An agitated man gets up and runs off an airplane into the airport, his wife is explaining, “He’s Sick,” he has no weapon, how does he pose a threat requiring lethal force?
There are no reports of any other passengers in the vicinity in the airport. The White House justification, and the justification by talk-radio hosts, their callers, and many FR posters, was that the marshals shot to protect the passengers. On the ground, how is this different than being in a shopping mall. If a mall cop shot and killed a man running who who didn’t obey an order; would posters here be lining up to give him a medal, or demanding he be prosecuted for murder?
Mohammed Atta quietly took his seat, and didn’t run OFF THE PLANE. I wish that on 9/11 the FAA allowed the airlines to use the terrorist profiling system that was in place, that as I recall picked up some 11 of the 19 terrorists; but the airlines were not allowed to use that information because it would be profiling Arabs. Then we wouldn’t have to be justifying the shooting of an Innocent man.
They were in the airport, that seems an unlikely scenario. How were the Marshals to know his history?
His wife told them.
With more and more female bombers these days, it is reasonable to assume that her "explanations" might be ignored as they concentrated on the guy. Who can say that a female companion to a terrorist might not try a delaying ploy to give him time to detonate.
If he had a bomb he could have quietly detonated in his seat, or better yet waited until the plane was in flight and detonated it there. Your scenario, and other wild scenarios posted to justify the marshals’ actions, would justify shooting anyone. If you reach for your computer how does the air marshal know that you don’t have a bomb in it?
Hind sight makes geniuses of many of us, but when time is critical and a wrong decision will either result in the death of a possible innocent, but sick man, or if made the other way, might kill 100+ people, there is only one decision.
I just went over to DU after seeing someone post from there on this thread. I found this: Whatever happened to "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"? Even in cases requiring decisions we may not want to face? Until you can put yourself in the Marshals' position, you can't really make useful criticisms.
This is an odd sentiment that has been repeated in one form or another a number of times…Federal officials who shoot an innocent man are beyond criticism. If I had to make the same choice, I would likely have done as they did. You would follow a man who ran out of an airplane, who’s wife told you “He’s sick,” and who, from eyewitness accounts never said “I have a bomb in my bag,” and you would shoot him dead? PS: Tookey needs to be executed.
On that one point we agree.
If you’ve read the earlier threads, listened to talk-radio, or even review this thread, you will see many, if not most people, “automatically justifying the shooting of an unarmed man” and “not bothering to look at the facts…” Additionally, I'm not sure why it matters that they shot him when he was off the plane The repeated justification has been that the marshal was saving the lives of the passengers; once off the plane that justification no longer holds. We don't allow people, even LEOs, to go around shooting people who they think might be a problem. Lastly, you said: I expect that after interviewing all the passengers Federal officials will come up with a few who will agree they heard the word, "bomb." ("You did hear him say "bomb," didn't you...others did, you must have...you're not gonna say the air marshals were wrong, are you?") Thank you for that because it shows me where you're coming from. In other words, no matter who says what now, you have made up your mind.
If you don’t think that the Feds are in 100% CYA mode now, you have never dealt with a government agency. Even before there was an investigation, the White House came out and said the shooting was 100% justified. If they were serious and honest about finding out what happened they would never have put out press releases about what Alpizar supposedly said, now they have tainted the witness pool. My hope is that there were audio or AV recordings that will tell us what really happened.
Alpizar's personal history is relevant as to whether we believe that he was wont to making terrorist threats. If he had a history of making threats, or was an anti-Amreican muzzi, I'd figure, "He probably did make a threat," but with no such history, and no independent collaboration by the passengers, and with the air marshal's statement about his "yelling": "I have a bomb in my bag," apparently false, I think it is reasonable to believe that he made no such threat.
He ran off the plane, and didn't obey the shouted orders of people who were not in uniform.
People will concoct any theory to justify the apparently unjustifiable. If he planned to leave a bomb on the plane, would he leave in a way that draws the most attention to himself, with his wife saying, "He's sick," or would he quietly saunter up and get off; and would his wife stay on board? Really.
I guess I don't have your secret information on the "modus operandi" of suicide bombers. If Alpizar did have a bomb, and wanted to take out the maximum number of people, I would have figured he would have sat quietly in his seat until the plane took off, waited until the plane reached maximum altitude, sat in a seat next to the external fuselage, and detonated there to decompress the plane and kill everybody on board. Instead he left the plane, and went into the airport where there were, as far as we know, few if any people. You realize that if he wanted to explode a bomb in the airport, he never had to get on the plane, or even go through security, where his bomb was likely to be detected.
You do realize that if he left without identifying his bags the entire plane would need to be unloaded and rechecked. We are discussing tangible risk factors. In this case there were three major risk factors each of which indicates a high risk.
I for one am glad you are not a baggage screener.
Your post is really too long to respond to. I still stand by what I said. I will let it go at that.
However, you said in the beginning of your post that his wife stated he had no weapon. I don't recall reading or hearing that before, altho it may well have been said somewhere (I really cannot spend all day on this, altho it seems like it!)
Can you please tell me where you got that info?
susie
Utter rubbish; the airport was PACKED with people right inside the gate and on the airplane, no less than 120 in the plane alone!
That goes for the rest of your self-serving post, too.