gbaji wrote:
I'm just curious because I've found that most of the time, when you start looking up the details of these sorts of incidents, they aren't quite the clear cut cases of abuse of police authority that they're made out to be. Yeah, the cops do ***** up, royally sometimes. But they are usually quite good at making it as abundantly clear that they are the police as they possibly can, doubly so when barging into someone's home, pretty much precisely to avoid the sort of situation you described.
Well, how about this one? Police lieutenant is briefed about an undercover drug bust and approaches his department's unmarked car during the bust, opens the rear door, and shoots an undercover detective that he's worked with in the past, who was wearing certain clothing that the early morning briefing made clear was being worn by the undercover officers (the lieutenant missed the briefing though, in his defense. /s), and as the undercover officer tries to crawl to the other side of the car while asking the lieutenant to please stop shooting, the lieutenant then continues shooting until he runs out of ammunition. One bullet injures another officer behind the "target" and this is pointed out in the subsequent lawsuit which notes that the lieutenant was also a firearm instructor for the department and should have known to be aware of what was behind his "target." Meanwhile, on the other side of the unmarked car, the targets of the drug bust were being arrested without incident. For being in possession of $60.00 worth of drugs.
Here are
two local news stories that have
most of the facts, you can dig deeper on your own if you want to try and show that this is one of those situations that "aren't quite the clear cut cases of abuse of police authority that they're made out to be."
Oh, and let me save you the trouble:
gabji wrote:
Yeah, the cops do ***** up, royally sometimes.
Yes, you did say that. But it seems that now that we have everyone carrying a video camera in their pocket, the police can no longer falsely claim the innocent person they shot was pointing a gun at them. It seems they **** up royally a lot more than "sometimes."
And take your "They have every vested interest in returning to them safely" and stick it in your innocent people have a vested interest in not being shot by a trigger happy sociopath with borderline-average intellect.
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"the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Hermann Goering, April 1946.