]

Its not kill or be killed is it. The fuss is over police shooting unarmed people.

Officer Michael Slager - who killed an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, during a traffic stop in 2015 - has pleaded guilty to a Federal charge stemming from the shooting and - today - was sentenced to 19 years in prison.

This case became a poster child for the Black Lives Matter movement because, unbeknownst to Slager - who gave the standard "fear of his life" explanation for the shooting - a bystander had recorded the incident on his phone. The recording directly contradicted many of Slager's statements about the event. [Link]

The criminal trial earlier this year ended with a hung jury. Presumably Slager will not be retried now that he has pleaded out the Federal case.

Edited by Ray in Houston (07 Dec 2017 10.42pm)

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

Sorry to hear your family seems to have unresolved issues mate.

Look at it this way, life in a completely homogeneous society wouldn’t half be boring now we are used to the benefits and challenges brought by variety.

Edited by Mapletree (07 Dec 2017 11.04pm)

What gets me about these cases - aside from the disproportionate reaction of the police and the human tragedy - is that they all seem to occur in states with open carry laws. Arizona is such a state; it has some of the most pro-gun laws out there. People called to report Shaver for having a gun when having a gun is completely legal. In Arizona, they may as well have reported him for having a lawnmower.

12-year old Tamir Rice was gunned down in similar circumstances - openly carrying a weapon in an open carry state. Coincidentally, Rice's weapon was a toy. There were no criminal indictments resulting from this although the city settled a civil suit from Rice's family.

Philando Castille was gunned down by police at a routine traffic stop because he followed both the law and the officer's instructions. He had a permitted concealed weapon in the car, and the law requires that such a weapon be declared to law enforcement. Castille did this, the officer freaked out and shot him. Dash-cam footage is incredibly damning, yet, the officer was acquitted of all charges.

Maybe, just maybe, cops are freaked out all the time because most states allow all and sundry to wander around armed to the teeth.

Edited by Ray in Houston (08 Dec 2017 4.56pm)

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

The common threads here is the near-complete lack of training for officers in handling these stressful situations. It's notable that in many of these shootings, the victim is complaint and/or trying to de-escalate the tension that is clear in the officer's demeanor. That's completely back-to-front.

If you watch the cell phone video taken by Castille's girlfriend as he was dying next to her in the car, she maintained an even voice and a deferential attitude to the officer; calling him "Sir".

"You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir."

So in that highly-charged environment, the two people who acted with calm and respect were Castile and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, while the cop lost his s***, shot Castile and bounced around screaming "f***!"

The cops handcuffed Reynolds and put her in the back of their squad car, leaving her 4-year old daughter in Castile's car with his dying body.

Edited by Ray in Houston (08 Dec 2017 5.29pm)

We don't do possession; we do defense and attack. Everything else is just wa**ing with a football.

I think it's more incompetence and a "rather them than me, so i'll shoot first" attitude to policing.

Optimistic as ever