. Why, if the Republicans have their way, his children won’t even have to pay any estate tax. Everybody wins!
Paul in KY
I’m sure the cop ‘feared for the pristine condition of his body armor’.
‘Narcotics Task Force’ in the heart of Mormonland. I guess they hit the caffeine addicts pretty hard up there.
C. Gallagher
@polyorchnid octopunch:
This link adds an explanation to the raw footage. Turns out the guy being kicked was guilty of nothing. Surprise, surprise.
Paul in KY
@Comrade Mary: They’ve obviously been watching Kyles’s uncle on Southpark. He has great tips to get around those pesky hunting laws.
Jules
I just do not know what the police expect?
If you break down the door of someones home in the middle of the night there is a good chance (espically around here in AR) that the homeowner is going to meet you with a weapon.
I could see myself running out with my phone in my hand (who wouldn’t call 911?) and getting shot.
Or my pets getting shot.
I guess “mistakes were made” is supposed to make everything ok.
GregB
Chris,
There is no racism in post racial America.
(Snark)
Paul in KY
@Dennis SGMM: It’s from his old ‘known space’ series. I think the book is called ‘The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton’. The organ harvesting appears in a few other books in the series, IMO.
Paul in KY
@SP: They are trained like the military. If the situation demands 1 round, why not 3.
Paul in KY
@MonkeyBoy: He looked white to me. With a bald or almost shaven head.
Ash Can
@Mark S.: And there was much rejoicing among the firebaggers.
…What?
Brisbane Belff (formerly G. Nelson Buttnergle (formerly Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))))
I just watched the film. I really like how they yelled “Get on the ground!” after they had shot him 3 times and he’d fallen down and died. I guess it was their professionalism shining through.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: ok… lol, haven’t been a clash fan / follower.
kdaug
@Roger Moore: Know you rights.
DFS
“You get suspended when y’all kill, we get the chair, son”
Brachiator
Forget it, Jake. It’s Authoritarian Town.
Conservatives will always give the cops the benefit of the doubt, and see the killing as just the price of having cops on the street doing their jobs. And even if the victim was a Real White American(tm) lifetime member of the NRA, the death would be seen as an unfortunate, but acceptable loss.
And while it is understandable to bring in the misguided war on drugs, it is ultimately irrelevant. The default assumption is that in any confrontation with a cop, you must do what you are told, and any misunderstanding, error, confusion, or outright abuse of rights, must be seen as favorable to the cops.
The additional sad thing is that even if there is a criminal trial or Civil Rights suit, and the police are found to be at fault, the true conservative will reserve his or her animosity for the “librul gummint” that dared challenge the cops’ right to do their job the way they need to do it.
Hob
@Paul in KY: One of Niven’s early novels, “A Gift from Earth”, is mostly about that too. There’s a corrupt aristocracy that’s been executing lots of proles for their organs… and this has been going on for so long that, when the revolution comes, the revolutionaries can only imagine limited reforms to the system to make it more fair; the idea that maybe there shouldn’t be any death penalty at all for non-violent offenses is barely considered at all. Niven’s politics were a lot more interesting before he started working with Jerry Pournelle…
Catsy
@Jules:
This, and the same point made by so many others.
Seriously, what the fuck do they expect to happen? What would they do if they heard unidentified perps breaking into their house in the middle of the night?
I make a point of remembering the names of murderous cops like this once their names are known, so that if someday I hear in the news that they’ve been gunned down I know to cheer rather than shake my head in sadness, and dig up the links to their crimes so that everyone else knows to shed no tears for them and why. These pieces of shit will never see justice, but I’ll accept karma.
(Stupid disclaimer that I shouldn’t have to write: I do not own a firearm, I do not shoot or kill people, and this is not an attempt to incite someone else to do so. But I’ll be damned if I grieve for a trigger-happy murderer who is a disgrace to their badge.)
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Don’t worry, they’re just doing God’s Work
http://www.standard.net/topics/featured/2011/01/12/sheriff-god-approves-capital-punishment
Hob
@Chris: Militarization of the drug war, and of the police in general, has been going on for a long time. There were some famous cases in Pennsylvania in the ’80s that really highlighted this: the firebombing of the MOVE building, and several drug raids where the wrong doors were kicked in by insanely over-armed squads– including one case where, due to lousy communication and an alarmed call from a neighbor, a second SWAT team showed up to confront what they thought was an armed drug gang but was in fact the first SWAT team, and trashed the (wrong) house even more thoroughly but didn’t kill anyone, thank God. It’s just gotten worse since then, with all kinds of small police departments thinking that they should have SWAT teams because everyone else does.
scav
OT, but the Vatican may be in a spot of bother again.
Vatican Warned Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse
Tonal Crow
Don’t just get furious, do something: please help the ACLU fight this — and many other — kinds of usurpations of our Constitutional rights.
Martin
Sounds exactly like what Utah residents have voted for the last, oh, 100 years or so. Elections have consequences.
Ash Can
@Brachiator:
As long as the cop doing the shooting was equally white.
freelancer
Breach and Clear idiot pigs didn’t even give the guy a chance to see what’s in Room 101.
Mark S.
@Hob:
That’s what depresses the hell out of me. Yes, this shit has been going on for years, and nothing ever fucking changes.
I’m willing to give cops some leeway, but Christ, these fuckers are supposed to be minimizing casualties. You don’t minimize casualties with no-knock searches in the middle of the night. This is completely fucking inexcusable.
In other news, I’ve had that Battle of Sarah Palin hymn going through my head all fucking day. I swear to God I only listened to it once.
Brachiator
@Ash Can: RE: And even if the victim was a Real White American™ lifetime member of the NRA, the death would be seen as an unfortunate, but acceptable loss.
Actually, I don’t think this really matters. Ultimately, a good conservative bows down before all cops.
Tom65
I’d be interested to see what bullshit they came up with for the search warrant. They went in there like it was New Jack City.
cs
@Roger Moore:
The Clash is always appropriate.
When they kick at your front door how you gonna come?
With your hands on your head?
Or on the trigger of your gun?
joe from Lowell
@cs: Certainly not with a golf club.
Arclite
The DoJ is much too busy with trying to find some way to prosecute Julian Assange to bother with something as small as this.
asiangrrlMN
@geg6: I’m with you. I can’t watch it. It looks like the mythical snuff films do actually exist–with cops as the snuffers.
I don’t know how to change the mentality of our society, though. We (general we) have been accepting the rush towards authoritarianism for some time now (while decrying healthcare reform as fascist).
Sophist
@kdaug: Treat suspects with respect or compassion, apparently.
Cat Lady
OT – but John Rogers is a genius.
1 in 4 are reliably certifiable.
Cassidy
@DFS: Haven’t listened to any gangstagrass in a while.
jinxtigr
The real unintended consequence here is this:
If you intend to rob someone, all you have to do is kick their door in, and yell ‘Police!’
And then- do ANYTHING YOU WANT.
It will be impossible to tell you from police. You could be shooting people randomly and that still isn’t an indicator that you’re not police.
We are god-damn lucky the guy that tackled the Arizona shooter was a civilian. If he was police, he might have shot everybody there. Certainly the one that picked up the shooter’s gun…
Nellcote
@Joseph Nobles:
And not just a “regular” school shooting. It looks like a kid brought a gun to school in a backpack, dropped the backpack and accidentally shot 2 kids. More guns on campus, yeah, that’s the ticket!
Villago Delenda Est
@Dennis SGMM:
Larry Niven covered this back in the 70’s with his series of “organlegger” stories.
Ah, I see Hob beat me to this upthread. Refreshing fizzy beverage being sent through the tubes to you!
trollhattan
I prefer to think our po-licing is like on “The Wire” and not done by Utah hit squads. Sigh, damn reality, you’re letting me down again.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: How the hell is he a Democrat? No. Just no. I know that his running would be good for somebody, but I put him in the category of Palin–people I just wish never to hear of or from again.
trollhattan
@asiangrrlMN:
Ack! Well, that makes the Mickey Kaus senatorial candidacy seem sane.
Arclite
@D. Mason:
I heard that less than 4% of police officers ever draw their weapon in the line of duty, never mind shooting it. On the other hand, I remember a stat where police officers die 20 years younger than the rest of the population, suggesting a lot of stress.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
Considering that Terry lost in the Republican primary in 1998 and 2006 when running for Congress (New York) and the State Senate (Florida) his likelihood of being put on the Democratic ballot seems pretty remote.
burnspbesq
@JC:
“I don’t know what will change the current ‘hey mistakes are made, cops risk their lives to protect us, necessary to protect us that cops given leeway’, attitude, that is current prevalent, and prevents accountability, allows cops impunity with regard to violence.”
Damage awards. Eight-figure damage awards.
If what is in the HuffPo article is accurate, it shouldn’t be hard to establish that there were material misstatements in the warrant application. And if the warrant was bad, and known by the cops who executed it to be bad, that might be enough to wipe out the officers’ qualified immunity in a 1983 action. We’ll have to see how this play out, but if I were the kind of lawyer who takes cases like this on contingency, I could see myself taking this one.
Arclite
@Paul in KY:
When you shoot you shoot to kill. It’s possible for a suspect with a weapon to survive a bullet or two and return fire. The issue is that they shouldn’t be using these kinds of violent military tactics for non-violent drug offenders, not whether to use 1 bullet or 3. It should be a daytime warrant presentation. The risk is that the suspect flushes the drugs, but the upside is that no one gets shot.
cs
@joe from Lowell:
Aye.
You know it means no mercy
They caught him with a
gunnine-ironNo need for the Black Maria
Goodbye to the Brixton sun
Catzmaw
I’m a big fan of holding cops accountable for misdeeds; however, this is simply not a clear cut case of a cold-hearted or unjustified police killing. Some people in these comments have said that he was just standing there with the golf club, but I slowed the video down and stop-actioned it several times. Several things are clear: a) the police did announce themselves several seconds before going into the house; b) the cop in the lead clearly yelled “freeze” at the guy; c) the police entry in the house was very rapid and they would have been at this guy in a split second upon entering the house; d)(and this is important), the deceased CLEARLY was holding the golf club in a threatening posture, having it raised like a baseball bat behind his right ear and his left foot planted forward. To me he appeared to be ready to charge the cops and was going to use the golf club on them. It appeared from the tape that he might have pulled the club back into that posture AFTER hearing the word “freeze”, but he seemed to be leaning forward, which is why I concluded he was in a charging posture. I don’t know why the cops were racing so quickly through the house or what this man’s background was or whether they expected him to have confederates in the house who might be armed and dangerous. We don’t really have the background of this man or anyone with whom he normally associated, so we don’t know how dangerous the cops perceived him to be or how rational that perception was. However, the vast majority of people experiencing a police raid don’t snatch up a weapon and prepare to charge the cops.
This video is inconclusive at best. It’s certainly nowhere near proof beyond a reasonable doubt or even clear and convincing evidence of wrongdoing. A frame by frame analysis might be even more helpful.
tomvox1
But, but, but… If he wasn’t guilty, they wouldn’t have shot him. Don’t you see?
Tonal Crow
@Arclite: Absolutely. Police commando tactics are almost always inappropriate. This wasn’t a raid on a person who’s taken — and is credibly threatening to kill — hostages. It was just a drug bust — which, BTW, we shouldn’t be doing anyway. It’s time to reverse the militarization of police.
Once again I’m gonna mention that the ACLU needs your support to fight this bullshit.
Jager
@rapier:
Last weekend in SoCal a naked man (yes, naked)was in the street at 3am berating a cab driver. Two cops came, after talking to the cops and putting his boxers on, he ran. The cops chased and cornered him, the guy, an ex college football player, knocked them around and apparently embarassed them enough for them to put a few bullets in him. He died. Seems to me a perfect situation to use a taser (both cops had one) but that’s silly isn’t? Cops only use the tasers on old ladies, mental defectives and guys in wheel chairs.
My retired cop pal from Boston emailed me and called the cops, “stupid pussies” and thinks the shooter should go to jail and enjoy life among the convicted.
Silver
Also, don’t be drunk with a hose nozzle:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20025657-504083.html
Clearly, the man was a menace. I frequently make “pew pew” videogame noises with my mouth, I won’t be doing that around an officer-he’s liable to think that his life is in danger and shot me multiple times.
water balloon
This is a country where cops can arrest a harvard professor in his own home for no apparent reason, and it’s the president who has to apologize after he notes that they acted stupidly.
In NYC, some innocent guy gets shot dozens of times on a semi annual basis. The militarization of civilian life is galloping ahead at a pretty shocking speed.
Mart
Note to self; quit smoking pot, don’t want to be assassinated.
elmo
It was ever thus. There is no golden period of American history when the cops weren’t a lawless gang of brutal thugs. It’s just that they used to beat and kill people outside of the prying eyes of camera phones and YouTube. That’s why there’s the big push to criminalize videotaping the police — because they liked it that way.
I’m 44 years old. I’m white, and I’m female. I was held at gunpoint by a cop doing a “dynamic entry” when I was ten years old. None of this shit is anything new.
Comrade Mary
@Catzmaw: As my comment above shows, I would find it understandable that a cop acted out of fear and a sense of self-preservation.
But the cops shouldn’t have put themselves and the occupants in that dangerous position where a split second decision could have killed a cop (if the home owner had a gun), a baffled, sleepy guy trying to defend himself and the house, or a child, or a pet.
I could choose to ride my bike down the streetcar tracks tomorrow instead of staying in the curb lane. If I caused a few accidents and even deaths along the way, the drivers’ startle reactions and overcompensation would be understandable. But I would bear culpability for doing such a useless, reckless thing in the first place.
Triassic Sands
@Catzmaw:
If you take the time to read (read???) the article (follow the link) you should have a lot of your questions answered. And unfortunately for your justification of the shooting, none of your questions get answered in a way that should have led to the fatal encounter ever happening. That is 100% the fault of police.
Wow, talk about undermining your own case. You say he “appeared to be ready to charge.” The time to shoot is not when someone appears to be about to do something (especially something like swing a golf club), but when, in this case, the person actually does charge. The shooter and club wielder were far enough apart that the officer was not in imminent danger. Further, all the cops, who were there in overwhelming force, were wearing protective helmets, which means the likelihood of the man being able to seriously injure the police officer with a golf club was virtually zero.
Being a police officer is always going to entail some degree of risk for the police themselves. To remove that risk entirely would require giving police license to shoot anytime the possibility of physical danger exists — which is in virtually every encounter between police and suspects.
You’ve obviously made a valiant effort to excuse the inexcusable — both because the situation shown in the video should never have happened and it’s the fault of police it did, and because the threat to the police officer simply didn’t rise to the level that should be required before lethal force is used.
As the article makes clear, the police unnecessarily created this situation. By doing that they bear responsibility — and guilt — for any injuries or deaths that occurred.
I think Sgt. Burnett simply freaked out, failed to assess the actual threat to himself, and opened fire — shooting three times from a distance close enough that he was unlikely to miss. At the very least, Burnett should be fired and never allowed to own a firearm again.
Finally, does it really matter what the “vast majority” of people would do in this situation? Personally, I don’t know most people would do — it would depend on countless variables. But surely someone is going to respond defensively.
Mayken
@rapier: Your first point is true: death by cop is a relatively rare thing indeed. Especially when looked at in relation to the number of interactions police have with the public every day. But you’re wrong about more cops dying in the line than people killed by police. The latest stats I found on arrest- related deaths (which only includes deaths of suspects during an arrest not, for instance, while in custody nor does it include FBI or border patrol stats) where for 2003-2005. 2002 suspects’ deaths were reported of which 55% were the result of direct officer action (e.g. The cop shot the suspect etc.) That’s well over 650 police homicides per year. Mind you that does not mean some, most or all of those deaths were unjustified killings, just that somewhere north of 650 people dies at police hands just during arrests in a three year period.
In contrast, in 2005, (to try to stick to similar time frames) just over 150 police officers died in the line of duty.
That is a pretty large difference.
Those stats are from a pretty quick google search. I have little doubt more thorough research would be enlightening.
Cheers
Mayken
Mayken
@Mayken: D’oh FYWP for not letting me correct the deaths per year – should be over 350 not 650! Sigh!
Eta: and over 1000 deaths by cop in a 3 year period. Typin on iPhone can be dangerous! Lol!
Cermet
@asiangrrlMN: Don’t know how to change things!? Please – end the failed drug war that is used to lock up half of all blacks, bleed our country of honest men, kill untold people (by the drug wars, not the cops) and put organized crime out of business AND make a killing in taxes for all the needy – asswipes all who sypport this murder and destruction of other countries.
Cain
@Comrade Mary:
Reminds me of South Park where those two rednecks would shoot anything that moved with the words “They’re coming right at us” despite the fact the animals in question wasn’t doing anything remotely like that.
cain
Cain
@Cassidy:
I reckon training like soldiers also cheaper? Thanks to budget cuts we can’t seem to get decent people to hire and it is downright dangerous.
Training like a soldier seems to greatly make this like it is a war or something. I don’t like that at all.
sri
mclaren
Meanwhile…
Drug-Friendly Netherlands To Close 8 Prisons — Not Enough Crime
Hob
@Cassidy:
I’m pretty sure geg6 was talking about anabolic steroids, not nutritional supplements. There does seem to be a lot of steroid use among cops, and it absolutely can contribute to bad judgment and aggression. Here’s a recent big story out of Newark.
honus
@Chris: The mentality is perfectly described in a 125 year old book. When asked if anyone was hurt in a boiler explosion on a riverboat, Tom Sawyer replies “no ma’am. Killed a nigger.”
Anyway, this shouldn’t be problem much longer since it’s now a prosecutable offense in most states to videotape the police.
sneezy
@rapier:
“More police are killed every year than citizens they kill I would guess.”
Dude, it is 2011. Don’t guess. Two minutes with google would show you that your “guess” is wrong.
jgmurphy
“Also, too, they could have tased him if bleeding-heart liberals didn’t outlaw tasers, or whatever….”
What planet are YOU on?
First of all, the police were murdering people long before the taser gun was even invented. So the idea that the poor little pigs are just blowing people away only because some pesky liberals took away their taser toys, is nonsense.
Secondly, where’d you get the screwy notion that “liberals” managed to “outlaw tasers”? (Would that it were so!)Do you simple sit around and make up your own news stories?
Thirdly, being tasered by the pigs has proven to be fatal almost as often as being shot. It’s just one more lethal weapon in the cop arsenal.
Hob
@jgmurphy: He was being sarcastic. It happens here sometimes.
polyorchnid octopunch
@C. Gallagher: Oh, I know all about it. It’s turning into a big story up here. There have been a number of them recently. As I said, the clusterfuck of the Toronto G20 policing fiasco opened up a lot of eyes here.
Mr. Blink
That made me a little sick to my stomach. One, because of how quickly it went down and they didn’t even give the guy a chance. And two, because I saw someone actually get shot and killed for real.
If someone busted into my apartment in the middle of the night with no warning, my first instinct would be to grab my gun to protect myself and my girlfriend. I would hope that if it was the pigs, they would at least give me a chance to drop it. I hope that cop burns for this.
LiberalTarian
I had the police storm my house recently because my delusional son told them I was unconscious and bleeding from being stabbed in the neck. I’m telling you, the cop was over my bed with a flashlight before I even knew what was going on. They had my daughter, who is 26, pinned up against the wall as a suspect. No, you aren’t safe from the police in your own house.
LiberalTarian
Also, this is in an area where I have had multiple calls to the police about my mentally ill son. They storm the house first, and ask questions later. My 3-year granddaughter was in my bed sleeping, too. What if I had had a gun in my nightstand, which wouldn’t be unheard of? Would we both be dead today? Entirely possible.
west coast
Period. Imagine the outcry if the Clinton ATF or FBI had done exactly the same thing.
Janus Daniels
@Roger Moore: “Fuck with rich people… Or go against the wishes of LDS elders.”
For LDS, priests are boys over 12, elders are (usually teen or twentyish) missionaries, then you get to try for Bishop, etc. So, you can skip “elder” and stick with “rich” to stay simple and accurate.
It seems the same for Hindu polytheists and Communist atheists. Authoritarians differ in beliefs and share in behaviors.
mclaren
@Chris:
This is what the limitless growth of the military budget has produced: America has turned into Iraq. The soldiers go to Iraq, kick in doors in the middle of the night and indiscriminately shoot people in the house and walk away over the corpses with no penalties, no sanctions, no repercussions. Then the soldiers muster out of the army and 90% of ’em become cops..
…And what the do they do then? Kick in the doors of Americans’ houses int he middle of the night and indiscriminately shoot people in the house and walk away over the corpses with no penalties, no sanctions, and no repercussions.
Isn’t it obvious that turning America into an armed garrison state under effective martial law, as the vast growth of our military has done, inevitably means that cops will treat Americans the way U.S. soldiers treat Iraqis?
Study carefully what happens in Iraq to innocent civilians shot down like dogs at checkpoints because they twitched. That’s what will happen to innocent Americans at checkpoints here in America tomorrow.
rickstersherpa
I read the Deseret News and the Utah news stories on this incident. In both stories the neighbors were all pro-cop about taking this guy out since apparently living with a drug black marketeer across the street is no fun. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50304398-76/blair-drug-roy-police.html.csp#
Of course, this goes back to the whole “War on Drugs” thing of the last 40 years. And people, innocent and not so innocent, have been killed during these raids. How much better if this trade was decriminalized and folks to go to a nice coffee shop to pick up their Meth and heroin.
Paul in KY
@Hob: I like his oldest stuff best. I’ll check out that book, which I haven’t read before. Thanks!
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I beat you too ;-)
Paul in KY
@Arclite: When they shoot, they shoot to kill. Agree with you though, that this is completely over-the-top (some degree of murder, I think).
brantl
@polyorchnid octopunch: Where do you get this bullshit about neoconservatives actually being neoliberals? What is that crap?
brantl
@Paul in KY: Nope, it’s from “Tales of Known Space” series but not Gil Hamilton, it’s a short story where a guy escapes, he’s going to be broken up for his organs after three speeding tickets.
Paul in KY
@brantl: My bad. I had thought that stuff is mentioned in the ‘Gil Hamilton’ book, but I guess I was wrong.
DKF
@GregB: Indeed, they do. I suspect you won’t be hearing much up there from the breeches and tricorn set about “government overreach” in these instances. They see signs of an incipient police state in everything except actual police state behavior.