Brickbat: Mama Tried

A Greenville County, S.C., sheriff's deputy accidentally shot the mother of a man she was trying to arrest for shoplifting from a convenience store. Bodycam video shows the deputy, identified by local media as Ashley Cure, confront Sean Theodore Kaiser outside his home. He went into the home and the deputy followed. She tried to put him in handcuffs, but Kaiser grabbed her. The deputy broke free and pulled her gun. The mother begged her to go outside and wait for backup, but the deputy refused. Kaiser then charged the deputy, who fired her gun, striking the mother. Seconds later, another deputy entered the home, kicked Kaiser so hard his shoe flew off, and arrested him. Sheriff's office officials say Cure violated department arrest policies, and the incident is under investigation.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Back away," she shouted at the mother repeatedly. "Do not tell me what to do."

Classic.

[Inigo Montoya]

Mama tried to make the arrest better, but her pleading Cure denied.
That leaves only Cure to blame cause Mama tried.

[Jerryskids]

Cops are taught to shoot the dog first and obviously the cop thought the woman was acting like a bitch, so what would you expect?

[Crackers Boy]

And nothing else happened.

CB

[sarcasmic]

"She's on admin duty, which is a method we started to implement to help prepare the deputy after going through an experience like that to get back on the road," Flood said.

Translation: "Fuck that stupid cunt who refused to obey. I hope she dies. The one who deserves pity is the poor officer who had to go through the traumatic experience of being defied by a mere peasant."

[Conchfritters]

I highly doubt she will be turning 21 in prison doing life without parole.

[Longtobefree]

"There’s lots of bad behavior all over this video, but the reason she's hurt, the reason this poor woman is in the hospital, is because of how the officer acted," Erwin said.

Yep.
Shoplifting is bad behavior.
Running at an armed person is bad behavior, as well as pretty damn stupid.
Stepping into the line of fire is bad behavior.
And at the end, shooting when you don't need to is bad behavior.
But the officer is not THE reason the woman is on the hospital.
I sometimes wish these stories would include the lawyer's hourly rate, or if he is on a huge contingency percentage.

[sarcasmic]

Yes the shoplifter and his mom acted rather stupidly, but the use of deadly force could have been avoided had the woman backed off and waited for a man to come to her aid. She put herself into a situation that she simply couldn't handle physically, and that resulted in her feeling the need to use her firearm. So she deserves some blame.

[sarcasmic]

Then again, had she backed off instead of using deadly force she would probably been fired. After all, police are trained to have zero tolerance for noncompliance. Obey or die.
So I guess it was a catch-22, and she made the call that resulted in her keeping her job.

[Jerryskids]

I don't understand your handle because that wasn't the least bit sarcastic.

It's simply a fact that female cops are less physically intimidating than male cops and malefactors are more likely to challenge them on the grounds that they'd feel embarrassed by being arrested by "a little girl". A female officer being challenged by an aggressive male has little recourse but to go for the gun - despite what you may have been led to believe by Hollywood, most of them are not in fact martial arts experts capable of disarming Hulk Hogan in the blink of an eye.

And, yes, a cop unwilling to shoot to kill at the drop of a hat is considered to be a threat to both himself and his fellow officers and not shooting is at least as likely to get you into trouble as shooting in many places. As was the case a couple of years ago when a cop talked a guy with a gun threatening to shoot himself into putting the gun down and got into trouble because the guy could have easily shot the cop or one of his back-up. Officer safety is paramount, it's not like cops are paid to put themselves in danger by prioritizing the safety of the public over their own.

See also the recent UPS truck-hijacking incident wherein the cops sheltered from gunfire behind random occupied vehicles and shot the shit out of the truck occupied by the hostage. Despite the public outrage and the promised investigation, I suspect those cops weren't "forgetting all their training on what not to do", I suspect they were responding exactly as they were trained - shoot first and ask questions later.

[sarcasmic]

I'm not always sarcastic. Generally I use lots of exclamation points when I'm doing that.

A female officer being challenged by an aggressive male has little recourse but to go for the gun..

To me that is a sound argument against female officers, or at least against them working alone. That makes them a danger to the public.

Then again "the public" is "everyone else." You are not the public. Anyone caught in the crossfire is not the public. The public is all those other people the cops are protecting as they go around committing acts of violence against individuals.

As was the case a couple of years ago when a cop talked a guy with a gun threatening to shoot himself into putting the gun down and got into trouble

He got more than in trouble. He got fired and blacklisted. He treated a human being like a human being. We are not human beings to the police. We are servants. We are slaves. We must obey or be executed on the spot. People don't do that to people. They do that to dehumanized animals.

Remember that deescalation is for pussies. Peasants must obey knights or face death.

We live in a feudal society. Only the costumes have changed.

[Robert Beckman]

Which is exactly why we need to militarize the police.

In the military any of this shit would get you a court martial and time in Leavenworth.

What we need to do is make the police liable for their actions, and that starts by having a constant zero tolerance policy for the police. Driving your cruiser above the speed limit without your siren on? Automatic ticket. Lots of patrol cars have automatic logging so that will often be trivial to do. Turn on your siren? Better have an encounter to pair up with it, or falsely claiming an emergency.

Lots of places where that needs to be applied, because if it’s not it’ll be one of the things listed on the next Declaration of Independence, and we’d be really better off if it doesn’t come to that.

[Incomprehensible Bitching]

This is why only police should have guns.

[EscherEnigma]

Many people would be okay with only special police units (SWAT teams and what-not) having guns, with your average patrol officer having only less-lethal† options.
_______
†The term "non-lethal" is a misnomer.

[Robert Beckman]

Electrified truncheons.

The electrification will stun anyone on contact, and in the rare circumstance something more is actually needed it’s still a truncheon.

[Rubbish!]

As Three Dog Night warned many years ago,

Mama told me not to come . . .

[EscherEnigma]

I went to the linked article and a giant full-page ad opened up, so screw reading the source material.

But does anyone know why the deputy showed up to the house alone in the first place? I thought that the "buddy system" was SOP.

[mad.casual]

I thought that the “buddy system” was SOP.

Why am I not surprised to learn that you live in a coastal city where every department is union backed and overstaffed.

[EscherEnigma]

Because your hallucinations are very persuasive?

Hint: your assumptions are wrong.

[mad.casual]

Hint: your assumptions are wrong.

Says the moron wondering why SOP doesn't jive with his assumptions.

[EscherEnigma]

Yep.

Me, not being from that area, asked a question, explicitly acknowledging my assumption.

You, being an idiot, made a host of conclusions (all wrong) about myself that you asserted as true.

Not very comparable.

[mad.casual]

Me, not being from that area, asked a question, explicitly acknowledging my assumption.

I think I see. The problem isn't that you aren't from the area and have no real conception of police procedure, it's that you can't or won't read or are having a stroke of some sort and can't conceptualize based on what you read.

Lemme help:
But does anyone know why the deputy showed up to the house alone in the first place?

Shoplifting.

I thought that the “buddy system” was SOP.

Not anywhere for trivial investigative purposes and even low-level arrests. Even mall cops can make single-handed 'arrests'. A shoplifting that happened hours ago gets one cop to investigate. Trivial persons of interest resulting from such investigations don't get two cops either. If the shopkeeper fingered Kaiser but Kaiser was out of the country or if video pointed to Kaiser and the cop offered Kaiser a chance to return the merchandise and he accepted, two officers aren't required and are a waste of resources. Sorry if I'm too explicit in spelling it out for you but the above two situations represent two of a myriad of possible situations where two cops wouldn't be needed.

Only in known or expected violent confrontations are two or more officers required. Once the situation escalated, Cure radioed for back and, in violation of SOP, entered the premises and escalated the confrontation.

My mistake for assuming that you had completely read and understood the article here before proceeding to not read the article somewhere else.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"you live in a coastal city where every department is union backed and overstaffed."

I live in Wisconsin. No coast in sight (unless you count Lake Michigan). Here in Wisconsin, even small town PDs with just a chief and one or two officers have to deal with the police union. This is part of why many small towns forgo their own police force and leave it to the county Sheriff.

[mad.casual]

This is part of why many small towns forgo their own police force and leave it to the county Sheriff.

So, what you're saying is, not everywhere on Earth can enjoin two officers at the hip for every shift and/or throw 2 officers at every shoplifting case?

There are still libertarians in the comment section, right? We're still glad that only one King's men shows up to generate unrest among the peasantry and persecute them for petty crimes and not an army of them, right? Maybe if Officer Backup could've shown up a few seconds earlier it would've been a proper 'Texas Gunfight'/'Dorner Manhunt' instead of just an accidental shooting.

[Robert Beckman]

That’s the weird part though - her backup arrived almost immediately, so knowing it was almost there (entirely fair to hold the agents of the a state to a modicum of competence) why didn’t she wait the handful of minutes to have two cops?

[mad.casual]

why didn’t she wait the handful of minutes to have two cops?

A decent or valid question or unanswered/unanswerable question but not the question that was asked.

[docduracoat]

Did anyone notice the article said officer Cure violated department procedure?
As long as she follows procedures, she can blast away and execute any citizen for not following lawful orders.
But she did not follow procedure.
Will there be consequences for not following procedures?