Woman shot dead after calling 911

Parent Cafe
121

“I would think that 99% of people with or without training would know not to shoot to someone given the same situation.”

Intellectually knowing and emotionally panicking are two different things. The military spends a lot of time training soldiers, trying to de-sensitize them to the reality of battle, but when soldiers are faced with a real situation some will panic and run away, some will panic and kill civilians or even their own troops in a friendly fire incident (like what happened to Pat Tillman).

If someone is panicked, they are in a flight or fight mode and training can’t always contain that. In cold light of day it seems obvious (ie the woman was outside the car, wasn’t armed, the partner wasn’t panicking in the driver’s seat, this wasn’t exactly the South Bronx in 1977). but something may have triggered the guy to shoot her, maybe firecrackers went off and he thought it was gunfire. That doesn’t take away from what he did, obviously, panic as a defense shouldn’t be allowed for cops (though it often is, they call that “he had reason to fear for his life”, as in “the officer heard sounds that sounded like gunshots and reacted”). The irony is if you as a citizen panic and shoot and kill someone because you were startled, they likely would charge you with manslaughter, even though you likely haven’t been trained, cops who are supposed to be trained IME often get off with “officer had reason to fear for his life”.

@ucbalumnus :
You are correct that other countries have higher gun homicide rates, but you are also comparing apples to oranges. The countries with worse murder rates are third world countries where the rule of law is not always present and where they have things like armed resistance movements and the like, not to mention many of them are poor where crime is rampant at rates that are way above the US.

What is startling is if you compare the US to peers, like Canada, the UK, and the rest of industrialized Europe and Eastern Europe, and there it is glaring, we are many, many multiples removed from the other countries (Canada which is similar to the US in some ways, is 5 times less on total homicides and a little over 4 times in homicides (like most countries, the US and Canada have as the largest component with gun deaths suicides, but the murder rate in Canada is around 4 times smaller than the US). A lot of that is likely the access to guns, people talk about access to guns in Switzerland, for example, but the gun ownership rate is about a 1/5 of the US.

122

Today on the NPR show 1A out of WAMU there was a really excellent hour-long discussion of how to improve police training to reduce “officer involved shootings.” It is available for listening as a podcast on the NPR site.

1A, which is consistently excellent, is the show that replaced Diane Rehm when she retired.

123

This police officer was in the passenger seat with an unholstered gun on his lap when they drove into that alley. Who approaches a possible sexual assault in progress in that manner? When would it ever be appropriate to have a gun on your lap? Even if the officer is left handed, he could easily accidentally fire the weapon when trying to get out the door.

And he was the senior partner of the two. Obviously their training is lacking. Shoot first, ask questions (and possibly plant evidence) later, and always frame your reaction as one of inescapable fear. The faces of the victim and the shooter may be different, but the problem is still the same.

124

This isn’t accurate. About 36% of US households own a firearm: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/29/american-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/?utm_term=.052c9be416ec. Estimates are 25% of Swiss own registered firearms. That number is higher if you add to it unregistered hunting rifles. So the data isn’t perfect, but the percent of households with firearms is estimated to be about the same in both countries.

125

Switzerland is not comparable to the US, for many reasons.

126

Sorry, Roethlisberger, I was talking the number of guns per 100 people, which takes into account differences in population. In the US, for every 100 people there are 112 guns, in switzerland it is 24 according to the stats. Yes, only 36% of Americans own guns but there is also the factor that people who own guns often have arsenals, it is the only way that if a little over a third of Americans own guns, that we have over 300 million guns in the country. The other factor that of course no one mentions is that the Swiss have pretty much every male over 18 as part of their militia, and a lot of the gun ownership is tied to that, and because it is militia based they have very strict rules on the ownership of those guns,and gun laws are pretty tight there to begin with, compared to the laxness of gun laws in many places in this country.

Not trying to get into a discussion of gun control, that isn’t the point of this thread, but what makes it relevant is in Switzerland they regard gun ownership as part of protecting the country, but they also view guns as a safety issue as well and have very tight regulations around them and accountability as well from what I have read, it is a very different culture there, and one of the biggest ones is they don’t have the gunslinger mentality that exists in more than a few quarters here, they view guns as a last resort, it is very different. Put it this way, from what I saw of Switzerland when I was there on business, I doubt very much swiss cops first reaction is to draw their gun, it is a very different mentality here among cops and a lot of people.

127

So Damond slapped the patrol car, probably to draw their attention. It startled the officer prompting to shoot.

128

A tendency to shoot first and ask questions later does not seem like a good idea for policing.

But then that tendency may be analogous to the increasing tendency to tweet outrage first and ask questions later that is spreading throughout society.

129

Unofficial street signs started popping up in Minneapolis and Saint Paul yesterday reading: “WARNING. Twin Cities police easily startled” and depicting a cartoon image of a police office with a handguns in each hand, firing away.

http://www.twincities.com/2017/07/23/sign-warning-that-police-startle-easily-appears-at-st-paul-intersection/

An indication of how many people here are feeling about their trigger-happy cops.

130

She slapped the police car? Sorry, I don’t believe it without dashcam or body cam evidence.

131

@ucbalumnus Yes, we are all high on something. I am sure there’s sociological dynamics behind this.

132

Mostly what we have now are rumors and leaks. The story will come out, but it hasn’t yet. I expect we’ll hear a reason for the shooting, but nothing that excuses it. Then the next discussion is what will change, if anything, to prevent a recurrence.

133

What’s wrong with slapping the car? Isn’t that what we do when we try to stop a car? It’s believable. She called to get police help, she sees a patrol car and bangs on it to get their attention. He shouldn’t have shot her or startled by that.

134

Indeed. While every adult male citizen is issued a military rifle/handgun depending on one’s rank/duties, the guns and issued ammunition is strictly controlled.

One can see in many pictures of Swiss citizens shopping with their service weapons.

No rifle magazines in the rifle as that’s prohibited outside of military training/duties. .

Also, ammunition kept at home for military emergencies are sealed and periodically inspected by the officers/NCOs in charge to ensure the seals haven’t been broken.

Ammunition for training is issued at the training site and any unused ammunition/spent shell casings are carefully counted at the end of the training session to ensure all issued ammunition was accounted for…very much like how the US and many other militaries ensure strict control over ammunition issued is accounted for to ensure soldiers don’t smuggle ammunition out for their own private use or to sell to a third entity.

This even extends to privately bought ammunition to be used in target practice events above and beyond training. It must be bought and used at the range. And they also count expended shell casings to ensure compliance.

135

I find it disturbing that the officer who did the shooting is still refusing to talk to investigators. Without his cooperation it will be impossible to get a clear picture of what transpired. Investigators say they can’t compel him to speak, presumably due to the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But for a police officer to refuse to cooperate in an investigation into the execution of his official duties strikes me as deeply problematic. We deserve better from officers sworn to a duty to protect the public and armed with deadly force in furtherance of that mission.

136

We have a recourse for that, deck his pay. If he isn’t cooperating with the investigation why should the public pay him on leave?

137

@Iglooo - I agree with you that there’s nothing wrong with slapping the car, if that’s what happened. But once again we have a victim who is dead, so she can’t testify. No video or audio evidence of any kind. Only the testimony of the survivors, one of whom is the shooter. They can say whatever they want, but I won’t believe them without outside corroboration.

The stakes are too high, and the shooter hit someone who is very high profile by being female, white, Australian, in pajamas, etc. She is not someone they can accuse of putting them “in fear for their lives”. So they come up with this slapping story and the transparent BS of it makes me feel ill. Will the driver, a rookie, have the strength to tell the truth? I doubt it.

138

At a training session on business and legal issues, a company attorney said “If you (engage in these practices), there will come a time when your interests and the interests of MegaCorp may begin to diverge. In that case, the MegaCorp law department will not be representing your interests.” For Officer Noor and the Minneapolis Police Department, that time has come. He may have a union lawyer, but the department is clearly not standing behind his actions. He is on his own and he knows it. No reason for him to speak at this time, and no way to compel him to speak. If there were a plausible excuse for his actions, I expect it would have leaked by now. So what do you expect him to say, and why would he say it?

139

@bclintonk and @iglooo It does make it tough to get to the bottom of what happened if he doesn’t talk to investigators. But He can’t be compelled to speak without a guarantee that whatever he says (and whatever other evidence his statements lead to) won’t be used against him in a criminal proceeding. Threatening his job altogether would constitute compulsion, and threatening his pay probably would too. That prohibition arises from a case called Garrity v New Jersey, which protects the Fifth Amendment rights (as you suspected) of public employees. So making him talk would jeopardize the ability to prosecute him if they decide that’s warranted.

140

Officer Noor’s attorney is now saying the officer will talk to investigators at some unspecified future date. This sounds like a strategy to get all the other evidence out on the table first, including statements from his partner in the squad car, any eyewitness accounts, and any video evidence that may emerge. That way they can concoct a self-serving story that is at least loosely consistent with the other evidence. If that’s what the attorney is up to, it sounds like attorney misconduct—counseling his client to commit perjury.