Texas Cop shoots 93 year old woman !

[74-911]

Posted without comment other than this is mind- boggling:

Texas police shoot woman, 93 - CNN.com

[sammyg2]

If a 93 year old woman is pointing a gun at me threatening to shoot me, I have nothing to worry about because at that age she not not capable of pulling a trigger.
Assuming the details in the story are even close to being accurate (which I doubt), what does her age and gender have to do with anything?

Still, it would seem a good dose of taze would have been more approriate.
Prolly end the same way.

[GH85Carrera]

It might well be suicide by cop.

I seriously doubt she was a gang banger or career criminal. I bet she was known almost by almost everyone in that small town. With a little luck the townspeople will demand a real and accurate investigation.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

It might well be suicide by cop.

I seriously doubt she was a gang banger or career criminal. I bet she was known almost by almost everyone in that small town. With a little luck the townspeople will demand a real and accurate investigation.

Agreed. I expect there to be more to this story.

[stomachmonkey]

Guys been a cop less than two years and this is his second fatal shooting. First one came 6 months into the job.

First guy was a 28 yr old with mental retardation. Can't really expect the officer to be aware of that and the deceased did have a gun so Grand Jury cleared him on that and he was put back on active duty.

Starting to appear this guy may be a bit quick on the trigger finger.

[flipper35]

It doesn't say if she was holding it at her side or pointing it at them. I would think that would make a difference, especially if the police already had their weapons trained on her.

On the other hand, if it were LA they would have shot the wrong house full of holes first.

[Jeff Higgins]

At least he didn't shoot her dog. That really pisses people off.

[livi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

At least he didn't shoot her dog. That really pisses people off.

Ironic post of the year contender. I love it!

[BlueSkyJaunte]

This is why only cops should be allowed to have guns.


/sarc

[doug_porsche]

I hate "trial by media".

My condolences to her family.

[Rikao4]

well it's about the only trial this Rambo will see..
as it's always.
I feared for my safety...

Rika

[HardDrive]

I wasn't there. So I'm in no position to judge.

My step grandfather is 90, and can fire a gun just fine. He still hunts deer.

[gordner]

Brandishing a weapon in the presence of a police officer is a good recipe to get shot for anyone regardless of age.
If she can hold a gun she can fire it, why does anyone automatically assume this was not justified?

[Rikao4]

because many of them aren't...
but no worries..
you will never hear them admit to that..
really..there are no bad cops..
just ask the 'good' ones that cover for them...

Rika

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by BlueSkyJaunte

This is why only cops should be allowed to have guns.


/sarc

It is getting to that point where according to the police, possessing a gun is a death sentence.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by gordner

Brandishing a weapon in the presence of a police officer is a good recipe to get shot for anyone regardless of age.
If she can hold a gun she can fire it, why does anyone automatically assume this was not justified?

Intent. it is not illegal to possess a gun, no matter what the police think.

A police-involved shooting is NOT justified unless the branisher shoots at the cops, or clearly deminstrates the INTENT to shoot at them or someone else.
Then and only then can cops justifiably use deadly force.

But it's got to the point where The cops are trained to YELL "stop or BLAMMO .... I'll shoot.
Everyone with a gun is seen as nothing but a target because of what they MIGHT do. And the law does not support that.

[gordner]

I agree cops tend to be to militarized these days and very quick to the trigger. My only point is that a gun is deadly in the hands of a young man or an old lady, and it is entirely possible she was about to blow his head off when he fired. Trial by media with no facts involved is not fair to anyone at all, people need to learn to reserve judgement about this type of stuff until the facts are in.

[Rikao4]

that's all sweet and admirable....
but when they shoot..
the 'facts' have been decided...
when they break down the wrong doors & hurt folks...
fact's or internal review always clears them...
when they fire multiple rounds into the wrong colored pick-up...
it's okay...

Rika

[Rikao4]

The Atlantic
by Garrett Epps

Today’s hypothetical: Police officers come to your home at 2 a.m., insist (as a result of their own clerical error) that the car you’re driving is stolen property, order you to lie on your belly, slam your mother against a garage door, and then shoot you three times from 15 feet away when you protest. Is there some chance—some very slight chance—that their conduct violates a “clearly established” constitutional right?

The Supreme Court on Monday said “yes.” All nine justices agreed that a lower court that blew off the claim needs to go back and take a fresh look at the issue.

Tolan v. Cotton began early in the morning of December 31, 2008, when John C. Edwards, a police officer in Bellaire, Texas (a close-in suburb of Houston), saw a black SUV make an “abrupt turn” into a cul de sac. This struck him as suspicious. He watched as two African American men parked in front of a house and got out.

The police computer reported that the car had been stolen. In fact, it hadn't; it belonged to Bobby Tolan, the owner of the house. Bobby Tolan is a local celebrity with a 14-year career in Major League Baseball, including a spot in the outfield for the 1967 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. The driver was his son, Robbie, then a 23-year-old minor-leaguer with big-league hopes of his own. Robbie lived at the house, too. He was unarmed. He and a friend had been to a Jack in the Box.

Edwards had triggered the stolen-car report by typing the wrong license plate number into the computer.

Edwards drew his pistol and ordered Robbie and his friend down on their bellies. Bobby Tolan and his wife, Marian, came onto the porch in their pajamas. Robbie’s father told Edwards the car was his; the officer ignored him. He also urged their son and his friend to remain compliant; Robbie’s mother, Marian, however, began to complain about the police entering their property and threatening her son.

Unfortunately, at this point “help” arrived in the person of Bellaire Police Sergeant Jeffrey Wayne Cotton. Without hesitation, he slammed Mrs. Tolan against her garage door (bruises persisted for days). When Robbie, 15 to 20 feet away, rose to his knees and said, “Get your ****ing hands off my mom!” Sergeant Cotton shot him three times.

He had been on the scene 32 seconds.

Robbie lived, but he reports persistent pain, and his professional baseball career is almost certainly over.

Local district attorneys must work with police, and they are reluctant to move against them except in extreme cases. But even by Texas standards, Cotton’s behavior was so egregious that the local state prosecutor brought criminal charges against him. Cotton was acquitted, but the indictment itself spoke volumes.

Two federal courts, however—the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit—decided the case wasn’t even worth listening to. There would be no trial, no jury, no real finding of fact.

The federal courts’ decision was based on special rules of civil-rights litigation. When a government official violates a citizens’ rights, federal statutes allow the citizens to bring a federal lawsuit. The most important, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, is the basis of the Tolan case. It provides a civil action against any person who deprives another of any legal or constitutional right “under color of” law.

But individuals—prisoners, defendants, “sovereign citizens,” and just people who have had a bad encounter with a cop—like to sue law enforcement, especially since, if they win, the government will pay their legal fees. To prevent baseless suits, the Supreme Court evolved a doctrine called “qualified immunity.” Government officials are presumed to be immune from suit for their official acts. Unless the plaintiffs can allege facts that, if true, would violate “clearly established” rights, official defendants are entitled to immediate dismissal.

So, for example, if a cop arrests me, grabs the key to my house, drives there, and uses the key to search without a warrant, I can sue for damages, because any reasonable officer would know the Fourth Amendment forbids that. If, on the other hand, a cop arrests me, grabs my cellphone, and searches my call log, I probably can’t sue, because that issue hasn’t been resolved.

So the issue for the Fifth Circuit was, could a reasonable police officer believe he was legally justified in shooting Robbie Tolan? To decide that, the courts are required by the federal rules to believe all the factual allegations made by the plaintiffs against Sergeant Cotton. A ruling of “qualified immunity” means “even if you can prove everything you say, the shooting was still reasonable.” Only if the court finds against “qualified immunity” will there be a trial, and real findings of fact.

The Fifth Circuit claimed to be applying that standard. It still dismissed the case because it believed, as the Supreme Court summarized it:

the front porch had been “dimly-lit”; Tolan’s mother had “refus[ed] orders to remain quiet and calm”; and Tolan’s words had amounted to a “verba[l] threa[t].” Most critically, the court also relied on the purported fact that Tolan was “moving to intervene in” Cotton’s handling of his mother, and that Cotton therefore could reasonably have feared for his life.

Reading the record in Tolan, I’d find it hard to reach that conclusion. The Tolans’ testimony—true or not—directly contradicted a lot of the Fifth Circuit’s version. No one disputes Robbie was unarmed. By his account, he rose only to his knees; a man he had never seen before had just barged onto his property and thrown his mother against a garage door. That man then shot him without warning.

The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 opinion, said that the appeals court had put a thumb on the scales. “By failing to credit evidence that contradicted some of its key factual conclusions, the court improperly ‘weigh[ed] the evidence’ and resolved disputed issues in favor of” Sergeant Cotton—which the rules forbid.” (Justice Samuel Alito, by far the most pro-prosecution Justice on the Court, wrote separately to emphasize that the Court shouldn’t overturn decisions like this often, but even he agreed that in this case, “there are genuine issues of material fact and that this is a case in which summary judgment should not have been granted.”)

The Court’s decision was narrower than some had hoped. Eric Del Pozo of Jenner & Block, the author of an amicus brief on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc., told me there’s a perception that the Fifth Circuit, and some other courts around the country, have begun to alter the test for “qualified immunity.” Instead of asking, as the cases hold, whether a reasonable officer should have known he was violating the plaintiffs’ rights, some judges, in some cases, have begun to view cases from the particular view of the specific officer involved. As they imagine what that officer was thinking or feeling, they have begun to “play with the facts,” Del Pozo said, deciding “whether they think the officer’s perspective was reasonable even if a jury could find for the plaintiffs.”

The Court did not directly address the “qualified immunity” issue. But the decision may send a signal to the lower courts to apply the immunity test as written. “It rights the ship a little bit,” Del Pozo said—and in a case that has been closely watched by civil-rights lawyers nationwide. He speculates that the court didn’t want “to foster a perception that the courthouse doors are closed to persons with meritorious claims.”

My own perception is that many federal judges seem to have little capacity for outrage—no real gut feeling that, when police storm onto private property, brutalize a woman, and shoot her unarmed son, there really might be something very badly wrong. The kind of “review” this case got in the courts below is hardly worthy of being called “law.”

The Court sent a quiet signal that this kind of thing won’t do; it was, as Will Baude notes, the first time in a decade it has held against law enforcement in a “qualified immunity” case. Let’s hope that signal is received.

[john70t]

This story is not only a media-distraction from larger issues, it's indicative of something much worse.....

I listened to a segment on NPR yesterday, where the discussion was about volunteering personal information to police.
Basically the argument went:
"Shouldn't cops know if a resident has mental problems, and access to a gun?"
-and-
"It would prevent unnecessary shootings"

Astounding.
They were trying to instill public doubt using the proverbial 'camel's nose inside the tent'.
These Bloomberg-felatioists want HIPPA rules swept aside, and want NSA programs instituted on the local level.

No wonder NPR fired any reporter showing empathy to the wall street protesters.

(and fwiw, The NSA gives unfiltered data on all Americans to Israel)