Woman shot dead after calling 911

Parent Cafe
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It is becoming clear that police should be approached as if they are an unfamiliar, possibly rabid dog. The dog is probably perfectly fine and nice, but the consequences of misjudging the situation are severe.

This is of course hyperbole (at least from my point of view), but is becoming less and less hyperbolic every day it seems.

This analogy has been in my mind when reading police news stories since I saw this gem of an idea proposed a few years ago:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/dom-costa-taunting-police_n_7127652.html

In PA, taunting a police dog is a felony. A lawmaker proposed making taunting a police officer a felony as well, referencing the dog law.

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I would imagine that drug testing was done on Officer Noor immediately after this incident. Shooting someone in response to a ‘loud noise’ seems overly jumpy to me.

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I thought the victim was a dual citizen, and had spent time in the US previous to the past two years(Buffalo, i think), and is no stranger to the US? In any event, this shooting is appalling, and the lack of judgement exhibited horrifying. It took place in a very benign residential city neighborhood only a couple of miles from where I live.

BTW, no one has mentioned what happened to the original incident in question. Did someone get away with assault or rape?

People are in shock here, and the mayor and police chief are acting like deer in headlights. I am not anti-cop, but this case is giving me the shivers. Could easily have been me or my wife shot down instead.

A friend knows a cop who knows the shooter. Says he is a really nice guy, not that that makes a homicide any easier to swallow.

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Police work can mean having to make quick decisions in surprising or rapidly changing situations – and the results of an incorrect decision can be very bad. Someone can be a really nice guy normally, but can be more prone to errors in these kinds of situations than one would find acceptable in police work.

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The best police officer in the work can make a mistake. We all do. Though the mistakes non-police at work make tend to be very trivial. And our most important decisions tend to me ones that are not make split second. And at this point, we do not have enough info to know if a mistake was made in this case.

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There was an article in today’s NY Times about this, comparing the US to Australia in terms of police, in Australia 1 person in 6 million is shot dead by the police, in the US it is one in 330,000. The article talked to criminoloigists and cops in both the US and Australia, and said part of the problem is that in the US cops are trained for the worst, to assume the worse, they quoted one rural cop who said that they live in a world where they assume they are going to be shot. Australia seems to emphasize non lethal methods of takedown, and maybe that has something to do with it.

What this sounds like to me is what I wrote about before, the cop who shot the woman panicked when he heard the loud sound and reacted as a panicked person will, how many people have been hurt or killed by loved ones when the other person was panicked?

I don’t think, despite what one poster tried to allude to, that the cop in question because he was Somali and presumably Muslim was doing this out of jihad or whatever, despite it being a bigoted and biased statement, it makes no sense, if it was Jihad he would kill his partner, too. I think he startled/was panicked, and shot the woman in a panic, the fact that he fired a gun like that across the car, which is an incredibly stupid thing to do for someone who was thinking rationally, seem to me to tell part or all of the tale. That said, it will all boil down to whether the cop could reasonably be assumed to be in danger at the time he shot her, and based on what little we know now (which means it is pure speculation if in fact these details hold up), he likely will be charged, it is hard to believe she was a threat given she was unarmed and the cops were in the car and there was no sign of anything that could be construed to be a gun, this kind of panic is quite human, the cop likely feels aweful about what happened, but because cops are trained they are supposed to be held to higher standard than a civilian would, with a civilian panic defense might get them off as being an accident, with a cop it won’t.

This kind of panic IMO/IME is also behind things like blacks getting killed by cops seemingly for no reason, if you go in already scared of the people you are supposed to be protecting, assume that the people in your area are all dangerous criminals, etc, etc and are in fear for your life, you end up with a hair trigger that can be set off by panic.

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A mistake? We all make mistakes? Wow. No wonder the Australian Prime Minister is so upset.

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This is probably related to the fact that Australia has an intentional homicide rate only about 1/5 of the US, and that Americans tend to believe that crime is higher than it actually is, due to collective memory of the crime wave era when intentional homicide was around 3 times as high as now.

So police in Australia probably feel much less at risk when encountering a potential crime in progress than police in the US, and therefore may feel less pressure to make a snap decision on the use of deadly force against a possible threat.

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I’m not a cop, and I make plenty of mistakes, but there are some that I could make that would be fatal. I also have to make quick decisions. However, if I make a fatal mistake, it will usually kill me too (I’m an airline pilot). If pulling the trigger would put a police officer in danger, instead of just eliminating any possible threat to them, there would be far greater use of non-lethal weapons. If police are so frightened of any possible sound or threat that they are going to shoot, they should wear bulletproof vests every time, and drive cars with bulletproof windows.

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I think that Americans think that they are at an unrealistic level of danger from violent crime because certain interests have taken great pains to convince them of it, for profit and control.

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To me, the real problem here is that a cop with 21 months of experience–and THREE complaints in 21 months, which seems high to me–was partnered with someone with one year of experience. I don’t care how well you are trained; street experience counts for a LOT. I’ve been in situations in which a rookie cop escalated the situation and acted like an idiot and a seasoned partner stepped in and calmed things down.

I also don’t understand why the cops entered the alley with all the lights on the squad car off and the body cams off. It seems to me that if you’re called to answer a possible sexual assault, the priorities should be (1) stop the assault if it is ongoing; (2) find and help the victim, and only after these two are done, (3) catch the perp. Turning the lights on the car off suggests (3) was the cops’ highest priority. If it was then those body cams should have been ON.

Driving down a dark alley --in which it is possible someone has been raped and left there-- with your lights off means to me that you might not see the victim if there was one and drive right over her.

Now I’m purely speculating but based on the police dispatcher transcript http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/justine-damond-minneapolis-police-shooting-transcript/8719212 it seems like there were fireworks in the area. Is that what scared Noor–fireworks?

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I am willing to bet they will go for the “I thought she was going for his gun” scenario.

Another guy who should never be a police officer. He could just as easily killed his partner.

Now they have a dilemma: will they FINALLY convict a killer cop, and it’s the black guy who kills a white woman? The fallout from that could be extraordinary.

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One of the unusual features of this shooting was that the victim was a woman …never mind Black, White, Brown, Red, or Yellow.

She’s dead and gone. Nothing can bring her back, but I want accountability. The Mayor and Police Chief better show some, pronto.

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@Consolation Police in America are at a high risk of danger. Look up the stats.

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The attorney for the officer driving the squad car—not the shooter—is suggesting that it would be “reasonable to assume” the officers thought they “might be the target of a possible ambush” when being called into an alley on a 911 call. This sounds like a trial balloon for a defense argument: the officers feared for their lives, so the shooting was justifiable. Hey, it worked in the Philando Castile case, didn’t it?

http://www.startribune.com/attorney-reasonable-to-believe-officer-feared-ambush-when-he-shot-justine-damond/435415343/

Something is terribly wrong here. The police are being trained to see every civilian as a potential threat, and the law is rigged to exonerate them every time they invoke fear to justify a killing by a trigger-happy cop. This incident can only further erode police-community relations. I know many people in Minneapolis who are now saying they’re afraid to call 911, and they’re terrified at the thought of what might happen if their kids call 911. The police are making themselves the enemy of the citizenry, and that can’t be good for anyone’s safety.

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I find it interesting that this accident has more calls for accountability/conviction than the train engineers who inexplicably exceed the speed limits, wreck their trains, magically have no memory, and kill people. It’s something to think about.

I also agree that not having the lights of the squad car turned on, if that’s the case, was not a good tactic, and probably contributed to the incident happening as it did.

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Notice also that the police officers are getting to tell their side of the story despite the investigation not being complete.

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Police officers who are frightened of any possible sound or threat shouldn’t be on the force. But in this case, we don’t know what the sound was. We don’t even know if it was a sound that served as the threat that lead to the use of deadly force.

Many of the police officers I see do wear bulletproof vests. Don’t know about bulletproof windows. I suspect certain police vehicles do have them though. Not sure though that either are the best way to deal with “jumpy” cops. Not sure that someone prone to a quick trigger will necessarily slow down because he/she is wearing a bulletproof vest.

Seems to me better approach is better selection of officer candidates and better training of them. Look more at temperament, dealing with people, reactions to stress, etc. Train them well and have them supervised by more experienced officers. And when you find people who are not suited for the job, seek to have them re-trained (with a relatively short window for improvement) or get them re-assigned to non beat duties or otherwise in other employment. Its a very difficult job. Not everyone is cut out for it. Some who are in place now may not belong there. They only serve to hurt those who do belong there and who are good at their job (which from everything I see is the majority of police officers). Likely will require increased funding (for training, salaries, etc.).

This makes is sound like the police/states/courts/juries/prosecutors are some monolithic entity which they aren’t. Should the other cases involving police shootings play a role in how this one comes out? Should the possible fallout be a factor?

Last I heard, the officer who fired the shot is asserting his 5th amendment privilege. And other info is coming out as well. I saw info about the 911 calls and from radio traffic after the shooting.

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@jonri I would be interested in knowing more about the three complaints and about the officers work assignment.

I am in police officer personnel files all the time, and how many complaints a particular officer has is often a function of what shift s/he works (far more complaints on second and third shifts than on first), what neighborhood s/he works (an officer who works a higher crime beat is more likely to have a higher number of complaints than an officer who works a lower crime beat), the officers particular assignment (patrol officer usually has more complaints than a school resource officer assigned to an elementary school), etc. Three in 21 months might not be that unusual for a patrol officer who has primarily worked a late night shift in a high crime area.

The substance of the complaints is also worth considering. People file complaints for all sorts of reasons, many of them of questionable veracity, and many of them about trivial issues not related to use of force - e.g., people file complaints against police officers when they believe the officer should not have written them tickets (even sometimes when the complainant admits having violated a known rule, but thinks his conduct was excusable for whatever reason), people file complaints against police officers who “disrespect” them by yelling to get their attention when they start to move forward when the officer has given a hand signal that means stop , etc. I once defended a case in which a person sued a police officer (after having filed an internal complaint that the department ruled was unfounded) because that officer wouldn’t let her cut through the scene of a serious injury-involved accident as EMTs were trying to treat the injured. Sometimes, complaints are serious and problematic, but often they are not.

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It could make it safer for actual criminals, if victims and witnesses are afraid or otherwise unwilling to call the police when criminals commit or attempt to commit a crime. Perhaps distrust of the police among non-criminal citizens could be a reason behind the recent uptick in crime in some places (though still well below the levels of crime during the early 1990s).