In this case, the reserve cop, Robert Bates accidentally shot Eric Harris (yes, Harris was 44...) with his gun instead of his TASER. Having listened to the audio which is quite clear, I do believe that this was an honest mistake on the part of the cop. First he warned the other officers on the scene that he was about to use his TASER and then after he shot the guy, he apologized immediately. You can see for yourself here. Note that he did not unload his weapon on the victim as the corrupt cops tend to do. It was an accident.
In fact, what I found more disturbing than the accidental gunshot was the fact that the other officers continued to manhandle the mortally wounded man: police kept his face shoved into the ground with their knees after the shooting and then told the guy to shut the fuck up when he was panicking about having been shot. I think those police should have immediately piled off the guy and inspected the gunshot wound. They should have worked to calm him down and then rushed him to hospital instead of telling him to just shut the fuck up. They acted like he deserved to be shot because he ran. It is possible if not likely that those actions (and inactions) contributed to and hastened the death of Harris.
In any case, Bates is being charged with manslaughter for his misdeeds. On one hand I feel sorry for the cop this time because he clearly just made a mistake. On the other hand, if I accidentally shot someone then I would be charged with manslaughter at the very least. The case of Harris has likely happened many times before. We already know several times for sure including the BART officer who shot a man in the back a few years back and the more recent case I mentioned here. I suspect that in many of those cases, some lie was made up about the victim grabbing for a gun, etc. But we are going to see less and less of these lies from police and more and more charges being preferred against the offending cop. In the case of Bates, I believe manslaughter is the appropriate charge and I think the evidence shows him to be guilty of it. Sorry Bates, your little retirement age video game rodeo is over. You will be going to jail soon.
So this is a good time to stop and reflect. How many police were ever charged with manslaughter or murder in the past 20 years? Not very many, that's for sure, and even fewer in a high profile, fully public manner. Now it seems to be happening every week!
Cops who might be reading this, you know I warned you many times that this day was coming and now it is here. You are witnessing the real time collapse of the two speed legal system. Those of you with any brains will heed my advice: SLOW DOWN with people. Stop treating everyone like a piece of meat. Yes, I know, some people you have to deal with are just assholes. But it is not your right or your job to abuse them.
I challenge you to listen to me on this: the next time you have someone running like this, don't tackle them. Just run up from behind and tell them to stop wasting their time running. Show them that the cannot out run you. You must realize that they are herding beings with built in fight or flight responses. In the case of Harris, he wasn't going anywhere. You could hear that he was tuckered out and the cop was running about 30% faster. All that cop had to do was run around in front of him and tell the guy to chill out and only if that didn't work then get physical. This whole idea of the police being SWAT/military and everyone else being treated as a terrorist is just going to work less and less well in the coming years. Time to try something different. Time to think to yourself "what would Andy of Mayberry do"?
For those cops that will argue that you can't treat people like Andy did because it's more dangerous, well, all I can say is that you are the one that wanted to be a cop. You had your decades of just running roughshod over the people. Your tactics are over the top and must be toned back or your ranks will more and more frequently find themselves behind bars. Those of you who love your rough police state tactics I tell you now: your behavior is criminal and it is immoral and we the people are coming for you. This is not a threat! It's a statement of how my socionomic models are predicting that you have jumped the liberal shark with your tactics and that the people are over it. I was predicting these things would happen before there was even a hint of it and people were actually laughing at me for the predictions; they sounded ludicrous at the time. But now here we are. In other words, I don't "hope" these things will happen, my models said they would happen and now they are happening. So get right with the people before they happen to you.
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