There might be some good lessons here.
Too often we only look for lessons when things go wrong. It’s probably better to look for lessons when things go right. Here were tens of thousands of people protesting and counter-protesting… and it all happened without an arrest.
As predicted, the killing of unarmed Trevon Cole in Las Vegas, based on bad tactics, a bad warrant, bad flashlight batteries (?!), a bad track record, misinformation, mis-identification was found to be justified.
Despite contradictory statements by nearly everyone else who testified, Yant stood by his story that he fired the fatal shot only after Cole stood up, turned and thrust his hands toward Yant as if he had a gun.
Yant testified: “Unfortunately he made an aggressive act toward me. He made me do my job.”
Silly me. All this time I thought the job of police officers was to uphold the laws and state and federal constitutions.
The BBC has an interesting piece about the bus siege by a rogue cop in which eight tourists were killed. The good news I think we would do better here.
In related news, have you heard that the Chicago Cubs are going to move to the Philippines? They’re changing their name are will now be called the Manila Folders (sorry, I heard that one when I was about 7).
This was five years ago and more than an unfortunate accident, it was bad policing and a bad shooting:
“Here you got two of the sweetest kids on the Earth going to the mall and having Slurpees, getting shot through the car window. It’s a mess. Yeah, I’m angry,” Harkum said from his Pasadena home.
It goes down something like this: After a bank robbery, FBI agents make a car stop, perhaps their first ever car stop. One agent orders the passenger to unlock the door. The other agent demands to see his hands. Joseph Charles Schultz, the passenger, listens to the first FBI agent and gets shot in the face by the by the second. Oops. Also, it was the wrong car. Schultz and his girlfriend really were just minding their own business.
In July 2007 the government settled. The agents were absolved.