She didnt turn her lights on.  Therefor her camera wasnt activated.  She wasnt hiding anything.  She just didnt turn her lights on.  That happens.  But since there was no video everyone wants to blame her.  I highly doubt she was covering up anything the second she put the car in park.  If anyone wishes her camera was working it is likely her.  Just bs finger pointing imo.  Nothing in this case suggest the officer acted inappropriate but everything in this case shows the suspect acting inappropriate.  So who is to blame..the officer, lol.

A man had his car stalled with the hazards on and she shot him dude. What you highly doubt is really not relevant. I'm sure it's very possible she does wish she'd turn them on, since that's the first thing an officer does when initiating a stop of any kind which involves their car being parked in the street.

There's a very serious need here to understand how we went from "Let me call you a tow truck" to shooting him. Thanks to her negligence, the only person who "knows" is her. She killed the only other person who could speak with any authority on the altercation.

For you? Well that's just all no big deal, but for a black person living in fear of the police who do not feel safe around officers, these are questions we can no longer just leave hanging out there as "okay" because they could be used to just execute someone. It is the public's responsibility to keep themselves alive when dealing with the police. I have no doubts if I wanted to I could force a cop to kill me. It is the officers responsibility to protect the integrity of the badge they carry as well however, and she failed in that. She put every other officer in danger with this negligence. Remember the cop-killer in Dallas? How you think he got motivated? While you may be "no big deal" I consider acts of negligence like this to be deadly to the rest of the 1.1 million people representing a badge. I'm sure they don't appreciate it.

I didn't see the Tulsa PD mentioned in any of those! Crazy! Almost like they already spent the money on dash-cams. Probably just more ignorant public opinion....

Edit: In my haste, I misspelled ignorant! Sorry.

Last edited by alz (9/22/2016 9:55 am)

alz wrote:

I didn't see the Tulsa PD mentioned in any of those! Crazy! Almost like they already spent the money on dash-cams. Probably just more ignorant public opinion....

Edit: In my haste, I misspelled ignorant! Sorry.

I never said they did.  In fact i just spelled out to you that data storage has no beating on this case.  Only that it is a real issue in law enforcement.  Pay attention.

The 4 links were to issues with data storage since you think it is an unreal problem.  I didnt think that needed to be explained.  I also thought i made it clear that conversation isn't related to the tulsa shooting.  A seperate issue completely.  I believe ive directly stated that 3x now yet you keep argueing it in length  pointlessly. Id who your argueing it to. Its confusing.

AP... If you're not arguing a point, don't send links supporting an argument you're not trying to make. That's just crazy.

Here's my beef. She had equipment in the car that could have answered a lot of the "Oh really is that how it was?" questions that can be asked on everything now. These questions come up a lot after the South Carolina incident which highlighted what blacks have been saying. They are treated different and dirty in a lot of cases where whites are treated with a lot more dignity. So because of South Carolina, we do know that humans can be morons who make very dumb moves. They can also try to cover it up, and yes they can do it all while wearing a badge, and being "the law". 

There was PCP in the car! (Was there?)
He was acting crazy! (Was he?)
He walked out of the woods from nowhere while I was sweeping the car! (Did he?)
He reached into the car! (Through a closed window? Was it closed? Was it open?)

Unfortunately, with the lack of camera footage, I can also present a situation where this lady showed up, prepping for a domestic violence call she's heading to, getting in that mindset, and now responding to this car in the middle of the road. Maybe she hated that he wasn't in his car, doesn't totally like black folks, acted like a spooked deer because he came from the woods. He was taking a piss and didn't want to just hang it out in view of the street. So she's scared and that turns ugly. Maybe she's mad that he's scared her like he did. So she told him he was a wrong breath away from her killing him like she should, and waiting for a twitch to blow him away. Maybe she made one bad assessment and it was fed by his being angry because his car died and she's treating him like the unibomber... 

Did it happen? I guarantee you there's a lot of black people out there who don't know, and aren't about to take anyone's WORD on it. That's why the camera is a big deal to me, it should have been on. No "well sometimes it isn't" garbage. No complaining about other departments issues with memory. After the bullshit that everyone saw for Officer Wilson, EVERY COP should know how important it is to have the camera rolling. If you have it, that thing needs to be filming every stop you make. That is not negotiable, and for me the consequence is that if you engage in a stop and don't turn it on, you better pray it's all sunshine and roses because if you leave this "alternate theory" left standing out there without any concrete way to disprove it (even when one is RIGHT THERE), you're fired. 

We cannot present our police force as peaceful people trying to help when a stalled vehicle ends up with a white cop killing a black man after she refused to turn on the dash camera. To me that's just complete horseshit. 

I know you don't agree, and in reality, I don't care. Now I'm left to rely on a toxicology report and an official investigation on the status of the driver side window, and the reports of the other officers who had about 20 seconds of scene exposure before the driver was shot. I also do not like leaving the man to bleed out in the street after shooting him. The first immediate move is to ensure no threat remains, not pow-wow at the back of the car (which can be construed as 'getting the story straight'). Call a goddamned ambulance, put pressure on the wounds and see if the life can be spared. I cannot just take "her word" for it when she didn't enable the one thing that would have told the entire story (on purpose? don't know!). I read something about them not knowing about how to proceed medically from that point. I hope that's not true. I really hope officers receive some basic training on how to save lives, not just how to end them...

"I don't always use my lights... Are you an officer?" 

Yes i am.  I thought everyone knew this.  It isnt something i make a deal over.  Just a job.  A decent and sometimes fun one in my area.  Still the national trends are troubling to me.  People used to see these cases as an unpleasant part of being able to live a safe life.  They would fault the criminal for his criminal behavior.  Now they want to fault the police for their non criminal behavior while addressing a criminal.  And dont get me wrong, i believe in cops being held to a high standard and being criminally liable for incorrect action.  If the courts fine this lady cop to have not had justification in this shoot and have a logical reason to back that up i understand and understand the severityof her punishment.  However, i think the public needs to look at this case from a factual standpoint.  Not look for scapegoats.  And i think accountability undoubtedly lays on the suspect for his disobeying of orders.

Why do i not use my lights alot.  Motorist assist are a perfect example.  Ill pull up beside the person and talk to them.  If it is a non busy road ill just get out and speak with them.  In this instance there was road blockage on a 2 lane hwy (or so it looked) so i would have most likely used my lights.  I will say that.  However alot of times it is someone talking on there cell phone who has pulled over, in my area someone checking crops or maybe a broke down car.  I dont always call my activities in to dispatch for alot of reason (they dont pay attention anyway and are tardy to respond and our radios dont work half the time).  It isnt the safest way of doing business but when you radios dont work, your cell phones dont get coverage and you administration fails to correct these issues for years you just give up worrying about your own safty.

One reasonable idea for her not using her lights, i believe she was headed to a domestic.  Domestic are a high stress call or can be. Alot of them are bs but other times they can be dangerous.  She came up on this enroute to the other call.  Maybe she got tunnel vision.  Wanted to hurry up and address this car in the road and continue to the domestic.  Then things go to shit.  She didnt plan on it being a large high man.  It is a mistake i could see myself making.  Ive made alot bigger mistakes in life then forgetting to flip a switch.  Or maybe she was driving fast to the domestic and forgot she had not already activated her lights.  Often poilce respond to calls without lights in non busy roads.  These LED lights are silent.  Not like the old rotators.  You cant hear them from in the car and cant see them in the daylight from inside .  You just dont know what her side is at this point.  What you do know is she doesnt legally have to have them on and cant be held accountable for those action.  You also know what the subjects actions were that lead to his death.  Yet you remain focused on thia camera issue. 

You cant do this job without putting yourself in the other officer situation. Ive reached a conclusion on what id do when these national cases started exploding.  If it is only my own safty at risk im going to error on the side that risks my life.  If the public or other officers are at risk ill address the threat in a manner that i most believe protects them.  However i dont see how it is to my advantage to respond in a manner that is allowed constitutionally.  Your life is ruined either way.  Your either dead or made out to be a murder in the public.  Why, because you forgot to flip a switch, didnt tase someone when others thought you should have.  Maybe i said something without tact in a stressful situation.  Maybe i didnt get shot at first or thought a cell phone was a gun coming out of the subjects pocket.  Maybe the public thinks i should have just got my ass beat for awhile before shooting the subject.  Or maybe the reason i initiated the contact with the subject doesnt line up with peoples opinion of what the end result might be despite the initial cause having nothing to do with the end result.  Any little thing to pick apart will be.  I work without proper equipment, some/alot of which ive supplied myself with one my own dime. Ive NEVER had a use of force complaint or a complaint about my attitute yet one circumstances will throw out a career of work.  It simply isnt worth it.  My wife will get my life insurance plus $300,000 from the government.  My kids will get free college at a christian school.  I just hope the guy is a decent shot.  I dont want to breath through a straw and shit in a bag for 50 years.

I dont believe ive been overly loyal to law enforcement on this discussion.  Ive laid out the side that the public hears little about in detail and explained it with facts.  Ive countered your complaints on the case with possible and reasonable explainations.  Yet you go back to the camera as your fail safe for the officer being wrong.  Which i just laided out a couple reason it might have not been turned on.  Right or wrong it isnt illegal.

Ive explained to you that limitations of the taser and possible reasons she didnt use it prior to the subject getting to his car.  Ive shown you a video of a small man with unhuman amounts of pain tolorance on the same drug the subject in tulsa was on.  Ive showed you two video of subjects getting a firearm from a vehicle and killing officers.  I gave you 3 supreme court case laws interpreting the 4th amendment.  They stated that less than lethal force does not have to be used if there is cause for deadly force, that officers do not have to physically see a gun before using deadly force and that 20/20 hindsight cant not be used to determine the justification of the officers action.  Instead one must put themself in the officers shoes at the time of the incident and account for the totality of the circumstances.  I cant argue this subject with any more clarity then i already have.  You have provided little in the way of facts or explainations to back up you opinion.  Instead you focus on a camera.  A human mistake.  Something that isnt illegal.  Its a good media story.  It just isnt constructive criticism for the overall nation issue.

"There was PCP in the car! (Was there?)
He was acting crazy! (Was he?)
He walked out of the woods from nowhere while I was sweeping the car! (Did he?)
He reached into the car! (Through a closed window? Was it closed? Was it open?)"

If you really dont believe anything the police say then i honestly dont think this is the country for you.  There is no way police can be an unhuman robot and carry a film crew with them.  I understand that there are issues with the balck community.  Im not exposed to that much.  In fact black males have been the most compliant people ive delt with.  Black women, not so much.  Black males however have not one single time been rude or disrespectful to me and i hope they feel like ive been reapectful to them.

Police are what separates society from evil.  Not a film crew or a portion of the population the blame all that is wrong with the world.

"Only when someone dismisses my question with something as profound as "fuck em, they had it coming.""

Never did i say that.  I wish her dashcam was on.  I wish the subject woukd have complied.  I wish he wasnt dead.  Im sure the officer wishes the same.  Your making things something they are not which is part of the problem.  Never would i say fuck em.

Could be. None of those were condescending in the last, so you're at least listening and truthfully we're saying a lot of the same things. I'd invite you to examine racial equality in detail. Look at the history of where this race has come from, and understand that this man was 40. I'm 40. Born just 12 short years after JFK was fighting with the Gov. in Alabama over not allowing two colored students to enroll at Tuscaloosa. Rosa parks was 8 years earlier. Which means this man was taught by his parents about police officers from a generation that was ridiculed, shunned, scorned, arrested, beaten, charged and jailed if they wanted to use the white bathroom. This isn't ancient history man, everyone getting shot had parents who went through every bit of this ugliness and taught their kids the best way they could to survive. It doesn't include trusting the cops. Imagine the PTSD that comes from that type of fear, constantly. See a badge, and just expect something gets dumped on you and you probably take a beating, and you are definitely at a much greater risk of being shot and killed on the street. 

Unfortunately we're white people. We have no idea about this, and we see this as a whole lot of whining and complaining and want to say, "Dude, just do what you're told!". It's really not that simple after South Carolina and Walter L Scott getting mowed down. There are still some abuses, and worse than that, there's a fear that the abuses can occur at any time from any officer. It's hard to trust that when we're finally just beginning to enter an era where things seem pretty fair.

Where society is at right now is very volatile. Nothing is "local" anymore, which was a very quick and abrupt change. In a few years we went from collecting the post dispatch to seeing news unfold real time on the internet. Nothing fails to make the news, and regardless of how big a story it is, it's shared, and that's shared 10 times more, and those people share it again and now thousands see a story. In another hour, a million people. By the following day, a majority of the adults in the United States know someone took a bullet in Tulsa. I believe this shooting is a very good time to implement mandatory policy and procedural changes involving any stop. Because in both of our opinions, a very clear mistake was made. It's not enough to charge or prosecute, or for white folks even suspect wrong doing, but it is definitely something a minority sees. Indeed, that's probably ALL they see. 

I do not know how I can better explain why this transparency is needed, or how important it is to offer more than words to a black community who still carries the scars of a lot of mistreatment. This was unfortunately not just a single thing with a little innocent mistake. It's a nation mover. It inspires the next Micah Xavier to show the police that minorities are not to be shot at random. It inspires riots, burning and looting. It inspires more violence. That's why it hurts, and why we need to change this approach. If we have a camera, for God's sake turn it on. 

Far more than Mike Brown, this is a story that can make perfect sense to rally behind. This can become a cause. If a clean tox screen comes back, this man may end up a martyr.... I'm not interested in providing this country with more reasons for us to hate each other. Turn the camera on....

APIAD wrote:

You and your camera. Human errors will never stop. They have been happening since the start of time. You cant address issues by saying the real probelm is human error. Its like saying world peace could be accomplished if everyone would just get along.

That's a big difference between you and I. I believe that saying "Us cops have always been killin black folk" is not an adequate reason to continue the practice. I also believe that gear provided to the officers is not provided so it can sit idle and not be used when needed. 

I would love to get to a point where it's just human error. We're not there, don't kid yourself. 

Arresting the wrong Michael Washington when serving a warrant? That's human error. Messing up a parole date when entering someone in the DOC database and giving them a release 2 years early? That's a human error. 

Eliminating the only source of evidence to prevent a national episode because you shot a minority who was stranded on the highway is not just another "oops!" type thing. It's a big mistake, it borders on negligence to me. It's going to bring a world of negative press to every officer in the country. I don't care how accidental my mistake is, if I did anything that dumped that type of problem on my company, I'd be fired. So would you, so would Fors, so would anyone else.

You are going to have to understand that officers play in a very high stakes world, and that little "oops" is not one that can just be laughed off. I apologize for the hard line I draw on this, I know you don't agree. She's a cop after all, and should be allowed to shoot anyone for any reason and it should be sunshine and rainbows for the rest of us! I just don't agree. I think some actions demand accountability and her career demands a transparency she didn't think was needed. I think she'd be better suited working a different job.
 

And yes I'm aware when you were talking about what's happened since the dawn of time, you weren't talking about shooting minorities, but human mistakes. 

There is never a bad time to evaluate whether the officers are doing the right thing. I believe any mistake by an officer can be nothing, or it can magnify pretty quickly. More than most jobs, everything you do has a consequence, and unfortunately that goes back to a higher standard. I cannot imagine a world where a work decision I made pisses off 75 million Americans and leads directly back to my director, but if I do that I know exactly how long I won't be employed for. I'm not totally looking for a scapegoat, but this shit is really been a focus for 2-3 years now, and it's not getting better. So whatever we're doing or not doing isn't enough. Minorities have a responsibility in this too, but so do officers. Provide the transparency, show the stops, show the details. Show your work. Then you get a bunch of people watching an officer remain calm while dealing with crazy abuse or just crazy and nobody can say a word different about the choices made. 

AP had you been a minority with a history of causing cops to shoot you, I promise you my speech to you personally would be very different and a lot more focused on what y'all need to impro