Just so I'm clear... Both partners planned to have the child walk around with a realistic toy gun, then planned to be the responding officers so that they could then murder the child. These are the facts as you know them? Otherwise, there was no murder here... Possibly manslaughter...
That being said, we should not have to expect the police to hold off on shooting someone with a gun. As was mentioned, having a child with a real gun is not out of the realm of possibility. The gun pictured looks very real, especially in the few seconds they could see it.
Yes, the police are there to serve and protect, not die.
They have a right to protect themselves and stopping to analyse whether a gun is real or a toy is not realistic.
If this had been one of the colorful nerf type guns, I would have a different opinion, but that gun looks real.
I guess in your book, you would have the police hold fire until they are shot at? Well, at that point it may be too late.
This was a tragedy, but I do put part of the blame in the parents court as well as the child..
Too be honest, with all the backlash police are getting, what happens if they decide to all be more hands off?
Hello 911, whats your emergency?
Someone is breaking into my house.
OK, let us know when they are done and we will come investigate.

I'm not saying that we should just ignore what the police do in their actions, I'm just saying we shouldn't crucify every action since the outcome doesn't please us.

Then why do cops get off scot-free whenever they murder and unarmed innocent person?


You know full well cops, lawyers and Judge work closely together, are sometimes friends, and will lie, misremember, or "not recall" shit to cover one another.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged-for-on-duty-shootings-1416874955

" New research by a Bowling Green State University criminologist shows that 41 officers in the U.S. were charged with either murder or manslaughter in connection with on-duty shootings over a seven-year period ending in 2011. Over that same period, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 2,718 justified homicides by law enforcement, an incomplete count, according to experts. "

"The think tank’s researchers tracked allegations of misconduct involving nearly 11,000 police officers in the U.S. from April 2009 through December 2010. They found that 3,238 of those cases resulted in criminal charges, and 1,063—or 33% of those charged criminally—resulted in convictions. In felony cases against the general public in 2009 in the country’s 75 largest counties, 66% were convicted, according to the Justice Department’s research arm, the Bureau of Justice Statistics. "

So as a cop, you're unlikely to get charges brought against you.

If you do, you're only half as likely to get convicted.

Cops are scumbags.
They might not start they way, but they definitely all become that way.

And if you don't get corrupted; the rest'll harass you, stick you with filing paperwork, take your cruiser.

You're like a child Lantern.
You're naive as Hank Hill, I tell yuh h'what.

Like you can't understand that Power Corrupts. Cops have Power.
Therefore many cops become corrupted.

"What are you talking about Genji, no one would just go on the internet.. and LIE like that."

"What do you MEAN there's no toothfairy Genji?! Where did all my children baby teeth go then?!"

My take, there's no way to tell if there was brutality. Most everything happened off camera. However, there's no legal reason for them to be demanding passengers ID themselves unless the officer had reason to believe they had committed a crime (being black doesn't count). That seemed to be the reason for all the action and over reaction.

Any word on what happened in the end? Did the daughter have an asthma attack? Did she get help? Not rendering assistance is one of the charges in Baltimore, isn't it? They do have a duty to provide medical assistance if it's needed, and a death due to neglecting that duty is manslaughter at least.

Okay newtboy, I understand you are frustrated. New York was bullshit and should not have happened. A manslaughter charge would have been appropriate in this case, at the least. And now remember, I am no friend of bullshit law enforcement choices.

But your arguments are just as bad as Lantern's arguments. They are utter shit. Beneath you by and far. I myself have been drawn down at gunpoint for a simple traffic screw up, but then it was night and I had almost ran into him because I was tired. Shit happens. I knew my place. My dumb cunt wife at the time got out of the car anyways, even when she was ordered back in. He pointed it harder at me--instead of her. Yeah, that's smart.

Anyways, I will talk about your posts in another separate post.

Acquitted on appeal.

As an ex racer I will say this is disturbing and should definitely be investigated as a criminal act.
First, watching the initial incident closely, Stewart definitely turns into Ward intentionally putting him in the wall. That's likely not criminal, but it should get him thrown out of the circuit, and watched closely by any other circuit he drives in.
Second, the point made in the description is quite valid but understated. He DID know that hitting the throttle would send the whole car, and especially the rear end, sliding to the outside of the turn. Any attempt to claim otherwise is completely ridiculous, he's a professional driver and he knows that. That means even if Stewart didn't intend to hit Ward, he did intend to drive dangerously close to him at unsafe speed wile sliding partially out of control. It seems likely he only intended to spray him with the dirt roost and/or scare him but burped the throttle too soon...that is not an excuse or absolution in any way.
Being on a track doesn't absolve you from behaving safely, or from responsibility for your deliberately unsafe actions. Killing Ward may have been accidental, but acting dangerously irresponsibly was not. An accident that happens when you are acting unsafely is 100% your fault and responsibility, it's exactly why we have the charge of manslaughter and not only murder. Hitting and killing him when you unsafely accelerate at him in a dirt corner was foreseeable by any reasonable person....I would almost certainly convict him.

More philosophical wank citing junk analogies (lol, blowing up peoples houses with them still inside = drunken manslaughter in a bar fight?) to justify a position directly contradicted by people who should know...

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-auschwitz-borders-revisited/7847

"The late Tommy Lapid, justice minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, caused an uproar in 2004 when he said that images of an elderly Palestinian woman in Gaza “crouching on all fours, searching for her medicines in the ruins of her house” demolished by the Israeli army reminded him of his own grandmother who perished at Auschwitz. Lapid compared the Israeli army’s writing of numbers on the arms and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners to the Nazi practice of tattooing concentration camp inmates. “As a refugee from the Holocaust I find such an act insufferable,” he said in 2002."

"Lapid, who was chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, also likened the routine harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron to the anti-Semitism of pre-World War II Europe. “It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us,” he said in 2007, “but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn.” Lapid did not live long enough to see Hebron settlers attempt to burn down a house with a large Palestinian family trapped inside, an act witnessed on 4 December by Avi Issacharoff, reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who called it “a pogrom in the worst sense of the word.”

or perhaps:

http://youtu.be/qMGuYjt6CP8

"Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

I'll take the word of people who lived through the Holocaust and the formation of Israel over you... = P

I do understand that the purpose of Godwin's law is to reduce the worst kinds of hyperbole, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

Whatever you think about Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians, referring to it as extermination only shows that you haven't taken the time to understand anything about the current conflict and you are just reacting emotionally to the terrible horror of war. Extermination is the total elimination of a certain population by killing, and such an action is so far beyond the state of oppression we see in Gaza today that I just can't take your comparison seriously.

The only way you bother to support these outlandish statements is by telling me that death is death - no matter what the cause - as if that mindless tautology is enough to render two wildly different sets of circumstances and tactics equivalent.

Should we also call all murders murders and not bother to make distinctions between first degree, second degree, involuntary manslaughter, etc? Should we treat the serial killer the same as the drunken brawler who hit someone too hard in a bar fight?

Of course not. As thinking people we analyze factors such as intent, quantity, severity, remorse, and perhaps most importantly, we consider what measures can possibly be taken to correct the underlying cause. All of these elements are wildly different in the different degrees of murders, and having an honest grasp of these differences helps us understand how we as a society should react to each degree, both in terms of punishment and rehabilitation.

To similar ends, it is very important that we consider analogous distinctions in the different degrees of atrocities between nations or ethnic groups. The fact that it is obvious that I would much rather be in Gaza today than a concentration camp in 1943 is very much so relevant to this sort of analysis. The fact that there is no Israeli intent to exterminate the Palestinians is also relevant.

But if you want to leave the depth of your understanding at "dead is dead" then I guess that's your choice.

I want to see the rest of the video where the back 2 drivers get out and beat the guy who stopped in the fast lane senseless. ;-)
I understand the frustration of having a dickhead tailgate you, but I also understand the frustration of driving in the fast lane only to find someone not even going near the speed limit thinking they own the road and should impede your travel simply because they can. The Pugeot was not passing in the passing lane, he was being passed, so he should have gotten out of the way. That makes HIM the one who is 100% in the wrong from the start, good thing he ended up with the £45k bill, but he should also get a number of tickets if not permanent removal of his license for being so inconsiderately, selfishly dangerous. I wonder if anyone was hurt...if so he should be charged with assault or attempted manslaughter.
"Slower traffic keep right" is a law, not just a suggestion people. They should ticket people for that more often.
EDIT: perhaps it's time to buy a dash cam...it sure paid for itself this time!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Drunk Driving' to 'Drunk Driving, manslaughter, affluenza' - edited by Lawdeedaw

I'm from the DFW area and this is indeed a big deal here right now. For some perspective, this same judge sentenced a 14 year old poor, black kid to 10 years in prison for one count of manslaughter.

This is SOP in The Lone Star State.

@ChaosEngine and @artician (I will combine these two posts into one because I don't want it to be so long as I posted before.)

Chaos. Cops around these parts make about 46K to start, then max at 65K. That is without promotions. Lts. or above easily make 110K. If you make rank of command staff it is free health benefits for life. The benefits a cop has, while not free, are decent. And this isn't even the biggest area or highest paying city around here. From what I can tell this cop was making 55K, he was almost halfway to a decent retirement and had good benefits. (Really great pay if you ask me.)

Next to answer you art. Examples can be speculation. There is no inherent problem with this. Here is a real situation. A cop shoots an unarmed man on the ground. Murder? Well, possibly. Problem is his tazer was on the hip side that the gun was. In the heat of the moment he could have reasonably grabbed it and got ready to use it. That was his claim. Bam. Sad, yes. Murder? Proving that would be difficult. Manslaughter? Depends. Some States say no in a moment of adrenaline (For everyone btw.) But the outrage was enormous.

So just to throw it straight out there; I'm a massive biker (though mostly solo so I can't really relate to the gang mindset here). You have no idea what this whole debacle does to my priorities!

So on the one hand provoking the man in the big metal cage (no matter how good the perceived reason) is basically never a good idea if your on a bike. And moreover beating someone to within an inch of his life and cutting him up is very very rarely a good or condonable solution to anything, even if he did just run over a couple of your buddies....

On the other hand......well (and this might only really find any sympathy from fellow motor-bicycleists)..........I can fill in some of the gaps that might explain why one biker felt the need to brake hard in front of him etc. from my own experiences.

Some (very few) drivers go out of their way to fuck with you sometimes over little shit, they get a big head tucked away safely inside their big metal cages and they take it upon themselves to cause you grief in some way or another.
On a regular basis for instance I have car drivers deliverately pull their cars out to try and stop me filtering (lane splitting) despite the fact that A. its totally legal and featured on my fucking licence test! and B. It actually speeds their miserable existence in the traffic flow up as we don't have to take up a car's space (and were fucking gone before most cars are even in gear when the lights change anyway)!

Fortunately I have the perfect solution to this problem, I ride a cheapish looking bike and don't show any signs of stopping for them as they veer over deliberately into my path! You'd be amazed how often they just back off :-D (if not I'm only ever doing 5-10mph so stopping is always an option for that odd psycho)

Not saying I remotely condone the bikers responses, but I do understand how this thing probably escalated. I suspect the bikers had a legit frustration but clearly they dealt with it very poorly. The biker side of the story seems to be that this guy had been deliberately blocking lanes and exchanging insults for a while leading up to when the braking biker escalated things,a situation I've witnessed myself before. Normally prudence makes you leave it alone and back off/accelerate away (or if they are being an extra special twatbag knock off a mirror and accelerate into the distance :-D (never actually done that, but it's seriously crossed my mind a couple of times, Kevlar knuckles are the shit!)). In this case the extra courage that only a 1000 or so fellow kinsmen stood at your side can bring had the usual effect..........Mobs will be the death of us all.

@newtboy is right though, bikers totally killed their own case reacting so aggressively. If they'd followed at a reasonable distance and waited for police to show up things would probably have gone completely the other way legally. Sure the dude that brakes in front of him might get charged but it'd be nothing on attempted vehicular murder/manslaughter running over a handful of bikers. Chasing down and then beating a man half to death in front of his family unfortunately rather overshadows your defence.


Sadly the only sensible conclusion I seem to be able to find is this was ultimately douche nozzles with no self control baiting other douche nozzles with no self control. But I do get it. I also totally get the drivers response once it escalated, I'd have shit bricks and maybe made a run for it through them by that stage too!

I really really really wish I could hear what was actually said between them oh well, back to the fence I go!


EDIT: I just wanted to come back and make it absolutely clear that I also acknowledge that bikes in groups (especially sports bikes and supermoto's as featured here) are just as capable of acting like power drunk fucknuts too. It's entirely possible the bikers started it a way's back and the driver was essentially an innocent man driven to extreme lengths by fear (though I'm still going with straight up hot douche on douche action for now)

Also look up the last famous incident of a guy wielding a knife on a bus in Canada. Only a couple of years ago a guy used a knife to cut off another passengers head. He then stayed in the bus, surrounded by police for several hours, even chewing on the corpse a bit while the police watched without shooting him. The police force was able to take him into custody essentially unharmed for the justice system to serve justice. He was not convicted of manslaughter, but was instead found not criminally responsible for the murder because of mental illness. He is already receiving supervised walks and excursions in public.

The Canadian public has been shouting ever since that incident that a great many would much rather seen the killer shot on that bus, as happened in Toronto here. There is a lot more back story to this and public debate within Canada on just how to handle violent offenders.