Eaton County, Michigan experienced two citizens killed by the county police in the last year. This is a high rate of death-by-cop considering our modest population.
The first death involved a young man "with a record" violating parole. The vehicle he was driving left the road. He greeted the police who arrived to render assistance with gunfire. Nobody's knickers are in a knot over this death.
The second death involved a high school student returning home from his girlfriend's house. The policeman's testimony, substantiated by the dash cam, is that the student initiated physical conflict. The policeman first attempted to subdue the student with his taser with no significant effect. The student continued assaulting the policeman. The policeman escalated to lethal force.
 |
| Pictures of Officer Frost after the altercation. Oddly, none of the protesters carried signs with this image on it. |
The parents of the student filed a wrongful death suit in federal court against the policeman (who is just a working stiff), and presumably, against the county (which has insurance).
The money-grubbing attorneys are attempting to first try the case in the court of public opinion, and presumably pressure the county (and insurance company) into an out-of-court settlement. It is necessary to have media coverage to make this strategy work.
 |
| Do most of those signs look almost identical? I bet the same person cranked most of them out. Hundreds, do you see hundreds? |
 |
| The obligatory crowd shot. This looks like 75 protesters, some kids who got dragged along and the balance being curious pedestrians and media types trying to get a story. Images from HERE |
Consequently, we have the classic "Hundreds protest on the Capital grounds" with the crowd estimate supplied by the attorneys but few pictures of the crowds.
Several of the quotes land with a thud.
- "He needs justice." He is dead. He is beyond earthly justice.
- "More people are....voicing their opinion." Justice is not like voting for the Homecoming Court. It is about facts.
- "I hadn't seen him in 16 years, it broke my heart (to see him in a casket)" His grandmother doing the victim-swoon. If he meant so much to her, where was she the other 5840 days he was alive?
I have a sixteen year old boy. There are moments when he is as impulsive and as blinded by tunnel-vision as anybody on this planet. We drill him on how to interact with people in authority, especially people who carry firearms.
In spite of our best effort, there will be times when our kids do stupid things. ERJ's Law of Threes
- Three seconds of stupid can kill you.
- Three minutes without oxygen can kill you.
- Three hours of exposure can kill you.
- Three days without water can kill you.
- Three weeks without food can kill you.
---End of rant---
I think Hohn Wayne famously said "Life is hard. It's harder iif you're stupid."
ReplyDeleteAgreed, but sadly they'll probably grub some $$ from the state/country to go away... dammit
ReplyDeleteIt's almost a tradition that a criminal who is shot while committing a crime (or his estate) will sue the the police or sheriff's department, the city, county, or state, and the individual officer (who is usually indemnified in the case of a line-of-duty shooting). The governmental entity will then offer a five-figure payout as go-away money, since that's cheaper than going to court.
ReplyDeleteThis is known as "winning the ghetto lottery."
(One way to tell if a shooting is good or bad is the size of the payout; five figures means it's a good shooting; seven or eight figures means it's a bad one).
Update: The local media is being spoonfed propaganda. The legal teams are working as a pack. One of the Detroit firms volunteered the information that the county could "...easily lose a settlement that will cost millions of dollars" if they go to trial.
DeleteThe lead legal team will be advertising to find citizens, motorists, who feel that the Eaton County Sherrif's department treated them in an uncivil manner. They hope to prove a pattern of unaddressed, out-of-control policing....implying that those actions are tolerated if not encouraged.
Makes me want to puke.
I think they should go to trial and tie up the lead attorneys for three years. Their entire "business plan" is to make the county cave in for the quick score.
And the county will cave in. If the facts as alleged are true, the threat of a seven-figure settlement is complete BS, but the county will gladly pay out five figures to make the whole thing go away. This is the ghetto lottery in action, and it has made a whole lot of shysters around the country very rich.
Delete