Police Kill Man Attempting to "Open Carry" ..wait for it...

[laughing dog]

Of course that question will be asked, and when the answer comes, it will not be good enough for most people one way or the other. The situation as we now know it, is very different from the situation the police were called to...

They had reports of a man with a gun at walmart.
They did not know the calibre of the gun.
They did not know if the gun was loaded.
They did not know if he had more than one gun.
They did not know if there was more than one person with guns.
They did not know if the man was bat-shit crazy, a wanted felon, a robber, or a shopper walking around with a pellet gun.

Their training tells them to safety gain control of the situation. This should be done from a safe distance. Walking up to an unkown and asking to see the gun, might be the last thing they ever would do. But because of the isles and other shoppers they problaly got too close. Things happpen pretty fast, and if there is a delay in following the command to drop the gun, then self-preservation is allowed.

So, the police officers did not act appropriately if they "probably got too close". And whether there was a delay in following the command and whether the gun was pointed in their direction and whether self-preservation action was necessary is yet to be determined.

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If that's your number one rule, you should probably just find a safer job.

What if we talked about other high-risk professions that way. What if a firefighter's number one priority was to make sure he goes home to his family? Look for people in a burning apartment building? Nope.

Except this is worse, because a firefighter who refuses to place himself in danger merely fails to save the lives of people who were already threatened. A cop who refuses to place himself in danger kills people while they're out shopping because they look scary.

A long time ago I posted in a thread my opinion that a police officer should be willing to take the risk of being shot at before taking the life of innocent person. I was laughed out of the thread and told that nobody would become a police officer if that were the case.

Certainly, anyone who laughed at you for that comment should become a police officer.

 

[OLDMAN]

The first rule that I mentioned isn't police policy, it is just the way it has to be...you will still be held accountable for your actions, but all that is secondary to coming home alive.
It is a really hard job, and police recruits are not chosen for wanting to bring justice to the world. They are chosen because their personality traits border on control freak. They enforce the law. They are the law. They will give you a ticket for driving five miles over the limit on a deserted highway in the middle of the night....just because it is the law. Remember this when you are dealing with them. If you want justice or your rights to be observed, go to court.

 

[laughing dog]

The first rule that I mentioned isn't police policy, it is just the way it has to be...you will still be held accountable for your actions, but all that is secondary to coming home alive.
It is a really hard job, and police recruits are not chosen for wanting to bring justice to the world. They are chosen because their personality traits border on control freak. They enforce the law. They are the law. They will give you a ticket for driving five miles over the limit on a deserted highway in the middle of the night....just because it is the law. Remember this when you are dealing with them. If you want justice or your rights to be observed, go to court.

Or shoot them first and leave no witnesses.

 

[RavenSky]

. I fault them for specifically telling police that Crawford was loading a gun. There is no way they saw anything like that because it wasn't an actual gun, so they are to blame for ramping up the alarm with this false bit of information, causing the police to come in expecting a genuine and loaded gun.

I do blame police, too, for not making 100% sure there was a genuine threat before murdering Crawford, but the two clowns who called police are to blame as well.

I understand what you are saying, but a police officer should be responsible for determining the nature of a threat regardless of what any witnesses have said on the phone, especially when the potential use of deadly force is involved.

I do agree with this part 100%

 

[Crazy Eddie]

. I fault them for specifically telling police that Crawford was loading a gun. There is no way they saw anything like that because it wasn't an actual gun, so they are to blame for ramping up the alarm with this false bit of information, causing the police to come in expecting a genuine and loaded gun.

I do blame police, too, for not making 100% sure there was a genuine threat before murdering Crawford, but the two clowns who called police are to blame as well.

Your right, this should have never happened. But the first rule of being a cop is "no matter what happens, make sure you and your partner go home to your families at the end of the shift."

No, that's the first rule of being a SOLDIER. The first rule of being a police officer is "keep the peace." That means whatever else anyone else does, everything you do and everything you say is in the interest of making the people around you -- the witnesses, the victim, the suspect, and yourself -- MORE safe than they would be if you were not there.

There is nothing more dangerous to the community than a jittery police officer who thinks his life is constantly in danger.

Everything else is secondary...and to be fair if you or I were cops, this is a rule I think I would follow.

Thank god you're not a cop.

 

[George S]

If there's a post on this forum about the police killing someone, it's going to be pretty easy to guess the victim's race.

What makes it even easier is when your article quote opens with "We was..."

But at least you didn't mention that the dead guy's wife children's mother is named LeeCee.

So anyway, here's the story of the couple who followed him through the store and called 911 on him:
http://bearingarms.com/dayton-walmart-shooting-innocent-man-swatted-death/2/

“He got on his cell phone right after he walked past me,” April Ritchie said. Ritchie was on her cell phone, talking with her mother. She had broken an ankle and was riding a scooter.

“Guy. Gun. Hold on,” April Ritchie recalled telling her mother.

They followed the man at a safe distance and Ronald Ritchie, a former Marine, called 911 at 8:21 p.m.

“Anytime I saw people walking his way, I would get their attention,” April Ritchie said, waving her hands for the reporters to demonstrate what she did. She said at one point, a family was standing next to the man with the rifle, but didn’t notice the rifle. The man turned to look at them with a stare she described as if he was telling them, “don’t come near me.”

He was holding a cellphone between his left ear and left shoulder while messing with the rifle, she said. “He just kept messing with it and I heard a clicking,” she said.

The "rifle"? According to the attorney general's office, John Crawford III was carrying an MK-177 (.177 caliber) BB/Pellet Rifle when he was shot.

Guns don't kill people. Little chunks of metal going fast kill people. This rifle projects .177 cal little chunks of metal at 800 feet per second, almost 80% of the speed of a .22 short bullet. As one witness noted, he had pumped up the pressure, click, click, click. Waving it around? Was this a dangerous situation? It even looks like an assault rifle at first glance. The responding officer has the information of a report of a man with a gun. He is primed to see, and did see because of the priming, exactly that. If the local security guards had been contacted and told there was a guy waving an air rifle around and would you see to it the situation might have been different. Overreaction on everyone's part.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The first rule that I mentioned isn't police policy, it is just the way it has to be...you will still be held accountable for your actions, but all that is secondary to coming home alive.

If this is just the way it is, then this is just wrong.
When i was growing up, all the cop shows had at least one episode of someone either shooting or coming close to shooting someone who was not holding a gun. Or they shot someone and no one could find the gun. Or in training they fired a blank at a guy holding a black hankerchief folded into a triangle and looked like a gun.
The point was always brought home that the cop's job, duty, reason for existing was to put himself at some extra degree of risk to make double-goddamned-sure of his target before firing.
Those that shot before they had sufficient evidence were consistently portrayed as in the wrong.

Holding an unloaded toy, even brandishing an unloaded toy, is not a crime that deserves the death penalty. As long as the cops are living an us-vs-them mentality, though, they're going to figure their job is to protect cops first, then citizens later.
The victim here made some stupid decisions, but he remains someone that the cops were supposed to protect and serve.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Guns don't kill people. Little chunks of metal going fast kill people. This rifle projects .177 cal little chunks of metal at 800 feet per second, almost 80% of the speed of a .22 short bullet. As one witness noted, he had pumped up the pressure, click, click, click. Waving it around? Was this a dangerous situation? It even looks like an assault rifle at first glance. The responding officer has the information of a report of a man with a gun. He is primed to see, and did see because of the priming, exactly that. If the local security guards had been contacted and told there was a guy waving an air rifle around and would you see to it the situation might have been different. Overreaction on everyone's part.

Yeah. That's obviously designed to look like a real weapon--a pellet gun has no actual use for a clip sized to hold regular bullets. I will not blame a cop for mistaking a simulation of a real weapon for the real thing.

 

[Jarhyn]

Guns don't kill people. Little chunks of metal going fast kill people. This rifle projects .177 cal little chunks of metal at 800 feet per second, almost 80% of the speed of a .22 short bullet. As one witness noted, he had pumped up the pressure, click, click, click. Waving it around? Was this a dangerous situation? It even looks like an assault rifle at first glance. The responding officer has the information of a report of a man with a gun. He is primed to see, and did see because of the priming, exactly that. If the local security guards had been contacted and told there was a guy waving an air rifle around and would you see to it the situation might have been different. Overreaction on everyone's part.

Yeah. That's obviously designed to look like a real weapon--a pellet gun has no actual use for a clip sized to hold regular bullets. I will not blame a cop for mistaking a simulation of a real weapon for the real thing.

For exactly the reason I don't blame cops
Who shoot kids holding airsoft guns, or kids for holding them (rather the society that allows sock obscenities), I don't blame either the cop or the guy. The guy's worst crime was stupidity. Rather we all commited a crime against all of us, in letting fake guns like this be sold, particularly off a publicly accessible shelf, and be allowed to be held when within the walls of the building by a customer.

 

[George S]

Yeah. That's obviously designed to look like a real weapon--a pellet gun has no actual use for a clip sized to hold regular bullets. I will not blame a cop for mistaking a simulation of a real weapon for the real thing.

For exactly the reason I don't blame cops
Who shoot kids holding airsoft guns, or kids for holding them (rather the society that allows sock obscenities), I don't blame either the cop or the guy. The guy's worst crime was stupidity. Rather we all commited a crime against all of us, in letting fake guns like this be sold, particularly off a publicly accessible shelf, and be allowed to be held when within the walls of the building by a customer.

The story doesn't tell us how it came to be unpackaged. If it is policy to have an unwrapped moderately dangerous weapon available (at 4x the power of the old Red Ryder BB gun it could do great bodily harm, perhaps even kill) then it might be a civil suit against the store.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah. That's obviously designed to look like a real weapon--a pellet gun has no actual use for a clip sized to hold regular bullets. I will not blame a cop for mistaking a simulation of a real weapon for the real thing.

For exactly the reason I don't blame cops
Who shoot kids holding airsoft guns, or kids for holding them (rather the society that allows sock obscenities), I don't blame either the cop or the guy. The guy's worst crime was stupidity. Rather we all commited a crime against all of us, in letting fake guns like this be sold, particularly off a publicly accessible shelf, and be allowed to be held when within the walls of the building by a customer.

I will agree that this guy's crime was stupidity.

However, I don't think such "guns" should be banned. I don't even mind it being held by a customer. I do think what he did should have been seriously illegal, though--the weapon looks real, treat it the same as brandishing a real gun would have been treated.

Sell them only to adults, minors are not allowed unsupervised possession and put a big warning on the box that they're subject to real weapon handling rules other than with regard to other willing participants. (Thus you can point an Airsoft gun at another player without committing a crime.)

As this was a pellet gun rather than an Airsoft gun there's no excuse for pointing it at another person, period. (Unless you're trying to bluff in self defense.)

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For exactly the reason I don't blame cops
Who shoot kids holding airsoft guns, or kids for holding them (rather the society that allows sock obscenities), I don't blame either the cop or the guy. The guy's worst crime was stupidity. Rather we all commited a crime against all of us, in letting fake guns like this be sold, particularly off a publicly accessible shelf, and be allowed to be held when within the walls of the building by a customer.

The story doesn't tell us how it came to be unpackaged. If it is policy to have an unwrapped moderately dangerous weapon available (at 4x the power of the old Red Ryder BB gun it could do great bodily harm, perhaps even kill) then it might be a civil suit against the store.

Why? It wasn't loaded. I don't see any wrongdoing on the part of the store.

Furthermore, customers are generally allowed to examine real firearms in the store. This is less powerful.

 

[bleubird]

A .177 pellet rifle is not a toy.This person died from stupid.

 

[laughing dog]

A .177 pellet rifle is not a toy.This person died from stupid.

No, the person died from gunshot wounds. Stupid is not a terminal disease nor an infliction that requires a legal execution.

 

[RavenSky]

A .177 pellet rifle is not a toy.This person died from stupid.

This person died from stupid, alright - but it wasn't his stupidity. It was scooter woman and her retired Marine husband who escalated a non-situation to a deadly one with their exaggerations and hysteria, and two cops who didn't properly assess the situation before shooting their weapons.

 

[Arctish]

A .177 pellet rifle is not a toy.This person died from stupid.

This person died from stupid, alright - but it wasn't his stupidity. It was scooter woman and her retired Marine husband who escalated a non-situation to a deadly one with their exaggerations and hysteria, and two cops who didn't properly assess the situation before shooting their weapons.

^ This.

 

[bleubird]

Come on.People die every day because they do stupid things. Did he not know that having a gun in a mall could be a problem?

 

[RavenSky]

Come on.People die every day because they do stupid things. Did he not know that having a gun in a mall could be a problem?

1. He didn't have "a gun"
2. He wasn't at "a mall"
3. Ohio is an "open carry" state. Many many "open carry" advocates are making it a point of carrying actual guns in actual malls... & not being shot/killed for it.

 

[bleubird]

Ok it was not a mall.A .177 can be a deadly weapon.

 

[RavenSky]

Ok it was not a mall.A .177 can be a deadly weapon.

To what... paper targets?

Seriously, trying to overstate this type of air rifle to "deadly weapon" status to justify the murder of an innocent citizen really fucking sucks bug balls. Furthermore, even your ridiculous "deadly weapon" nonsense has to assume the air rifle was loaded. It wasn't.

But all of this has already been covered in this thread anyway.

 

[Derec]

Ok it was not a mall.A .177 can be a deadly weapon.

To what... paper targets?

No. It is routinely lethal to small animals but can also kill humans in some cases.

Seriously, trying to overstate this type of air rifle to "deadly weapon" status to justify the murder of an innocent citizen really fucking sucks bug balls. Furthermore, even your ridiculous "deadly weapon" nonsense has to assume the air rifle was loaded. It wasn't.

Says who? And besides, how are the police supposed to know that? For that matter, how are the police supposed to know it was a pellet gun rather than an actual firearm?

But all of this has already been covered in this thread anyway.

Yes it was.