Posted on 05/23/2015 11:21:35 AM PDT by navysealdad
Yes, Cleveland police Officer Michael Brelo stood on a car and shot 15 times at the vehicle's unarmed black occupants seconds after he and fellow officers first riddled the car with bullets in 2012 -- but the shooting was justified, a judge ruled Saturday.
Concluding just one of several police use-of-force cases that prompted recent outrage in Cleveland, a Cuyahoga County judge decided that Brelo was not guilty of voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault in the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams following a 22-mile car chase.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Cleveland police Officer Michael Brelo stood on a car and shot 15 times at the vehicle's unarmed black occupants seconds after he and fellow officers first riddled the car with bullets in 2012... following a 22-mile car chase.
Tragic, but moronic on the part of the driver. If they had convicted the cops, pursuit of armed criminal suspects would have ended. The thing that distinguishes US cops from cops in other countries is the extent to which American cops will put themselves in harm's way to apprehend suspects. For instance, in 2012, 4 British cops died in the line of duty. The American number was 133, or 33x the British number despite the fact that the US population is only 5x Britain's.
I don’t see this ending well.
It would appear that in the new Obama World, police officers have an obligation to give obvious felons a fair chance to pick them off before they are authorized to use deadly force.
The two men were armed.
They had a two thousand pound car.
They had already used that car to ram a police cruiser, so they knew how to use it.
Verdict: The reporter is an idiot who is unaware that you can squash people and things really good with a car.
American police have no duty to pursue.
Only local departmental policy, and the teaching of "confrontation" in their academies.
two thousand pounds...Was he driving an Opel GT?
Cleveland's population is 400K. It was 915K in 1950. Not a decade has gone by since then, that this number hasn't gone down.
That's an important point. But what's missing from the article is the state of that car when the police started shooting. Was the car hemmed in, and so no longer a threat? Or was the car in motion and still capable of maneuvering, and so still a threat?
If I were the judge, the car's state would be most important.
The question that hasn't been answered (or asked) is why this couple was so hell-bent on not stopping for the police.
Thanks, I wholeheartedly agree. I remember the eight times I led a dozen police vehicles on a 22 mile high-speed chase, I, uh, wait...
Duty and courage are different things - the first is pablum that comes from without - the second is commitment that comes from within. Police everywhere are sworn to protect. That means risking their lives to catch criminal suspects. Outside of the US, cops go along to get along.
Al Sharptongue to urge Cleveland to burn.
“Ultimately the chase ended in a school parking lot outside the Cleveland city limits, with Russell using his vehicle as a battering ram against the police cruisers. Faced with this imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm, the 13 officers on scene fired 137 rounds at the vehicle over a 20 second period, mortality wounding Russell and Williams.
Of the 137 rounds fired over those 20 seconds, all parties agreed that the first 122 bullets fired, and all the bullets fired during the first 12 seconds, were legally justified.
The only legal dispute was over the last 15 bullets fired by Brelo during the last 8 seconds, during which Brelo was standing on the hood of Russell’s vehicle and firing through the windshield. (Notably, during these last 8 seconds other officers were also still firing into Russell’s vehicle.)
Brelo was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter, and two counts of the lesser included offense of felonious assault.”
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For each of these counts, the Judge found that they had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The reason is that both Russell and Williams had received fatal shots from other officers, whose shots had been deemed lawful. Thus, even though at least some of Brelo’s shots certainly caused mortal injury, it cannot be said that Brelo was responsible beyond a reasonable doubt for their actual deaths because Russell and Williams would have died from the other officers’s lawfully fired bullets even absent Brelo’s fatal shots.”
The US Supreme Court begs to differ.
Warren v. District of Columbia, 1981
"Risking their lives" is merely following their "confrontation" training, or departmental policy.
No such animal as a hemmed in car, unless it's hemmed in by tanks on every side. If the blocking vehicles aren't tanks or something equally heavy, as long as the engine is still going, the car can move and kill officers that get in its path. Heck, I know of someone who, from a standing start, accidentally backed up his econobox and killed someone inside a foot of space. In addition, the cops were operating with the assumption that the occupants had firearms on them.
At least this Mayor called for calm.
As I pointed out earlier, the number of dead cops per year indicates they risk their lives a lot more than British cops. They'd be a lot safer, and our streets a lot more dangerous, if they simply turned a blind eye to criminal activity, the way cops in other countries do.
Given the circumstances, the cop made the right decision in waiving his right to a jury trial.
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