A rookie cop is answering a disturbance call at a local McDonald’s. In the parking lot, he sees a car unrelated to the call that looks like one that had fled from him the day before for having the wrong plates attached to the car. Having never seen My Cousin Vinny and realizing that you can mistake a metallic mint green 64 Skylark with a 63 Tempest, he decided that running the tag to confirm it was the same car was silly, and figured that he would just walk over to this car and demand that the driver step out of the car.
Since there was obviously no reasonable suspicion that the driver had committed a crime, much less probably committed a crime, what came next was an entirely illegal stop. Let’s see what happened next:
So he dumped 10 shots into a car with a 17 year old in the driver’s seat. Now there are many who will jump in and say that the kid should have complied. Here is the issue- the entire stop was illegal to begin with. It doesn’t matter what the kid did or didn’t do.
Multiple bullets struck the teen, who stopped his car just down the road. He was transported to the hospital and is now on life support. He is not expected to live. Get this- the cops arrested the kid for evading detention with a vehicle and assault on a peace officer. The local prosecutor, realizing that this was a shitty case, refused to prosecute.
The San Antonio cops fired this cop immediately, which they can do because he is still in his probationary period. My guess is that this kid’s family has got a very large paycheck coming. I’m sure that they would rather have their child back.
Perhaps if this kid had been armed with an AR-15, the cops would have stood around for an hour and a half before deciding what to do. This was a cop who was pissed that a ‘bad guy’ got away, and was looking for a little cop revenge. Instead, the cop lost his job and has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a police official. When this kid dies, and he probably will, the cop will be facing a murder charge.
Here is Donut’s take on the shooting:
11 Comments
Big Ruckus D · October 11, 2022 at 9:49 pm
Once more: fuck the police. There are no good ones. If there were, they’d have run pieces of shit like the one in this situation out, to avoid being tainted with the stink of being rightly perceived as overbearing, authoritarian roid raging assholes. But they didn’t do that. They never fucking do that. That is all.
Ok, I lied. that’s not all. Fuck the city too, as they will soak the taxpayers for the inevitable settlement. Not that the city is faultless here, they hired this sack of dogshit. But the now ex-cop should have (yet probably won’t) maximum culpability unleashed on his ass for what he did, at his own expense and to his own personal detriment. Justice would be if he ate a bullet out of shame and guilt. And we know how likely that is.
Mundt Act 2012 · October 11, 2022 at 9:52 pm
Bad apples? The replacement USPF will keep things spicy.
The nightly Bolshevik enemedia played the clip but the driver wasn’t the preferred demographic for burning and looting.
Jester · October 11, 2022 at 10:21 pm
Yeah this is perhaps the worst part of everything. Fine, I could see possibly the argument that in some way perhaps you get called to a disturbance and see something that makes you think they could be related. Check. Got that.
I could see possibly calling for back up which generally would be considered a good idea. And then if there is nothing crazy going on right now or danger waiting, but if something was going on that threatened people engaging in a valid threat response. Check. Got that too.
But what it really does seem to be is this bully showed up, saw something that was not related or a threat to the reason to be called going to instigate a fight. If he really thought this was the source of the disturbance of the call he still could have.. Oh.. gosh knocked on the window and not exposed himself to danger like that or yanked a fucking door open. One thing if the kid had been driving at a high rate of speed from the police and crashed. Yeah sure randomly jerk the door open and extract. Check. Got it.
Walk up to a door like that and yank it open in a lot of places you’re going to get shot, though the courts generally have protected such (Ahem no knock raids on the wrong address) activites.
I mean if this kid was such a threat to run as he was the night before why would you not wait for backup and/or just pull up behind that vehicle, he has a choice to either try to ram the vehicle or get away, likely by damaging his vehicle if he does so. Am I missing something?
Additionally while the kid could have been -utterly- oblivious with the tinted windows and just hanging out with his GF eating cheeseburgers I also have to wonder if well hey cop’s here if I saw them and was such a threat why did I not just take the fuck off right away? If I caused the disturbance that was bad enough to get the cops called why would he just hang out in the parking lot?
There’s so much bad here that anyone that had a lick of common sense even as a rookie cop would have known if their goal was not to get some award. We had those types in the Army (generally officers it seemed) but enough hard heads that thought the Military was there to get them awards for heroism by any means nessicary.
Elrod · October 12, 2022 at 8:32 am
Herschel Smith headline a post last week with “You’re Never In More Danger Than When The Cops Are Around”.
Herschel very, very drastically understated the case.
And this cop is barely the tip of the iceberg.
Steve · October 12, 2022 at 9:08 am
@Jester, “if I saw them and was such a threat why did I not just take the fuck off right away?”
My first thought, too. What kind of a brain-dead cop does not realize if that was really a stolen vehicle, the driver would have taken off when the flashing lights went on? And calmly enough to blend in with everyone else who just doesn’t want to be hit by stray cop bullets.
Divemedic · October 12, 2022 at 9:29 am
My favorite comment so far: “After carefully reviewing all of the applicable laws, I couldn’t find a single statute that declared driving a car that looks sort of similar to a car that was involved in fleeing from a cop 24 hours ago to be a crime.”
Steve S6 · October 12, 2022 at 10:03 am
What FTO signed off on this guy?
Aesop · October 12, 2022 at 4:26 pm
I repeat my comments from Captain’s Journal for emphasis:
If that was my kid or kin?
Open season, screw the bag limit.
One by one by one.
There wouldn’t be a living cop alive in that town a year later who was alive the day that happened. Not. One.
The new hires could then ponder the lesson at their leisure.
The only thing that would stop me would be prosecuting the cop for that attempted murder, judicially and mercilessly hammering him into the ground pour encourager les autres (10-20 and no early parole), firing outright every officer in that idiot’s chain of command who trained him, and demoting every one who supervised him and turned him loose on his own, from Day One to that incident, from the chief on down.
No? Then tell the city to stock up on caskets and flags.
They need to start living under the same rules as everyone else.
If I’m not safe from the police, the police will not be safe from me.
Fair is fair.
And this is why we always lock our car doors.
—–
I still stand by every word of that.
San Antonio seems to be trying as hard as they can to get upwind of this fecal explosion, short of punishing anyone but the offender, or taking any institutional blame for entrusting him with a badge and gun, unsupervised, and with the powers of arrest, in the first place.
I suspect that whether the victim lives or dies, they’re about to have about a $20M budget shortfall within the next year or two, to cover the inevitable payout and court costs.
If the chief is really lucky, they’ll only fire/retire him, when the dust settles.
If they wanted to actually make things right with the community, the city council would (and should) revoke all sovereign immunity from not only the officer, but from his entire chain of command in regards to this incident, and let them all take their chances with juries in civil court, if not at a coroner’s inquest should the victim die. Maybe the prospect of being broke and homeless when they killed someone, or nearly did so, would give them pause to think about things before they turn another Officer Sh*thead loose on the town.
This wasn’t just someone who lost his mind for 20 seconds; it was an institutional failure that probably tracks back years (if anyone would look), and they should all be held to account in the only way you can do so: by the wallet, and their short hairs.
Elrod · October 12, 2022 at 6:16 pm
It’s stuff like this – which happens repeatedly in different forms – that suggests prudence dictates leaving the area immediately if a cop shows up, at any time, for any reason.
Which makes me wonder, what will the Officer Unfriendlies do when they enter a lot and see several cars immediately start up and pull out? Pursuit? Arrange a roadblock? Order Stop Sticks? Ram to apprehend? Open fire?
If it is legal to use deadly force in self defense if an armed criminal poses a direct and immediate threat to one’s life or severe bodily harm, does it matter how that criminal is dressed?
Anonymous · October 13, 2022 at 1:05 am
To avoid contradictions, consider using the word “legal” to mean “whatever the legal system does”. So, yes, it is legal for the cop to act like the overseer on the plantation, which he is.
Aesop · October 13, 2022 at 2:33 pm
Like I said: one by one by one.
If city hall won’t restrain them rationally, then Rule .308 will.
They will learn, one way or the other, that they’re less than 1% of civilization, and they’d better rejoin the herd, but quick, or life is going to be short and interesting.
Like doing a combat patrol in Fallujah, naked.
A city policed under Peel’s Principles will have zero problems.
Stuff like this will mean a perennial 90% shortfall in LEOs.
And a lot of criminals DOA.
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