Brickbat: In a Hurry

Former Warren, Michigan, police officer James Burke faces two felony counts of homicide-manslaughter with a motor vehicle after he drove a police SUV at nearly 115 mph, crashing into a Dodge Durango and killing Cedric Hayden Jr.  and DeJuan Pettis in September 2024. The high-speed collision occurred in a 40 mph zone. Burke was responding to a "be on the lookout" alert but was not using his emergency lights or sirens. Macomb County Sheriff's Deputy Joseph Bosek testified that Burke's vehicle reached 114.9 mph five seconds before impact and 93.8 mph at the moment of collision.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

BOLO = YOLO

[Jerry B.]

I expect that qualified immunity will come into play at some point.

[Longtobefree]

Certainly so.
I am SURE there has never been an officer involved in a collision at precisely 93.8 mph before, so the doctrine applies.

Given the precision of those reported speeds, I am sure the computer ratted him out. Next we get a campaign to include the computers in the union so they can suppress this kind of data.

[MatthewSlyfield]

The article is about criminal charges, not a civil suit. Qualified Immunity has zero application in criminal cases. It can not come into play in a criminal prosecution.

[Incunabulum]

QI absolutely comes into play in criminal cases - Reason has articles about cops that have been caught stealing from materials gathered under wma warrant and walking because QI gave them the excuse that they the law wasn't clear on stealing evidence between when it was collected and when it was turned over.

[minus the clever name]

Not enough facts here... I'm sure the lack of lights and the speed, that combination, has happened MANY TIMES.

[John F. Carr]

Police cars should be governed to the speed limit unless their lights are flashing.

[AT]

So, for the requisite context that's always missing from Chaz's garbage - there's two things missing here: 1) a recent rash of car theft and carjackings, specifically of Jeep Cherokees and Dodge Durangos, that were being used in a similar rash of armed robberies and ATM hits. (So bad that the local citizenry was open-carrying at the gas stations just to fill up their car.) 2) They were responding to a FLOCK hit on a Cherokee. One that, by all accounts and reasonable suspicions, was likely highly related to said crimes.

I'm not saying it justifies the cop burying the needle chase after the suspect vehicle - because it absolutely does not - but it does at least sort-of explain why they were running silent. I'm not sure what the SOP is on that with regard to a FLOCK hit in Michigan - but I can speculate with darn near certainty that it doesn't involve doing 115 mph to intercept a vehicle whose only suspicion at the time is the FLOCK hit. Especially since the suspected Cherokee wasn't all that far away from his original location, and that the area was largely residential with open streets.

Cop screwed up running at those speeds under those circumstances. Plain and simple. Manslaughter charges seem appropriate.

[Get To Da Chippah]

For further context, it was a Friday and a fresh batch of donuts was just coming out of the oven at the local Dunkins.

[AT]

For further context, Chip is a hateful ignorant clown who only wants to hear fact patterns that affirms her naked bigotry, and doesn't at all know handle that which breaks her narrative.

Which happened in two ways here.

[Rossami]

None of that "context" is even vaguely relevant to the fact that a cop was driving recklessly and that his wilfull indifference cost two innocents their lives.

[AT]

It gives the explanation as to the mindset that created the bad judgment call.

The reason you don't want to hear it is because obfuscating the mindset makes is easier to just shriek "ACAB!!!!!" instead of looking at it rationally and objectively and pointing out that it wasn't malevolence or caprice - just bad judgment.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Your alleged context is entirely irrelevant.
It is negated by this: " but was not using his emergency lights or sirens"

[minus the clever name]

Yet hard to imagine any sense for that. Was he waiting for an excuse to go 100 mph with no lights ????

People rarely make such egregious bad choices with no history of bad choices.

[AT]

It is negated by this: " but was not using his emergency lights or sirens"

It's not. That's why I questioned the SOP.

It may very well be that when a FLOCK hit registers that (high crime state) Michigan 5-0 intentionally runs silent so as not to spook their prey, who - unless they're running special tech (which I highly doubt a bunch of bodega rollers and ATM thieves would be) - almost certainly does not know that they were just tagged by a FLOCK.

Still you don't run silent with the needle buried. Maybe if the FLOCK turned up an escaped Charles Manson in a white Bronco with Elizabeth Smart tied up in the trunk - then, yea, I can see rushing quietly (even then though, I'd run lights until I got within a certain range of the FLOCK hit) to stage a net before the perp knows he's been spotted and begins to flee.

I know most folks around here don't want to consider things that deviate from their ACAB narrative - and it's certainly an ignorance that Chaz preys on for his garbage brickbats - but the context DOES matter. Especially if you're trying to view things objectively.

Which few seem to be at, lol, "Reason."

[BYODB]

Who is going to pull over a police officer for unsafe speeding, exactly? A coworker? Yeah fucking right. Nobody watches the watchers on this issue unless they fuck up huge like this dimwit.

[AT]

Language.

Who is going to pull over a police officer for unsafe speeding, exactly?

Assuming 5-0 was spotted doing so. Now, there's a couple things to think about there.

1) Comms. If he's buried the needle and he's not on comms letting everyone else know what's happening and why, that's a problem.

2) GPS/CAD. Dispatch knows where all its cars are. GPS can tell when they're moving at high speed. CAD can identify it and bring it to dispatch attention. The FLOCK registers in the same system.

3) Timeframe. First FLOCK hit: 4:56:37am. Second FLOCK hit: 4:57:50am. Arrival of 2nd unit at crash scene "about 5 a.m." (that's as specific as I could find). Meaning that the timeframe between which Burke hit the gas and the moment of impact was likely within minutes. Five to seven at the outside range, I'd speculate.

So, exactly how reasonable is your proposition that someone would have had the time to pull them over? Let alone even have an idea of what's happening, as its happening, if the guy was out of comms, or even if dispatch had marked it and directed resources.

But I get it. Didn't want to think of it because you were too self-enamored with your excuse to use "who watches the watchmen."