Posted on 03/14/2005 8:48:17 AM PST by YoungBlackRepublican
A video camera, which is supposed to be monitored by two guards in a command post, shows the two arriving in the holding area between two courtrooms, according to a law enforcement official who viewed the tape.
The video shows Hall guiding Nichols, whose hands are still handcuffed behind his back, face-first into one of two open cells.
Hall releases one cuff and turns Nichols around to unhook the remaining cuff, which is dangling from his wrist. She uncuffs him so he can change from a jail jumpsuit into street clothes.
The muscular, 33-year-old Nichols then lunges at Hall, knocking the petite, 51-year-old woman backward into another cell. Both disappear from camera view because having a camera inside the actual holding cells is prohibited for privacy reasons. Two to three minutes later, Nichols emerges from the cell, holding Hall's gun belt and police radio. He picks up her keys from the floor and locks her inside the cell. Nichols then enters the empty cell.
A couple of minutes later, he emerges dressed in civilian clothes. He locks the door behind him and saunters calmly out of the holding area, carrying the gun belt, according to the law enforcement official who viewed the tape. Nichols appears to know which key to use to unlock the holding area door and enters a vacant courtroom on the eighth floor.
I heard the cops have this all on tape.
To think those people would be alive if the two people who are supposed to monitor that tape had been doing their job.
I won't hold my breath for them to be fired.
This is just gross negligence. And .. if I was related to the court reporter, I would be filing a lawsuit against the Sheriff's office.
I'm wondering if Nichols had been in and around the area long enough to have figured out that nobody was watching the area.
And .. secondly, why was a WOMAN in with a MAN who was changing his clothes. I really doubt MEN are allowed to be with WOMEN prisoners when they dress for court ..?? Hmmmm?
The judge and prosecutor had asked for more protection and this is what they got?
A female deputy alone in a room that is supposed to be monitored via video but in fact was not?
What was the security before the sheriff's office beefed up? Someone in a wheelchair and a frying pan?
On CNN last night they said it was Nichols 10th trip through that changing room so he knew the procedure very well.
And good point about a woman alone while a man is changing.
Not only that .. wasn't the women officer/guard shot?
No one heard the gun shot?
If she was hit in the head .. the why was she in surgery?
No. The female guard was not shot. She was beaten. They did think she'd been shot at the hospital but it has turned out not to be the case. He beat her unconscious for 30 seconds and then continued beating her for 3 minutes.
There was something last night about the panic button, but I missed the discussion. I think it didn't work.
And the cops are not permitted to wear their guns into the courthouse. So once the slaughter happened, they had to stand in line to retrieve their guns.
And I'd been under the impression that Nichols attacked the female deputy, opened the door to the courtroom and started shooting. He didn't. He had to walk across a walkway that attaches the changing room area and the courtroom. They are in separate buildings.
So if those people who are supposed to monitor the changing room had done their job, they could have put the courthouse in lockdown!
I read that on the day he assaulted Deputy Hall, it was Nichols 10th time of going through the dressing for court routine. I believe he'd been paying attention to details over the previous 9 times and had taken note of which key fit which door.
I haven't seen the news much yesterday .. so please excuse my confusion
This is all just unbelievable
I didn't know a lot of this until last night, and I'd been paying attention, I thought :-)
But the truth about a lot of this is just starting to come out. I'm usually a pretty big supporter of LE, but in this case, heaven help Atlanta if there is a terrorist attack. They are the most incompetent bunch I've seen in a long time.
Nichols beat the female sheriff so badly, for over three minutes, that the hospital thought she had been shot.
They have it on videotape. The changing room was to have been monitored at all times by two staffers. Except it wasn't. At least not this time.
Not quite. BTK's daughter provided DNA to the police but she did not know the real reason they were asking for it. So it is incorrect to say she turned her father in and it was, in effect, excellent police work.
And your guess is completely ignorant. It isn't racial and your "guess" is offensive. I have been on a jury panel in another city where a white guy who was up on charges of capital murder, (multiple counts), also had his cuffs removed before the potential jurors had the chance to see him. In his 3-piece suit and fresh haircut, he looked "safer" than most of the lawyers around the table. As a member of the jury panel. I couldn't tell who was the accused and who were the lawyers until they made him stand up.
In that city there were two deputies built like NFL linemen close by at all times, but it is standard procedure in all jurisdictions not to allow jurors to see an accused in cuffs, and IMHO, it's a good rule. Exceptions can and have been made if the guy has made verbal threats or tried something in court when not cuffed.
Not in front of a jury, they aren't. You are thinking about arraignments before a judge, not a jury trial.
Probably all of them.
The fact of human nature is to grow complacent over time. This system probably has 10 - 20 prisoners go into that courtroom every day of the week for pretrial, trials, motions, arraignments and sentencing. Multiply that by the number of courtrooms in the building and you have hundreds of prisoners coming and going each week for many years - all without incident.
This leads to complacency which ultimately leads to the occasional tragedy.
This week, probably every court in the country is reviewing its security procedure. Ten years from now few of the new procedures will be observed.
Ditto.
In our jail - this would never have happened. Our Sheriff was a stickler on this stuff. But .. the PC idiots today think a woman should be allowed to do any job. I'm fine with that - but she needs to be qualified.
Because of my slight build, I WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO LODGE PRISONERS WHO WERE MALE - WE HAD PLENTY OF MALE OFFICERS TO DO THAT. But even when I lodged females, we didn't have a camera monitoring system (old jail), so an officer with a weapon was stationed outside the door of the room and the door was ajar so he could hear what was going on.
I can only remember one time when I had 3 females, and one prisoner amped up her voice to me and the male officer was in the room immediately - with the strap holding his weapon undone - and his hand on his weapon [I was unarmed]. Since the females had already been checked - he remained in the room with me and we lodged them into the cells together. THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE - not leaving some person alone with prisoner.
That Sheriff - if elected - should be RECALLED or IMPEACHED for dereliction of duty.
Ditto every word you said.
I know that some freepers got upset when people questioned why a petite woman was guarding a big man like Nichols.
I thought it should be questioned and should not have happened. It's just a matter of physical strength and common sense.
And it sounds like where you work is well run and everyone's safety is more assured than those in Atlanta.
The biggest mistake is having an armed deputy within striking distance of the prisoner and not having an armed deputy about 10 feet away. If they had that set up, this probably would never have happened.
Right, why give a violent criminal the benefit of the doubt. That is a suicide mission.
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