Posted on 07/30/2013 3:23:16 AM PDT by Wolfie
Roy Middleton, Unarmed Florida Man, Shot By Police In Own Driveway While Retrieving Cigarettes From Car
Florida law enforcement officials are investigating reports that an unarmed man was shot by police in his own driveway while retrieving cigarettes from his mother’s car.
Roy Middleton, a 60-year-old resident of Warrington, Fla., was shot in the leg by Escambia County sheriff’s deputies on Saturday, the Pensacola News Journal reports. The shooting reportedly took place on Middleton’s driveway, as he attempted to retrieve a cigarette from his mother’s car. That’s when police arrived on the scene, investigating a report of a possible vehicle break-in, Fox 10 reports.
Middleton claims that he was searching the car for a loose cigarette when he heard someone say, “Get your hands where I can see them,” the News Journal reports. The 60-year-old initially thought a neighbor was playing a joke on him, but he turned to find Escambia County police standing with guns drawn.
The 60-year-old says that he exited his mother’s car with his arms raised, but police opened fire anyway, the News Journal reports. “It was like a firing squad,” Middleton told the paper. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”
Middleton remains in a local hospital and reportedly faces several weeks of recovery. “I’m just glad they didn’t hit me here or here,” he told the News Journal, indicating his chest and head. “My mother’s car is full of bullet holes though.”
“He was just coming home like he usually does. I don’t understand why they had to use so much force under the situation,” Middleton’s mother, Ceola Walker, told Fox 10. “I don’t understand how they could fire so many shots at him. He wasn’t resisting or anything and he was at his own house.”
Middleton added that he doesn’t understand what caused officers to perceive him as a threat and shoot him. “Even if they thought the car was stolen, all they had to do was run the license plate,” Middleton told the News Journal. “They would have seen that that car belonged there.”
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the Middleton shooting Saturday, but the incident is currently being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the News Journal reports. The deputies responsible for shooting Middleton have reportedly been placed on administrative leave.
It’s not sad, it is criminal.
Unless this story is horribly wrong, these cops should be charged with felony assault, convicted, & sent to jail.
Suppose a child was helping this man find his smokes, or his wallet, or his keys?
An example needs to be made to the “shoot first & ask questions later” crowd in the police dept. But, the Sheriff’s early, lame defense of the 2 shooters is telling. It may hurt him next election. I hope so if he is gonna defend such criminally irresponsible behavior.
My computer has the MSN I would say home page, but don’t hold me to it. And MSN has headline news that rotate that > I saw “Cops shoot unarmed man in Fl, or words to that effect. I clicked on to the story and it gave the details. He was going through his and his mother’s car looking for a gigarette, heard footsteps and someone saying,”Keep your hands in plain sight. He thought it his neighbor playing a joke on him, and then the shooting started. Unknown to him his neighbor had called the cops saying someone was burglarizing his car.I am going from memory.
And then there's the issue of "first-person-shooter" video games being tweaked and used as police "training tools". We always see comments about these games influencing the kids who go postal on their classmates, but the same sort of video-based training can desensitize cops just as easily.
This "attitude" training is criminal.
Some years ago I reviewed a study training workshop where an experimental video training program was tested by an equal number of cop and civilian CCW holders.
Randomly distributed among the bad guy scenarios, were several innocent scenarios like an unknown person turns and displays a handheld card that says: I am a Deaf Mute. I can read lips."
9 out of 10 cops fired on the subject and 9 out of 10 civilians did not.
I resist generalizations, generally. I do not see how anything I said supports your generalized distrust of law enforcement. Maybe I’m just too dense to get it, but I don’t see it. We agree that the ideal we both seek is the rule of law. We only disagree on the extent to which law enforcement has been corrupted. You write it up as though a large scale general failure is underway. I see individual cases of bad apples, surrounded by a whole lot of ordinary LEOs doing their job more or less the way we expect them to.
I believe this discrepancy in perception is not accidental. I believe our law system as a whole is under attack in novel ways that are deceptive even to good conservatives. Credibility of law enforcement is essential to societal order. This conflicts with Marxist Apocalypticism, the belief that some grand conflict is a necessary catharsis to throw off the antiquated ways of the past and enter the Worker’s Utopia.
Toward this end, the left’s media wing is using a devastatingly effective propaganda technique which I call “selective amplification,” where events and trends that may be numerically rare are given disproportionate size by constantly pushing them into the forefront of the public consciousness, conditioning uncritical news consumers to believe the rare is common, the abnormal is normal. The left in our country is playing hardball, and they are not stupid. They know they must divide us and put us at odds with many would gladly be our allies, and this includes our own law enforcement community, the vast majority of whom absolutely do support the rule of law, but who, through selective amplification, can be made to appear otherwise.
Yes there are incompetent police. There always have been. Yes there are police who abuse their power. There always have been. But why now, when a new American revolution is stirring, are there so many stories surfacing about how your local community police officers cannot be trusted? Is it because there are really that many new events, proportionately speaking, or is it because these events are being selectively amplified to divide us from a category of fellow citizens we need with us if we are to win this struggle? The strategy has always been divide and conquer, dilute the response, so that no matter how virulent one particular group may be, the culture as a whole cannot act as one.
For my part, I refuse to cooperate with that strategy. It’s just another way to lose. If there are systemic problems encouraging or rewarding bad behavior, we need to fix that. We don’t disagree on this. But we absolutely *must* find ways to cut through the propaganda and insist on the truth, even if that requires us to be more patient in the development of the latest “police are bad for you” story, because the truth will keep us united.
The English Bobbies are unarmed for the very reason that the English subjects did not trust them at the time of their authorization by the Crown. They still are not armed, by tradition, they say, but there has never been an expression of trust from the public.
I remember the days when teenagers would sit in the car in the driveway for hours listening to the radio. Guess its not allowed now.
The guy who was shot was Black, so where are the “Reverends?” This is a disgrace and it only serves to perpetuate the racial divide. Contrast this with the white guy (also in Florida) who shot a Black teen in his yard at about the same time of day. He’s been charged, but the “cops here are being investigated, and they aren’t talking.” We’ve made a big mistake giving cops guns, they don’t respect the responsibility that goes with being armed.
Too much steroids in their system most likely.
Either you are part of the problem or you can’t see the forest for the trees. Or maybe you are in denial. Only you know the answer.
Good enough for me, sport. The neighbor who called them in wasn't harmed, I suppose that's something to be thankful for.
None of the above. I’m just too old to be gamed by the left. I’ve seen this all before. Fool me once ...
Boy, are they strict!
It was his car parked at his house. Silly man, he probably he could take as long as he pleased. But just for my edification, how much time should he have been allowed to get a cigarette?
You do have to learn how to pick the fly specks from the pepper. And I am just going from my interactions over the last few years with them. It was not always the way it is now.
I never said you didn't. I just don't think you throw out all the pepper over a few fly specks, 'specially when you really need the pepper.
I took no offence from your posts to me. Take care. Don’t take any wooden nickels and stay safe.
I am thinking Steroid abuse.
LEO’s are at the gym everyday to keep from getting beaten.
I don’t blame their work ethic. Staying in shape makes sense.
I just see some responses that reflect “Roid Rage,” and they need to be tested.
In Texas, they random test for Steroid’s in the high school football teams, track and even the golf and band.
We should test the guys with guns.
I wonder, when he thought it was his neighbor joking, if the guy actually DID turn around quick and make a lunge to “return” the joke.
A couple years ago there were a ton of squad cars two blocks away when I was driving home. A few minutes later as I was unloading my truck, with all of the doors wide open in my driveway, a cop was walking towards my house with his hand on his holster. I slowly walked out with my hands out from my body saying “can I help you?”.
I explained that it was my truck, I had been there a few minutes, but did not see anyone. (Turns out they were looking for a burglar that was surprised by a young girl back from school and he took off).
I don’t know which part of the story is wrong, but I’m certain that something in the story isn’t quite right. For example: the neighbor says she heard the car cranking, what’s up with that.
I’m going to hang my hat on either she didn’t hear the car cranking, or the guy said he was just going out to get a cigarette and for some reason started cranking the car.
911 transcript available via link in original article.
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