Updated: When I was eating breakfast, Hagar watched the video. When she came to the place where the cops opened fire, the cop yell’s “hands up”, not “Drop the Gun”. I got it wrong. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Honest, I wrote this before J.Kb. posted his version.
At the end of May in 2020 I watched camera footage of a police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man, slowly chocking him to death while the man repeated over and over again “I can’t breathe”.
I was so angry. I was glad I had not observed that in person. I did not know if I would have had the courage to intervene to save that man’s life. An out of control cop murdered a black man while people were screaming at him to stop.
When we discussed that horrific video at the table that night, we were all convinced that we had witnessed a cop killing an unarmed, handcuffed black man. Why? Why would he do that?
Over the next few weeks, we started to find out more. As always, it is best to wait to find out the facts, not what we think we saw. It turns out that the black man was a career criminal who was in the process of overdosing. He had just tried to pass off counterfeit money, was attempting to evade the police and had been just been removed from the squad because he was “having problems breathing”.
It seems likely that he had swallowed his stash, which is the cause of the overdose. Once he was out of the squad and before the famous video began, he was struggling with a police officer. The police officer was not “kneeling on his neck” but actually had his knee on the man’s shoulders holding him down, waiting until it was safe to transfer him to the EMTs for transport.
This incident led to a summer of violence in multiple cities and is still with us today. That one video with the massive narrative behind it has done more to damage our society in the last 5 years than any single event I can think of outside of 9/11 and 12/7.
And it was all based on a lie.
When I received an email describing the outrageous behavior of a bunch of cops that murdered a man, I started to write a highly emotional response, ready to slam the cops for their actions.
Here is how that article began:
On April 5th, 2023 an elite team of officers were responding to a domestic violence report. The cops showed up at the house and did the cop knock. Of course, the left plenty of time for people to respond.
— AWA, rough draft
I finished that short paragraph and realized that I wanted to verify the type of knock, the length of time that was allowed for the residents to respond. I watched the video. What I saw was stupidity that ended a man’s life and will or should end another’s career.
The facts of the incident:
Three cops respond to a domestic violence call. They approach on foot. The arrive at a suburbia home, nicely maintained, outside lights on, inside lights out. No noises from inside the house.
The lead officer opens the screen door and politely knocks. It wasn’t the demanding cop knock
of fame. It was a polite knock on the door. He waited about 40 seconds and knocked again. He waited another 40 seconds and knocked a third time.
At that point, the cops start talking with dispatch to have dispatch call the 911 caller back to get them to come to the door. To quote a television cop, Something seemed hinkey.
While waiting on dispatch, the three cops start talking and realize they are at the wrong address. The lead cop chuckles and starts to back away.
As this happens, he sees the male resident coming to the door. Lights come on inside the house for the first time. Lead cop exclaims something like “oh shit”.
As the door opens and the male resident starts to open the screen door, the lead cop’s gun starts to come up. In the video, I see what looks like a pistol coming up and the man going into a two-handed stance with the gun pointed straight at the cop.
When the door started to open, all three cops turned on their lights and pointed them at the door. The resident was not seeing anything but shapes behind those bright lights. There were no flashing red and blues. There was nothing except three very bright lights pointed at him.
Lead cop yells, Drop the gun!
About the time you hear the n
of gun
, he opens fire and the man drops. The other cops start firing as well.
The cops move back, a female resident comes to the door screaming about her husband. As she comes out the door, there is a very, very short flash from her hands. My first thought on seeing that flash was that it looked like a gun shot. There was no sound to go with it, but all three cops respond by opening fire once again.
You can go watch it yourself, sorry, but it is on the book of acquaintances.
So what happened?
The cops showed up at the wrong fucking house. They were at the wrong house number. Some reports say it was even the wrong street. They woke up the residents at 2330. The residents responded poorly by, to quote Miguel, Breaking the perimeter
.
These cops are going to get away with murder. They are going to be covered under qualified immunity. They fucked up so badly that at least one person is dead and another was wounded. They should be fired. They should have their cop licenses revoked. They should have to do pen entice for the next 40 years, daily.
Maybe somebody who is a law enforcement officer can tell me why they didn’t park in front of the house with lights on? That might have saved lives.
For us, it teaches us, once again, don’t break the perimeter. Don’t expose yourself. Know your target and what is beyond it.
I hurt for that family. I’m angry. I hope we all learn something from this.
Comments
6 responses to “Why it is hard to unconditionally support the thin blue line, maybe?”
Its like every thing else- divided…. Some are good some are bad. Way back in the 90s you had the Rodney King video. If you watched the WHOLE thing like I did, when he quit resisting they quit beating. You can thank media for ALL the chaos. media is the cause of 99% of it. These cops made several bad choices. As usual it’s citizens who pay. And pay and pay…
Some good, some bad … that’s true for individuals and likely always will be.
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The problem is, though, what happens when you have nominally good (well-intentioned) people forced to operate in a system that is inherently, and badly, flawed? E.g. a good cop, operating with training and under a ruleset that are intrinsically bad (as may be argued might be the case here), results in no faith in the system itself, regardless of the merits of the individuals themselves.
Idk man, not specific to Rodney King, but in general. To me that can fall under the same treatment as “stop fighting and the dog will stop biting you!” Which is bullshit. Let me just lay there and have the dog chomp on me and surpress all instincts to try to get the dog to stop.
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Much the same, block blows to the body or head = resisting, so we keep beating. Please accept a few hits and we may consider you have stopped resisting…may.
I have personally experienced something very similar to the she one story.
2am and I live on a 2nd floor apartment that can see straight down to the basement level of the house the aprment is in so a good 20 feet or more up. I can’t sleep so I’m up watching tv when I see a light flash by my window that gets my attention. I look down and all I can see is a figure holding a very bright light over their shoulder that is washing out any defining features looking into the basement apartment. I watch them walk around the side of the house and towards the hill that will lead up to my door. I’m not a total dumbass so I grab my gun and peel around the corner through the window on my front door to verify the identity of the potential ruffian as they crest the hill in front of my door. Low and behold as they come under the light for my porch that cancels out the power of their flash light to reveal a state trooper! So I’m still not dumb, so I place my gun on the ground out of site and try to make my presence known so I don’t scare the shit out of this dude when I open the door. 30 or so seconds of trying to do that I give up and open the door, and predictably scare the shit out of this guy. He is surprised and runs over to me to see wtf is what, though to his credit here not in a threatening manner at this point. Turns out upstairs neighbor thought someone broke in called the police yada yada. Officer asks me for ID, I’m in my undies at 2 am so I need to get it. Tell him stay outside, but so you don’t freak out in case you see it my handgun is on the floor a foot to my left, I will leave it there into you leave. Give ID etc etc. and this officer has the balls to say, yes I definitely would have shot you if you opened the door with gun in hand.
A – no shit
B – you had no idea I was there, I had you dead to rights if I wanted
C – go fuck yourself, you’re lucky I’m an upstanding citizen and not a wacko, dumbass, or some dude that knows he has warrants etc. You had zero awareness and nothing to indicate you were police, no lights on your cars were on,
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One of a few interactions I personally had that ranged from totally illogical to patently absurd that showed me damn, the police really aren’t officer friendly like you think when you’re a kid.
Re the update: either way, was there enough time for the homeowner to do anything at all? Or did the cops just start shooting immediately after saying something? If the latter, then what was said makes no difference.
As for why they didn’t go in lights. Every department has a different flavor of policy on when to roll lights and sirens. At late hours in a “nice” neighborhood units will typically not roll lights or sirens unless they are responding to an active threat to life OR its political and they want to draw attention to their target. Responding units would have had to call in to dispatch to inform them they were on scene and I would love to find out in discovery if they falsely verified their location or completely neglected that step.
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At the advice of this blog and its authors I years ago added external cameras and an exterior intercom to the apartment. It has allowed me to wave off pan handlers, power company scams, ding dong ditch kids, at least two fake food delivery people up to what I dont know, and a few late night cop calls. Even more importantly though it allowed me to submit evidence to the apartment management about folks not picking up their dog poop. The last one the officer banged on the door hard enough to wake the neighbors and them to open their door. Officer did not like speaking over the intercom and covered it and the camera with his hand then proceeded to continue to bang on the door. Never answered, told him I wasn’t interested, didn’t go downstairs.
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The next day he shows up with another officer and tries to say how he COULD have kicked my door down but since he felt charitable he came back today. A car had been stolen from another unit in the complex and they were going around “asking” for security camera footage. Told him my cameras did not have line of sight on the parking lot on the clear other side of the complex and he said they needed to collect it anyway for evidence. Other officer cut in saying failure to provide all of last nights recordings could be considered obstructing an investigation and I needed to let them in to collect it.
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Not happening and in the process of telling them exactly why and how it was not happening I told them I was former LEO and their entire attitude changed. “Why didn’t you say so? Oh okay you say your cameras didn’t catch anything? Good enough for me, should have just told us you were one of the good guys. Hey man you won’t make a big deal bout this will you? Haha yeah brother you know how it is haha.”
Sickening.