Now let’s see how they will spin this? So Minneapolis tried to do the right thing by insisting on body cameras yet the cops don’t turn them on, nor is the vehicle dashcam available.
I hope that ALL citizens there protest this shooting. Something has to be done about these overzealous officers.
This was my first thought too.
I’m guessing it’ll come out that she used drugs or something (whether it’s true or not). Or that she was showing psychotic tendencies. They’ll grasp onto anything (again true or not).
Horrible.
If I understand the story, the officer in the passenger seat fired his weapon **across the driver’s seat/b, through the driver’s side door and struck the victim, who was talking to the other officer. WTH?
I’m curious as to what the defense will be. They can’t use the usual, walking while black, he resisted, criminal record, I feared for my life…
By all accounts this woman did nothing wrong.
This is a really weird one. They are bound to give some strange explanation and how can it be investigated?
I’ve been thinking about justice with all these cases. It seems that American juries are reluctant to convict police officers under any circumstance. Perhaps in the back of their mind is the knowledge that there will be a civil case that will lead to a settlement for the family and that is justice enough. (I don’t agree with this)
Insurance companies pay the settlements and all of us pay taxes that pay the premiums for those insurance policies. Police officers and police departs usually have no financial obligation in these settlements. What if premiums become so high that cities are strapped in paying them? What if police officers/departments are forced to carry some kind of malpractice insurance? Shouldn’t tax payers know right now how much cities are paying for these insurance premiums and have the financial liability categorized for each risk?
After all, when I get my auto policy packet it includes the prices for each car, for the type of collision coverage, etc., and the refunds for alarm systems, etc. All the dollar amounts are there.
I was reading about this last night, specifically about Minneapolis, when I heard the news of this woman’s killing.
http://chicagoreporter.com/a-push-to-make-cops-buy-liability-insurance-in-minneapolis/
http://chicagoreporter.com/police-liability-insurance-measure-goes-to-court-in-minneapolis/
A judge ruled that the proposal could not go on the ballot. I wonder if this killing will change that in any way.
Well, when we see or hear the official PD video or explanation, is it going to state the typical “…Stop resisting!..” and “I feared for my life” ? Those declarations seem to be in chapter 1 of the PD playbook in every PD large and small.
It may get ugly because the police officer who shot her is the first Somali-American police officer in Minneapolis. If he’s charged with murder, there may be charges that he is the victim of racism, i.e., that he is being treated differently than a white officer in the same situation would be.
Frankly, I think any officer who is caught turning off the camera should be fired and lose any pension. Seriously, what are the odds that both officers’ cameras AND the dash cam all malfunctioned?
Oh boy. Awful. I wonder what the deal is with the 2 open complaints against the shooter?
I wonder if officers often have the body cam on while seated in the car?
This is such a bizarre case. So far the silence has been deafening. It’s like the ( and forgive the flippedness) yada yada yada of police brutality. "They responded to a call, the woman was there and yada yada yada the police fired on her.
I think the cop knew her somehow. Maybe she was a spiritual healer to someone he knew or it didn’t mesh with his religious beliefs. Hopefully the true story will come out. That’s the only reason I can think of for him to shoot across his partner. There is no way he was in danger.
I have been on a jury in a case where a man was accused of assaulting a police officer. I was astonished that a man could be arrested for standing up quickly in anger in his own home – no weapon, no fists swung, no furniture thrown – and that was enough. The officer felt threatened, and therefore had cause to make an arrest. The jury overwhelmingly gave the benefit of the doubt to the police officer.
I think how the laws are written and the directions given to the jury are a big part of the problem too.
As more injustice is brought to light (video + coverage by the media), discussing the cost to Joe Taxpayer might help put pressure on the Powers That Be to make real reform.
Escalating taxpayer costs might be the thing that makes the people who feel safe and like police brutality has nothing to do with them, feel like they have skin in the game.
I pulled up an article from The Nation, from back in March of 2016 and it states that Chicago has spent half a billion dollars ($643 million) on police related legal claims since 2004.
The police officers may not have the same story on this one, if it is true that his partner was “stunned”. Hopefully he can provide an honest version of what happened.
No way that any sane police officer wants a partner who fires in his direction. That also happened in the Philando Castile case when the officer fired into the car and his partner was right on the other side. The partner took off quickly! I don’t understand how it would be controversial to take the gun away from any cop that does that unless or until the situation is fully investigated and the officer is properly retrained.
White victim, black police officer. This should be interesting, on a few levels.
Our society has racial bias issues and it also has institutionalized police violence issues. Sometimes they intersect and sometimes they don’t.
Sincere question: is there any kind of logical reason why body cams couldn’t be on at all times?
^To start with there’s 18000 separate police departments in the US, so there’s no one person who can order all police departments to start using them.
@romanigypsyeyes When we looked into the possibility of cruiser cams continuously running in the city where I worked about 10 years ago, someone in a higher pay grade than myself determined it was cost prohibitive given the server capacity that would have been necessary to store camera footage for a police force of our size (over 1000 officers). The city would have needed to store the footage long enough that it would be available if someone came forward a long time after an alleged event. Unless a death or serious injury results from a police-citizen encounter, the first notice a city might get of an allegation is typically a civil suit, and in most states a citizen has 1 or 2 years to sue. If they sue and the video footage has been purged, then the plaintiff will imply there was something nefarious about its “destruction.” So it was a matter of the expense involved in having to store 8,000 hours of footage x 365 x 2 (our state had a 2 year statute of limitations). With technological advances, it is possible that is less costly now - I have no idea.
Someone upthread mentioned how much money is paid out by cities in litigation involving police officers. What many people don’t realize about that kind of litigation is that if a plaintiff wins even a small amount of money (as little as $1) for an alleged violation of his constitutional rights, the city also has to pay the plaintiffs attorney’s fees, which can be substantial (the court awards a “reasonable” hourly rate, which might be as little as $250 but is often far higher, and multiplies it by the number of hours it believes the plaintiffs attorney reasonably expended on the litigation). But very seldom can the city ever recover its attorneys fees from the plaintiff if the police officer prevails. Many enterprising individuals and their attorneys have figured out that police officers and the cities who employ them have a lot at risk, and virtually nothing to gain, by fighting he said-he said claims. Thus, a fairly large percentage of what gets paid out for claims against police officers is paid out for claims in which liability is far from clear.
It will be interesting to see what information comes out about the incident that was the subject of the original post.
Three compaints against him, including a lawsuit in just two years. Was he kept on the force because he was Somali? Did he understand English competently?