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 a bad concept, within reason.…
Category: Police
Bad Taser Judgement from Officer Slager
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 legal and departmentally justified. But…
Videotaping police isn’t quite as legal as you thought
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 very insightful comment: older cops…
Killed by Police (2 of 3): Race
[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. And this figure will get…
“‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie”
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 a store, fought for the…
Killed by Police (1 of 3): New Data!
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, and regardless of reason or…
“This one is different”
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 less of a threat when…
“Suspect is down,” says the dispatcher
Here’s video of the initial Walter Scott car stop. (Yes, his brake light was out.) But what I love, which I suppose is kind minor in the grand scheme of thing, is how fucking amazing this drawling dispatcher is. She is bad-ass and calm. “Shots fired. He grabbed your taser. Suspect is down,” she drawls, almost yawning, like it happens…
“U.S. police shootings not simple as black and white”
Good article by Tom Blackwell in Canada’s National Post: “If we point to the officer and say, ‘You did something wrong,’ we all feel a lot better, and it’s concrete,” said Marcia McCormick, a criminal-law professor at St. Louis University. “But when the problem is the system — you have racism without racists…. It doesn’t seem as harmful, and [is]…
“We got a dead guest”
It was an odd feeling to be made-up and mic’d and then walk off the set of a TV show. I had just rushed (on a Citibike, no less) from AP’s studios on 33rd and 10th (for Dutch TV) to midtown. It’s a studio I’m very familiar with (though not the show). I was rushed on and given a seat…