Ft Worth cop already charged with murder.

The cop who got skittish and shot a woman through the window of her own house has already been charged with murder.  Ex-cop Aaron Dean is now going to jail just like ex-cop Amber Guyger.  With that body cam footage from Aaron there's barely any need to even have a trial.  It was immediately clear to me that he accidentally discharged his weapon because of his mental condition (scared) and obvious lack of useful training.  I'll let other people discuss the lamentation that this sorry incident has caused.  My main focus at this point is how the system is changing.

A few years ago the cop could have shot the woman and everyone else in the house and gotten away with it somehow.  Maybe they would have taken the woman's gun and planted it on her so that he could say he saw a gun before he fired OR they might have even put it in her dead hand and discharged the weapon at the window to make it look like she fired first.  Or maybe they would just hide behind department procedure and make up some lie about her actions that justified the shot.

But none of this cover up crap happened and in fact the police heads did what they should have been doing all along: they almost immediately released the body cam footage.  They didn't try to stonewall on it.  I suspect they called the cop into the back room, got his story, watched the footage and said, "Aaron, we've reviewed the evidence.  We wish there was something we could do about this.  We really do.  But the people are just waaaaay too awake these days and nobody's getting away with anything.  We know you didn't mean to do it and we know it wasn't racism but man, you have to follow procedure when you have a gun like that.  You screwed up and we are sorry but we think it will be best if you just resign.  The prosecutor will be calling you soon.  Again, sorry it had to go down like this but I'm going to need your service weapon and your badge.  As of now you are off the payroll."

That was step one.  The next step was to distance the department from this cop in every way possible, "Had Mr Dean not resigned, Police Chief Kraus said: "I would have fired him for violations of several policies including our use of force policy, our de-escalation policy and unprofessional conduct.""

As you can see, no excuses were made.  The heads know that the herd is beyond that.  All that would result from that would be people calling it a cover up attempt.  So, just like I said was eventually going to be the case, bump - bump, under the bus the cop went.

And now the management is going to catch Hell as well.  Changes need to be made.  SOMEONE instilled this whole "shoot first ask questions later" attitude into the cops.  Management has to step up and own this.  I want to know what high ranking department official will be fired for dereliction of duty in not properly training these cops.

I also want to say that I have never shot anyone.  I have never even pointed my gun at anyone.  So if someone starts talking about confiscating my guns while all these cops are running around without much respect for other people's lives, I can tell you it's not going to go over well.  The cops have no moral authority anymore.  All credibility is GONE.

5-10 years ago very few of us were loud and hopping mad about what was going on whereas now everyone has woken up and no longer accepts the notion that cops killing innocent people is "just doing their job".  The notion of collateral damage which used to be OK is not OK anymore.  If this crap keeps up even a little bit longer, someone is going to start asking in a public and serious way if cops should really be allowed to carry weapons going forward given that they have proven to be less than careful when it comes to other people's lives.  This may sound funny but look what someone did to the wiki page discussing police use of firearms; they highlighted the sections that say the rank and file cop in the UK (AKA bobby) does not get to carry a gun.  No, I did not do it.  But it goes to show that people are upset about all these random killings being done by skittish or stupid cops.