I'll reserve my own opinion for a bit. http://api.viglink.com/api/click?fo...ww.cbsnews.com/news/outrage-...trick-feaster/ Full DashCam footage: http://api.viglink.com/api/click?fo...urvivor, Doesn't Tell Anyone, Escapes Charges
Based on what I saw, assault first degree/ attempted murder. I watched without the sound first and then with. The cop shoots an unarmed man trying to climb out of a wrecked car and then lies about it. Unless the guy is yelling some serious threats at the cop as he's getting out, it seems pretty clear. That isn't the case, though . . . "The 11 minutes waiting to notify is awful. Regardless, can we prove a case of intentional discharge of that weapon beyond a reasonable doubt? We could not," District Attorney Mike Ramsey said. Are you fucking kidding me? That would excuse about 1/3rd of the murders in this country. He points the gun right at the guy and it maybe accidentally goes off? WTF? Only a cop gets away with that. The PA should be shown the door. Even if the gun somehow fired "accidentally" it's reckless discharge of firearm causing injury which is still a felony most places. If that were a cop climbing out of a wrecked patrol car and a black civilian walked up and fired like that, he'd be in jail with a million dollars bail, and lucky it wasn't a fatal shooting or he would be facing the death penalty
Bad Shoot.......at least based on the video. I honestly think the officer DID NOT intend on shooting the drunk. I think he pulled out his weapon for safety and was poorly trained. I'm willing to bet his trigger finger wasn't along the slide but rather resting on the trigger and he accidently fired. Same thing is happening in LA County. Deputies switched from the Beretta 92, that has an external decocker/safety along with a ridiculous trigger pull in DA mode. They now carry the S&W M&P 9mm and they are having a ton of accidental discharges. Short trigger pull and no decocker/safety. The officer is at fault in this video but it's Manslaughter because I don't think anyway.......that it was intentional. Also, if he is a good shot, the guy would be on a morgue slab and not in a hospital bed. You aren't trained to wound.
And in other news . . . Good boating or bad boating? Missouri trooper charged in handcuffed Iowa man's drowning http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article50474430.html This was about 75 miles away from where I live. This is actually a little bit of a political football here because our dufus governor pushed for the merger of the Highway and Lake Patrols and there had been some hearings about some of the problems with having road cops driving boats with little training, among other things. (Some of these boats are high-powered-- actually pretty sweet)
I didn't know that. Feaster lied while the guy lay dying. It looks like he let the guy die to cover his own buttocks.
Some people have said since it is such a small town (and the way the other officers referenced the bar as "the Cantina" that Feaster knew both in the vehicle and it was an assassination. Some say he saw the woman on the ground deceased and he went off the edge. No proof but it does seem like a small town. Having lived in a small town at one point, it's true that everybody knows everyone else's business. His story about an accidental discharge (sorry Tac but) is bullshit. Watch the video again. As Tac said, any range teaches you to place your trigger finger along the trigger guard until you are ready to fire. This guy was 5 years on this Dept and he knew what to do. He must have been certified and re-certified on proper weapons handling many times. It was no accident. Feaster walked up like he wanted him dead and then fumbled through after-the-fact trying to make a scenario where he wasn't guilty.
I will never be convinced that "common" and "sense" have ever gone together in the entire history of Humanity. I honestly think police are trained with an entirely wrongheaded "dominate and control" mindset from the very start, then given stupid metrics, such as "number of arrests" and "number of tickets given", by which their performance is evaluated, all for reasons that sound like they make sense, until you take human nature into account.
To a point that sort of training is necessary. Plus there is some tendency for police work to attract a bossy-authoritarian personality type, again necessary to a point. We militarized our police forces, and similarly and to a lesser extent, we gave almost every officer a tazer, which is often used for control rather than self-defense. IMHO, this was not necessary.
Yes, it's kind of like the unintended consequences that stem from a lot of well meaning legislation. You add reality to the laws and shit happens.
