I hate to agree with what sounds like the slogan you'd see some redneck wearing in Alabama at a county fairground gunshow, but...
Maybe "Gun Control Means Holding Your Gun Firmly and Hitting What You're Shooting At". Or, at least it should for NYC police officers. They just don't seem to be able to control themselves very well(or their weapons, for that matter).
the full story is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
This is what kills me about these gangland style NYC police shootings. What ever happened to shoot three times, evaluate, proceed as necessary? I'd say "Let's take away the guns and give these ass-clowns tazers", but law enforcement collectively seem to be in an awful hurry to misuse those, too! (Remember: "Don't 'taze me, bro!)
20 shots at an unarmed lad. What a crime. What is it about unloading boxes of ammo that NYC seems to believe is conducive to good police work? 5 bullets will kill just about anybody, really. 10 does the trick for sure, assuming your fat donut chomping ass can place them in an area the size of a human chest, but 20? 40? Don't these ass-clowns ever practice?
The final straw is that the jerks NEVER admit: "Well, we just plain screwed up. Sorry. Our bad, we'll resign. No, when you shoot an unarmed person who didn't do something obviously an attempt to get themselves killed, its:
"We're investigating this as a 'suicide by cop'"
The law enforcement official gave a different version of the encounter, saying that Mr. Coppin charged toward the officers and refused repeated orders to stop. The police said they were also exploring the possibility that Mr. Coppin was trying to prompt a shooting, a phenomenon known as "suicide by cop."
How do I know this is bullshit? Easy. Any time police bully or intimidate the witnesses, you KNOW they're guilty.
Mr. Sanchez said that just before the shooting, he went outside and saw several officers there with guns drawn. Mr. Coppin approached the window, backed away, then returned and stood on the sill, Mr. Sanchez said. When an officer told him to get down, he jumped to the ground and started to go through a gate in the fence in front of the building, Mr. Sanchez said.
An officer told Mr. Coppin to put up his hands, and when he did he dropped the hairbrush and the shooting began, although one officer called out to stop the gunfire, Mr. Sanchez said.
Officers started chasing Mr. Sanchez and knocked him to the ground after, he said, he protested: "Why you got to shoot him like that, for nothing?"
Folks, I've seen this sort of thing happen. When a Modesto Police officer was too busy scrolling down the police laptop in his car to notice my wife (driving) and I were approaching the parking lot he was about to pull out of, he ran into her side. About three people came over to see if she was alright. One of them was a lady who came to her window and said "I saw what happened, are you OK?" the officer leapt like a tiger out of his cruiser, and instead of even asking my wife if she was OK, he started punking this poor woman. "WHAT'S YOUR NAME? I NEED TO SEE SOME ID. WHAT DID YOU SEE? THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED HERE, I DON'T THING YOU SAW WHAT HAPPENED/ I NEED YOU TO STAY OUT OF THE WAY OR I WILL ARREST YOU FOR INTERFERING."
This lady panicked and took off as soon as the officer went back to his car to take his report book out of the car. The other witnesses cleared out right quick after they saw what was coming. Once he chased everyone away, he made sure to make sure to tell us that "falsely reporting an accident was a serious crime." What a punk.
Anecdotal? You bet. I'm just saying that when the police know they screw up and 20 shots at an unarmed guy is a screwup, the best way to get a feel for if they think they're mistaken is how they react. If they circle the wagons, they screwed up. When they did everything right, they hang around and look for the cameras for vindication.
Sigh, 20 shots. At least no one was getting married in the morning this time.