Posted on 07/18/2010 12:50:12 PM PDT by redreno
Erik Scott ran with the bulls in Pamplona and jumped out of airplanes while training to be a paratrooper.
A West Point graduate who commanded battle tanks, everything he did in life he did with zeal.
"He reached for the stars and always wanted that new challenge," said his mother, Linda Scott, one week to the day after he was shot and killed by Las Vegas police officers.
(Excerpt) Read more at lvrj.com ...
authorities are now concerned relieved that the video is somehow damaged and may not be able to be viewed.
There. fixed it.
This goes for armed and unarmed citizens. But especially armed ones.
Mr. Scott probably thought he was dealing with people who dealt with him using good training and discipline and in the end had his best interests at heart. He was wrong.
I suppose the lesson here is, cops are potentially as much of a threat as criminals if you are carrying a concealed weapon. Plus they can act pretty much with impunity under the law in such situations and the most important thing is that they go home safely at night - but not necessarily you.
Good luck, citizen!
Remember, Nevada is also an open carry state. You do not need a permit to carry openly, so “printing” is never a legal issue. These police should have been trained on how to deal with an individual who is open carrying. The proper way is to realize that they are not doing anything illegal, not to detain them, not to pull weapons on them, at most to ask them to leave private property when the owner/manager of the private property informs them that they are trespassing because the owner/manager does not want them armed on the property.
As far as I can tell, the owner/manager never asked Erik Scott to leave, never informed him that the police had been called, and in general acted maliciously and irresponsibly in setting up the situation that lead to his death. The video tapes and 911 recordings would clarify this issue. If Costco employees acted maliciously/irresponsibly, they could be liable for millions in damages. Perhaps this is why we are having technical glitches in seeing the videos.
If an armed citizen shoots a criminal in a convenience store, we see the video within hours, with no concern about the legal consequences. But when the legal consequences involve the police, suddenly the rules are changed.
If witness accounts are accurate, he dealt with them by following their instructions and got shot anyway.
People seem to argue with me here by making my point for me. Open carry or permits be damned ,Cops were called because someone saw his gun. Cops make mistakes,eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. For whatever reason, even, maybe especially, if told to do so by a cop, never put your hand near the weapon during a contact with LEO. If in doubt,slowly put hands on your head, and freeze.
You can "should" all day about what the law should be, how cops should be trained , what a citizen should be able to expect. Good CCW training means knowing how to deal with cops. If you carry everyday, you will have an encounter like Mr. Scott.
I have every reason to believe Mr.Scott was among the finest of our citizens. I fully expect he knew how to handle many dangerous situations,knew how to put ordinance large or small on target. But his fine education and experience in the military did not prepare him to deal with scared, poorly trained, cops.
If this gets in front of a jury, the absence of the tape should be viewed as incriminating as the tape could possibly have been. Otherwise there's an incentive for the tape to disappear. If that's the policy, tapes will stop disappearing.
The one thing people seem to forget is that almost of the information about what happened in the store is information supplied by the police, in particular, a certain Captain Patrick Neville. The most damning thing- the cops haven’t released the 911 tape, which leads me to believe that, perhaps, whoever made the initial call, didn’t describe the situation the way the police claim. Think about it. If they had a Costco employee on tape saying there was an armed man acting erratically or irrationally, you can bet your bottom dollar they would have released it by now. Nope, I’m betting the story will change and the cops will say that employees or customers at the scene (before Scott left the store) told them that he was acting bizarrely. There’s supposedly an open phone line recording of the actual shooting complete with the cops screaming at the guy. I’m betting the time lag between the initial confrontation and the shooting is just short of instantaneous, and the cops are trying to reconstruct it time wise to make it look like a good shooting.
The problem with that is it is basically the embracing of “guilty until proven innocent.”
If the tape does turn out to be damaged then there SHOULD be a separate investigation in that [obstruction of justice OR incompetence(malfeasance), at least; possibly conspiracy] and ALL people on the tape’s chain of custody should be thoroughly investigated.
I know, and for government employees, especially those who've been in the chain of custody of disappearing evidence, I'm OK with that. For the productively employed, no. The Constitution is there to protect us from them, not the other way around.
And besides, I didn’t say that should be the policy when there never was a tape to begin with, but when they mysteriously disappear.
“Cops make mistakes,eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable. For whatever reason, even, maybe especially, if told to do so by a cop, never put your hand near the weapon during a contact with LEO.”
When I took my CCW class, both instructors said to do whatever the cops tell you. Both had handed their weapons to cops after being told to do so. Both had let cops remove the weapons themselves, when told to do so. Both were ex-cops.
There is no standard procedure.
And I assure you, taking down an armed suspect in a crowd when the suspect isn’t holding his gun is NOT a standard procedure ANYWHERE. Standing at the entrance with guns drawn was the worst possible way to stop and disarm a dangerous suspect. At a bare minimum, these 3 cops were very stupid and bad at their jobs.
For sake of discussion, what would happen if the person carrying was deaf? Should he be shot for the crime of deafness? Do deaf people lose their Constitutional rights?
I admire cops because they take risks to keep us safe, not because they kill people to ensure their safety at all cost.
What happened to yesterday’s (3/28/11) thread on this Costco topic? I read through about 60 replies yesterday but today I can’t find the posting.
Hopefully the cops will receive poetic justice one day and hopefully their families will be there when it happens.
Thank you. FReegards, Z
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