Monday, July 11, 2016

Shorter Cop Rationale: "I Shot the Wrong Guy!"

A lawyer for a suburban Minnesota police officer who killed a black driver says his client pulled the man over in part because he believed he resembled a suspect in a robbery.

Philando Castile had no felony record and authorities have not said he was a suspect in any crime.

But attorney Thomas Kelly tells the Star Tribune newspaper that Officer Jeronimo Yanez thought the 32-year-old Castile looked like someone police had been seeking in a recent robbery.
So the cop thought he was pulling over a bad guy. When it transpired that the guy had a gun, the cop, who still thought that he was dealing with a bad guy, shot him. Even though the guy wasn't reaching for it.

In short, it was a bad shoot. I don't know how they're going to get out of not bringing manslaughter charges against him.

Men have been killed by police because the cops thought that cell phones or wallets were guns.

Seeing what you expect to see and not being open to questioning your assumptions is a hard thing to do. This one cost one man his life, may effectively cost another man his and may cost the people of that municipality many millions of dollars in damages.

(No, I'm not throwing rocks.)

No comments:

Post a Comment

House Rules #1, #2 and #6 apply to all comments. Rule #3 also applies to political comments.

In short, don't be a jackass. THIS MEANS YOU!
If you never see your comments posted, see Rule #7.

All comments must be on point and address either the points raised in the blog post or points raised by commenters in response.
Any comments that drift off onto other topics are subject to deletion.

(Please don't feed the trolls.)

中國詞不評論,冒抹除的風險。僅英語。

COMMENT MODERATION IS IN EFFECT UFN. This means that if you are an insulting dick, nobody will ever see it.