Saturday, July 17th, 2010
- Looks like we’re back on for an Arrested Development movie. But we’ve heard that before. Hey, why not just bring back the series?
- Las Vegas police are saying there’s some sort of technical issue with the security video taken when police shot and killed a man in a city Costco earlier this month. They also aren’t turning over audio from the 911 call that brought police to the store in the first place.
- ACLU suing to help a Florida man get his guns back. I’ve hearing more and more of this from the ACLU. Now that the Supreme Court has determined the Second Amendment confers an individual right to gun ownership, many of the organization’s state chapters will take on more gun cases.
- New York Post bites on ridiculous, bogus story about the Taliban training monkeys to become terrorists. Fox & Friends fell for it, too.
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TheAgitator.com
The power of the badge has subsidized a police mentality that compounds itself through these ludicrous in-house “investigations” that without fail, validates conduct that is simply beyond questionable by ordinary Americans who for the most part, naively believe that this cannot happen to them. I bet the Costco employeee simply freaked out at the mere sight of the gun the guy was carrying and an escalation of overreaction spread like wildfire. Until there are credible outside oversight commitees of such incidents, these investigations will continue to play out in our country exactly as they do in corrupt third world countries.
Dude, stop being everything awesome. You can’t be a freedom-loving, Idol watching, Arrested Development ogling genius. ’cause then what am I supposed to be??
I’ll take a stab at predicting the events in the Vegas shooting:
- Erik Scott was concealed carrying, a Costco employee freaked out and called the police
- The police respond and get Scott out of the store
- The cops begin shouting conflicting orders at Scott while they have their guns drawn
- At least one of the cops barked at Scott to remove the gun and place it on the ground
- At least one other cop was yelling at Scott to keep his hands away from the gun
- Scott attempted to remove the weapon and place it on the ground per police instructions
- Cops open fire
Aftermath? Video recorders weren’t working (ha), cops are cleared of wrongdoing, and maybe one officer has to go for retraining.
Wow…there were a few commenters here who called it right on re: the security cameras “not working.”
Costco tapes.
I can see the video not working perfectly at the local Gas ‘N ‘Sip, but at Costco? No way in hell.
And there you have it. The police are doing the equivalent of ‘claiming the fifth’ while circling the wagons. Who watches the watchers?
What we need is brave souls to leak the video out. Of course, the cops will make every attempt to prosecute those people that try.
Apparently, police there have shot 17 people so far this year, so it’s pretty routine. Each shooting undergoes a Coroner’s Inquest, which is apparently a rubber stamp that says “Good Shoot”.
So the only groups who had recorded voice or video were Costco and the cops, and are also the only groups who had anything to lose from a finding of wrongful death. Strangely, their recording equipment was “malfunctioning.” Who would have thought?
Glad to hear about the ACLU taking up the 2nd.
via the comments section of Las Vegas link:
“Since 2005, there have been a total of 61 officer-involved shootings.
Of these, a Coroner’s Inquest ruled 45 justifiable, nine excusable, and four as suicides. There are still three shootings this year that have not undergone an inquest yet. This includes the shooting at Costco.”
“The last time a police shooting was ruled criminal by a Coroner’s Inquest in Clark County was 34 years ago in 1976.”
http;//www.mynews3.com/Story.php?id=22655&n=5035
sorry for the bad link, not sure how that happened. Fixed it.
http://www.mynews3.com/Story.php?id=22655&n=5035
I worked at WinCo foods for a few years, and they had cameras everywhere, and they were more or less flawless as far as I knew. I’d assume Costco would have similar (if not better) cameras up, so this story, along with all the others involving cop and cameras, smells like bovine excrement. My guess is that Costco is worried about liability or police intimidation. probably both.
Arrested Development: “my name is Judge!” Man, bringing that show back would be nothing short of amazing.
@Eric: You’re #2.
It seems the police have the tapes:
“Detectives hope to view surveillance video of the incident, but have sent it for forensic examination because of a technical issue with Costco’s recording equipment.”
“Some sort of technical issue,” hey slow down there braniac.
So to translate from cop to English, “When we’re done editing the tape we will release whatever parts tend to backup or story, the rest was unretrievable.”
Regarding the Costco shooting:
I found a discussion forum that purports to give a transcription of the radio traffic surrounding the incident. I don’t know if it’s legit or not, but it looks real to my untrained eye. Check out rob944s2′s post a little more halfway down the page at the following link:
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1064662&page=39
Based on subsequent eyewitness accounts, it does look like the info. the cops got was hyped.
Of everything you’ve ever posted on this blog, this may be the least surprising entry.
The monkeys aren’t trained by the Taliban, they’ve just finally discovered more efficient poop-flinging methods.
Short version of the Vegas story: The cops shot an innocent man.
After reading the news accounts of the Costco shooting, my guesstimate of what happened was exactly the same as “pc” (#3) above. Building on what he/she said, isn’t encountering someone with a gun a fairly predictable part of police work? If the officers are shouting conflicting orders, it means they are not on the same page in what should be a run-of-the-mill situation. Are the police just making up a response on the spot, as if they have never had any consistent training on how to handle it?
So here is the scenario: Someone has a gun in a pocket, holster, etc. He is standing there waiting for you the police officer with the gun to say something. Do you want him to (a) stand there with his hands up, (b) get down on the ground, or (c) drop the gun (which will require touching it)? It should be obvious without lots of training at the police academy that you are going to tell the person to do one of these three things, but the police probably need to decide ahead of time on which one they prefer in routine situations.*
Maybe a journalist could ask the police chief what we should do to avoid getting shot by groups of police officers who have different answers to this generic Police 101 scenario. Should we just stand there with our hands up no matter what the police say?
*Many would no doubt mock the notion that I, an untrained “civilian,” have any right to comment on police tactics. (E.g., shut up until you walk a mile in their shoes.) Of course, if police training and tactics were so awesome, this guy probably would not be dead.
OB: Paraphrasing “Raising Arizona”
Gale: Ok, Everybody freeze. Everybody get down on the ground…
Eville: Why ain’t they moving?
Old Man in Bank: “Well son, which is it? You want I should freeze, or get down on the ground? Cause if’n I freeze, I cain’t get down. And if’n I get down, I’ll be movin’. “
In your initial post on this you didn’t like the look of it and someone commented with a prediction that the camera footage would be faulty.
Over here we have idiots who handcuff people face down on the street and get them killed. The coroner has referred them to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
There is an eerie similarity in that in this case a kid who was pissed but had shown no sign of aggression was wrongly reported to have had a machete.
Oh Jesus, I can’t believe how expected the mysterious technical difficulties are. These commenters know the game all too well.
I’m going to try and concentrate on the ACLU being awesome and the obscenity trial being dropped. Ya know, actually positive political news.
P.S. Cops in Mt Lebanon, PA are being sued because they handcuffed a woman having a seizure. Her co-workers called and said she was seizing, the cops came and decided it was an OD, the handcuffed and restrained her (why they would do that with an OD, I don’t know.) She bit them while seizing, and was initially charged with assault.
Here’s to her winning the lawsuit.
Thanks for the link in #14, rapscallion. If that transcript is legit, it sounds like dispatch was passing along info that doesn’t fit with some of the other stories I’ve been seeing. However even if there was misinformation, I’m still less convinced than some of the posters there that the cops didn’t screw up by not getting a better sense of what was actually going on there.
Also interesting is a post with this info that makes the “technical problems” seem even more questionable:
@#21
So then I’d guess the “technical difficulty” is that they’ve as yet been unable to edit or delete the failover back up.
I wonder why the ACLU is so late to the party on 2nd amendment gun rights?
So… I’m wondering.
Has a SWAT team EVER actually saved a hostage?
I mean, is there even one documented case of a hostage that would have been killed if a SWAT team hadn’t stormed the building? I don’t mean a case where any cop could have walked in and saved them… but they waited for SWAT, I mean a case where ONLY SWAT could have done the job because of their special training?
Every case I’ve ever heard of, the SWAT team rolls in after the fact or not at all.
In virtually every case of a mass shooting, the only viable defense would have been civilians with CCW permits. So what do cops do? Treat civilians with weapons as a severe threat.
Cops are not there to protect you. They’re there to protect their own interests only.
Police Bingo strikes again: video technical issue.
We’ll get protection from cops about the same time we get balanced budgets and lower taxes.
“Monkey Terrorists” is all the proof Obama/Bush/Clinton/Bush would need to invade a country.
I’ll give 10:1 odds that if the CostCo tapes had recorded a brown person shoplifting a pencil, they’d have flawless video documenting it from 9 angles, two of which would offer high-res, 3-D imagery. It’d probably look like “Avatar”. Only more racist.
#27 – Yes they’d instantly have video of a customer committing a petty crime, but being a “brown person” has nothing to do with it.
Video disappears when its cops versus anyone else.
It doesn’t matter if they’re “brown” or not. Cops will gun down a white guy just the same as a black guy, not caring about anything more than the fact that he was a civilian and therefore needed to be controlled. That’s because the only color that cops really care about is blue.
PW-
Generally speaking, your right. My comment was as much an indictment of CostCo as it was the police. But the statistics do tell us that there is a disparity in how cops treat white suspects vs suspects of color, even though all groups are generally treated pretty shitty.
Besides, exactly how is it “racist” if a store wants to prevent its merchandise from being stolen by installing video cameras?
Those cameras don’t only turn on if a “brown person” steals something – they film everyone who enters and exits, and as a private company Costco has every right to protect its property from shoplifters regardless of color. Nor is it “racist” if they catch somebody stealing from them and he happens to be a “brown person.” If he stole something, he stole something and it doesn’t matter what his color is.
No, the real issue here is what happened to those cameras now that they may have caught somebody other than a common civilian doing something wrong – somebody who also likely had instant access to the tapes and the ability to make them “malfunction” if they showed something he didn’t like.
It had NOTHING to do with race, BSK, and the fact that you honed in on race nonetheless despite no evidence or reason to believe that there is anything racial about Costco’s camera system…well…pretty damn racist itself.
What statistics would those be, BSK? I don’t see much difference at all in how Oscar Grant was treated versus what happened to Erik Scott. They’re both dead at the hands of trigger happy cops.
In fact, research into the subject shows that black cops and white cops are both pretty damn trigger happy.
http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/fighting-police-abuse-community-ac
“Now that the Supreme Court has determined the Second Amendment confers an individual right to gun ownership,”
Actually it should be: “Now that the Supreme Court has reinterpreted the Second Amendment to confer an individual right to gun ownership”
Fact #1: It is the year 2010
Fact #2: I have not used a VCR in over a decade
Fact #3: Costco uses computers to do various types of work
Question: Who the fuck uses “tapes” anymore? Are they Betamax? VHS? It would be a damn shame if Costco had everything shot in perfect sequence, but no one could watch it because they don’t have a laserdisc player down at the precinct.
Tapes?! WTF?
Careful what you wish for re: the Arrested Development movie. Two of my all-time favorite shows eventually made movies. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was certainly enjoyable, but not really any better than a regular episode. The Simpsons Movie suck-diddly-ucked, but I guess that was to be expected considering the show hasn’t been good since I graduated college in 2001. As an AD fan myself I hope it’s great but I won’t hold my breath…
Sorry for the threadjack but…
Prosecutor not told ex-trooper falsified log
“The West Virginia State Police didn’t tell Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Plants that a former trooper likely committed a crime, according to court documents provided to the Gazette-Mail. ”
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201007170181
“Snavely — who now is the police chief in Hinton — had falsified his duty log, it should have been included in the case file.”
“Even if Snavely were decertified, he still could be Hinton’s police chief, Sadler said.”
Just more proof that there are armed, government sponsored rapists in our midst and there isn’t jack-shit we an do about it.
What would happen in a sane world:
Cop: I understand that you have the shooting recorded.
Costco Employee: Yes we do.
Cop: Can I have it?
Costco Employee: Sure thing. MP4 or AVI? What’s your email address?
fin
#33 Terrorific:
“Tape” is a metaphor. I would fully expect that Costco’s system is completely digital and when needed, they burn a hard copy to a DVD just like everyone else does in the modern world.
That Las Vegas police, in a city filled with casinos that use the same surveillance company as that Cosco uses can’t get the video to work is completely nonsensical.
And even then… I expect that Las Vegas police also has to deal with all the Gas ‘N Sip type stores that still use antiquated VHS based systems and have a player lying around.
Bob, I feel like SWAT would have come in handy in a Columbine situation. But sadly, the police took three hours to enter the school. But I’m assuming that would have just caused the shooters to commit suicide faster, maybe saving some of their later victims (or ya know, the people bleeding to death while the cops stayed safe outside.)
Cops and the drug war are proof that propaganda works. Even homeschooled with libertarian parents, my mind was slightly blown as a circa 11 year old when my mother carefully explained that she didn’t like cops and that drugs, especially marijuana, weren’t necessarily bad and should be legal.
Even I had picked it up fairly outside of usual society. I should remember this next time I feel like punching some of my friends.
I’m quite surprised at the ACLU. Shortly after the Heller decision, I emailed them to ask them whether that would change their attitude toward the Second Amendment. In the reply, they said that despite the Heller decision by the SCOTUS, they did not see it as an individual right, and that they did not believe the right to bear arms was a civil liberty.
Nooooooooooooo. Stupid ACLU. They seem so good lately.
@24 Because the organization is more properly called the American Civil Liberals Union. While there are exceptions, the ACLU follows a liberal agenda, which is why IJ was formed.
Hmm. As an aside, I wanna expand on something I posted earlier. I would have posted it then, but I hadn’t thought of it yet.
Here’s what I posted in #25:
Let’s look at the second amendment:
It seems to me that civilians with CCW permits falls easily within any definition of “A well regulated militia”.
As such, ANY TREATMENT of civilians with CCW permits that are not actively committing a crime as possible threats by law enforcement should be considered a violation of constitutional rights and prosecuted.
PW-
I never used the term racism or racist, so refuting it is a strawman. I did not say this was an issue specific to white cops, so refuting that is, again, a strawman.
I’m happy to get into this conversation in more depth, but I don’t know how useful it’d be. You’ve demonstrated a tendency to get your panties all up in a bunch at any hint that oppression still exists in our society.
The point of my comment was that the “technical difficulties” with the camera is clearly a selective issue. If it had been to the cops’ or Target’s advantage to have film of an incident, you know damn well they’d produce it. And I think a brown person shoplifting is a pretty good example of a time when neither the cops nor Target would have any incentive to hide the tapes. Maybe a white person shoplifting would be just as likely. But I choose a brown person for my example. Why is that wrong again?
Stop imagining enemies that you can fight your war against PC-ness and multi-culturalism against. They may exist, but I am not one of them, so stop with the rhetoric.
The best commentary on the LVMPD shooting of Erik Scott was by Dave Champion and Bill Cairns both being former police officers and Bill a former LVMPD officer. The podcast is here for those interested:
http://www.davechampionshow.com/archives/?p=896
Regarding the LA Costco link, I’m inclined to think the issue is that the video “technically” shows the Police Officers in a very bad light.
Whoops, misread Las Vegas as Los Angeles. Guess I just expect it to be LA cops.
“I never used the term racism or racist, so refuting it is a strawman.” – BSK, #44
“It’d probably look like “Avatar”. Only more racist.” – BSK, #28
You either have trouble with your memory or the truth. Neither is an enviable position.
[...] The ACLU starts pushing for gun rights. No word on who Fox News will use as a liberal boogeyman now (via Radley Balko). [...]