It sounds like it happened last Sunday.
What I don’t understand, first, since I live in a state which had decriminalized marijuana years ago, and now has “legalized”, even recreational marijuana, is a police department that has enough manpower to spend their resources for a " sting" operation, involving a very small quantity of a substance that most states have legalized in the form of medical marijuana.
All I know is what I see on TV, but don’t stings use undercover officers?
You can hardly be undercover if you are in a marked police car.
I was actually once at a house party in the 1970’s, which was raided by police.
This was the house of a dealer who sold marijuana to other dealers.
So multiple kilos of marijuana were seized, however no guns were drawn, nobody was roughed up or thrown to the ground.
Standards for training and hiring have gone way downhill.
Courts have Ok’d not hiring candidates who score “too” high on the police exam.
People are killed by police all the time. Men, women, children, elderly, young, all races. Sometimes completely by accident. But when you are carrying lethal weapons, that is often what happens. After all this, I cannot believe that someone has not invented effective non lethal weapons more reliable than tasers. And that body cameras are not the law.
I think the article in the first post was poorly written. I had to read it three times before I got a clear picture of what happened. I looked for a better written one and found this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zachary-hammond-shot-police-south-carolina_55ba6d51e4b0af35367aaa16 dstark’s was also more informative. On to the actual crime, this one is horrible and I hope the cop is charged. It seems impossible that the young man could have been driving towards him when he shot him.
Thanks for the articles to the two who posted them. I’ll read them at a later time. Hopefully they do clear up what happened because I’m very confused.
They do make bean bag rounds. Occasionally you will hear about them being used.
It’s ridiculous to contemplate police departments that have military equipment like tanks, but not things that would actually be useful in day to day police work, like assessing a situation and defusing it.
Here’s another white unarmed young adult killed by police. College student, nationally ranked debater. Story never got any traction in the press, just a couple of local articles:
“Morad graduated from high school with a 3.9 grade point average and was accepted to UC Berkeley and UCLA but chose Moorpark College, his sister said. He planned to transfer to Cal State Long Beach in the fall and wanted to go to Harvard Law.”
@dietz199 I am speaking solely for myself, and not as a barometer for other people on the forum. What happened is absolutely unacceptable. The folks in that city need to demand that he is punished. The reason other threads get so much attention is because it happens ALL THE TIME, and we(Blacks) are tired of it. You think this is a lot of threads? Clearly from your posts you are not tuned in to how many times this happens. I could list countless cases where minorities were killed that dont make the news, and the cops claimed they feared for their lives. Our problem is that they seem to ALWAYS overreact when dealing with us, not so much with others. You dont hear about a lot of cases of criminals who happen to be black being killed, because unfortunately they may have done something to deserve it.
Just in the month of July…5 Black women have died in jail in police custody. But thats not getting a bunch of coverage.
We are a small percentage of the population, yet we are a large percentage of being unarmed and being killed. If not for cell phones, and bodycams it would be business as usual. And hell, it still is in some places, ie Tamir Rice.
This cop needs to be tried and thrown in prison. For a loooong time. How can you justify any reasonable self defense when you shot someone in the back? So what the kid decided to leave the scene? Many cops are instructed to not start a pursuit unless the suspect presents a clear danger to the public. Was this kid a danger to society?!
We have organizations who want to improve the teaching pool by judging teachers on how the students perform on tests.
I don’t necessarily agree with that, but its a national thing.
Why can’t we have national standards for hiring & training our police forces?
I realize that most officers are not the problem, but wouldn’t the good ones want to get rid of the ones who aren’t?
When we see police making bad decisions under circumstances that shouldnt be that difficult, I wonder what would happen if they were in a * really * stressful situation?
If video footage surfaced showing the police officer shooting unarmed Zachary Hammond in the back, do you think it would go unnoticed by the media? I don’t. Law enforcement overreach is an outrage, no matter whom it is directed against, and I think people would be appalled and outraged, especially because it would fly in the face of most American’s expectations of the way law enforcement interacts with white people.
BTW, I have a thirteen year old white grandson (my stepdaughter’s oldest child), and you had better believe I wouldn’t sit still if he were shot in the back by law enforcement without cause. And in my view, there is seldom cause to shoot a suspect in the back! The problem is when there’s no objective evidence, such as dash cam, body cam or cell phone video that might contradict a lying officer’s CYA. Most of the cases that have engendered outrage from within the black community in recent years, have been ones in which there is some level of accompanying video. Hint: video moves the news cycle. The execution of Walter Scott wouldn’t have achieved nearly the traction it did without that shocking cell phone video, you had best believe it.
It may well be true that whites are shot by police more often than blacks, but that’s only logical, given the fact that whites make up 63 percent of the US population, while blacks make up only 12. In either case, whether justified or otherwise, most instances of police shootings of civilians do not gain national attention. Just as, “if it bleeds, it leads”, corroberating video lends it its greatest chance of going viral.
“The problem is when there’s no objective evidence, such as dash cam, body cam or cell phone video that might contradict a lying officer’s CYA.”
In this case, it sounds like there is a witness - the woman in the car who was also shot by the officer. Even the objective evidence may be interpreted subjectively, unfortunately (just see the other thread).
I find the marijuana case shocking. We haven’t heard yet from the girl, have we? She was eating ice cream at the time, how awful.
What I don’t understand is the coroner refusing to elaborate about the autopsy and referring all questions to the police department. Sounds like they either don’t want to be the one pointing the finger at the shooter/cop or they are in collusion. The autopsy report should be official.
It’s also awful how the cop approached the car with gun drawn “as standard procedure in a narcotics bust”. Marijuana is a narcotic? Tell that to the opiate family.
It does indeed smell extremely fishy. I hope this case gains traction. And I hope the whole truth comes out about the way this all went down. I’m still flabbergasted by the way the arresting officer conveniently forgot to report that he shot and killed a suspect in this incident, as if that were a minor oversight. It smacks of “I’m trying to buy time/cover my tracks/assemble my allies.” I’m sure I can’t fully fathom the pain this poor boy’s parents must be feeling; the numb incredulity, howling grief, and blind rage, in waves and by turns.
General fear of violent crime is much higher now than it was in the 1970s, even though actual violent crime rates may not be higher. Presumably, this has an effect on how police act (e.g. the assumption of a higher likelihood of someone having a gun and trying to use it, or the acquisition of military-like equipment).
All of you who love to jump to conclusions might want to take note of the fact that officers involved in a shooting are not required to make an immediate statement because they have rights, too. They have the right to counsel and to some time in cases where there is a possibility that they could be charged with a crime. If an immediate statement is required of them, it’s possible that it could not be used as evidence against them.
In this case, the only reason there was a report in the first place was because it had to do with the arrest of the woman in the car on drug charges.
I see that officers are not required to fill out a report for a day, since it is a traumatic event.
But in this case, I didnt see any indication that assistance was given or that investigators were called immediately after, as is required in Greenville, NC for instance.
