Posted on 08/12/2011 12:20:01 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
FREEMANSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Authorities say a police officer slain while responding to a domestic disturbance in a small eastern Pennsylvania borough had pointed a stun gun at two dogs before being shot.
The Morning Call of Allentown reports Freemansburg police Officer Robert Lasso had pointed at the attacking dogs when the homeowner pulled out a shotgun and fired the fatal blast Thursday evening.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Stretching the truth with some wild story does nothing but make you look silly.
Having “domestic violence” calls trump a home owners constitutional rights is an encroachment
Really, then get enough people to agree with you and change them. I just think you will find that you are running your head into a brick wall.
It puts people out of business, and never happens outside of sports stadiums or large arenas that produce revenue for the city. Just restaurants, bars, and general places where Americans interacted freely for many years before MADD nannied everyone’s pants off.
Mr. Hitchko is a frightening looking man.
Another victim of “political correctness”!! Had the officer drawn his weapon instead of a taser he might be alive today.
They are not grabbing “Drunks”. They are grabbing everyone hoping to catch a DUI. DUI’s in PA are a massive revenue stream in some of these communities to fund all the paramilitary outfits and bloated police forces. If you get a DUI in PA, it is focused on fines and fees and not deterrence.
When you have a police force injecting themselves into all of these gotcha sort of activities, it sours the relationship that the community has with the police. It builds distrust of the cops. It make the cops look like a Stazi style outfit instead of being considered the friend in the neighborhood.
There is also an economic factor. Many of these places, like Freemansburg, have bars and restaurants that are hurting with this. Who wants to go out to a place that has a police presence regardless of how drunk you are planning to get? Who wants to take a chance?
That's a shame.
/johnny
As an aside, this involves some bad journalism, an important fact for everyone to consider. After looking at several of the “news” links, several things stand out.
1) The reporters are using words that vilify the shooter, and at the same time other words that sanctify the officer. No matter what the facts, this is not objective reporting, and should have been stopped by the editor.
2) Because of this bad journalism, a judge could easily agree to a defense motion for a change of venue, because it has tainted the jury pool. It gives an advantage to defense argument that he cannot receive a fair trial.
3) The judge might also agree that because of such bias by the press, that the trial will not be open to the public or the press. And the judge may now exclude other events that the reporters highlighted in the shooter’s past that would have been very relevant to the trial.
The bottom line is that this should be an open and shut case, but by their actions, the media may mitigate the punishment or could even result in a directed acquittal.
46-year-old George Hitcho Jr is very lucky up til now, in many burgs he would not make it to jail after offing a cop.
As it is he will likely cost us all a lot of money keeping his sorry ass in jail forever.
Sympathy and prayers for the officers family and soul.
Seems like everything was under control until Chief Wiggam ordered the dogs killed. An incident like this was bound to happen sooner or later considering how attached some folks are to their dogs.
We have it. We just don’t use it.
I hope Corbett has the stones to finally dispense with Mummia. That one really bugs me. He should have fried by now.
What happened will come out in court.
It was a taser pointed at a dog and the cop was on the property in response to a domestic violence call and now he’s dead from a shotgun blast to the head... What did I leave out... Oh yeah... you’re a moron.
It is not a story, it is unfortunately an actual event. It happened to a Marine in AZ. Unfortunately he was also killed by one of the 70+ bullets. So not much of a stretch.
LOL, funny, you have a man, a wife, and kids, all have equal rights under the law. So who’s rights were violated.
There is no such thing as a free country,just different levels of serfdom.America USED to be under a light yoke but in my lifetime it has gotten very heavy. For instance there were no sales taxes here when I started school,now we pay 7% on nearly everything.Of course that is on things bought using the roughly 75% of my pay the government doesn't take before I see it.
Yes, I know where it happened and one has nothing to do with the other.
Well, what in the world would you have the cops do then?
Suppose a call comes in saying there's trouble at a residence. But you don't want the cop to "invade" the property. Should the cop just park out front with a pair of binoculars and try to look through the house's windows?
And I do value the life of the cop over the life of a dog. A cop (or anyone else) has every right to defend himself against a possible dog attack.
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