It’s especially bad when the cops are hopping into folks backyards to get a peak into a neighbor’s backyard, and they blow away the labs and golden’s in the totally uninvolved person’s own yard. “I felt threatened” (by a lab or a golden retriever) is no damn excuse at all, when the cop is on private property on a fishing expedition. Yet they do it, and they get away with it.
Here in NE Florida, the Jax PD has a new standard for shooting “suspects.” The cop just has to say, “I ordered him to show his hands, and he didn’t.”
The only witness, being dead, can’t contradict the cop’s story. So basically, a JPD cop can shoot a suspect, kill him, and then just claim the dead suspect “refused to show his hands.”
That is a hop-skip-jump from extrajudicial execution.
“That is a hop-skip-jump from extrajudicial execution.”
I see as just that...executions. “Do as I say or else!” I said probably 10 years ago that it will get to the point that if a cop is headed your direction we’ll need to kill it before it kills you. We are nearly there.
Once I saw that FBI agent shoot that kid in the face for “reaching for something” as he was trying to unbuckle his seatbelt and exit the vehicle as ordered I knew that was the direction law enforcement was headed.
Now we see cops shoot for all kinds of reasons. “Dog seemed vicious”, even though it was a toy poodle. “Person seemed to be reaching for something”, even though they were ordered to present their ID from their pocket. “It was dark and he was reaching for something”, even though the cops stopped the person in a dark alley and could have ordered them first into the light. “It was an accident”, even though they pointed a loaded gun at the back of a 9 year old boy with their finger on the trigger. None of these incidents ever resulted in prosecution of wrongful death, murder, or manslaughter.