TheAgitator.com
Unarmed GVSU Student Shot During Drug Raid Arrested on Marijuana Charges
Friday, April 17th, 2009According to police reports, on March 11 Grand Valley State University sophomore Derek Kopp sold an undercover police officer 3.3 grams of marijuana for $60. The police then raided Kopp’s apartment, at which point Deputy Ryan Huizenga mistook Kopp shielding his eyes from a police flashlight for brandishing a weapon, and shot the unarmed Kopp in the chest. The bullet pierced Kopp’s liver, broke a rib, and punctured one of Kopp’s lungs.
Apparently, a bullet in the chest and time in the intensive care unit wasn’t punishment enough for selling three grams of pot. This week, a Michigan judge issued an arrest warrant for Kopp on the charge of delivery of marijuana. He’ll be arraigned on Monday.
Serves him right for shorting the eighth by .2 grams. I hate getting shorted…
Oh, good. I’m not the only one whose first reaction was “hey, that bag was 0.2 grams short”. I bet the undercover guy pinched it.
Come on, guys, you’ve never bought a quarter and then split it by eye to make back a little cash?
I knew I was naive about marijuana. But realizing that I have no idea what you three are talking about really drives home just how little I know.
Cop 1: Ooo! Ooo! I have an idea! Let’s go ruin some kid’s life over 3.3 grams of pot!
Cop 2: Fuck that! Let’s shoot him in the chest, instead.
Cop 3: Dudes! We’re cops! We can do whatever the fuck we want! Let’s do both!
What the hell is wrong with these assholes? What kind of an asshole sits there and says “Sweet! We can ruin this kid’s life! Awesome!”
Are you telling me not ONE person in that entire sorry chain of events couldn’t GROW SOME MORALS and stop to think ..”Hey, this is wrong. I don’t see how putting this kid in mortal jeapardy, then charging him with a felony is the right thing to do.”
Are you telling me not ONE person in that entire sorry chain of events couldn’t GROW SOME MORALS and stop to think ..”Hey, this is wrong. I don’t see how putting this kid in mortal jeapardy, then charging him with a felony is the right thing to do.”
Citizen, right and wrong are not a question of morals, they are a question of LAW!
From the article: “Police allege Huizenga should have had his finger on the outside of his trigger guard when entering the apartment, but it was on the inside.”
From my previous post on this topic: “The cop FAILED to uphold the four rules of safe gun handling, specifially number three, do not have your finger on the trigger until the target is in your sites!”
Any cop who fails to uphold the BASIC rules of firearms safety is UNQUALIFIED to be a cop. The cop should be fired, then charged with negligence resulting in serious injury.
I’m sure the charge is just the police deparment’s bargaining chip for the lawsuit that will certainly come out of this. IMMORAL pondscum, the whole lot.
They have no choice but to prosecute. In order for them to get their boy who pulled the trigger off, they have to smear this poor kid in the court of public opinion. That means painting him as some amoral drug pusher who is out to get the children.
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that WEMET rolled a full-on SWAT team for a fucking eighth.
I bet the officer shot him for shorting it 0.2g.
Because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s the drugs ruining the kid’s life. That’s why they’re such great cop material. They’re not burdened with a conscience like ordinary people.
It’s a good thing that cop was there, drugs are dangerous.
per comments on the link:
“When your kid gets high, gets hooked on drugs, knocked up at age 13, kicked out of school, arrested, appears on Springer, then overdoses and dies…You’ll wish the cops killed the dealer. Live like a gangsta…you should be shot like one.”
God forbid it be incumbent on anyone to actually, you know, act like a parent. Better to have the state step in..
Illegal Alien working in America has committed no less than four criminal violations (two of them felonies) and our elected officials want to give 12 million of them Amnesty.
CIA agents torture and abuse prisoners and detainees and Obama grants them Amnesty.
A student hooks up an undercover Drug Agent gets SHOOT, will have a criminal record, and may even serve PRISON TIME.
WAKE UP AMERICA…we need bodies in the street demanding LEGALIZATION, we need AMNESTY for over one million people locked up in prisons for selling a little weed.
Get involved, volunteer…right now, I would love to find Budding Bloggers in every state in America, on every college campus to Blog about this very important issue!
Email me to get your own Medical Marijuana Society Blog…give your college, university, small town or big city a VOICE IN THIS NATIONAL DEBATE!
medicalmarijuanasociety@yahoo.com
#9, thomasblair:
“I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that WEMET rolled a full-on SWAT team for a fucking eighth.
I bet the officer shot him for shorting it 0.2g.”
Not just one eighth… 2! Don’t forget the 3 gram one in February! At that rate, these raging dope peddlers could have supplied poorly measured out dope to … well, almost one person! One person with a very light usage pattern. Isn’t it obvious that these guys are the smallest of the small? They can’t even measure out their dope right. I also find it suspicious that the 3.0 gram bag was 50 bucks… yet the 3.3 gram bag was 60. I see no reason to believe that the kids would have been able to tell the difference between the two bags. Why the different prices?
The utter incompetence of it all. It’s clear that it’s all about arrest stats and forwarding the careers of everyone involved in the judicial system.
And why not roll a full on SWAT team? That’s more people they can employ and raises the possibility of more arrests for ‘resistance’. With no oversight… why wouldn’t they do that? Concern for civilians? There’s clearly none of that! The more guns you can point at innocent people the more situations you can create to criminalize them.
You’ll have that just as soon as the body count in the drug war starts to approach that of the Vietnam war and you get the resulting demonstrations and riots. And even then the government will just become more entrenched in their belief that we must win the war.
medicalmarijuanasociety@yahoo.com
Sorry, medical marijuana won’t help the problem at all. In fact, it may exacerbate the problem. We need full on recreational-use legalization to fix the problem.
Hunters often say “there are no ‘accidents’ when hunting,
only negligence.”
Can’t cops espouse this motto?
Are they too dumb or too arrogant?
@Bud
Right on. We need to be busting down immigrants’ doors and shooting them, not weed dealers.
Wait a minute – are you saying this is another example of a highly trained officer erring with his gun. No f’n way! There goes the argument that only the agents of the state should have guns.
I clicked on comments to argue that the shooting was justified, due to the light eighth. I was far too late.
It touches on a real problem in our society. Too long have these dealers taken advantage of the justified hesitation of their clientele to carry simultaneously weed and a postage scale. This is an example of the rampant greed of NE 45th Street abusing the hardworking people of Main Street.
We must demand a strong government response to this out-of-control pandemic. Ask your representatives: are you FOR shorting?
Someone should pass a law!
Zero tolerance.
Wow! 60 bucks for an eighth, I can get a quarter for 50 canadian dollars (about 40ish american ). Poor guys….. Lets here it for the genius of prohibition! Take away what the people want and they will get it somewhere else. If you shoot, and or, jail them all it will stop. Now all ya gotta do is shoot, and or, jail everyone in the united states. Problem solved, win win! (ps. shooting people is cheaper than jailing them, keep that in mind during these hard economic times)
#5 and #6
Are you telling me not ONE person in that entire sorry chain of events couldn’t GROW SOME MORALS and stop to think ..”Hey, this is wrong. I don’t see how putting this kid in mortal jeapardy, then charging him with a felony is the right thing to do.”
Morals…Laws…they have their place…what is lacking is “common sense” in evaluating what is necessary in order to accomplish your objective while minimizing the risk of injury or loss of life to either an officer or a suspect. Law officers appear to be indifferent to the use of force and they know their unions are strong and the dept. will do their own internal investigating while an officer will be on paid administrative leave pending dept. findings…not much to fret about when you are always “just doing your job.”
Transparency and Accountability along with other changes in Investigating Techniques need to be addressed by community oversight.
#7
I agree that the rules of gun safety are an issue, and they are routinely abused and overlooked by certain police depts., perhaps all, when their policies and protocols allow their officers to implement “ready gun” postures in unwarranted situations, and if and when something does go wrong, resulting in a terrible injury or worse, loss of a non-threatening person’s life…the justifications are always the same. The officer who causes the injury or loss, is always described as very liked, respected, dedicated etc. and the dept. buzz words and banter all follow the same standard responses.
They forget or negate that the unnecessary and unjust injury or loss of life was sustained by a person who was also valued by their family and friends and the same adjectives can also apply. We are all God’s children!
When I read these type of posts and exchanges, it is upsetting on many levels. ALL life is precious and that should be remembered by those who are in positions of authority, wear badges and carry weapons, especially when they have access to profiles and risk assessments that are not sending up any red flags with regard to weapon ownership, having previous criminal records, and threatening or violent behaviors attributed to those they would put in harms way.
http://www.justiceforsal.com
The best argument against the drug war is this: If you can’t keep them out of prisons, how can you keep them out of a free country? And what will said country look like after you’ve succeeded?
From the article:
“Police said field tests proved the drugs were real.”
“Field tests”, huh?