That Friday tale from the Washington, D.C. Metro system was just the start. “The North Miami police officer who shot an unarmed, black mental health worker caring for a patient actually took aim at the autistic man next to him, but missed, the head of the police union said Thursday.” [Miami Herald] Meanwhile, in Oregon, a gross-receipts tax proposal backed by public employee unions and schools lobby could spell the end for Powell’s Books of Portland. [Interview with Emily Powell on Measure 97, Business Tribune]
8 Comments
I was curious as to how the police felt aiming for the autistic man playing with a toy truck improved the optics of this shooting.
As if shooting an unarmed mentally disabled patient would have be better from a PR perspective.
Are the police in this country actively trying to destroy what little public trust and credibility they have left?
Not to mention the basic disconnect–You shot in order to protect someone who was accidentally hit. Your immediate response to that situation is to handcuff the person you were supposedly rescuing and leave him bleeding on the ground.
Re Mr. S: “As if shooting an unarmed mentally disabled patient would have be better from a PR perspective.”
(I assume that the police officer was white or maybe Hispanic).
It would have been better from a PR perspective because he can claim that he did not intend to shoot a man who was:
-black
-proned-out and surrendering.
His claim makes this, (arguably), a case of extraordinary negligence, instead of (arguably), racially motivated murder, which is how the press and Black Lives, Sharpton, et. al, would have portayed it.
I think this Miami shooting story also ties into some of the other themes that have been seen or are prevalent on this site.
According to the linked article, the officer who fired the shot was not identified as of the time of the writing. The shooting took place on a Monday with the article being written on a Thursday.
No other citizen who had shot an unarmed person would not have their name put out into the press. Then again, not all citizens have Law Enforcement “Bill of Rights” and or contracts which prevent the release of the name.
The name of the officer was released on Friday (4 days after the shooting) and was identified as Officer Jonathan Aledda.
Commander Emile Hollant has also been suspended (with pay) for allegedly fabricating statements to back up Aledda’s version of the events.
Source: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/North-Miami-Police-Commander-Suspended-After-Shooting-387961252.html
Frankly, a shot with a rifle from 50 yards that misses the target by at least 6 feet is horrible shooting. One cannot even qualify with that lack of accuracy.
Then again, the police in the Miami area have a history of not being the best of shots as evidenced by this shooting in 2014:
CBS4 News has learned a total of 23 officers fired a total of at least 377 rounds.
Bullets were sprayed everywhere. They hit the Volvo, other cars in the lot, fence posts and neighboring businesses. They blasted holes in a townhouse where a 12-year-old dove to the ground for cover and a four month old slept in his crib.
….
But Montesano and Valdes weren’t the only ones struck – two Miami Dade police officers were hit as well – caught in the crossfire. One officer was shot in the arm and the second was hit in the arm and grazed in the head. If the bullet had struck just a half an inch to the side the officer would have been killed.
Montesano had killed an officer earlier in the day so it is understandable that the police were after him and thought he would be armed (he wasn’t at the time of the shooting.)
If the police cannot capture, wound, kill or whatever unless they “pray and spray,” something is terribly wrong.
Source on the 2014 shooting: http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/05/06/police-shooting-frenzy-raises-concerns/
“Commander Emile Hollant has also been suspended (with pay) for allegedly fabricating statements to back up Aledda’s version of the events.”
He should have been suspended without pay. Cops including ranking department members need to start feeling real pain when they make mistakes, even “honest” mistakes.
“Then again, the police in the Miami area have a history of not being the best of shots”
NYPD is worse.
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160519/midtown/nearly-two-dozen-bystanders-struck-police-shootings-since-2010-nypd
http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/12/unarmed-man-charged-two-women-nypd-accidentally-shot/355820/
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/09/robert-farago/breaking-new-york-cops-shoot-84-bullets-hit-perp-once/
NYPD cops fire 84 bullets hit perp once.
Did anyone really need shooting in this case.
In any police planning there will be a non-zero rate of wounding and killing unarmed and undangerous civilians.
Then the first thing that must be decided is what is the number of civilians to be killed in order to save one officer’s life. The inverse ratio is simply how many cops die to protect one civilian, much like the N guilty men go free to prevent wrongfully convicting one honest man, aka Blackstone’s ratio. (http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm)
It would be interesting to see police unions’ perception of where this number should be relative to that of the general public. I worry that policing has perversely decided that it is better to shoot ten innocents to protect one police officer, exactly the opposite of espoused judicial theory for protecting the public.