TheAgitator.com
Georgia Pastor Killed in Botched Drug Bust
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009Developing story in Georgia, where church pastor Jonathan Ayers was shot and killed by undercover narcotics officers during a botched drug sting on Tuesday afternoon. Ayers was not the target of the investigation.
Police were apparently after a woman Ayers had dropped off just prior to stopping at the convenience store where police confronted him. Surveillance video shows a black SUV pulling up to the store, and plain-clothes officers jumping out with their guns drawn before the vehicle has stopped. Ayers’ car then backs into the picture, and the officers fire into his car as he drives off. Ayers was shot in the liver, crashed his car a short distance later, and died at the hospital the bullet wound.
A police spokesperson says the officers identified themselves as they got out of the truck, though even if they did, it isn’t difficult to see how someone in Ayers’ position might panic when confronted with armed, plain-clothes men who’d just jumped from a black SUV. He had also just returned from getting money from the store’s ATM. There were no drugs in Ayers’ car.
Ayers leaves behind a wife who is four months pregnant.
this could’ve happened to any of us… but, the cops will be cleared of any wrongdoing and will set up the next raid.
Hey, you’re gonna make an omelette, gotta break a few eggs. Just wait’ll we’ve won the war on drugs and you’ll see that it was all worth it…
Sounds like straight-up murder one, according to this account.
wow. just another state sanctioned murder. when are the citizens of this country going to say enough is enough?
Heart aches for the wife and the child who will never even get to see dad.
Sissy cops with guns lead to no good for anyone.
I saw this last night. I really think that it’s going to take more Baptist ministers getting killed by cops to make people realize that this isn’t something that just happens to ‘those other people’
Especially the citizens of Georgia.
By the way, isn’t it great that a state that denies bond for a guy who slapped a kid in a mall – gives cops paid vacations for killing people?
http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/bond-denied-for-accused-130094.html
“Ayers’ car then backs into the picture, and the officers fire into his car as he drives off.”
All other aspects of this aside, doesn’t that right there make this very not OK? He’s not shooting at them, and he’s driving away, and they just open fire?
I don’t see how opening fire on a fleeing vehicle (in the officer’s view) is standard (or even acceptable) proceedure. I went through MP (Military Police) training just after 9/11 because we were short on cops (the class was taught by MPs and the local Sheriff). One of the first things they taught us was that you only fire if you feel your life is in imminent danger (or the life of someone else).
Obviously these cops were not in imminent danger. They should be investigated and tried for murder, as far as I’m concerned.
Notice that the police lied to the victim’s family too:
Carpenter also told AccessNorthGa.com that the family was first informed Ayers died in a traffic accident, and then that he had been shot. Hours later, they learned he died in an officer-involved shooting.
They also initially said to the media that Ayers was the target of the sting, and then backtracked on that.
From what I can tell, at least one of the plainclothes officers in the video is wearing a wife beater… Can anyone say that if a guy wearing what usually passes for “suspect” gear on COPS jumps out of an Escalade and pulls a gun you wouldn’t react the same way?
“This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.” -Admiral Josh Painter (Sen. Fred Thompson), The Hunt for Red October (1990)
That quote keeps rolling thorugh my mind after every story I read like this one.
Not siding with the cops, but they shot him because he touched one of them with his car. They try to block him in, and as he backs up turning, the car touches the officer.
They’re going to claim that he was using deadly force against them (i.e. the car) so they had to use deadly force against him. They always get their bullshit story lined up early on, you just have to watch for the signs. Hang out here long enough and it’s second nature.
The officer did a little show where he went to the hospital to be “treated” for his terrible wound, and was released the same day needless to say. You can see how wounded he is in the video, almost unable to keep running after the car due to his massive injuries. Hopefully his paid vacation will give him time to heal…
But…but…someone might put something in his nose!
We need to keep shooting ministers, elderly ladies and dogs! And then taking some paid time off until eveyone says it’s OK!
Don’t you subjects understand?!?
Goddammit. I just saw the video on the link. If I saw that in the parking lot I was in, I’d have pulled my weapon and shot at the cops. That looks 100% like some gangbangers trying to roll someone for their car or cash.
Goddammit.
Lemme guess, Jonathan Ayers was an African Amaerican? Maybe he was doing one of those Christian clergy trying to save someone’s soul thing?
The War on Liberty continues. It’s for the children you know.
Just not Jonathon Ayers’s
“The pastor tried to avoid them, Shirley said Wednesday, striking one of the agents after putting his car in reverse.”
That at least answers some of the question as to why they shot at the poor guy, but firing on a moving vehicle in the middle of the day AT A GAS STATION (!!!) of all places is terribly reckless. It sounds like they got their ‘police training’ from a combination of Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys II, and Point Break.
How can any court believe that saying “Police!” is a way to identify yourself? If he’d seen some men in blue unis and badges come toward him, you damn well know he’d follow their orders.
And everyone would still be living.
I ought to try that….
“Sir, we need your ID ”
“MIIKE!”
“Thank you, sir…”
Another innocent victim of dangerous illegal drugs…
If these guys weren’t cops, the story would be this…
“Several armed men assault a 28 year old pastor who had just gotten cash from an ATM. As the pastor tried to escape from his attackers, one of the armed men shot at his vehicle, penetrating the door and killing him. The attackers claim they were just trying to stop him and ask him questions about drug dealers in the area. But officer Blowhard says “It isn’t acceptable for civilians to assault someone in this manner, no matter what the reasoning. It’s dangerous, other bystanders could have been hurt, and it was obvious that their target was fearing for his life.” The attackers are being held without bond.”
What a difference a badge makes.
I hate to say this but the first thing I was “Was this pastor black?” because if he was this is going to be even easier for them to sweep under the rug and get away with it.
This crime is so outrageous, I hope Roger Goodell suspends Donte Stallworth for another year!
I wonder if this will even make the evening new?
Plain clothes cops should be for information gathering only.
Any actual enforcement of the law should be by uniformed cops.
Anyone impersonating a cop should get the death penalty.
This is outrageous. Why can’t police use the squad cars we buy them, and wear proper uniforms and badges? A bunch of thugs in wife beaters and jeans hopping out of an Escalade is what I expect from carjackers and thieves. If I had just pulled cash from an ATM, I’d be driving off in an “aggressive” manner also when approached by a group of questionable characters.
Yelling “POLICE” is not sufficient for identification, because ANYONE can yell “POLICE” – where were the squad cars and uniformed officers? These task forces and rogue “units” have to be reigned in, just like the overuse of SWAT.
Plain clothes cops should be for information gathering only
Yes, duh!
Any actual enforcement of the law should be by uniformed cops.
Double Yes, duh!
Anyone impersonating a cop should get the death penalty.
Think of the strippers!
When the economy collapses, the people will no longer have their prosperity to prop up the illusion that they are genuinely free. Wealth itself is not freedom, in fact it tends to make people put up with abuses that they’d never tolerate as a poorer, prouder people like we were in 1776. If the economy gets worse, and the dow hits 5000 or less for at least a year, it will be very interesting times for the pigs.
This story has just ruined my entire day. It’s just so damned infuriating. One more dead American thanks to a bunch of government thugs who decided to criminalize a fucking PLANT. Ugh. I have an 8-week old son at home right now and I cannot fathom the future he is going to be living in if society continues to collapse into itself. I know it’s cliche to say so, but I seriously do fear for his future. This shit is straight up scary.
I’m partial to the idea of having a stripper in a police uniform cane the shit out of them in public. I think 30-40 lashes with a cane or whip would be sufficient to deter most of the people who would impersonate a cop for the wrong reasons.
From what I can tell from the video, Ayers is white. The caption for the video states that the first part of the video is him going into the store to use the ATM. I assumed that the white guy in the red t-shirt was Ayers.
Goddamn today’s links are a bummer. Between this and the article on the
prosecutionpersecution of advocates for pain-relief doctors my blood is boiling.Very good point. I’d add to that that even if simply yelling “POLICE” was sufficient, Ayers was in a closed vehicle. If he had the radio playing or his engine was revving there’s no way he’d hear what they were saying to him. He had every reason in the world to believe that he was being mugged/carjacked.
More likely Police Academy. (All five films.)
Insane. The folks on here from GA will know that Lavonia is the middle of freaking nowhere – almost to the SC border. That they’re doing this kind of “investigating” over there is just ridiculous. Of course, they probably don’t have enough cow-tipping to investigate with the kids back in school now.
“composed of officers from Stephens, Habersham and Rabun counties”
That means a bunch of rednecks with guns and authoritah.
There are a bunch of really troubling aspects to this story. First, in what sick world is shouting “police” while in plain clothes and pointing a gun a someone good enough to shoot them in ‘self defense’ if they try to flee? What do these people expect? That everyone knows they’re police? If they think everyone knows, why wear plainclothes? I thought the whole point of wearing a uniform was that so people know that you have police authority, and can make informed decisions.
I don’t know about anyone else, but if some guy in track pants and a t-shirt points a gun at me in my car, I’m hitting the gas and hoping I can get out of there.
And as usual, it bothers me they always have to try to tar the victim with accusations (ensuring that some people will always remember Mr. Ayers as a drug dealer. Very classy) that they know are lies, as a preemptive move to cover their asses.
The fact that they had their guns drawn was the real contributing factor here. They didn’t need to do that. Had they been calm, badges in hand stretched out in front of them, this would have have been a lot different. The cops escalated this scenario when they didn’t need to. No indication that this pastor was armed or violent.
That is the problem with all these stories about accidental police killings. More often than not, THE POLICE escalate the violence, not the public. Disproportionate use of force is what the military uses when they fight the Taliban. Police don’t need to follow the same protocal when dealing with the American Public.
If they were that close, why not just shoot the tires out and manually apprehend the person? During all of the confusion, the cops must have misplaced their bag of crack to plant on Ayers. I’m taking bets that the cops will say that they found ‘trace amounts’ of something or other so they can justify future murders by pretending they heroically took down a major drug kingpin.
Well, the police do seem to view the Public in the same light as the military views the Taliban.
Nothing in this story strikes me as being an accident, except the pastor hitting one of them as he backed up to try and escape from a bunch of thugs with guns.
The pastor was white.
The shooting happened in Toccoa, GA which is about 17 miles northeast of Lavonia. The preacher’s church was in Lavonia.
It is one hell of a tragedy.
Sorry guys. In the interest of accuracy Toccoa is northwest of Lavonia. I’ve lived in Toccoa all of my life. You would think I would know where the hell it is.
Well what else can one say that hasn’t been said so far? I only wonder how much more of this has to happen before things get really ugly.
“He says there’s a storm coming.”
“I know.”
Dammit Radley. Stories like this are the reason I hate to love this website.
This is entirely nauseating. Thanks for spotlighting such a grave injustice. As always, Radley, u do this country a great service here.
If the police did any investigative work BEFORE they showed up at the convenience store, shouldn’t they have known the victim was a PASTOR?!?! I mean, really, and knowing that he’s a pastor, and the type of church he preached at, they wouldn’t have pulled their guns on him. Or, at least, couldn’t have, since aiming a gun at a pastor is a sure trip to hell.
Well now I think I just explained why officers shouldn’t do investigative work beforehand…
#35 “I’m taking bets that the cops will say that they found ‘trace amounts’ of something or other so they can justify future murders by pretending they heroically took down a major drug kingpin.”
90% of all US currency has trace amounts of cocaine. Ayers just took money from an ATM. There’s your “probable cause”.
Even if they had, they’d use the “just because he’d a pastor doesn’t mean he’s not a scumbag, and potential cop killer” defense.
So lemme see if I have this right. The GBI is looking for a woman who they suspect is selling coke. This pastor gives her a ride, drops her off and then goes about his business and then gets shot by plainclothes officers who try to box him in an a blacked-out SUV. So somewhere along the line they a) lost the car the pastor was driving and didn’t realize the woman they were looking for was no longer in the car or b) heard she might be in this car from an “informant” and just decided to see if they could get lucky and pull up on the pastor.
I guess the new Law Enforcement slogan is:
“Sloppy police work, mistakes, we can shoot(tase) our way out of anything”
I bet it don’t make the evening news. I hope I’m wrong though.
The only way that these kinds of atrocities by police are going to stop, is if the news media (international, national and local) starts conveying stories such as this, to everyone, with the same level of coverage that the death of Michael Jackson has gotten…
[...] weekday afternoon. Ayers was not the direct of the investigation. … Read the rest here: The Agitator » Blog Archive » Colony Pastor Killed in Botched … Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: a-botched-drug, and-killed, botched-drug, investigation, [...]
Personally, I don’t believe that even a cure for cancer, nuclear war, or an imminent asteroid impact warrants the level of coverage given Michael Jackson’s death.
“Ayers leaves behind a wife who is four months pregnant.”
Correction:
“Officers from Stephens, Habersham and Rabun counties made his wife a widow and orphaned Ayer’s unborn child.”
/accuracy nazi
You’re sitting in your car when a bunch of armed men in plainclothes jump out of a black SUV and start shouting, you’re gonna try to get out of there quick. This is why i always recommend backing into parking spots. It makes it much easier to take out a few unidentified assailants on the way out.
Again, why warrant service should be limited to uniformed officers.
John Wilburn “The only way that these kinds of atrocities by police are going to stop, is if the news media (international, national and local) starts conveying stories such as this, to everyone, with the same level of coverage that the death of Michael Jackson has gotten…”
Totally agree but its never going to happen. The media act like they’re scared to cover these stories. I’m not sure why.
“Anyone impersonating a cop should get the death penalty.”
Nah. The death penalty should be reserved for cops who abuse their power.
#34 Mattocracy is right on the money. Why have guns drawn ready to use deadly force if they wanted to talk to the guy? Pointing a gun at a guy like that tends to cause tunnel-vision, where all you know is that you have to get away.
What next? Traffic stops where an unmarked van pulls up next to you and a guy with a machine guns leans out the door to make you pull over?
It’s all about incentives. If they gave me paid vaccation for killing people I’d kill people too.
BTW, I just saw a link to the story on the CNN.com main webpage.
I guess it’s getting around (or CNN is getting ideas from Radley again and not crediting him).
Hey police! Here’s a tip:
Don’t walk up behind a car that is or could be backing up.
People can get hurt that way. Evidently, it’s the driver.
I am from Lavonia, so this hits home to me, but Ayers also rammed his vehicle into one police officer, then tried to hit another. The problem here is deciding to give officers or clergy a bad name. So many of us Southern Baptists can’t see past the fact that even our wonderful pastors may actually lead a double life. I do feel terrible for his wife Abby, and am praying for the whole family, but please don’t point fingers until everything has come to light. He probably was just dropping off a woman that needed a ride that day. But, very few pastors I know will put themselves in a situation alone with a woman that is not their wife to prevent any idea that he may have stepped outside of his marriage. When the female suspect’s statement is released, I think a lot of things will come to light.
The woman who was the actual “suspect” in all of this should count this as a near-death experience. If she had still been in the car with him she’d have been shot dead as well.
It saddens me to think that, as a child, I really wanted to be a cop when I grew up. Now, all I want is the greatest distance possible between me and them. Oh, and some kevlar too.
This has gone far enough. Are there any productive, well run organizations taking action to stop this of abuse of power? If so, I will become thier biggest supporter.
If not, it’s time to start one.
Ok, guns drawn and killing aside. WTF were the cops doing following the car? I thought the suspect was dropped off before. So they left the location where the suspect was and followed someone else? Or am I missing something here?
# 51 JS
“The media act like they
“A police spokesperson says the officers identified themselves as they got out of the truck”
The cops *identified* themselves before they pulled the trigger!
That makes this killing legal. Sorry, folks, move along.
#51 | JS
“The media act like they’re scared to cover these stories.”
That made me think of the scene from the movie “Airplane!” where the “Russian news reporter” has the gun to his head.
There was a show on Discovery a few weeks ago called “WHEN PERSUIT GOES BAD” or something equally inane. I watched it like a good citizen.
One of the videos was this dude in a Camaro getting out of three very high spped PIT maneuvers. It was like something out of GTA. Amazing. I really wanted the guy to get out of there.
There was another where the cops were after a guy who’d stolen a couple hundred dollars out of a cash register. They were flying down the road for several minutes. Plenty of time to get a plate number and back off. (But wait, he might have stolen the car! Do some fucking police work and find him then.) Instead of doing that, they shot the tires out of the car and it flipped several times.
When interviewed the cop said “We had no choice.” What he should have said was “We had no choice that we wanted to take.” They had no way of knowing if there was a kid in the car, if a stray bullet would hit a civilian, if the car would hit an oncoming car. And the cop thought he’d done a great job. It boggles the mind.
On the topic of stupid things cops do, a mile from my house here in CT is the great Woodstock Fair. As a vendor was setting up on Monday, he was shot. By a cop doing pistol qualifications at a range a quarter mile away. Wanna bet the one who did it doesn’t even lose his qualification? (And for the record, I’ve been to that range, the backstop is at least 15′ high, meaning there’s no possible way you can miss it without doing something stupid.)
MacGregory “That made me think of the scene from the movie “Airplane!” where the “Russian news reporter” has the gun to his head.”
lol yea but what excuse does ABC or CBS have? And by the way, where’s the ACLU on this kind of thing?
…The pastor tried to avoid them, Shirley said Wednesday, striking one of the agents after putting his car in reverse….
So, I wonder just how badly injured the agent was after being struck by the car. Was he treated? Or was it more like the kind of injury suffered by Crystal Mangum at the hands of a few Duke University lacrosse players?
Has anyone ever done research to see how likely you are to be killed by law enforcement in America as compared to the rest of the first world countries? Something tells me we lead the world in prison lock up and police shootings.
Dave, watch the video. After being touched by the car, he commences to run after it. He went to the hospital to help solidify their excuse, but he’s clearly not injured in any way.
I’d also like more information about what happened after Ayers crashed and went to the hospital. Anyone want to bet that they handcuffed him after pulling him from his car?
Also, there’s a strange coincidence here. Seems there was another Jonathan Ayers from the Atlanta area who was recently killed on duty in Iraq. Makes it interesting to search for him.
Stories like this bolster my argument that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you frequently have *more* to fear.
If someone’s just robbed a convenience store, is cooking meth in their garage, or is growing some special crops out in the cornfield, some part of them must know there’s a chance of large men with badges and guns bursting in on them. When that happens, they can assume the jig is up, and they get to choose whether to fight, flee or surrender. They know the likely consequences of each path.
For the rest of us, we are caught completely flat-footed. As far as we know, we’ve done nothing wrong, especially nothing worthy of guns leveled at our heads in a parking lot or of having our doors kicked in at 3am. We aren’t likely to make the mental jump and assume that the violent, armed men surrounding us, bellowing threats are the police. We’re raised to believe the police will protect us, not terrorize us in the middle of the night. We don’t assume surrender will allow us to work out the misunderstanding – we assume it will kill us. So we fight, or we flee, and they open fire.
OTOH, if MJ were to be resurrected….
;)
This story: http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134689&catid=40
paints everything differently. The pastor doesn’t look so innocent. A fact left out here and there and the picture changes.
No, the only way these kinds of atrocities will stop is if people declare open season on cops. The State will throw more and more force and escalation of violence for any incident, continue the ass covering, the lies, the murder … BECAUSE THE STATE CAN, due to the people not standing up for themselves. Things are way past “use the system”, as the system doesn’t allow for a redress of grievances that even remotely serves justice.
Everyone should consider whether cops even serve a good purpose any more. They serve The State to generate revenue, are absolved of all wrong doing by their masters, follow the mantra of “just enforcing the law, if you don’t like it then change the law”, uphold the Blue Wall of Silence, and generally view Citizen Nothings as ATMs and targets for practice.
What happened to Ayers can happen to anyone.
Roho @ 2:29 PM
Good point.
I’d never thought of it that way, but it’s true: Most of us would not expect it and react the wrong way. If men in street clothes suddenly pulled guns, my first thought would be “terrorist” and to run.
#73, how does the picture change? Even if Ayres was soliciting a prostitute, how is that a crime (other than The State says so), and how does it justify MURDER? Even if he was buying some drugs, how is that a crime (other than The State says so), and how does it justify MURDER? Both activities aren’t crimes in the mind of a rational person.
Remember that the statements are coming from the mouth of THE POLICE. They aren’t known to be purveyors of truth and accuracy. Their statements are very deliberate, and usually with the intent to cover their ass and smear others.
Just to cut to the chase – you tell us: what could he have possibly done that necessitated killing him on the spot without a trial? Don’t bother with “he possessed dried plant leaves” or “he tried to pay someone for sex” unless you think either of those actions should be punishable by immediate death without a trial.
Ith @ 2:38
As BamBam says: So F*****g what?
The Clergy I’ve known over the years have always been willing to help others and frequently reach out to the “despised.” Taking a prostitute to a convenience store isn’t an illegal act, or even one that most people frown on.
Also, IIRC, Joshua ben Joseph hung around with a prostitute in the 1st century. You may have heard of him.
BB:
And smear they did! Since there were no drugs found in the car they can’t spin the story as the heroic capture of yet another gram of powder that will never find its way up my kid’s nose. So smear is what’s left.
11 alive looks like a buch of jackasses for buying it. I hope they learned their lesson and never blindly quote the police PR rep again.
#73
I’m also confused as to how that changes anything. So there was an extremely lucky passenger in the car the cops didn’t manage to kill, and now they’re saying she did Bad Things, and implying that maybe Ayres did Bad Things too.
Fact is, when Ayres tried to escape, the car touched a cop, (not enough to prevent him from giving chase), and him and his buddies took that as a license to kill everybody in the car after Ayres had already thrown it into drive to try and get away from what he obviously (and correctly) considered a threat to his life.
#73, things that a sheriff says are not “facts.”
To post #73
No, the picture remains the same.
The officers sped up in an unmarked truck, jumped out wearing jeans, plain t-shirts, and what looks an awful lot like ski masks in the video(I could be wrong about that as the detail is not great)
The pastor may very well have been involved in something illegal, but the tactics used were unforgivable.
An often heard comment in cases like this is that ‘Innocent people don’t run from the cops’ but again, let me stress, how do you know the armed men who just cut you off and jumped out of their vehicle guns drawn are cops? Anybody can yell ‘police’ and even then if your scared out of your wits you may not even understand that.
My point is that these tactics could easily cause a completely innocent person to react the same way the pastor did.
After reading his second comment, I don’t think lth is claiming that Ayers is guilty, only that the police went out of their way to make it seem so.
a mile from my house here in CT is the great Woodstock Fair. As a vendor was setting up on Monday, he was shot. By a cop doing pistol qualifications at a range a quarter mile away.
They were gunning for Carroll Spinney, dude! They know he attends each year!
In my neighborhood, thieves have begun doing “home invasion” robberies, passing themselves off as police. As far as I’m concerned, there is no reason NOT to run away from, or defend yourself from, anyone threatening you with a gun, even if they are shouting “POLICE!”
Ya, I know Carroll. He’s an awesome guy. Did some tree work for him eight or ten years ago. Nicer than you’d ever expect. He lives three or four miles from me.
Ben, I’ve seen Carroll several times at the fair, and I knew his godson at Johns Hopkins (we got stoned together, where he would tell me about his parents getting stoned with Carroll all the time).
Will cops ever learned? Sure we call them to help us in time of need-we just have to pray that they don’t shoot the wrong persons. I don’t trust cops, sure their are a few good ones, but these two need to be tried for manslaughter. How do you explain such negligence two his wife and unborn child. Bad cops lies and cover up the truth. Good cops will take responsibility for there mistake and take the punishment.
Another one of our heroes in blue:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/prosecutors-wife-roberts-2550422-physically-police
Where do police departments find these types of people?
Oh, yeah, that’s the type of person that applies to be a cop. I forgot.
Holy unilateral escalation, Batman!
So basically, 3 guys wearing jeans and t-shirts roar up to this guy’s little car in an SUV, jump out and start yelling and pointing guns.
The guy thinks he’s being jacked, and tries to flee. So, despite his being unarmed, they fire at him through his car door in a gas station surrounded by other people, murdering him.
Do I have this about right?
For fuck’s sake… what would they have done if they actually thought he had committed a crime? Nuke the site from orbit? These fuckers are totally out of control.
New slogan on cop cars “To escalate and subdue”
I could accept the theory that this was ‘a few rogue cops’ if there were a viable oversight mechanic that actually charged abusing officers with crimes, but there is not.
You gotta love the part where the officer was ‘injured’ by being brushed up against by a car. Get out of the way, dumbass! I had to get out of the way of a car once, I didn’t draw my gun and start shooting at the driver though, because you know… that would have been a totally inappropriate use of force.
#80
At the time of the shooting there was no passenger in the car. Mr. Ayers had already put the passenger out at a different location and was then followed by the police down to the service station.
The speculation around here is that Ayers just happened to offer a ride to somebody he should never have offered a ride. When the police saw him put the woman out they assumed that he had either purchased drugs or gotten a blow job or something.
They followed him down to the service station and wound up shooting him.
I think Ayers thought he was being robbed and tried to flee. I am not sure why undercover officers would jump out of a black escalade with guns drawn even if they knew damn well he had purchased drugs or gotten a blow job.
The investigation is going to take a while. Or so they say.
I assume that the officer:
a) was aiming at a target inside the range.
b)was deemed proficient for his pistol qualification.
#71 | Roho
Dude, I’d like to buy you a keg of beer for that one. If I were to get pulled over there are certain questions I would ask myself begining with “what did I do wrong?” If I am in bed at 3am and here someone busting down my door, that is not my first thought. It would be more along the lines of “I am being robbed, need to grab my 9mm.”
Unfortunately, I agree with #12, the cops are going to walk. I hate to say it, but they will. Mark my words, I promise you 100%.
If someone says that they said “police” which, IMHO doesn’t mean squat to me, complete with the video of the cop getting bumped with the car, the cops WILL walk, I promise you 100%.
Just ask Sean bell. Cops get bumped at 5 MPH, and suddenly that is they can resort to deadly force.
Of course when the cops intentionally run people down with their cars…they walk. Just ask the SC state troopers who ran down black people with their cars. Cop was reinstated and dodged all criminal liability.
Why in the world you would not stop the individual BEFORE they get into their car or not just pull them over in a normal traffic stop AFTER they get in their car, simply is stupid beyond stupid.
It is bad tactically (what if the guy has an AK47 in the car…) and it is bad from a safety stand point to everyone else. This is simply cowboy police work.
Also, today it is to the point where it doesn’t even matter. If you are black, white, young, old, grandma, whatever, you are subject to being shot, tased, beaten, run over with police vehicles, etc… by cops who may be white, black, old, or young. It is simply out of control and until juries start slamming cops over this stuff, it will simply continue.
http://www.wyff4.com/news/17609268/detail.html
As Hicks said in Aliens, “I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
http://nukefromorbit.ytmnd.com/
“I think Ayers thought he was being robbed and tried to flee. I am not sure why undercover officers would jump out of a black escalade with guns drawn even if they knew damn well he had purchased drugs or gotten a blow job.”
Because that’s how they do it in the movies…er…totally professional training videos…these clowns jerk off to all the time.
Look, you put a gun into the hands of someone with half a brain and very small but ragingly hard penis and they cannot be satisfied with the shooting range. They WANT to shoot. What is the point in having that power if you go your whole career without using it? It is like giving a BB gun to a kid. You can set up empty cans and let him shoot all he wants, but as soon as you are not looking he tries to shoot a bird. He wants to know what that is like.
The other side of it is this bullshit “they put their lives on the line every day for us!” mantra. “They are all every day heroes!”
You hear enough of that lying crap and pretty soon you think you better be shootin’ some perps so it looks like you were in some danger. You are a hero after all.
I simply took everything in the link #73 posted as gospel truth, then asked how that excused anything. That link indicates the woman in question was in the car. (I suppose the quote “The sheriff said there was a passenger in the car” from the article could mean she was in the car previously and not at the time of the murder, with an odd but technically accurate reading)
The details of the case will surely be obfuscated by the PD trying to cover their guys, but in this case, the details are irrelevant.
Police aren’t even in the top 10 of most dangerous jobs, which is compiled by a relatively unbiased source and based on hard numbers. Do you hear people praising fishermen as heroes when they eat shrimp, salmon, and tuna?
http://money.howstuffworks.com/10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america.htm
This is his blog, from a link at the church website. I want people to realize a) he was just an ordinary guy, and b) he seems to have been a really *good* guy.
http://jonathanayers.blogspot.com/
Also, the church web site: http://shoalcreekbc.org/
If you think who the pastor kept company with was bad, you should have seen who his Boss associated with: not only prostitutes and drunks, but tax collectors.
For those of you who mentioned the victim’s race and how it might impact the fallout from this incident, he is in fact white. There are a couple of pictures of him on his blog:
http://jonathanayers.blogspot.com/
Here is a video:
http://www.wneg32.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1490:surveillance-video-shows-moments-before-shooting&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=18
“just an ordinary guy”
whose wife spent last night trying to sleep but couldn’t stop crying.
whose child will never play with its father
whose parents, brothers and sisters are tormenting themselves with thoughts of things that they could have done that might have prevented the tragedy
“just an ordinary guy”
Don’t read his blog – it’s depressing as hell. He sounds like a truly energetic, decent human being.
He has entries about getting pulled over and being scared, and another about the Gates incident.
Interesting, but if I wanted to be that depressed, I’d go over to Packratt’s site.
Nothing on CNN’s frontpage although they did have something about Michael Jackson, USA Today doesn’t seem to have it, FoxNews doesn’t have it on their webpage either, nothing on the NYT page although they did mention the Michael Jackson entombment, well…maybe Al Jazeera will pick it up.
“…maybe Al Jazeera will pick it up.”
I thought Al Jazeera was running a story about Michael Jackson’s last-breath conversion to Islam.
;)
That hasn’t come out yet. Reports from a guy on the scene of the injury said the bullet was intact, which in my mind rules out a ricochet. The balistics people claim that without a doubt the bullet came from that range, and they were the only people there.
The point I’m making is that cops don’t respect their firearms the way they should.
I saw the video and it appeared the cops had masks on and were dressed in blue jeans with T-shirts.We don’t need masked men in jeans and T-shirts running around with guns.I would try to get away two if I saw people like this coming at me. What law gives these drug agents to kill a drug suspect running away? I know of no law that gives them the authority! This drug war has to stop! People who use drugs are only hurting themselves!
“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attemps to control a man’s appetite by legislation,and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes”
Abraham Lincoln
#97 BamBam
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 10 most dangerous jobs in America are:
1 – Fisherman
2 – Pilot
3 – Timber Cutter
4 – Structural Metal Worker
5 – Waste Collector
6 – Farmer / Rancher
7 – Power Line Worker
8 – Miner
9 – Roofer
10 – Truck Driver.
(Miner isn’t on your list; Taxi Driver isn’t on mine…)
Police Officer isn’t present on either list.
According to Pshrinks, cops ARE in the highest risk category for Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Divorce and Suicide…
I think sanitation workers deserve more respect than cops, and I say that completely without sarcasm or snark. They perform a truly valuable service for society and they get little to no thanks or recognition for it. I listened to a radio program on sanitation workers once and those guys will literally lift several tons of trash over the course of a single work day. And now I learn that their job is more dangerous than cops’ too. Down with cops, hooray for Sanitation workers!
MDGuy
I’m pretty certain that the sanitation workers in any given small city have saved more lives than all the police forces in the world put together.
Not only that, they’ve kept more rats off the street.
Roho, that was perfectly said and expresses my thoughts perfectly.
Bang up job pigs, really.
I’m sure the conservative baptists who love the drug war are coming out to explain why this man was a necessary casualty any minute now.
What about all the people outside the store ? they could have been shot ! The cops didn’t even take their car out of gear. it rolled toward a street full of traffic. Barney Fife could have handled this better.
Bill Ayers? The weather underground terrorist? He deserved to get shot.
I came here to post his blog. Someone beat me to it.
How can this go unpunished? But it will.
“Barney Fife could have handled this better.”
AFAIK, Barney Fife never killed anyone.
Question: Would the libertarian party work to resolve this problem if they were given more power?
//No, the only way these kinds of atrocities will stop is if people declare open season on cops.//
If I were a legislator, I would offer something like the following as a way of making both police and citizens safer:
-1- All police officers who exercise their authority as such must make all reasonable efforts to ensure that anyone and everyone present may identify them both as police officers and as individuals. Anyone claiming to be a police officer must produce identification upon request.
-2- Standard uniforms should feature the officer’s department and badge number in high-contrast characters at least 3″ high on the front and back, and at least 1″ high on the sleeves. If uniforms are covered by vests or jackets, officers must ensure that suitable labeling is either included on the vests or jackets, or wear a covering garment, sash, or other such item displaying the appropriate information.
-2- An individual who is approached by another person who claims to be a police officer, but who refuses to produce identification, is entitled to assume that that latter person is lying and use such force as is necessary to resist that person’s actions unless or until said person produces ID.
-3- If police enter a person’s dwelling and are attacked, the burden of proof shall be upon them to show that the occupant could not reasonably have believed them to be anything other than bona fide officers serving a warrant in legitimate fashion.
Thanks for informing me the pastor was white. I was wrong with my initial guess. Give me a moment to get used to the experience. ;-)
The rest of the story remains the same. Dead person, no drugs, no weapon, no professionalism or humanity displayed at all by the police.
Ignacio del mar “I’m sure the conservative baptists who love the drug war are coming out to explain why this man was a necessary casualty any minute now”
That’s a really good point. I sent this article to a friend of mine who is a conservative Baptist pastor and a get tough on crime law and order conservative. It’ll probably be depressing to hear how he responds but I bet you anything he justifies the police and condemns the pastor.
“AFAIK, Barney Fife never killed anyone”
That was kind of my point.
I blame it all on a sudden attack of OMIF.
*Open mouth, insert foot.
#73 | lth | September 3rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
‘This story: http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=134689&catid=40
paints everything differently. The pastor doesn’t look so innocent. A fact left out here and there and the picture changes.’
the comments on the link sickened me as much as the murder itself. I cannot believe how people line up to defend these thugs. you suck for implying that a nonviolent citizen deserves to be shot for a possibility of a nonviolent crime.
Marty @ 9:47
From Ith’s post # 79 @ 2:55 PM, it appears he was trying to draw attention to the fact that, as earlier commenters suggested, that the police would try to smear Ayers.
oops- thanks for pointing this out Aresen!
ROFLOL.
I have not been this amused by a news report since the one about the DEA identifying a plane carrying American protestant missionaries as a drug smuggler and having the host countries airforce shoot it down killing the female missionary and her baby.
Things like this should happen more often to God Bothering moralizing humbug Christian pastors. If the car driver actually had been a major drug trafficker I would feel sorry for him, drug traffickers provide a product that many people want and some need but Christians are a plague upon the Earth.
Nero had the right idea about dealing with Christians, use them as cat food.
So, Carlyle, was the baby a “plague upon the Earth”? Are you going to give us the old line: “From nits come lice”?
Or, are you just writing while drunk?
So the officers shouted “police” when they jumped out of their black SUV, but did the driver hear it? If he did hear it did he understand it? If he understood it did he believe it?
For it to be reasonable for Ayers to stop rather than attempt to escape when men in plain clothes pointed guns at him the answer to all three questions would need to be yes. As he is dead we can’t ask him.
If the police really did shout their identification it is not reasonable to believe that their target heard them, he might have been deaf, he might have had the car windows up and the radio and air conditioning on. If he did hear the shout did he make out the word “police”? When one hears a shout it is often heard as a noise without sense, enough to attract attention to subsequent speech but the fine information in the shout is itself lost. Even if Ayers had made out the word police should he have believed it, if he saw himself as a law abiding citizen going about his lawful business would he think that it is more likely that he was being stopped by police rather than being car jacked.
I suspect that if we talked to Ayers ghost, he would say that he fled in fear of his life just as would the ghost of Amadou Diallo killed in 1999. by plain clothes NYPD army of occupation police.
Jerri Lynn Ward.
No I am not writing drunk and my tongue is only half way in my cheek.
I am an atheist but I am an ex-Christian atheist and as such don’t like Christians, particularly the Christian Taliban type that you have in America. If the car driver were a drug trafficker or a black American, I would feel sympathy, but for a white Christian God botherer who is probably a member of the Klan no way.
@107 | Ben:
No, I think the problem is that the police don’t respect people the way they should.
After thinking about this today and reading more stories, I’ve noticed a few more things. First, I was so right about the police story above. They’re making it loud and clear that he hit one with his car and was trying to hit the other, so they had no other choice but to kill him. Conveniently, their guns were already drawn.
Second, most of the story that’s being repeated is the police story. There’s no reason to believe any of it. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. They’ve killed a man and they’ll say anything to get out of it. They only dropped the drug story when it came out that he was a pastor and it was obvious that wasn’t going to stick.
Third, his brother-in-law is reporting that he asked the ambulance drivers “who shot me?” He had no idea they were police. The owner of the station, who witnessed it, said he didn’t know until later that they were cops.
To continue with my original theme – let’s look at what we *do* know. We know this from the video and witnesses. He went into the store and got some cash. On the way back to the car, the black SUV drove up, the thugs jumped out (we now know to be cops), and according to non-police witnesses yelled “stop, police” at him. Since he didn’t know that they were police, it’s possible they only shouted this after he was in his car; we don’t know.
Once in the car, he tried to get away from them and they tried to use their bodies to block the car. One was touched by the back of the car but was completely uninjured (he ran after the car later in the video, therefore, he was not injured. Yes, I know he *feigned* an injury to help bolster their story, but he was clearly not injured. For those who are new here, this is SOP). His partner then shot Ayers, claiming that Ayers was coming for him next. At some point the guy in back also fired. Ayers drove away, crashed, and was taken to the hospital where he died.
Now, *those* are the actual facts that we know so far. Note that I didn’t mention a woman who had been in the car with Ayers. Why not?
Well, um, where is she? Oh, yes, she’s in police custody. Really? Who is she? Why the secret?
Think back to the Kathryn Johnston case for a minute. Remember all the false stories made up about her and the case right after she was killed? The officers thought there was a drug dealer there named Sam and all that? Turns out they made it all up, then threatened one of their snitches to try to get him to testify to their fairy tale after the fact.
For all we know, they have some girl that has a record, and they’ve brought her in and are offering her a deal if she’ll go along with their story. We don’t know. Maybe they’re telling the truth, there’s just no reason to believe it.
You would think that when they’re driving around playing spy in their Escalade they would surely be filming. I will believe the story of the girl in the car *if and only if* they release the full unedited video that has a direct line from her getting out of his car to them accosting him at the gas station. In the absence of that, I probably will never believe the story about the girl.
So, what *were* they trying to do? I’m not sure. It could just be more unreliable snitching – someone fingers “that car over there” to get the cops to leave them alone for another day. Hopefully it’ll come out in the investigation, but it’s clear so far that the cops are more interested in circling the wagons. Hopefully the GBI will get to the bottom of it.
In the mean time, I suggest those of you in GA make it clear that you expect charges filed, make sure the sheriff knows he’ll have to get another job unless he takes care of business, and the DA, too. I strongly suggest picketing the sheriff’s office and other police agencies involved. And, make sure we find out who the officers are who did this.
Jerri Lynn Ward.
To which baby are you referring?
Actually humans are a plague upon the Earth. If I ever speak to an extra-terrestial alien I would tell him that his people should exterminate humanity now before we get into space and do to them what we did to the natives of America, Australia, Palestine, West Papua, East Timor and all the other places humans have conquered.
To the cops who did this:
“Well done, Judas…good old Judas…”
@Carlyle Moulton
Humans are part of the natural system of the Earth. Unless your arguing that humans are supernatural then, for better or worse, all things we do are natural. (BTW, all of the countries which you named, putting aside for a second that you called them inhuman, did many of the same things your protesting to other people having done. What happened was wrong, but unfortunately that was the way the human species operated for a long time.)
Why would you want to wipe out an entire species? If your arguing that some species are more important then others, I completely agree. That being said, you appear to be arguing that the most intelligent/sentient species should be eliminated. This is odd in that if I where to have to choose to cause a species to go extinct I would obviously choose an unintelligent/sentient one.
Carlyle:
I’d refer you to Bill Hicks’ comments on Homo sapiens, but you’d probably think he was totally serious.
Do us both a favor and stay out of my side of the continent.
@Carlyle Moulton
Congratulations on being an atheist. I am as well. So from one atheist to another how about you shut the f*ck up. Seriously. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously in America as is. When you have to deal with what amounts to racist ( it’s okay that he was killed because he’s white, from the south so that equals he was a racist, and therefore by my own ignorant assumptions his death was justified), ignorant, unintelligent people proudly claiming their rationality it really sets back the fight for a better tomorrow. You are probably the most disturbing/sad person I have ever met. Really, go f*ck yourself you sick, disgusting, irrational, dogmatic shit.
“I’ll start thinking this country believes in freedom when it brings the army home and sets it loose on the police.”
My rough recall of a comment that I saw somewhere about a week ago, I think.
How many more must die?
“’ve lived in Toccoa all of my life. You would think I would know where the hell it is.”
I was only ever there once, but I did manage to find it all by myself in an airplane.
Billy Beck ““I’ll start thinking this country believes in freedom when it brings the army home and sets it loose on the police.”
The quote was mine and it went like this-I’ll believe this country cares about freedom when they bring the troops hom and set them on the police.
It’s the goddamned truth, JS.
#80 This is pretty much a repeat of what happened on Lark Street in Albany NY a few years ago on New Year’s Eve. Only difference is instead of killing the driver, they killed an innocent a block away. What made me sick were the “too stupid to duck” comments from law enforcement afterwards.
The city eventually had to cough up over a million dollars to keep those two thugs on the payroll. Who then were fired for reporting for work drunk.
For even more depressing news… watch this.
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=7086
I know preaching to the choir, but good examples all in one easy hour format, pass it along to your friends and family to help open their eyes.
#136 David.
I refer to your post #136 referring to mine #134.
Obviously you did not read my post 134 carefully. You say I called them inhuman, I did not use the word “inhuman”. I said “extraterrestrial” and that was in the context that if I met a space alien from another planet, I would advise him/her/it to get him/her/its authorities to exterminate us humans before we get into space and start exterminating whatever species we find there and stealing their planets and anything else that they have that we covet.
The word inhuman is a silly word as its assigned meaning is the opposite of what it should be. “Inhuman” should mean behaviour that is not typical of members of species homo sapiens but instead it refers to such things as murder, torture, genocide and ethnic cleansing all of which are very typical human behaviours.
As to humans being the most intelligent sentient species, I do not think that the human race as a whole deserves the description intelligent. Some humans may qualify as intelligent, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking for example but the vast majority do not, for another example it is absurd to consider George W Bush as intelligent. When humans act in mass the intelligence of those few who qualify is canceled out and only the stupidity of a mob remains.
Whenever humans on Earth have had the opportunity to commit genocide or ethnic cleansing and steal the land from there victims they have done so, and that list of countries or provinces that I gave are places where this has happened.
If we classify species by their destructive effect on other species, humans are the most destructive. If other species understood what we are doing to them they would surely want us gone.
David.
About your post #138.
I admit that I am prejudiced but at least I do not pick on the usual suspects, niggers hispanics and arabs who already have too many picking on them. I don’t like white people, Christians and footballers. By the way I am white. I also don’t like humans.
The army of occupation policing that resulted in Jonathon Ayers death does not come out of nowhere. It is driven by the moral panic of respectable white Americans over scary niggers selling drugs to their children. Normally when deaths occur the dead are blacks or Hispanics and respectable white America does not care the least little bit, death after death after death of poor people of colour has not caused any reassessment of the war on drugs but this time it is one of their own, a respectable white baptist pastor. In affecting change Jonathon Ayers is worth a hundred Ashley Villa Reals or Amadou Diallos.
It is unlikely that Jonathon Ayers was a regular reader of Radley Balko’s articles on SWAT team policing therefore he would never have assumed that people confronting him with guns as he goes about his innocent lawful business were police, rather he would assume they are robbers, in which case fleeing is a reasonable thing to do as robbers do not normally want to upgrade the criminal status to death penalty eligible murderers.
It is likely that one of the reasons he is dead is that he was conscious of his own innocence, an actual drug trafficker would have been more likely to recognize the armed thugs as law enforcement.
More air headed drug warriors that really need jail time not a badge!
One thing’s for sure- it’s not America anymore when thug cops can get away with stuff like this repeatedly. It’s just dumb luck that we’re all still alive, that they murdered this guy and not you or me. Don’t they understand that anyone with a gun can claim they’re an undercover cop? They’re acting like they’re an occupying army.
Carlyle: why do you claim you’re not picking on blacks- sure sounds to me like you are. I understand you’re being curmudgeonly, that’s fine, but do you have to use that nasty word, with it’s links to the days of lynchings etc? I use it myself in private, to describe the status of illegal drug users as the new nigs, but tend to avoid it in public as the term is so inflammatory.
To #98, try not using outdated data next time.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/25/dangerous-jobs-fishing-lead-careers-cx_mk_0825danger.html
Whether or not the job is in the top 10 or not is pretty meaningless. The numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLs track NINE THOUSAND different jobs. So if being a cop is only the 11th most dangerous job, that means that their are somewhere around 8,988 other jobs (ie the jobs most of you do) that are statistically less dangerous.
Pointing out that their are 9-10 jobs out of 9000 that are more dangerous than being a cop makes the speaking look prejudiced and stupid. Don’t do it. There are lots of things that can be fix in American Law Enforcement and public policy (like ending prohibition), but Libertarian voices are almost never really heard because of all the BS white noise like this in the background.
A newer story on the Atlanta paper’s site. http://www.ajc.com/news/family-130662.html
It seems that not everyone thinks he “should” have heard the cops over his radio/ac and through rolled up windows. And the convenience store owner is a bit dubious of the cops, too. It’s refreshing to see.
And, so even if they thought he bought some drugs from this woman who had previously sold cops drugs on TWO occasions (why wasn’t she already under arrest), why can’t they just make a freaking traffic stop? Plainclothes, guns drawn, screaming, at a busy gas station for a single drug buy?
I swear, I think the “tri-county drug task force” must just sit these guys down with some DVDs of Bad Boys, Miami Vice, etc. and call them trained.
The CNN article changed. They are towing the police line now, reporting just the “facts” as given to them by the Officer Bankhead. FWIW, this is a very poorly written article. It’s like they let those uniformed near-dropouts write the article for them.
The undercover officers wanted to question Ayers about what they had just seen, he said. “They approached the vehicle. They were in plain clothes. They identified themselves as police officers, which civilian witnesses say happened. They also had badges around their necks.”
Ayers put the car in reverse and backed up, striking an officer, Bankhead said.
According to Bankhead, Ayers then put the car into drive, and another officer fired into the car, hitting Ayers, because he thought his life was in danger.
“The subject kept going and drove off,” Bankhead said. “And later he ran off the road. He was taken a local hospital, went into surgery and died an hour later.”
The incident was caught on the gas station’s surveillance camera.
Yea, that’s an account of the video. Factually correct. But, oh daym, that’s some solid “just reporting the facts, sir” spin.
This quote from officer Bankhead struck me as strange, maybe a good sign…
“They approached the vehicle. They were in plain clothes. They identified themselves as police officers, which civilian witnesses say happened. They also had badges around their necks.”
Omar Translation: We, the police, are not lying. You can trust us, little people.
First and least of all, fuck you, you aren’t in the Army, you are a civilian too. Second, the rush to establish credibility usually leans towards “we are the police, we are the truth”. This dude knows he’s not believable on his own, so he’s using incomplete statements of fact from civilians to give him credibility. To me, this means he knows they are in some trouble…you know, for murdering.
#133 | Michael Chaney-
well said.
Jonathan was a wonderful man of Christ. He was known for helping people in any way that he could, and he would use any opportunity he could to speak to others about God and he truly loved witnessing to people and telling them how good God had been to him. This has been a tragic event that will now leave an unfillable void in so many lives. I understand there will be countless cynical views and comments against him that will come with this event. The ones who it will matter to know the truth and I hope and pray that the people responsible will have to pay for what they have done. That being said, the only judgement that will matter will not come here on earth, and I can also tell you that Jonathan has already forgiven them, because that is the person that he was.
Sometimes it’s better to take some with you isn’t it?
I’m becoming more convinced by the day that drug divisions are where the police send the mouthbreathers.
I mean seriously people. I live in Los Angeles and if I were driving downtown and a bunch of plain clothes guys jumped out of an Escalade pointing guns at me, I would think ‘carjackers’ or ‘gang members’ and I would drive off as fast as I could and probably dial 911 a half a mile away.
I think that is what any reasonable person would do. They wouldn’t hang around trying to see if the gold medallion around their assailant’s necks were badges or just jewelry.
To a cop “civilian” means “not a cop”. Even if you are active duty military and in uniform, they still consider you a “civilian”. They are trying to steal the meaning of the word and I don’t like it either.
[...] [...]
NewAgeBlues.
Reply to #148.
White Americans who think they are so liberal and non-racist don’t like use of the ‘N’ word, it is so impolite. They think that if they avoid using the word that they avoid appearing racist. There are plenty of white people who would never be so politically incorrect as to use the word who nevertheless harbour in their minds all the malign stereotypes about Negroes that inevitably lead to discrimination and some have also Jim Crow level malice as well.
The word “nigger” expresses an essential truth about the relationship between African Americans and the white American power structure that is a major determinant of the misery in which African Americans exist. When Amadou Diallo was shot dead by 4 plain clothes NYPD thugs it was not because he had black skin but because the police saw him as a nigger and hence a probable armed and dangerous criminal. He was unarmed but he was profiled to death when the cops assumed he was reaching for a gun instead of his keys, and a predominantly white jury from the respectable city of Albany let his killers off.
The main reason America is so attached to “the war against drugs” is that it provides a solution albeit slow to the Negro question. The drug war is in fact the counter attack against the civil rights movement. If it were wrecking the lives of white Americans from the respectable classes to the extent that it is doing it to blacks drug prohibition would be ended in 5 minutes. However the beauty of declaring normal human behaviour such as the use of mind altering drugs as criminal is that there are so many breaches of the law that one can only afford to prosecute maybe one in every thousand. This provides discretion, if one only searches assiduously for drug crimes among poor communities of colour then that is the only place one will find drug criminals, thus proving that the members of these communities are inherently criminal, the authors of their own misfortune and undeserving of any Government help with education or housing.
In fact the criminalization of each of the three main illegal drugs opium, cocaine and marijuana has occurred after explicitly racist campaigns against the ethnic groups that white America wanted at the time to classify as criminal, respectively Chinese, Negroes and Mexicans.
How about if cops aren’t “civilians”, then they can be subject to military court martial.
Oh,they must be tried in civilian courts you say?
Then cop = civilian.
Except that are a bit more equal than the other civilians.
That officer’s life was not in danger. He fired his weapon with total anger. The car’s maneuvering was NOT indicative of a killer car, not at that speed and the proximity of the officers. THIS OFFICER IS GOING DOWN! WE NEED TO GET THE PANICKY MINDED ONES LIKE THIS OFF THE FORCE. THERE ARE MANY OTHERS. THE VICTIM’S FAMILY SHOULD SUE FOR SOME MONEY FROM PD AND THE OFFICER HIMSELF.
To Stephen, no one is trying to steal any words.
——————
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/civilian
1. A person following the pursuits of civil life, especially one who is not an active member of the military or police.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian
Main Entry: ci·vil·ian
Pronunciation: \sə-ˈvil-yən also -ˈvi-yən\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 : a specialist in Roman or modern civil law
2 a : one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force
b : outsider 1
——————
I personally tend to use the term “Private Citizen” when refering to people who aren’t cops or fire fighters and reserve civilian for people who aren’t in the military, but that’s just to avoid the unwarranted charges of OmgWtfMilitarism others like to throw out if I did choose to use the correct term.
@145
If you did not mean to insinuate that they where not human then why describe what happened to them as being perpetuated by the whole of humanity if they did not fall within that category.
That being said, do you believe that human actions are somehow different or outside the bounds of what is normal in nature? All of our empathy simply makes actions that are otherwise normal and within the realm of a day on earth. Do you really believe that an advanced extraterrestrial species would not have developed much the same way we did? Your view of humanity is naive and sad. If you think we are somehow an aberration, you are astoundingly naive. Life is, unfortunately a horrible, horrible thing for nearly all species. Luckily, you belong to one of the few (and most capable) of species in regards to empathy. Your self loathing is rather sad. I would really recommend you seek out some sort of mental health practitioner before you do something drastic and shoot up a school or old folks home. Seriously, your railing against genocide by advocating for genocide…
Rereading your collective posts I can only assume that your are either a very sad troll or a very dangerous psychotic. Your disdain for the common person reeks of elitism and holier-than-thou leavings symbolizing a dyed in the wool fascist. Simply because you do not believe George Bush was intelligent does not negate the fact that, even those towards the bottom end of the intelligence scale are more intelligent then the next most sentient species. I do not expect that to make much of an impact on you, however, as it is clear your self-loathing/loving will not allow it to. If your truly advocate the extermination of humanity may I make the suggestion that you lead by example and excuse yourself from the world first? Or will you go the route of PETA and simply say that the advice is for me, and not for thee?
@163
carl, the money gotten “from the PD” is your money and my money; I’ll let you speculate on how much of a deterrent that is. To further state the obvious, no amount of money will bring the slain husband back to his family.
I sure hope these officers lose their jobs and are charged with murder. As a former police officer myself, I know that when this happens, people are confused… ESPECIALLY when you’re in plain clothes and just jumped out of a personal vehicle! They might have identified themselves but when you have a couple guys yelling at the same time, you can’t make out what they are saying.. Ever watched cops? Yeah it’s pretty hard to hear..
Murder plain and simple.
I read this early today…I too, am a minister, and a Southern Baptist one at that. I knew nothing about the minister’s race, but I have experienced, sadly, that some policemen love to show power and force. I am a white man, but I was accused by police of driving drunk because I was driving too slow (I thought I was being careful because of the situation). I wish I had sued the police thirty years ago for some of their shenanigans…My lips have never touched alcohol.
I grieve for this brother’s wife and unborn child. Nothing can bring him back. These “officers” should lose their office, and they should be responsible for the murder of this man. But they will dig up some wild story about the man and come out smelling like a rose. I know longer trust the system.
On more than one occasion I have caught policemen, black and white, doing the things they arrest others for. Then they almost always pull together to come up with an alibi, or at best, to hide the truth.
@167 Woog: This is why the missus has to go after the cops themselves. Find the nastiest most vile attorney she can find, and go after their shields, their pension accumulation, the equity in their homes, their vehicles, furniture… everything but their kids and wives.
That, or the congregation from his church needs to rustle up a healthy dose of street justice.
The term “atheist” is meaningless.
If one does not believe that God exists, then why would one use the Greek root for “god” in a self-descriptive word? Why on Earth would one concede the argument in such a self-defeating way?
The word “rational” has been suggested to replace “atheist,” as it differentiates between those whose imaginations have gotten the best of them and those who think logically, completely leaving the issue of the existence of “God” for those who believe to prove.
Well, i think we all know how this will turn out. For those who dont… you grab the broom, ill lift the rug.
“This is why the missus has to go after the cops themselves. Find the nastiest most vile attorney she can find, and go after their shields, their pension accumulation, the equity in their homes, their vehicles, furniture… everything but their kids and wives.”
grizzly,
I wonder if this will happen. I read Pastor Ayer’s blog and it appears that the doctrine followed took “in, but not of, the world” to the extreme. Look at this post, for instance: http://jonathanayers.blogspot.com/2009/07/main-thing.html
Excerpted from AP report:
Plainclothes officers shot and killed a small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said.
Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn’t targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers.
“resisted efforts to question him,” “(struck) one of the officers.”
Yep, the spin it has begin.
And will we ever find the woman in white, “the passenger (who) was the person being investigated by the task force” ? The person the fucking cops should have been talking to in the first fucking place.
Oh. It’s been brung. We’re gonna raise Jim Morrison from the dead and he’ll make the blue cars go away.
Georgia Pastor Is Latest Victim of America’s War on Drugs…
I have a developing story for you all, courtesy of libertarian blogger Radley Balko:
Jonathan Ayers, a 29 year old pastor of Lavonia, Georgia was shot and killed last Tuesday by undercover narcotics officers during a botched drug bust. The shooting o…
#164 | LibCop |
I think that just means that the word has already been stolen.
I hate it when words have more than one meaning and I know there are a lot of them. Lots of different fields of work use the same words but mean entirely different things within their specific field.
So, I guess that thinking of just a cops worldview, he uses the word “civilian” in the “cop” context. Within that specific field.
I still don’t like it. I applaud your inclination to not use it that way.
you people are all idiots who think this was not a good shoot. i happen to know the police officer personally and know this was a good shoot. the media has about 3% of this story correct….this guy ran over one of the police officers and attempted to run over the officer who shot him. i have been a cop for 9 years, and by the way military police are not real cops….u guys don’t have a clue……anyway, this was a good shoot…..he will enjoy his paid time off and have a slice of pizza for me… good job guys!!
obvious troll.
Oh, this is bad, truly terrible, and a miscarriage of justice, what the police did to this man. I think we have reached a tipping point. This story will go viral.
[...] Cops fuck up and kill a Georgia man during a drug bust. The man was a preacher, which is naturally becoming the focus of the story. Personally, I don’t care if he had a brick of smack shoved up his ass, if I saw a team of cops who frankly looked like carjackers, I wouldn’t be clamoring to stop. [...]
Does anyone here have any law enforcement types in their personal circle? I’m very curious: To what extent do these people realize that they are increasingly considered the enemy? I don’t mean considered the enemy by the “criminals” they target. I mean by average Americans.
There is a growing backlash that’s hardening against incidents like the one here. The combination of the Internet revolution and the growth in SWAT-like activity has bred a level of animosity unlike any before, and it’s growing fast.
I don’t hang with any police folks, so I honestly don’t know: How aware are they of this reality, and do they care? (Better yet, does it give any of them room for pause?)
I’m making a prediction.
The woman he had given a ride to will soon come forward and smear the pastor. I can guarantee that the police will “interview” her sufficient intensity to get her parrot any story they give her. We’ll soon be hearing how the pastor was a one of her johns, her pimp, a drug dealer, a racist, a cop hater, a liar, a child molester, a thief.
Mark my words it is coming. Cops are just that sick and evil when they need to cover their ass.
Hey chad, why don’t you run in front of my car and I will pretend I’m playing Halo 3 and splatter you.
LibCop@151
Apparently Baptist minister is moving up the charts-with a bullet.
LibCop, the job of cop is only as high as it is on the list cuz you cops dont know how to friggin drive. It isnt as high as it is cuz other people are shooting/killing you. You end up killing yourselves in traffic accidents.
Darwin doesnt get nearly the respect he deserves.
The govt. is getting too much control. can kill innocent ppl and get away with it. they try to justify it, but so did the Nazi.
chad. so the people who protect your country in time of war are not real cops. they handle more than you could do in a lifetime. your traffic violations you pass out does not protect 1% as the boys at war. if you go to a raid go with out a vest. maybe the world will be a better place.
David.
Your responses to my posts confuse me as you seem to be saying that I said things which I did not say and as far as I can see did not imply either.
Getting back to my post #134 and your response to it #136, I did not use the word “inhuman” nor did I say something that implies the same meaning. You introduced the word “inhuman’ in #136.
In #134 I say
“Actually humans are a plague upon the Earth. If I ever speak to an extra-terrestial alien I would tell him that his people should exterminate humanity now before we get into space and do to them what we did to the natives of America, Australia, Palestine, West Papua, East Timor and all the other places humans have conquered.”
In #136 You say
“BTW, all of the countries which you named, putting aside for a second that you called them inhuman, did many of the same things your protesting to other people having done.”.
I gave a list of nations or territories where the dominant colonials have carried out genocide or ethnic cleansing against the indigenous peoples. In the USA your predecessors committed genocide against the native Americans, in Australia my predecessors committed genocide against the Australian Aborigines, in East Timor Indonesia ethnically cleansed a significant proportion of the native Timorese before East Timor gained its independence, in West Papua Indonesia is still ethnically cleansing the native melanesians. Nowhere did I describe the victims of genocide or ethnic cleansing as “inhuman” nor did I describe the conquerors/colonists doing the genocide/cleansing or their behaviour in that way although that word in its dictionary meaning is appropriate. No doubt the people carrying out the ethnic cleansing/genocide described their victims as subhuman and as not deserving of the human rights and the protection of the law but I did not say anything about this.
If I were an extra-terrestial alien I would view the human species as very dangerous, intelligent enough to be a menace but not intelligent or moral enough to be capable of coexisting with other species if their existed the potential for humans to gain the upper hand. If I (the extra-terrestial) were not confident in the ability of my species to prevent humans obtaining hegemony I would want to exterminate humans well before that became a possibility.
Andrew Williams #137.
Do you have a link to Bill Hick’s comments, if so please post it, I am sure I would appreciate it.
Chad # 177.
You do not use appropriate capitalization and you use the word “shoot” when you should use “shooting”. Obviously you qualified as coming under the maximum 70 IQ points allowable for a policeman in the USA.
Assuming for the moment that you actually have a brain, I point out that if someone runs in front of one’s car pointing a gun at one gunning the car and preemptively running them down is a sensible thing to do. Jonathon Ayers is dead so neither you nor your cop mates can ask him whether he thought the plain clothes gunmen jumping out of an SUV were police. If you assume that he should have known, you are making an unreasonable assumption.
Even if Ayers did know that the men with guns were cops he might validly have assumed that the act of pointing the gun signaled that they were going to shoot anyway and that getting in first was the only hope he had of survival.
Pointing a gun at someone is an extremely aggressive act even before the trigger is pulled.
Re: #182
It’s starting now. Just read a story where the cops are dropping more information (likely as they get their story together) that Ayers was at a motel twice that day where the alleged prostitute/drug dealer was staying. They’re probably heading toward an angle where he’s a john who went to get some cash to pay her after the fact.
Michael, where was this story? Can you provide a link?
Here’s the link:
http://www.examiner.com/x-19719-Southern-Baptist-Examiner~y2009m9d3-Slain-Georgia-pastor-was-killed-during-prostitutiondrug-investigation
So as long as they can assasinate you character enough in the public eye, I guess it’s okay for them to gun you down.
Going on that method of operation, I wonder how the officers involved would fare?
Carl.
In your post #163 you say “THIS OFFICER IS GOING DOWN!”.
Your prediction is most likely wrong. The DEAth squad members who shot Ashley VillaReal in the back of the head for driving a car while unlicensed and 14 years old were not prosecuted. http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2998.html.
The NYPD police who shot Amadou Diallo were prosecuted for 2nd degree murder but acquitted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo.
The Lima Ohio police officer who shot dead Tarika Wilson and shot off one of her infant son’s fingers was prosecuted but acquitted.
When the state prosecutes police it is usually half hearted, the state attorneys are conflicted because they do not want to sour their working relationship with the colleagues of the offending LEO. In addition juries are chosen from those members of the respectable classes that are two stupid to be able to avoid jury duty and like most such Americans have an extreme pro-police bias. People who read Radley’s blog are not typical Americans. When rthey read the many posts agreeing that the police conduct is extremely bad they get the false impression that the respectable classes of the USA as a whole are becoming disenchanted with the police.
Radley.
Glen Greenwald http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ adds numbered updates Update 1 Update 2 etc … to his posts as new information becomes available or to clarify things that comments from subsequent posters show to be in need of clarification.
If your blogging software allows it you might consider doing the same thing. This thread would benefit from new information and links being added to your lead post at the top.
Also I notice that your thumbs up thumbs down count is a net value. It would be interesting to have separate totals for thumbs up and thumbs down as well as the net.
In my post #195 I meant to include a link to the Tarika Wilson case on which Radley has already commented but omitted to do so.
Here is the missing link:-
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/01/06/lima-ohio-drug-raid-gone-bad/.
@ Carlyle Moulton
Well I see your still not taking your own advice and offing yourself. Oh wait, you did not mean that we should kill ourselves off, just that aliens would be justified in doing it. Because, well, you know genocide is bad so we should hope that aliens perpetuate it to rectify the situation. That’s just brilliant. There’s no chance that, like all life on earth they to would have gone through an extremely brutal and violent infancy. No, it’s just humans, no other species behave that way.
I also like how you ignored the fact that we are the only species which feels bad about what we do to our own species and others. Or are you saying that we should kill off all lions, wolves, bears etcetera? No, of course not because that doesn’t fit into your elitist understanding that all things human are bad and all things not are good. I hope you have at least sought out some sort of mental health professional. You really come off as the sort of person who might shoot up a school. Of course I don’t expect you to seek help, fascists never do.
Way to ignore everything I said outside of that one small part. Truly brilliant how the mind can so selectively cull entire posts to find something inoffensive to ones own beliefs and focus on that. Or maybe it’s just that your dishonest on top of psychotic.
LOL, cockroaches, rats, and humans are about even on the “hard to exterminate” scale. Wiping out humans would pretty much require wiping out everything else.
David. #198.
My last rely to you as it is obviously a waste of time, you interpret me as saying things that I did not say and ignore what I actually said.
You say “Because, well, you know genocide is bad”.
I did not say that genocide is bad, you interpret me as implying it. Of course obviously the victims of genocide think it is bad, but the perpetrators of it do not. Sometimes after a genocide is completed some of the successors of the perpetrators express regret and even when it is going on their are voices of opposition, but such opposition is never sufficient to stop the process.
You say “I also like how you ignored the fact that we are the only species which feels bad about what we do to our own species and others.”. So you complain about what I did not include in my post. I put in my posts what I want to say at the time, I do not try to predict what other people think I ought to have included to be balanced and fair. You think I should have admitted that humans feel bad about their bad acts. In fact some humans feel bad about their bad acts, not all do, we do not know whether members of other species feel the same as we can not talk to them. The worst things that humans do to other humans are not acts by individuals acting as individuals but by individuals acting as agents of some larger collective entity, a state, a nation or an ethnic group. The policemen who shot Jonathan Ayers for example were acting as agents for the righteous of America fighting against the evil scourge of mind altering substances other than caffeine, nicotine and ethyl alcohol. I agree that humans have a limited capacity for judging their own actions and those of others, but the critical thing about it is that it is so limited, it fails most of the time to prevent genocides, ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. Regret well after these events occurs but it is of no use to the victims.
You seem to think that our hypothetical alien should himself be so opposed to genocide that he would not wipe out a dangerous species but should let it proliferate to wipe out his/her/its own.
That is enough, this psychotic troll is going to have lunch, American babies in tomato sauce, yum yum but I have to limit how many I eat as they are overly obese they play hell with my cholesterol.
Over and out.
Strange, 200 posts and NOT ONE says if drugs were regulated, controlled and decriminalized these tragic incidences would not continue happening. Anyone realize that the two most dangerous drugs are already legal? (alcohol & nicotine)
God, nobody learns from history…prohibition never works. You can never ever tell a human being what they can and cannot do with their own body.
March 23, 2096
“…..we need another $____________Billion for the war on Drugs-but it looks like were winning!”
Damn right those cops are gonna say now matter WHAT happened “We showed him our badges, our wallet PD IDs, our service pistols, an arrest warrant and yelled “Stop or we’ll shoot!” and he still drove off!”
F*ckin **sholes are out of control
what did the hippies call them in the 1960s-PIGS?
So they didnt bother looking up his PLATES?
#189.
Google Bill Hicks. Or go to billhicks.com.
#139
Billy: My favorite line from Star Trek: Insurrection
How many people does it take before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people DOES IT TAKE, Admiral?
“I’ll never understand people. Even being one doesn’t seem to help.”–Spider Robinson
ANOTHER FUCKING CASUALTY OF THE WAR ON DRUGS.
when will this bullshit stop? innocent people die everyday. whether they do drugs or not, nobody deserves to be jailed or fucking MURDERED over it.
Fuck police, fuck the law, and fuck our government. It does not care for or represent the people at all.
All you criminals need to shut the hell up. You’re just pissed because law enforcement agents sometimes prohibit you from being the maggots you are. A guy is seen in the company of a drug/prostitution suspect. Agents attempt to question this guy and he flees and HITS AN AGENT WITH HIS WEAPON (aka car). The agents did identify themselves as bystanders confirmed. Guns were NOT initially drawn but were exposed or uncovered. Being a pastor does NOT give this guy the right to resist questioning and attack IDENTIFIED agents with his car. It would, however, give him more reason to run and attempt to protect his reputation. Could that not be the desperate actions of a man wanting to protect his reputation. Hmmm, does that not make sense??? Witnesses have confirmed the agents DID identify themselves so enough with slanderous attempt to cloud the situation. It is very hard for families and friends to accept when “good” people do bad things. If that had been you or your kid hit by the guy fleeing from identified agents would that still be okay? Why would you put less value on the lives of the agents that are risking their life to protect yours????
“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.” — Martin Niemöller
Enough said.
you people are a bunch of ignorant people you know that you dont know what the heck you are talking about it wasnt the police who shot the preacher and he was seen more then once driving around with this same lady late at night you people need to get ur story straight
#177 Chad
you said; his guy ran over one of the police officers and attempted to run over the officer who shot him.”
You say you happen to know the police officer- both of you are idiots
First- the officer that was “tapped” was not run over, he ran behind a moving vehicle and he was a little slow, too many pork rinds and donuts, he then ran after the car- (shows his injuries were nothing but “cover” second, the video clearly shows the other officers (or druggies posing as officers) were 5-6 feet to the right of the car as it turned (he was NOT trying to run anyone over, just escape armed thugs.
Third; using your reason, I could feel safe that if I shot a person (maybe you) who tapped me as I went through a crosswalk on a green light it would be “a good shoot” as in “citizen arrest” you sir turn in your badge, and visit your “friend” in prison when he get’s 25 to life for a “BAD shoot”
#207 No Nonsense- you must be a cop, I saw the video, your deductions lack merit- he was seen in the company of a prostitute/criminal (who the cops left alone at the motel where the pastor dropped her off) and did WHAT? followed him, the officially stated “non suspect”,
Maybe (using your thought pattern) the cops in all reality were on the way to the 7-11 and needed a donut fix, but alas, they had no money left, they must have used it all to pay the prostitute for services (why else leave her alone at the motel) and then they saw the pastor get money from the atm and wow! what an opening- money for donuts and we can go back to the motel and get more!-
That’s the same insane logic you use in your post here
The pastor asked the paramedic who first tried to save his life “Who shot me?” that brings to light the truth, a dying mans last few words, he also said, tell my wife that I did nothing wrong and I love her” – then he went home, to the one he was trying to serve
Oh the dangers of trying to be like Jesus and visit the hurting, the prostitutes, the drug addicts of the world- it may just get you Crucified (or in the modern world) shot
Bill, there were witnesses that clearly heard and saw the agents identify themselves. One agent was “HIT”and not “tapped” by the fleeing car. A car IS considered a deadly weapon. Why try and blur the situation with stupid cliches and innuendoes. Why would he try to convince anyone that he had done nothing wrong if he had “NO IDEA” what was going on? What happened to the story about getting money to by his wife tires? There is no way you have knowledge of investigation procedures. I don’t have training but I am smart enough to know that you don’t let someone know that they are under surveillance. Why are you so bitter….have you been busted for solicitation for prostitution? Do you think drugs should be legal? I suppose in your world the agent should have waited and called the guy to say “excuse me sir, why did you run me over.” The agents did identify themselves. The actions taken were a direct result of the driver’s attempt to flee and disregard for life in the process. Oh the dangers of trying to serve and protect– It might just get you crucified… or RAN OVER. I would like to thank all law enforcement and military for serving and protecting our country.
Are you aware that one of the NCIS officers involved in the Johnathan Ayers shooting has a habit of getting hit by cars?
Source: http://216.116.225.82/stories/2004/10/24/met_432211.shtml
Augusta Chronicle – http://augustachronicle.com/
Across Georgia
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Police say woman dragged officer in car
CLARKESVILLE – A police drug investigator was dragged by an SUV down a gravel road Thursday while investigating a home, police said, but survived with a crushed collarbone.
Chance Oxner, a commander for the Northeast Georgia Drug Task Force, was helping on a routine check Thursday when Shannon Lynn Rich, 20, drove up to the home.
When Officer Oxner asked her to step out of her vehicle, a 1997 Chevrolet Suburban, “she floored it,” Sgt. Tonya Elrod said. “Next thing I knew, he was being dragged down the road.”
Also, one of the “injured” officers chased the pastor 1/4 of a mile to the crash scene where he then dragged the fatally wounded man of God from the car, threw him to the ground and kneeled on his bullet ridden body.
From the website: http://www.wneg32.tv/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1502:another-witness-in-ayers-case
“It was pretty intense,” says David Wagener. Wagener is describing the scene where 28-year-old Jonathan Ayers ran off the road and crashed his car. He says he saw, what he believed, was an undercover police officer running down the hill.
“He approached the driver side of the car and pulled the door open and grabbed the driver out. Grabbed him kinda by the neck and shoulders and threw him to the ground and then kneeled on him,” explains Wagener.
How do I know that Chance Oxner was involved in the shooting?
http://www.wnegradio.com/2009_09_01_archive-news.html
Sources Identify Woman Involved in Ayers Investigation
9/14/2009
By MJ Kneiser
The woman listed by investigators as the “target” who was with the Reverend Jonathon Ayers moments before he was shot by undercover investigators is a 26-year old who has been in trouble with the law before.
Sources say she is Johanna Kayla Jones Barrett, whose address is listed as the Relax Inn in Toccoa.
Barrett is charged with two counts of selling cocaine. She remains in the Stephens County jail.
According to sources, Barrett is known to law enforcement in at least three counties for various crimes. She has served time in the Georgia Department of Corrections prior to this latest arrest.
Members of Rev. Ayers’ church say they don’t believe he was involved in anything illegal with Barrett. They say if he was with her, he was likely trying to help her.
Rev. Ayers was shot as members of the Mountain Judicial Circuit NCIS Team were conducting a drug investigation of which Barrett was apparently the target.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate, but refuses to give a timeline on when that investigation might be complete.
Sorry, that didn’t identify Chance Oxner, but this one does:
http://www.thenortheastgeorgian.com/articles/2009/09/10/news/breaking_news/02breakingnews.txt
Warrants obtained from Stephens County Magistrate Court show that NCIS Team Deputy Commander Chance Oxner took two warrants for sale of cocaine on Kala Jones Barrett of Room 9, Relax Inn, Toccoa.
Just a few miles down the road from the dead pastor’s church, this happened.
http://www.921wlhr.com/news.htm
Hart County authorities are searching for two men involved in a carjacking.
… The driver of the 1985 red S-10 pick up was pulled out of their vehicle by two black males at gun point.
Once the victim was out of the truck, shots were fired at the victim as the pair drove off with the truck. …
No nonsense- you sure sound like someone out of Police Academy- the officers were heard by the witnesses in open air- the so called suspect (was in a closed car) I hope you show up in my jurisdiction, 5 over the limit and you are a considered a deadly force that needs stopped- same theory you use- the officer was laughing and went to hospital just to make it look like a good shoot as you state- you are a trigger happy danger to society- hope the officers get life w/o parole- if in fact the officer worsened the situation by hauling a mortally wounded man from his car as reported and knelt on his chest shows they were amatures- I bet you were one of the three, trained by Barney and Opie and other rednecks. One more thing- why did they not get the “woman” who was a suspect instead of letting her alone and following someone they knew nothing about?
How does being a PASTOR change the situation other than increased motive to flee and protect his reputation??? How does being a PASTOR exempt him from the law or pardon him from unlawful behavior? Bill, you want to condemn men who put their lives on the line for you. You are a moron for your lame comparisons. I’m trying to understand your pain from being betrayed by someone you trusted or maybe even loved but shifting blame isn’t healthy in the healing process. The driver who was fleeing from law enforcement and hit an IDENTIFIED agent with a motor vehicle is at fault.
“When someone flees, they put themselves in danger, innocent people in danger and the law enforcement officers chasing them in danger,” Riley said. “I hope these tougher penalties will make someone think twice if they get the idea of trying to outrun the police.” http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090520/NEWS/905209982/0/APS?Title=New-law-stiffens-penalties-for-fleeing-law-officer
Facts are facts no matter how much crap you try to cover them up with. There is no way you are in law enforcement…..or have jurisdiction in this universe.
jurisdiction n. Law. The right and power to interpret and apply the law (psst….not break the law)
I have left comments on a few websites about the MURDER of this man by police. he is not the first and if something is not done soon he wont be the last police in this country are out of control . I heard something a few months ago about an 80 year old woman killed by police when they raided the wrong house. in NY a undercover cop was shot by 2 other undercover cops while he was making a bust, but all they saw was a man holding a gun so they jumped out and shot him. they are even getting there own people killed because of these terrorist tactics the use . do I even have to mention Rodny King and when the police were found not guilty LA burned for what 3 days .but that was all turned into a race thing ,dont get me wrong it was a race thing but it was also another atempt by police to abuse there power and try to kill someone “just because they can”. If that riot was aimed at the police and only the police there would’nt be a police force in LA to this day.If the police keep going the way they are this will happen one day. This is AMERICA we have RIGHTS we can wait untill the penelty for having a tail light is being rammed off the road and shot . Or do some thing about it these men were county sheriff they have to be ellected into office .make it clear to the men who run, that any officer who deals with the public must be in uniform and in a marked car. its a start these police need to understand they are not the CIA
It matter’s not that he was a preacher; just he was innocent.
It matters not what his race was (although I think it is a factor in the lack of public outrage); he was innocent.
The police, in my opinion, after looking at the video, reading their statements, make several poor decisions. Not trying to apprehend him in the lot before he get’s in his car was a dumb mistake. Not using a uniform car to pull him over later, another tactical error.
Officer safety should not trump citizen protection. With all the taser situations happening in this country IE: Police using Taser’s to force a citizen to comply with their “requests” and all the bad conduct happening out there; it’s no wonder that respect for police is now at pre-9/11 levels.
But, to quote a officer in a gang task force a few years back; “Don’t worry about the local gangs.. we are biggest gang out there.”
The Gang in Blue.
[...] Excerpted Recommended PASTOR LEADERS article FROM http://www.theagitator.com/2009/09/03/georgia-pastor-killed-in-botched-drug-bust/ [...]