Posted on 10/05/2010 6:01:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
The "Long Gray Line" is bringing pressure on the Vegas department following Erik Scott's death in a hail of bullets.
It was a foregone conclusion that a coroner’s inquest in Las Vegas would find three Metro police officers justified in gunning down Erik Scott in a hail of bullets outside of a crowded Costco on July 10, even though five of the seven bullets hit him from behind, and at least one appeared to have been fired while Scott lay prone, dead or dying on the ground.
Police were called to the store after an employee described Scott as both armed and acting as if he were under the influence of narcotics. As Scott and his girlfriend emerged from the store along with dozens of other shoppers, he was confronted by a trio of officers with weapons already drawn. Scott was identified by a Costco employee, and seconds later, Scott lay dead on the ground. These are the facts of the case that are not in dispute.
What is very much in dispute is whether or not Costco employees unnecessarily escalated the threat, whether the store chain’s unclear policies on customers carrying weapons and their employee training contributed to the events that led to Scott’s death, and whether or not police officers violated Erik Scott’s civil rights when they killed him in a confrontation that some argue was little more than an ambush or assassination.
Erik Scott’s family is expected to file a civil case against Costco, the Metro police, and the individual officers over his death, but that isn’t the only action being called for because of this incident. Metro has raised the ire of the the Long Gray Line — Erik Scott’s fellow graduates of the United States Military Academy.
Sources have provided PJM with copies of communications between members of the group. Alumni in the threaded discussion seem almost universally suspect of the coroner’s inquest process used in Las Vegas, where prosecutors and law enforcement control the witnesses called and the questions asked, and disallow cross-examination. Since 1976, law enforcement officers have been in front of the coroner’s inquest more than 200 times, and none has resulted in criminal charges being filed against an officer for even the most controversial shootings.
One alum wrote to the president of one of the larger West Point Society chapters:
I don’t know if you are aware of the tragic shooting of Eric Scott ‘94 in Las Vegas not long ago. It looks more and more like a police screw up and cover up on top of that. We are trying to bring as much political pressure to bear, as possible, to make sure the “truth” comes out.
Another suggested that members bring the Scott case to the attention of West Point and Naval Academy graduates in Congress: Rep. John Shimkus, Rep. Joe Sestak, Rep. Geoff Davis, Rep. Brett Guthrie, Senator Jack Reed, Senator John McCain, and Senator Jim Webb, and well as Nevada’s Congressional delegation, plus Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Chairman of the House Judicial Committee John Conyers. (Interestingly enough, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s name was never mentioned.)
One of the strongest comments openly suggested that the Metropolitan Police Department should be considered as an adversary:
I think that we, as a society, need to take a more active stance. This needs to go to the AOG. Remember the words of “The Corps.” We all took the same oath the Erik Scott did many years ago, on the Plain “to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” The abuse of due process, not only for Erik, but all of the others who didn’t have a voice is an attack on the Constitution.
There were at least three of us at the vigil last night. I think that we need to have a much more visible presence to show our support of a member of The Long Gray Line.
Another graduate called Metro PD an “out of control police force,” a characterization that seems to match up with the analysis of the shooting conducted by Mike McDaniel, a former police officer and SWAT operator (also my co-blogger at Confederate Yankee) who recently analyzed the audio of the 911 call and the police radio transcripts. Troubling bursts of static in the Metro radio traffic at key points indicate that these communications need to be examined, and the lack of in-car camera footage from the multiple police cars is also odd — to put it mildly. This is on top of the fact that Costco’s cameras seemingly malfunctioned in the days before the shooting, meaning that none of the four cameras pointed at the scene of the shooting recorded the event according to Metro and Costco — the two entities that have the most to lose from disclosure of such evidence.
A letter composed by one of the officers has been submitted to Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, outlining “an on-going pattern of police misconduct” by authorities in Las Vegas and citing 63 officer-involved shootings since 2005.
Eric Scott’s death may have been ruled justifiable during the coroner’s inquest, but the pending civil trial to be filed by his family, and the specter of a federal civil rights case being filed against the department, means that the spotlight on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and its leadership will only get brighter.
Really? They were standing in Mosher's line of fire?
[Honesty Disclaimer]: That is what they showed on a moving display with a time hack for each sentence. I tried to follow the tape, and got about twice that...12 seconds. As garbled as the tape was, I have to guess that the time line the inquest displayed in minutes and seconds was accurate - otherwise, why add a distorted time line? When I reviewed the full tape, my stopwatch regularly varied from the time line shown at the side...maybe due to their playback machine? At some points it seemed to freeze up for 10-15 seconds.
Are you saying you're getting twelve seconds instead of six? And are you using a tape of the inquest or something available online? A transcript of the inquest would be nice, if one can be found.
You blame the cops for assuming a round was chambered. Is that logical?
I wrote that the police got to assume that a round was chambered. I then wrote that they didn't get to pretend at the inquest that a round was chambered if it wasn't.
Mosher asserted to the inquest that he could shoot through Erik's holster - which he determined in 2 seconds, before he started shooting. This is pretending to the uninformed that a round was chambered.
McDaniels posits "a circular firing squad".
>I think the round in the pipe question is a useless approach here, simply because any firearm [or toy for that matter] pointed at a cop is grounds for gettin shot...
While I find your posts to be interesting and/or well-reasoned the usage of ‘any’ here, when applied to a toy, means that any kid pointing his Buzz Lightyear Laser Blaster-Cannon (or even a GI Joe’s gun) at a cop has forfeited his life.
On a thread where the minutia of legalities/justifications are being used or examined precision/accuracy is of utmost importance.... and I’d rather not give the police even theoretical justification for killing a kid who was playing with a toy on *ANY* scale larger than the case-by-case basis.
The logical extension of these arguments is a “throw-down” water pistol...
1 - I haven’t seen a diagram of where the cops were standing. However, if they were all standing in the same spot, they were screwing up. The best bet would have been to walk up to Scott in the parking lot, with the other two cops spread well apart.
2 - The video of the transcript being played is found on one of the sites we aren’t supposed to link to...I’ll send the link to you privately. The audio is very hard to hear. The conversation and the time line is easily seen in the video. It is the video of the inquest, so the data is what the DA presented.
The value of the unloaded chamber is that it shows proof of Scott’s frame of mind. In day 1 of the inquest, the DA suggested Scott was trying to commit suicide by cop...yet the physical evidence shows Scott was not prepared or interested in taking anyone hostage, or threatening anyone. You just can’t do that with a holstered gun with no round in the chamber.
It confirms the witness testimony that Scott was NOT acting like a threat while exiting...so why confront him in a crowd, and why start shooting 2 seconds after the first command. It means there was no way Scott could have threatened anyone without taking time to load his gun, so you are left with a man leaving Costco with a concealed gun, not acting strange, not waving a gun around, not threatening anyone - yet within 6 seconds he went from someone the cops didn’t know was the suspect to a fatally wounded man. SIX SECONDS!
I think that shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the cops were trigger happy. And I wouldn’t want to be the defense in a civil trial, trying to explain why my client felt he had to shoot Scott less than 6 seconds after seeing him, and without giving him time to obey any commands.
>The logical extension of these arguments is a “throw-down” water pistol...
Given the lack of care for the open/honest truth* we’ve seen from the LVPD & the inquest I would only be slightly surprised to hear of the police shooting someone ‘armed’ with a toy [who wasn’t bluffing up a bank-robbery or carjacking or somesuch].
[/cynic]
*We’ve seen them attempting to taint the outcome by parading the SUBJECTIVE and CIRCUMSTANTIAL as *fact.*
-We’ve seen them raid/search the deceased’s home w/o a warrant (do you HONESTLY believe there was a pressing and immediate need for that?).
-We’ve seen multiple changes in the official story, however the changes make things conflict more and do not clear things up.
-We’ve seen *no* OBJECTIVE analysis of the officer’s actions. (The inquest started with the bigoted assumption the officers were in-the-right.)
>The logical extension of these arguments is a “throw-down” water pistol...
Addendum:
Do you remember that story about the SWAT-raid where the officers killed a sleeping girl [7 yrs old, IIRC] during a raid? The officer said that his weapon went off in a struggle to retain his weapon while the person he was struggling with [the girl’s grandmother, IIRC]. A throw-down water pistol would have given them a lot more credibility, no?
They could, in that case, used this story: “We *burst* into the house and the first thing I see is movement of something being aimed at me so I shot.”
Unfortunately, the cops couldn't read his mind.
Quit acting like it was an extended armed standoff, instead of the two snaps of a finger that it was.
As you post, and I reflect more on Mike McDaniels’ analysis, it’s becoming very clear why the video had to “go away”.
I don’t expect the cops to read Scott’s mind. I expect them to use their eyes.
A man is exiting Costco quietly - enough so that the cops need someone to identify him as the ‘stumbling, drug-crazed freak’. He isn’t acting like a threat.
Yet within 6 seconds he is dead. Why? Because the cops were trigger happy. They were primed by the dispatcher & the Costco employees to expect a high-threat drug using mad man...and they based their treatment of Scott on what they expected, not what they saw.
If a man is leaving quietly, why not wait until he is in the parking lot away from other customers? And if he is acting normal enough that Costco needs to point him out, why not act as though he is innocent, and simply ask him for a minute of his time?
But they went in primed for a drug-crazed madman. They grabbed at him from behind, and then confronted him with conflicting commands, and TWO SECONDS after their first words, they opened fire. As best I can time it, Mosher pulled the trigger while saying his second “Get down!”
If you were exiting quietly, and didn’t know the cops had been told you were a wild man threatening others, and suddenly a cop shouted “Put your hands where I see them now, drop it, get on the ground, get on the ground...” - would your knees be on the ground that fast? Mine wouldn’t. Not in two seconds. Even if I made the decision to go to my knees, it would take me over two seconds because I wouldn’t want to injure my knees on the concrete.
And I probably wouldn’t make any move until the string of commands stopped, so I could figure out what the cops were saying. And if I was leaving the Costco that day, I would die for the crime of...listening? Not wanting to hurt my knees by dropping like a soldier under enemy fire? The crime of being innocent, and thinking like an innocent person?
Get a stopwatch, click go and have someone shout the commands Scott received...would your knees hit the ground in 2 seconds? Or would you die at the hands of the LVPD?
Does the LVPD have the right to kill based on hearsay?
It would shut a lot of these naysayers right up.
>>The value of the unloaded chamber is that it shows proof of Scott’s frame of mind.
>
>Unfortunately, the cops couldn’t read his mind.
And here you fall into the same trapped mentality the inquest did: instead of looking at the true state of things [after the fact] and comparing them to the subjective you are assuming a position and justifying it [or at least trying to].
Sure in the adrenaline-rush of things the subjective time [order to shot] the officers felt could have been minutes... or it could have been instantaneous.
How does that compare to the actuality of elapsed time? (6 seconds? 12 seconds? I don’t think I’ve heard any estimate, even by the police, exceeding 21 seconds.)
And how does that time-interval mesh with a “reasonable person’s” compliance with those orders [esp in that sort of ‘surprise situation’]?
Metro Police Officer William Mosher, one of three officers who shot Erik Scott, said he is a member of Metro's crisis intervention team and has gone through extra training to deal with situations that might involve people with mental issues.“With the details we had and the fact that he had a weapon, that’s not really the time to talk,” Mosher said.
He also said he only observed Scott’s behavior for about 30 seconds between the time Scott was pointed out to him and shots were fired.
Mosher, who is a Marine, said Scott, a West Point graduate, should have known how to safely surrender a weapon to an officer, but he didn't act in an appropriate way.
The full report is here.
And here you fall into the same trapped mentality the inquest did: instead of looking at the true state of things [after the fact] and comparing them to the subjective you are assuming a position and justifying it [or at least trying to].
They could read his mind after the fact?
If someone pointed a gun at you (not saying Erik did), would you assume it was loaded or not?
“He also said he only observed Scott’s behavior for about 30 seconds between the time Scott was pointed out to him and shots were fired.”
The audio & time line given at the inquest say Mosher was wrong. Of course, he was wrong about a lot that day. Wrong about what gun Scott had. Wrong about the holster. Wrong about being able to shoot in the holster. Wrong about the gun caliber. Wrong about what he said to Scott. And very wrong about how long it took for him to decide to kill Scott...
“With the details we had and the fact that he had a weapon, that’s not really the time to talk,” Mosher said.”
Except the scene Mosher SAW was different from what he had been told to expect. Cops are expected to deal with what is, not with what they heard before arriving. Which is why I think either Costco or their employees may well be found to have liability...
Hopefully, I would see the holster wrapped around it. However, the time line makes me suspect that Scott was fatally wounded before he did anything more than get the holster loose. I don’t think he had enough time.
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