Quote:
Originally Posted by PedroMartinez
Many of y'all keep saying that the cop shouldn't have shot at the car with children in it. If you pay attention, you'll notice that the police officer firing the shots was NOT the cops involved in when the kids were out of the vehicle. I've yet to read any information stating that he knew there were kids in the vehicle.
If there is information showing that the cop knew there were children in the car, please post it. If not, quit stating that your assumption is fact.
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Oh please. The first rule of using your firearm is to be sure of what you are shooting at, the possibility of hitting innocents and so on. If the officer wasn't part of the initial stop and didn't know all the facts as could be know to that point, then what the heck was he doing shooting at the vehicle?
You do not shoot at a vehicle if you are unsure of who is inside, period.
Now it is justified to shoot at a vehicle not knowing who is inside? Since when? You get car jacked (it happens) and you want the police shooting into the car you might be sitting in? Really?
We all know what the woman and her 14 year old son did. The woman violated a traffic law and then drove away before the citation could be issued. In the scheme of things, that was the most minor of situations in this incident.
Lets get one things straight though, every person in the USA has the right to defend themselves or their family. That 14 year old came to the aid of his mother. A lot of sons would do the same, police; just because they are the police doesn't mean they get to do anything they want. Remember, the son heard the verbal exchange between the police and his mother.
How many of you, believing that the police might harm your mother would not come to her aid? I would because obviously those officers didn't follow procedure. Not everyone is stupid or doesn't know when someone is crossing boundaries in place to protect you. That kid isn't going to be convicted.
Once the police shot at the vehicle, they made a complete cluster out of the entire incident.
They had pepper spray
They probably had a Taser
They had at least two patrol cars available and more ready via dispatch.
They knew who she was, her address, the vehicle plate number/registration info
That minivan could not outrun the patrol cars
She had nowhere to go
She could not hide
The police had the opportunity not to escalate but to moderate and effect an arrest in less than a few hours (how far could she go and if she crossed any city/county/state borders there was hot pursuit).
The saving grace here is that no one got shot or that officer would go to prison and rightfully so.
Throw the book at the woman for sure. Then do the same for those officers. Note that not all of them acted stupidly, some had the sense to react according to training and common sense.
Now time to think just a little. What do you think those 4 kids grow up to believe? That the police will shoot at you for something that doesn't call for it.
So that 14 year old and the other kids grow up and are driving somewhere. Maybe they have kids of their own by then. They get pulled over and the officer is very terse and maybe makes a rude comment. What do you think that now grown kid thinks about? He/she was there when the cops shot at them.
This is why people sometimes run from the police. They've seen firsthand things like this. Those kids will talk to other kids. The cycle grows and then you have people who simply won't stop for the police. All because some officer thought in an act of stupidity he was going to shoot out the tires.
A little perspective here: Do you know how small a target a rear tire is on a vehicle moving away from you at a rapid speed? About the size of a dime held at arms length, if that. He was shooting a pistol at a small target moving away from him. As the minivan was headed away from him, he had only the lower half of the tire visible, if even that. Now this officer is so accurate that he can hit that target? He was more likely to hit anything but the tire. Even if he hit the tire, from a rear shot the tire would deflate slowly and the minivan would be able to be driven and the woman might not even know the tire was flat.
How many of us have seen someone driving down the road on a flat tire and they didn't know it? I have seen it.
What the woman and her son did do not excuse what the police did. It is as simple as that. The police are not gods that have complete control and authority over you. They are there to protect and serve the public and in so doing, enforce the laws. They do not have the right to do whatever they want and expect the public to simply allow them to do it.
Those officers tarnished the reputation of all sworn staff in their department and by association, created distrust on a larger scale.
Lets not forget that in haste, officers in LA riddled an SUV with gunfire all because the vehicle looked like the one an LA officer had when he went bonkers. The women inside had nothing to do with the situation other than driving a similar car. They shot up the car not knowing who was inside. What lesson do people take away from this? Stick around and get shot or take off and deal with it in court?
Those women in LA got a lot of money, this woman will too because she now has a lawyer and the game playing is over. The police were not in fear of their lives but she can claim she was for hers and her children.
Then there was NY City...
Once the police lose the trust in their police, it is over. People who say you just do what the police say don't make sense. That is living in fear of what the police might to. Is that what we want in a police department or do we want partners and members of our communities and society with whom we cooperate and support to deal with criminal elements?
One last thing, any person that would have been shot would have been shot from the back. Think about that too.
I rant about these things but that is because after more than 20 years and a good retirement, I'd never dream about shooting at someone in this situation. I appreciated the support of the public when it was earned because like trust, every day was a day to earn the trust and support of the people who paid my salary, made that career possible and without whom the job was impossible to perform.
Rarely was the dirt put in the trash, mostly swept away quietly. That hurt us all and some paid dearly for it, having done nothing but tried to serve the best they could, victims of the kind of thinking created by incidents like this.
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