Posted on 02/01/2006 8:26:30 AM PST by Smogger
CHINO, Calif. - A videotape released Tuesday shows a sheriff’s deputy shooting an unarmed Air Force policeman who recently returned from Iraq as he appeared to obey an order to get up off the ground.
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'Get up' Carrion is heard telling the officer he is unarmed and is in the military.
At one point, a voice is heard saying several times: “Get up.”
Carrion says: “I’m gonna get up.” As he rises, at least four shots are fired and Carrion collapses, crying out in pain.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” someone shouts.
In a telephone interview conducted in Spanish, Valdez said after the shooting, Carrion asks the deputy, “Why did you shoot me if you told me to stand up?” That alleged exchange cannot be heard on the video.
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(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Fortunately the deputy is a lousy shot, and the Airman will probably be OK.
"As he rises, at least four shots are fired..."
I counted three.
If there was no video, I wonder how sympathetic some people would be if the victim were not a recent vet.
I appreciate hearing from a retired cop my own thoughts: there is more to find out, but it looks very bad for the deputy at this time.
Most police officers are decent people doing a difficult and often nasty job under very trying conditions where they never know all the facts. I respect that, but they do not AFAIK issue halos with the badge. A few power trippers slip through the cracks and there are a few cops I would prefer not to be in society at all much less in a position of authority and responsibility. Each case is different, and must be treated according to the facts, not with a blanket let the officer do his job or a catchall execute the cop.
Are you serious?
I'll bet the cop knows you have a CHL/CCW before he ever steps out of his vehicle. I know the do in Texas, because the CHL's have the driver's license number right on them. Of course they still have to correlate that to your vehicle's tag number, and it's possible that the driver would not be the one with the CHL.
Actually, on a small scale, I have. Further, I've applied to agencies, been put through polygraph tests (black magic and voodoo), and been told that I've lied about my criminal background. They knew damned well my record is clean (other than speeding...).
Sure, there are good cops out there, but they sure have to hide it, because if they show they are for JUSTICE and not for LAWYERS OR THE SYSTEM, they get canned real quick.
Not all good cops have to hide it. Good agencies are good from the top down. Bad agencies are bad from the top down. Whatever direction the Chief/Sheriff leads, the department follows. I happened to live in a county where the Sheriff (Scott Lancaster) was a criminal (even though he returned the money). They have a guy now who is killing morale even worse.
Other counties have good folks leading them and morale (and police behavior) is good.
That's a tricky call, I'm sure. I just don't want the issue to come up if I have to get out of the car for any reason and take the cop by surprise. If he gets nervous when he's informed verbally, I figure he could get dangerously nervous if he saw it and overreacted. None of us has any guarantees that whatever approach we take will be the one that keeps us from being shot, I suppose.
Yep, I tried but the parser clips it off.....
You got that right! Call 'em like you see in when you have all of the info you can get. That's what is supposed to be done. And for sure there are some in uniform that need to find a new career. When the repeat problem children in LE do something very bad, I think it's called "Unlawful Rentention" in civil courts and that is usually the motivation for Admin types in LE to start yanking badges.
Doesn't always work though, too many keep slipping thru the cracks.
The SP was not the driver. The deputy used poor procedure if he said "Don't get up" rather than "Stay Down". The former is way to easy to misunderstand, and it's pretty obvious the shootee thought he was obeying the deputy.
"I'll bet the cop knows you have a CHL/CCW before he ever steps out of his vehicle. "
Nope. That is a separate computer system and they really don't care.
If someone says that somebody who runs from police deserves to get the crap beat out of him, or even worse, then we have abandoned one of the most basic elements of the criminal justice system.
You are no longer "presumed innocent". Now, you are automatically "guilty" of something, and it is your burden to prove otherwise.
That is an interesting point. It is also noteworthy that most cops are military vets. Some of the anti-cop turds would be ridden out of FR on a rail if they said bad things about vets.
My whole take on the situation is that in every walk of life (including police AND veterans) you'll find turds. I just don't believe that the turds are a majority anywhere, yet.
Except Hollywood and DU.
True, but if he is going to arrest me then the usual question is, "Do you have any weapons on you?", so he gets a chance not to be surprised.
Due to my social life I meets a number of cops and they really don't care who is armed. They seem to only care when it is during a traffic stop or incident where they were called out.
I was just getting onto a fly-over bridge when a policeman flashed his lights behind me (he'd clocked me speeding). For my safety and his, I thought I was doing the right thing to keep going, but at a reduced speed, and then pull over when I got to the other end of the fly-over bridge and then pull over on solid ground. But, by the time I got to the bottom, he had turned on his speaker and was commanding, "pull over RIGHT NOW".
Sorry, but no way was I going to pull over on the practically non-existent shoulder of that fly-over bridge with other cars whizzing by at or above the 60 mph speed limit.
By the time I came to a stop, I was scared and feeling humiliated. When he came to my window, he was full-up ANGRY and demanding to know why I hadn't pulled over. I wanted so badly to call him a Barney Fife, but I just told him I did it to be safe. He said, "When a police officer tells you to pull over, YOU PULL OVER!!!" in kind of a Frank Constanza type rage.
I bet he's impotent.
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