If people believe that “police shouldn’t take the law into their own hands” and say they’re just upholding the law and people’s rights on the one hand, shouldn’t they also not be quick on the other nad to convict police in the court of public opinion, and do so while knowing they don’t know much about the case?
People have hardly been unwilling to pronounce judgment here while not even knowing that the police officer says he wasn’t shooting at the black man, and many other things that have come out. The Miami Herald reported this:
“According to a law-enforcement source, Aledda was taking cover behind a squad car and fired from at least 50 yards away. He shot after another officer, in a radio transmission, suggested the autistic man was loading a weapon, which turned out to be the toy truck, the source said.”(1)
I also read an interview with the autistic man’s mother, who said that he is big and tall, often when he doesn’t get his way, he can get angry and physical. She warned the group home about him possibly “acting out” if they took him for July 4th fireworks. And this:
“On July 5, a behavior analyst from the group home called to tell her she needed to go to an urgent care center immediately. Rios had been injured while he was being restrained the day before, she said, and doctors could not treat the young man without her medical consent, as she was his legal guardian. “He was trying to get out of the house and he became aggressive and he was not allowed to get out of the house,” Soto said. Rios had broken his nose while being restrained. He also had broken his finger, an injury the group home says probably occurred earlier.” (2)
We don’t know what prompted the call to law enforcement by an onlooker. Since the man has a history of physically acting out,
You wrote earlier in this thread:
“Years of dealing with severely developmentally disabled and emotionally traumatized individuals did nothing to prepare him for an encounter with a paranoid and unpredictable person who was armed with a gun and a badge.”
There has not been proof to establish that the officer is a “paranoid and unpredictable person.”
If the police department is at fault here, rather than the incident being more of an accident that happened despite the best precautions they took while working within an imperfect system that is limited by things like budget constraints, then how does anyone know yet that it is the officer at fault, and not others in the department or a fault of the system that led to his actions?
I’ll also mention to you something I wrote to another poster here:
Jesus said this:
“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” Luke 6:38
What measure you use, will be measured back to you.
With social media being like a court, and the MSM following along, how would you like the public to treat you if you were accused of something that got high-profile attention and there was a narrative that inclined many people automatically to presuming you were guilty. Not everyone, but many people.
How much of the evidence would you want people to hear before arriving at a judgment about you? Would you want them to make a judgment if they haven’t even been willing to read one entire story about it? If they just hear a few sentences and jump in with their opinion, and don’t want to expend much energy to looking into the matter, but still want to arrive at some strong opinions about you. Would you want people lumping your case in as “one more example of how something is the matter with this type of person,” or would you want them to start from square one, and with the same mindset of a good citizen who wants to just pursue the truth and justice while sitting on a jury, will carefully try and consider each claim that is made? If any information came out that might make you look bad, would you like that person saying, “aha! I thought so,” or would you like the person to say, “that could be bad, but here’s a possible innocent explanation for that”?
(1) http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article91309192.html
(2) http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/north-miami/article91472342.html
Thank you for your very long post. I appreciate the time you invested in it.
The police are desperately trying to blame the victims in this shooting and you’ll kindly forgive me if I’m having none of it.
1. If Officer Aledda was truly firing at the autistic man from just 50 yards away then there’s no excuse for hitting the black man. None. I can score a ten ring with my rifle all day long and at 100 yards. At 50 yards it’s not even a remote challenge.
2. If the police are going to “see” a gun in everyone’s hands (regardless if it’s actually a gun or not) and then use that as an excuse to kill someone then they need to find other work. Period.
3. If the police in this country are going to use lethal force for every encounter with civilians then they’re going to have to understand that some people are going to use lethal force for every encounter with law enforcement. Because in this country there’s no law that says people have to peacefully die when some idiot decides that their cell phone, toy truck, or lipstick is a gun.
Finally, liberty and our rights are rendered meaningless when you can get murdered and the jerk killing you can blow it off with a cheesy excuse that no one else would get away with using.
I still feel terrible for the officers in Dallas but if the police in this country are going to persist in acting like an army of occupation then they are going to foment an insurgency. It’s just that simple.