Meet Jason Westcott, your latest, needless, inexcusable drug war casualty

Washington Post ^ | July 7, 2014 | Radley Balko

[LevinFan]

What the cops told him is not relavent. What is relavent is that once again, cops ignore the issue of what can go wrong when you create a confusing situation, with fractions of a second to make the right decision.

And all of it assumes the cops didn’t dress up the story after screwing up. Too many of those happen to take a cop’s word for granted.

[cizinec]

Don’t waste your time “reasoning” with loyal serfs. They worship and blindly do the will of their masters. Neither the law nor reason will ever shine through their haze of slavish devotion.

[kiryandil]

The article in post #14 quotes a witness to the event. A first-person account is not hearsay =>

You're just saying that because it's true...

[FBD]

Bump and bookmark

[FBD]

“The public attitude toward police has changed markedly in the last 5 years. And not for the better.”

And there's a reason for the shift . Cameras and the Internet now reveal to everyone, that time and again, police officers are getting away with killing people in their own homes (as in this case) , or seriously injuring them while they are restrained. Hell, they're even beating up mentally handicapped paraplegics in wheelchairs and getting away with it. But the reason they get away with it, is because there's a very vocal bunch of people like ifinnegan, who will gladly polish the JBT boots and badges. They're sociopaths, defending sociopaths.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140703122438-cop-push-wheelchair-story-tablet.jpg

[steve8714]

Selling today’s marijuana is not a non-violent offense.

[ifinnegan]

“Reyes said investigators told him and Westcott not to be afraid to use their gun to defend themselves if the suspects reappeared,...”

No where does it say where Reyes received this information. When was Reyes talking to these police?

Note the odd use of pronouns. Reyes and Wescott have a gun together?

Note how the Washington Post, the object of my comments, does not accurately reflect even the dubious assertion of the Florida report quoted above by you.

The claimed advice from the cops was quite specific to seeing the suspects.

It stated: “Reyes said investigators told him and Westcott not to be afraid to use their gun to defend themselves if the suspects reappeared”

Whereas the Post changed it to a broad generic command to shoot anyone who might try to break in.

” If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”

None of this is credible for multiple reasons.

[Ken H]

That has nothing to do with your misstatement about hearsay. A first person account is not hearsay.

As for credibility, the cops are already caught in one lie, so they have none. From the WP =>

Police initially said that the investigation of Westcott’s alleged drug dealing began because of neighbors’ complaints. However, when the Times could find no neighbors who had called police and no records of the complaints, the department revised this assertion, saying the case began with a tip from the same informer who later bought the marijuana.

Liars.