Image via YouTube/Vallejo, CA PD

The mainstream media says six Vallejo, California police officers shot aspiring rap artist Willie McCoy as he slept in his car. McCoy had passed out with a stolen gun in his lap in a Taco Bell drive-through. The bigger question for many in the community, now that police have released bodycam video from a number of officers: Did the police use excessive force?

Leave it to the Brits to react with shock and horror to the sensational story. From the UK Daily Mail:

Shocking police footage shows the moment an aspiring rapper was shot dead by several officers who fired at him multiple times as he was apparently sleeping in the drive-thru of a Taco Bell in California.

Vallejo police released nearly 30 minutes of footage on Friday showing the shooting death of Willie McCoy, 21.

The 30-minute video begins with an explanation of the Vallejo police department’s version of events on the night of February 9 when they found McCoy slumped in the driver’s seat of Taco Bell parking lot with a gun in his lap around 10.30pm.

As they were investigating, police said that McCoy suddenly made a movement towards the gun in his lap.

And there you have it. Mr. McCoy failed to follow repeated police directives to raise his hands. Instead, he reached down to his lap where a handgun with an extended magazine rested.

The Daily Mail has plenty of company in sensationalizing this tragic story.

Here’s the bodycam video as released by the Vallejo PD. Skip to about the 6:00 mark to when Mr. McCoy begins to wake up. The gunfire starts about about 6:50. Caution: it’s disturbing video with some NSFW language.

When McCoy ignored the “hands up!” command and instead reached down to his lap, cops opened fire. Vallejo redacted the footage of cops dragging him out of the car, still alive, and then administering first aid. Mr. McCoy quickly succumbed to his injuries at the scene.

Again, the fact that this man had a gun in his lap and ignored police commands while reaching toward the gun makes this a pretty clear-cut case of justifiable self-defense by the cops. Investigators would later trace the stolen gun back to Oregon.

The question plenty of people are no doubt are asking: Did the cops over-react and use excessive force. Certainly the deceased’s family has retained a lawyer who has field suit, claiming police negligence.

To the untrained, six officers firing multiple rounds into an aspiring rap artist in his Mercedes Benz will undoubtedly seem heavy-handed. However, detached reflection is not demanded (or easily found) in the presence of an upraised knife. Or a hand reaching for a gun.

Clint Smith from Thunder Ranch sums up his thoughts on shooting bad guys multiple times, as needed:

“If I shoot him and he keeps coming? Shoot him again.  …and again and again and again and repeat as required until what I want to happen happens.”

Indeed. Smith is right.

Sadly for his family, Mr. McCoy made a series of bad decisions that night that tragically ended in his death. No one forced him to illegally carry a stolen firearm on his lap while driving. No one made him consume illegal drugs or pass out behind the wheel in a fast food drive-through. And Mr. McCoy still could have averted disaster that night by simply raising his hands in response to multiple officers shouting for him to show his hands.

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

165 COMMENTS

    • “McCoy had passed out with a stolen gun in his lap in a Taco Bell drive-through.”

      I have to admit, as soon as I read the above, I started thinking like you.

    • What really happened? A wannabe wrapper high on drugs with a stolen gun in his lap…
      You put up an edited video…
      What really happen? An armed criminal high on drugs refused to follow lawful orders and had his sorry a$$ shot off. I believe that is called Social Darwinism

      • Did you watch his first video? He clearly lays out some hard truths in both the first video and the update. I do not agree with everything he states, but quite a lot of it I do agree with. If you do not like the truths, you need to check your premises.

  4. No need for the cops to put themselves in that situation in the first place, surrounding the car with guns drawn; what did they think he was going to do when they startled him awake with a bunch of lights in his face and guns pointed at him? Easily could have stood behind him and banged on his window with a baton, it would have been really awkward and obviously telegraphed for him to twist around and shoot at someone standing behind him and to his left, minimal risk. Not an execution, but completely unnecessary.

    • Absolutely unnecessary. He should have stayed in school, supported his baby mommas, got a job, stayed off drugs, pulled up his pants, and avoided the gangsta life, and this would never have happened.

    • What happens when he throws the car in drive, takes off, and runs over three people because he’s high AF?

      • Sounded like their plan was to sandwich his car in between their cruisers to prevent him from driving off.

    • @ Case:

      Yea I think you might be correct, but I don’t blame the officer entirely. There’s an enormous amount of pressure placed on individual LEOs as it is. They need help.

      Does the US have an organization specifically for R&D into law-enforcement tactics? The military has their own R&D programs, the NIH helps with medical advancements, perhaps there should be a branch of the FBI that is dedicated specifically for this purpose (beyond the usual ballistic and crime data). It wouldn’t be to grant the Federal government more power than it already has over State governments, but simply offer LEOs additional options, particularly cost-effective non-lethal equipment and strategies as well as methods to effectively prevent mass shootings or respond to them more efficiently. It might even finally shut the left up (i.e. “someone” is “doing something”). Imagine if we had a Q-branch for LEOs that provided public designs and info regarding:

      1) Security cameras that squirts highly UV fluid on armed robbers so a UV helicopter spotlight can more easily identify them
      2) some glue gun or bola-launching gun that stops suspects who immediately try to run from cops when questioned
      3) deployable cover that is easily stowed in the trunk of a police cruiser or perhaps something that expands from the driver-side door

      In this specific case, I don’t freaking know, just spit-balling here, but what if there was a tactic to park a car in front and behind the suspect’s car and deploy some portable shield that provides the officers with cover while still allowing them to get close enough to communicate and see the suspect clearly. This would perhaps give the suspect enough time to realize his situation without putting officers or the public at risk (and I literally just came up with all of this on the spot don’t crucify me if it’s a shitty idea, I’m just trying to make a point).

      • Fully Involved. Your idea to shroud the car in some type of shielding would cause the folks here accusing the cops of mishandling this situation of wrongfully imprisoning an innocent man.

        The only way the cops will get any approval from this bunch is if they all went home and refused to cop again.

    • I agree with you, Case. That officer set the tone for what was going to happen while the dead guy was still asleep; “I’m going to bus the window.” “I’m going to open this door and SNATCH HIS ASS.”

      Since I’ve been living back in the city, I’ve had about three incidents of people asleep/unconscious in a drive through at night. In all three cases, I went to their window. The latest was at McDonald’s about a month ago. In all cases, the people took a few moments to get their bearings. Every last one of them leaned forward, hands in their laps. None of them got shot.

      From the TTAG article:
      “Again, the fact that this man had a gun in his lap and ignored police commands while reaching toward the gun makes this a pretty clear-cut case of justifiable self-defense by the cops. Investigators would later trace the stolen gun back to Oregon.”

      No, this is not a pretty clear-cut case of justifiable self-defense.

      • Typo correction:
        That officer set the tone for what was going to happen while the dead guy was still asleep; “I’m going to bust the window.” “I’m going to open this door and SNATCH HIS ASS.”

        *I used the term asleep but, of course, passed out would work as well in my post.*

      • @John in Ohio

        I hear you that you’ve had multiple incidents of people falling asleep in the drive through and not getting shot, but how many of them had guns in their laps?

        I’m not defending anybody here, and with the gift of hindsight we can see how things could have played out better, but the single best thing anybody could have done to avoid this would be to not have a handgun in your lap.

        Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

        • In my city, probably two of those three had handguns. All three incidents were in the hood next door; very high crime. Two were young thugs. The third was a thugette.

          What’s missing from your understanding is what Case posted and what I was getting at. The attitude of the young cop was evident early on, while the driver was still passed out. He placed himself in a vulnerable position forward of the driver. All of the people that I awakened moved in the same manner as the thug in the body cam video. There is a certain amount of time that most brains require before being completely cognizant upon awakening; even longer coming out of a drug induced unconsciousness.

          The shooting was frankly too premature to be called a clear case of justified self-defense. Some cops are way too trigger happy. Some departments are way too quick to give them a pass on it. If they are that frightened and put themselves at unecessary risk then they need to find a different line of work.

        • “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

          What was stupid?

          Ingesting substances and being in a vehicle out in public? I agree.
          Being armed? I disagree. It’s prudent to be armed.

          Would he have been shot if he weren’t armed? Likely not. Therefore, let’s all disarm. That would make the left very happy; for a NY minute. Then again, that would deprive all of the imbeciles the opportunity to shriek idiotic nonsense like, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!”

    • Completely agree. And people need to stop acting like his history justifies the outcome. Who wouldn’t have some unexpected reaction in a situation like this??

    • What Case said. I hate second guessing the choices somebody else makes under pressure, but I didn’t see any sign of a coherent plan — at least not one which allowed “stuporous man” a chance to live through the public safety intervention.

      What I know I’m missing is any knowledge of the 11min between 911 call and ID of the gun.

      Is it now considered routine and acceptable to illuminate a welfare check with a gun light when no crime is reported, and no problem beyond a medical event or public intoxication has been identified?

      I don’t see any meaningful attempt to arouse Mr McCoy. No nearby flashing lights, siren, or PA announcement to identify police presence and expectations; no banging on the car; no loud voice contact attempt. Shouting “hands up!” at a groggy person — still with no announcement of authority, but simultaneous with onset of gunfire — does not result in failure to comply. It results in the same near certain outcome that I fear when I stop for a few ZZZs at a roadside rest or have a “wrong number” dynamic warrant served to my motel room. Maybe I get an edge for being white in America, but I don’t like the setup. I would not say excessive force in this incident. Maybe inappropriate use of force, but definitely inadequate tactics to serve officer and public safety.

      I generally think officer misconduct is the least likely explanation of bad outcomes, and that seems like the case here. I consider police command, supervision, and training ordinarily most responsible and culpable — and rarely held to account. I also consider elected jurisdictional officials ultimately responsible for assuring acceptable agency leadership and quality — and almost never accountable. Only in the rarest cases where individual officer criminality is invisible to competent supervision and oversight is the badge on the street the real bad actor — and I wouldn’t point that finger here.

  6. Hard to follow commands while youre sleeping. Really how scary is a sleeping man with a gun?

    • High on drugs is not sleeping, friend.
      And who knew what he was going to do while high?
      Just one more slime ball flushed down the toilet!

    • He wasn’t sleeping, he was passed out. People who are so drugged up that they lose consciousness don’t “wake up” like normal people. Even with the shouting and bright lights, this guy only had about 20% congnizance of what was happening around him. The cops had no way of knowing that. Bad situation all around. Drug users like this guy are shitheads. I don’t have sympathy for him.

      That said, what if he’d been unconscious due to a diabetic condition? It’s not illegal for someone who is diabetic to own a gun and have one in their car, nor is it illegal for them to have it in their lap if they are in a bad area and having an incapacitating diabetic episode. If you are diabetic and semi-conscious, you are likely to look and act exactly like this drugged-up kid. Like I said, it’s a bad situation all around. Once the cops saw the handgun in the guy’s lap, he immediately became very close to being killed. My point in drawing the comparison is that this kind of thing can easily happen to anybody. And that’s something we should all think about.

      • This was CA. It actually is illegal to have a gun in your lap in your car. Very much so. And the law doesn’t make allowances for bad parts of town or medical conditions.

        • -.- well then they can’t also complain that “we need to do something”. Either we do something or not. They need to make up their mind.

          But the point wouldn’t be to appease the left (if it happens, yay; it not, fuck ’em); it would be to save lives of officers and do our best to protect a suspect’s right to due process.

        • See this is where I disagree. A gun in your lap, even if it is illegal to carry in the state is not justifiable use of deadly force. You should have your day in front of a judge so he can decide your fate. It is not the LEs job to be judge, jury and executioner, UNLESS there is direct threat of deadly force against them. To me this incident had not reached that level when they started firing. Driver was obviously not coherent and his reach for the gun was not aggressive and he never pointed the firearm at an officer.

          I’m sorry but today’s police are more concerned with preserving their own lives than citizens lives, especially when tough decisions have to be made as in situation such as this. They just don’t make cops how they used to.

          If the driver of the car had looked attentive and was in the process of POINTING the gun at an officer then deadly force would be justified. The simple fact here is the cops were trigger happy because they saw a gun (every case where they see a gun) and that in itself to them justifies deadly force. This is ridiculous as the rules of engagement in a war zone are usually to engage armed adversaries. We are not at war, we are at home and the threat should present a direct deadly threat to the officer BEFORE deadly force is warranted. Police are supposed to be there to SERVE AND PROTECT, not to preserve their own lives before properly assessing a situation. If a cadet does not understand this very simple concept they should be looking for another line of work.

      • I get what you’re saying about the diabetes thing. Being one of those who has had EMS attend to me when I’ve gone too low, people are very freaked out by people who aren’t all there mentally with guns. Normally my wife is near when this has happened (thankfully) and there’s no issue. No cops, no threat of violence, no problems. Fire and EMS routinely have to deal with people without po-po clearing scenes.

    • A sleeping man with a gun is a pretty low threat. The moment he wakes- whether expected or not- is a very different story.

      • ‘Sleeping’ is not the same thing as ‘tripping so hard you nod off’. This guy had no business driving.

        Any word on the toxicology report, or what was found in the car?

    • Plenty dangerous. Woke up many a felon with a Signal 0 next to their bed. Move faster than them is the secret. And hit them at 04:00 hrs.

    • Also hard to even hear commands with the windows rolled up in a German luxury car. Those things are designed to cut out the road noise while going 150 MPH. I watched the video, but couldn’t detect any clear or repeated commands before the shooting. A groggy, disoriented person with muffled hearing is going to do worse. After they shot, you could hear them repeatedly give the commands. They might get cleared on the shoot by internal investigations, depending on if they followed established protocols, but I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of the wrongful death lawsuit for it.

  7. “passed out with a stolen gun in his lap in a Taco Bell drive-through”

    I’m sure there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for having arrived at this situation.

    • Pot and malt licka?

      But really? “aspiring” rap artist Willie McCoy. If that is your “aspiration” then you have LESS THAN shit as a goal. But shoot a sleepin thug? Really popo?

      Stupid people, stupid places at stupid time.

  8. In my day, if we were going to get good and wasted, we did it with friends, behind locked doors and usually finished up in a horizontal position with a willing companion of the opposite sex. Sorry, shot dead in a Mercedes, too wasted to understand simple commands in a Taco Bell drive thru is only deserving of a determination of death by misadventure with extenuating circumstances (AKA felony stupid in a public place). F-K-A

    • “Commands”? BS mister policeman you don;t “Command” diddly squat. You are a private, not a “commander”. Make a polite request of the citizen and stay out of the popo seminars on faux macho.

      • neowia, you’re right and I always tried to be polite. However, there’s something inherently wrong with saying, “Pardon me sir. I know you just robbed that convenience store. Though no fault of your own, of course. Without your victimization of society you would no doubt be a CEO of a Fortune 500 Corporation. However, I must arrest you. Would you please drop your weapon on ground?” No. I think I would do it the way I did it for years. “Drop your weapon! Put your face on the pavement/dirt! Do not look at me! Hands behind your head! Fingers interlocked!” When I had backup he flanked the suspect and cuffed him. When I didn’t I made it very clear that any movement would end up with him trying to survive a large caliber handgun wound to the head.

    • “usually finished up in a horizontal position with a willing companion of the opposite sex.”

      Be honest, chances were never over 50%.

      • Don’t be projecting, Brute Squad…this was the ’60’s, if you came to my place and wanted to play, we would play. If you came to my place and wanted to pay, you paid. No complaints, no surprises, no victims, just happy volunteers. We were all grown ups …everybody knew the rules and nobody ever complained. I never kept score, gentlemen never do.

  9. So why was he passed out in a drive thru lane? And was the pistol payment for his burrito? I’d say bad decisions have bad consequences.

  10. I’m a diabetic (making this up, insert any non-criminal reason I would he groggy/sleepy) I miss my insulin shot. I am carrying and I realize I need to get off the road because I’m not doing well. Cops come to car and see my gun on my hip or wherever. They start screaming at my asleep self. I awake to screaming and immediately reach downward…to get gun, stabilize myself, start car, whatever to gain situational awareness since I was abruptly awakened. Boom.

    At that point, there is no proof I am high. There is no proof I’m a criminal. There is no proof I’m unlawfully carrying. There is no proof I have a stolen firearm. Now this is CA, so pretty sure lawful carry is nearly impossible. But still.

    “He didnt comply” is not necessarily a valid reason IMO. I dont know. I dont watch videos that are disturbing, I have enough bad memories, maybe there is something that says they should have intervened the way they did. But when you wont harass homeless people who are shooting up in public spaces, but you will go to someone’s parked car and bother them when they arent bothering anyone. I have an issue.

    • Helped a woman in diabetic duress 2 weeks ago. She slumped in her car on the side of the road and was unresponsive. If she had a firearm next to her the cops might have shot her. Because the sight of a gun means 5 cops.gather around worring about snatching the perp before the perp gets a shot off. That was the scenario these guys were running.

      I got into the car and shut the engine off and unbuckled her belt before law arrived. They would have smashed the glass and cut the belt
      I got in with a coathanger.
      One of the two cops was a real cowboy. Young guy looking for trouble.
      The other woman cop.was mellow mature and had her act together.

      • Thank you, GS650G. That’s the type of stuff we would do for each other in the rural area where I was living for over two decades and some of us still do things like that for each other in the city I now live in.

    • There was no proof, there was no proof yada, yada… Right. But everybody knew the situation when we read the headline, and we were all correct. So were the cops.

    • Is “passed out in a Taco Bell drive-thru” not sufficient evidence he was high?

      Bigger question is whether being high is sufficient evidence that a person is dangerous…except that he had a pistol in his lap (not holstered, not next to him, but in his lap, ready to go…because that’s why he had it in his lap in the first place).

      So we have 1) a young black male 2) in an expensive vehicle 3) at a trashy dinner joint 4) at night 5) passed out/unresponsive 6) with a gun (illegally) visible on his lap 7) reacting vigorously to police commands (whether this was a result of him merely being startled or whether he was really going for his gun doesn’t make a hill of beans difference to the officers’ threshold of lethal force)

      How much more fully-justified could the police officers approaching this guy possibly be? Sure enough, turns out after-the-fact there’s also a point 8) aspiring rapper, and something tells me also known gang/drug connections that manage to be ignored in the reporting. Any priors? When they ran the plates they’d have come up, remember.

      “But, but you *assume* he’s a…” Exactly. Rationally, police had (count ’em) at least seven reasons to suspect this guy was going to react violently. Sure enough…he reacted violently. Gotta be the racism, though. Cops should’ve waiting until he had shot one of them in the head before drawing down. Cops should’ve shot him in the knee instead. Cop’s should’ve… Maybe this idiot should’ve chosen to get baked & pass out in his own home, and saved everyone a whole lot of trouble.

      • I don’t see violence from anyone but the cops. I see a guy panicking after being awaken by what he might perceive as people dressed in black shinning 500 lumens in his eyes. And he is a rapper who likely doesn’t have pleasant people looking to rob him.

      • You know a lot more now than the cops did. None of you should ever be on scene at a situation like that. These cops were looking for .40 cals so they could liquidate him.

        I particularly like your number 7, exactly how was it determined a law was broken at that time?

    • D Y: “but you will go to someone’s parked car and bother them when they arent bothering anyone. I have an issue.”
      Did you not read/see where his car was parked in a drive thru lane which bothered others trying to pass through. Wonder why he had the gun in his lap? Had the gun been anywhere else in the car out of sight, the police would have no reason to even draw their guns. This guy unfortunately made some really bad decisions and has paid the ultimate price. Speculating as to WHY solves nothing, the facts will speak for themselves. A sad shame a life was lost……

    • The real issue here with diabetes isn’t missing a shot. That can make you tired, give you a headache, blurry vision etc but it’s not going to cause you to pass out unless you’ve missed A LOT of shots and go into a diabetic coma in which case you’re pretty well fucked anyway. People walk around at 600mg/dl all the time. Done for a fairly short period it’s not harmful. As an endocrinologist will tell you “There are no emergency sugars except for lows”.

      The real issue is taking too much insulin or Metformin or whatever the person takes. This can happen for a number of reasons the most common is guessing at the carb/fat count of some food but guessing too high and therefore taking too much short acting insulin, especially after exercise. The effects of doing this create someone who often appears drunk/drugged and disoriented, sometimes violent and then may pass out. Now, what happens and how fast it happens depends on how far they overdid it. They may just get knocked out and wake up a bit later after their liver pumps out some glucose or they may get brain damage or they may die. Regardless, the answer isn’t more meds but rather giving them sugar in the form of a soda or candy that doesn’t have a lot of fat in it.

      I have no idea what this guy’s situation is but I can tell you this: Were someone who was an insulin taking diabetic to take a dose of insulin before a meal and then not get the meal it would produce this kind of result. That result could take anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the dose, type of insulin and where their blood glucose was when they started along with things like if the injection was done “correctly”. So if someone hasn’t been properly instructed on safe insulin usage they could check themselves, see they’re at 110mg/dl, figure they’ve got 15 minutes and are already in the drive thru, do an injection that hits a capillary and be out of it or passed out pretty damn quick if the drive thru line gets screwed up. They could also exhibit irrational behavior before passing out.

      This kind of thing has killed dozens of people in Colorado alone because the cops caught people who were hypoglycemic, thought they were drunk, arrested them, denied them food and let them die. It took a massive lawsuit and like 7 years of litigation to find out that the police departments knew this was a problem and simply didn’t want to change their training. All the lawsuit asked for was what was going on and for the cops to change their policy in dealing with people who claimed to be diabetic. The police, as a whole, fought that for nearly a decade even though they knew damn right well they’d killed a bunch of people.

      • You nailed it. As a strategy…

        Build protocols into muscle memory. So, for instance, do the SAI shot when you have meal prepped, have ordered, or have in hand. Put that in habit so foggy thinking doesn’t matter.

        Of course, carrying any quick acting carb is another simple habit.

        Any resemblence to particular granular parts of handling guns is … just a consequence prudence handling powerful things.

        • The issue, as I see it, is that such a strategy isn’t something a newly diagnosed person can probably set up because the people who will give them the knowledge of how to use insulin safely and effectively are people they have not yet met.

          I spent 61 days after I got out of the hospital totally fucked up because my GP had zero clue how to use insulin and was still treating me as if I was a T2. Literally the day after I saw an actual endocrinologist (which took 61 days to get to) things improved by 75% because I was instructed on how to actually use short and long acting insulins. The issue is that my GP had improperly instructed me and I was taking WAY too much long acting insulin and not enough short acting insulin. So I’d be high after meals but then crater if I did much of anything other than sit on my ass.

          The result was that I literally left the house twice in two months and didn’t drive for three but I can see how people who are not as anal retentive as I am and have serious shit to do might just go for it and make a huge mistake of going hypo in public.

  11. They didn’t know the gun was stolen until afterwards so that doesn’t justify the action. While sleeping in the drive thru is a public nuisance I don’t agree it rose to the level of 6 cops emptying mags. The cops put themselves in the line of fire .

    Maybe we need to find ways to make loud noise while standing far back so a startled man doesn’t shoot guns off.

    I think they handled it wrong. But they get a pass.

    • They knew he didn’t have a CCL…
      They knew he was high…
      No one sleeps that soundly with out drugs while out driving

      • I heard a story about a soldier that fell asleep while invading Iraq. He was so tired he fell asleep and drove his vehicle to his death. They didn’t let them sleep because they wanted to hit Iraq hard and fast. I think that was one of the first deaths of the Iraq war.

      • A blood test for narcotics? nope
        Could be diabetic. Maybe
        Narcolepsy? look it up and see.

        So they stand real close around the car so if he starts shooting they can be hit.

        Maybe they should have pushed his car back out of the lane with the car in front so people could get their taco bell on.

    • Cops roll up on someone that is in possession of a firearm (doesn’t have to be this particular guy) and threaten to murder them for doing the same exact thing they are. Cue the fiasco with Florida Open Carry.

    • This isn’t “falling asleep.” People don’t “fall asleep” with a gun in their hand in the drive-through of Taco Bell.

      • Some people fall asleep driving a massive truck and wake up when they start smashing into things.

      • “This isn’t “falling asleep.” People don’t “fall asleep” with a gun in their hand in the drive-through of Taco Bell.”

        With the stuff I carry every single day, everywhere I go, I can make you appear to be a raging drunk and then pass out. Anywhere you like and any time you like. All with no narcotics or intoxicants. All I need is about 15 minutes of your time. Wanna try it out?

  12. To the letter I had this happen to me, back in 1968 except I got the 45 colt out of his lap and he never moved.
    I did not use the drivers door, I came in from the other side.
    I put the car in park then woke the driver up.
    I arrested the driver and towed the veh..

    • And if he had killed you, you wouldn’t be telling us this, but your wife and kids would be really pissed. Did you get a raise?

  13. First off let me say I fully support our police oofficers.
    While in the military I had a Sargent rudely awaken me and he wound up with a broken jaw. I appealed the article 15 and won. For all you armchair quarterback…which one of you is fully aware of your surroundings when you are startled awake.
    I will answer for you…maybe 0.001 percent of you will have the wherewithal to know and understand what is happening.
    This was piss poor planning on the part of the officers present. IMO they should all be charged for negligence.

    • “For all you armchair quarterback…which one of you is fully aware of your surroundings when you are startled awake.
      I will answer for you…maybe 0.001 percent of you will have the wherewithal to know and understand what is happening.
      This was piss poor planning on the part of the officers present. IMO they should all be charged for negligence.”

      I’m gonna go out on a limb and agree with you. If they knew the magazine was partially out and his gun could only fire once then why not just back off, surround him at a distance and wait it out. Absolutely no reason for the gang bang… pun intended. Negligent homicide without a doubt.

      • If that was a California approved gun, I don’t think he could have fired because of a magazine disconnect feature. I am pretty sure that is a requirement for handguns in California. You would think all cops would know that if they grew up in California and became a cop.

        Now after the shooting we know it was a gun from another state and had an extended mag. That wasn’t knowledge they had to them at the time. They thought it was a handgun with a magazine falling out. None of the cops said, “Well, if that is the case, the dude can’t shoot us at all!”

        • User. I have 2 CA approved firearms I jumped thru all the hoops to buy here in CA. Both semi auto 9s. I have other guns but these were bought new and off the list. A sigma and a glock. Both will fire without their mags in.

          I don’t know how common this is. But the 2 new, approved CA compliant semi auto pistols I own will fire without their mags.

          I also have a legally purchased Makarov bought here in CA that never had any sort of mag safety on it.

          I think it would be borderline insane to look at a handgun in CA and risk your life on it not firing cause we have a magazine safety requirement here.

  14. What’s the purpose of that grip style? Support hand mostly off the gun with the thumb alongside or above the slide?

  15. Wow. Just wow. In CA even if you have a permit to carry concealed, concealed it must be. Except for rural areas and designated hunting zones there is no open carry of firearms here. Rolling up to the take out with your gat in your lap is just straight up retarded.

    Being an ‘aspiring rapper’ whatever the fuck that means is not grounds for execution. However, you combine this dudes level of stupid with blocking the drive thru at a CA fast food place and it comes real close. Real damn close.

    • “Being an ‘aspiring rapper’ whatever the fuck that means”

      I think its some kind of code.

  16. Cops escalated and created a situation that caused the unnecessary death of an individual. He Could have been a law abiding citizen. Lucky for law enforcement he wasn’t. Cops should be charged with manslaughter at the least.

    • He could have been law abiding except for the whole gun in his lap thing and being passed out from drugs in the Drive in

      • Some drugs are legal in California. And there is something called the 2nd Amendment, but I know Californian police hate it and won’t hand out permits.

  17. And in a Mercedes no less, cause going down at a taco bell with a stolen gun in a Kia doesn’t say “Ballin Bitchez!!!”

  18. Slap on a badge and see if you can do it better, or something to that effect. Right? You know I’m talking to you.

  20. The State Department advises foreign visitors the the USA to be wary of American “law enforcement” stating that police may react in unexpected ways. With the Israeli training that American police receives, “we are all Palestinians, now”…

  21. Why did that Deputy have his off hand thumb on the top of the slide? Just an observation, good way to put a gash in your finger and put your weapon out of battery. As far as the rapper, he finally had something to rap about, but chose stupidity instead, too bad.

  22. I’m torn here. On the one hand, I despise police excessive violence. On the other hand, the police did just reduce the amount of k-rap noise pollution….

  23. “his family”

    Oh that’s a good one. An “Aspiring Rap Artist” with a family. Hahaha. He has no idea who his dad is and odds are his mom was too drugged up to raise him.

  24. As for the shooting, I don’t have enough info to judge, and I don’t really care. (No, I haven’t watched the video, and I’m not going to.) What puzzles me is where the hell Mr. 21 year old “aspiring rap artist” got the $$ for a Mercedes Benz.

    Either his family is rich or he’s a full-time criminal and part-time rapper. Seems like they’re all “aspiring rappers” these days.

    • Here in the bay area, and Vallejo is close enough to be part of it, the used Mercedes is not all that expensive. They and Beamers seem to go very cheap used.

      Now if you want expensive here try to find a decent used 4runner. Fuckin’ hell. People act like those things are made of gold.

      • because nobody maintains them lol. The parts are too expensive so they sell these ‘luxury’ cars with tons of issues and labor pending to idiots who have no idea how to even open the hood. The only thing they do is put a stereo in, slap some rims that are worth more than the car, and wash it. Never buy this junk.

  25. Passed out at da TacoBell with a stolen gun in his lap…expiring er aspiring rapper is(was) a dumbazz.

  26. Wow just Wow.
    I’m sorry but I have to say it is funny as hell how the one guy starts yelling “Hold Fire” after all the guns are empty. Little excessive on the Number a rounds fired.
    But hey, he was dead to the world right?

  27. They had no idea if he was in medical situation, diabetic, etc, or high.
    Tape sheet of paper ‘call 911 now’ on the front window and driver door window.

    Toss tarp or blanket over the top of car, so he can not see out,
    let him call 911 and give him instructions to exit the car no gun in hand.

    They did not have to execute the man, sure he was wrong to get high and have the stolen gun but that is not a death sentence. Now if he raised it up then he is DRT.

    • Do your local police just carry tarps/blankets large enough to cover all windows of a car? Hell, tape isn’t something I’d expect officers to carry.

    • You’re thinking of some Apollo 13 level of attention. If you’re trying to save astronauts that are halfway to the moon, that’s a good idea. But when you’ve got some dude passed out in a Taco Bell drive-through holding a gun, it’s not time for rocket science.

      At any moment when someone is trying to do all that crazy shit you’re dreaming up this guy could have woken up and smoked em.

  28. Another reason never to return to Dalifornia, where once upon a time, in a saner era, I lived for not quite 3 years.

  29. With the gun in his lap and hand movement, cops did the right thing.
    It could have been 6 dead cops..

    • Not likely, dead drunk/stoned, firing from inside his own car with bright lights in his eyes, and against six opponents with their guns drawn and aimed. John Wick teleported into that situation couldn’t have shot his way out.

  30. This site is starting to shill for the police now too? Fuck this.

    Look, I understand that some passed out rapper who traffics in the illegal wasn’t about to cure cancer. I won’t shed a single tear for his passing. But we in the gun community need to start taking this shit seriously. The man was understandably disoriented as he woke up from whatever substance induced coma he was in.

    The police do not have an unlimited license to kill. This is absolutely a situation that did not have to end as tragically as it did. At what point do we acknowledge that the police in this country don’t possess the proper respect for human life? If we’re pissed when they shoot an old white guy in his garage because he was holding a gun (investigating noises outside, wrong place wrong time) we should be equally pissed that this is their best solution to this situation.

    • regardless. had a gun on his lap in CA…. illegal.

      Take this shit seriously, I agree. Because had I been in that situation or yourself for that matter, would you show sympathy and allow him to continue reaching until he has extended his arm at you then fired the first shot?

      Yea… I thought not.

    • “The police do not have an unlimited license to kill…”

      Correct. That said, you give them a license when you steal a gun (or buy a stolen gun), get high as fuck, pass out in a Taco Bell drivethrough lane HOLDING the gun in question and then reach for it when you get woken up by the cops.

      You are looking at this purely from a “I don’t trust the police” perspective but that’s not how long-established caselaw works. And I’m not even talking about police caselaw, I’m talking about basic self-defense caselaw. The law allows you to use deadly force if you reasonably perceive a threat and are otherwise acting within the law (i.e. not if you’re burgling a house). In some (but not all or even most) states there is a ‘duty to retreat’ if you can safely do so before firing; however, an exception exists for police because their whole job is to deal with people while others retreat.

      • Long established twaddle masquerading as logic.

        Cops and courts deal with bad situations, that’s a given. That doesn’t mean they handle them well in all or even most cases. There are a bunch of medical issues that could cause this guy to have this problem. But everyone jumps to the idea of “he’s high as fuck” without having the first clue if that’s true or not.

        Such an attitude is what gets people killed for no reason at the hands of the police and gets the cops sued at taxpayer expense. The cops then say “No one likes us and we always get blamed” and the cycle of distrust rolls on.

        Some better training for police and better protocols for certain situations would go A LONG way towards building public trust. But the cops lying about the situation when they know there are issues and then having to be sued just to get them to change 20 minutes of training/protocol (as happened here in Colorado) when they’re killing people for no reason and they know it causes people not to trust the 5-0.

  31. John Burris is going to make some coin from this little event. I’d be willing to bet a donut he was well known by the locals.

  32. Anyways. The initial suggestion he bust the window is uncalled for, but he doesn’t actually do it so not really relevant. The guy has a bright light shinned on him for several minutes and he doesn’t react, so the officers know he’s absolutely on drugs. Strobbing him to force response and blind him is the only thing they could have done differently and that’s still risky, especially when it would also harm officer vision.

    What’s the wiper at 8:30 from? I also note the driver had a McDonalds cup.

    • I heard he was out late working [concert], was going to get some food and passed out for a long time. Someone called the police because he was blocking the drive through. Maybe he also had been drinking or doing other substances but I didn’t hear about the blood report.

    • “…so the officers know he’s absolutely on drugs.”

      No, they know he’s unresponsive and possibly unconscious. They don’t know why. Could be drugs, could be a medical situation. Any reason they might give is pure speculation on their part.

      The real problem here is the gun in his lap which has them nervous.

  33. It is entirely possible that he had zero intent to hurt anyone at the moment he was woken from his stupor. That said, since police aren’t psychic, there is no way for them to know his state of mind at the moment and they have to go by his actions. And those actions could easily be reasonable perceived as a threat to life. He sure put himself in a lose-lose situation.

    Now, could the police response have worked something better out? Maybe. One could try to back off and wake him up from positions of cover with rifles. But then you have to worry that he might start the car and end up killing someone by driving over them. It was a lose-lose situation for police, too.

  34. “Rap” and “artist” are mutually exclusive terms. It’s trash for people with no talent and no standards.

  35. Defiant to the last drop……..You can send em to school but all they want to do is eat the books!

  36. I watched a few body cams of that shooting. I consider it a situation that was created by the police for them to execute the man with the gun. One officer said he didn’t want to give him a chance and another was shinning his weapon light in the suspect’s eyes. Many cops came to the incident to line up in a firing line.

    They got what they wanted when the man woke up, couldn’t see what the hell was going on and ducked. They never gave him a chance to survive because they took that chance from him when they stood in the danger zone intentionally.

    You have all those big SUVs, ballistic shields and loud speakers to setup a situation where you can be behind cover and wake the driver safely. Then the driver will have a choice to make. If he chooses to point the gun you can safely engage him from behind cover.

    Here is another California shooting where a cop feels the need to put himself in “danger” yet claims feared for his life (as if he couldn’t get in his SUV and blocked her escape). They also claim she was originally chased as a suspect for a shooting. Doesn’t look like they are scared about her having a gun.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txwMMlWegcc

    • Right… the police gave him the drugs and put the stolen gun on his lap. They also forced him to drive high AF…

      “Stood in the danger zone intentionally”… wow. That is what cops do. Because losers like you won’t. You wouldn’t last one ride along with them let alone put yourself in their shoes on a call to call basis or traffic stops. Fucken keyboard warrior.

      Shut the fuck up fool.

      • You act like I grew up in a safe space and didn’t have dangerous stuff happen to me. Project much?

        Do you have evidence he was on drugs? Or is that an assumption?

        The cops didn’t force him into the initial situation. They did force him into the one where he woke up to a firing line with a bunch of high lumen lights pointed at his face.

        Have you ever been awaken with bright flashlights and men dressed in black? I have been once. It’s hard to see anything when you go from full adjusted night vision to hundreds of lumens. Another time I was also confronted at night by a patrol car. It’s very hard to tell if it’s a bad guy or a good guy because all you see is a bright light.

        These days it’s increasingly common to be confronted by men dressed in black with red dots and flashlights on their pistols.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5BMifLibLA

  37. WOW, tough situation for the police officers. The person in the car was less than a second away from firing shots at them. Too bad he did not comply with their orders but he made his choices and multiple bad ones with not surprising consequences.

  38. Baseless speculation is a fun game to play. Hold my beer.

    Little Willie, the aspiring rapper, spent all of his coin on a Mercedes. We all know how outrageous recording studio rental fees are. Who can Little Willie turn to for investment capital? How about the drive in window at Taco Bell? That would explain the gun in his lap. He stopped short of the window for a dose of chemical courage and overdid it. The next thing he knows a bunch of cis-gendered, white, male music critics cut his career short.

  40. Eh, reaching for the gun is what got him killed. That sucks because I’m guessing he had no idea what the fuck was going on at that point.

    How he ended up in that situation is what I wonder. It’s gonna suck for the cops taxypayers if it turns out he has some medical condition/medication that caused this. The cops couldn’t know that from the situation but it will look bad for them in front of a jury where damages could be considerable.

    And before someone says “That’s not possible”, I assure you that it is because I have one. There are conditions can cause odd behavior for quite a while that culminates in the person passing out and waking up with no clue where they are. No intoxicants necessary. Dumb/hardassery on the part of police has killed a lot of people with problems like this.

      • Look, in this particular case (the story, not the video you posted) this was an all-round shitty situation. The cops didn’t handle it as well as they might have but their reaction is somewhat justified because they had no idea what they were dealing with, and really, neither do we.

        Yeah, cops fuck up. Yes, better training and smarter SOPs would help. Yes, the guy in the video you posted deserved to lose his job and get his ass beat. But that doesn’t mean that everything cops do is wrong. Often they have a seriously shitty situation and we get to sit back with 20/20 hindsight and without the adrenaline going and judge what they do. Sometimes that’s fair and sometimes it’s not.

        This shooting of the “rapper” is just shitty all around. I don’t think the cops did a good job with it but they’re doing things the way they were taught to do them and they’re dealing with an already fucked up situation where a lot of things we know, they don’t at the time they made the judgement calls.

  41. lol, “sleeping”. In the Taco Bell drive through? Please, dude was nodding off on drugs and had a fully loaded, stolen gun in his lap. Funny enough, when you don’t do shit like that, your chance of ending up shot by the police goes dowwwwwn.

    • I’m not attacking the cops here but I have a question about your outlook on this because of my personal curiosity.

      So, I’m just curious here. If the gun was his buddy’s gun and he had it because he took it from his buddy when his buddy was drunk and this whole thing is actually some sort of medical issue gone horribly wrong, would you still say it’s his fault and that if he didn’t “do that shit” he wouldn’t have been killed?

      I mean say the guy had a bad reaction to a medication, or an undiagnosed problem that just manifested, or had been told improperly by a doctor how to use a medication, and this is what led to his behavior.

      Again, legitimately curious.

      • S9. This is CA. You don’t just take a pistol from your buddy and then drive around with it in your lap. If you do the cops are going to have words with you. Not saying its right. But it is fact.

        If this had been a medical issue that got derailed with the gun being there. Again. Not saying its right. But in CA, that’s reality.

        Far too many people accept the bogus fact that our constitutional rights stop at the CA state line.

      • I think its reasonable to question the police tactics.

        box in the car, get everyone behind cover, and get on the PA to wake his ass up.

        Personally if i ever came across someone sleeping/passed out with a gun on their lap, at no point would i think waking them up at basically zero distance was the right move.

        but on the flipside, if i fell asleep/passed out with a gun in my lap, i would feel some culpability if i ended up taking hot lead from the police.

  42. When citizens pass out in cars with guns they get executed by a 6 man police firing squad. When pigs pass out drunk in their cars with full swat kit and machine guns nothing happens to them, in fact they get to keep their pistol on them they aren’t even disarmed.

  43. What would be the difference if sleeping anywhere else with a gun on your lap while cops sneakily surround you to then wake up and be greated by barrage of bullets?

    • This was justified.

      This was not a no-knock raid on the wrong house or one based on manufactured information. Cops who break into the wrong house at zero dark thirty and take incoming fire get no sympathy from me. No-knocks are way over used, most often by the very type of people who shouldn’t have a badge in the first place.

  44. Maybe they had some bad information and thought he was an aspiring rapist, not rap artist?

  46. I don’t get why some side with the now deceased man.. true, it’d be terrifying to be surrounded and have a high lumen light flashed in your face but the fact that he remained asleep for as long as he did is indicative he wasn’t in his pinnacle state of mind. Also, he had already broken the law having both an illegal weapon and magazine beyond law while also probably reacting to a threat how he’s used to instead of complying with law enforcement commands which they were patient in giving him.

    He made his choices; the shooting was justified.

  47. this is one of those ones where while i think the whole thing could have been avoided, i’m not outraged either.

  48. This is not the best case for the cops, but dodo here did one dumb thing after another and ended up with worst case as a result. He chose to be high/drunk/twacked, be a felon in possession (whole other issue), leave a gun on his lap (stolen gun, another issue) and drive. Then, pass out in a drive through, with a running vehicle in drive. Not only was he breaking multiple laws just sitting in the vehicle, but was a massive potential hazard to others on the road while he was moving. This COULD HAVE been worse.

    6 cops? Meh, never been there or done it, but it’s my (uneducated) opinion that it seems a bit much. 6 guys opening up on one vehicle might be a bit excessive, especially when they mention in the video about cross fire. His first plan was to break the window, remove him and secure the gun. Why wasn’t that an option?

    It’s easy for us as the public, from our home WiFi to MMQB this thing, but if I’m sitting on a grand jury who’s being asked to indict, not sure that I can.

    • If there is any question about the shooting because there was another option that could have easily been taken and these people know better, you must indict. That’s the whole point of the justice system: to figure out any wrong doings and provide consequences for those particular wrongs done. If you never go to court no one would ever know what exactly happened and whether it was right.

      Jussie Smollett is a good case where some people think he did nothing wrong and others believe he might have. Therefore, we need to go to court where both cases can be displayed to the public in a proper fashion. Then we can officially make a decision that must be respected. If cases never make it to court there is no justice served whatsoever, people will not be able to peacefully move on from that, resulting in people not respecting the entire system. Then we will see riots, protests and retaliation (like in Dallas).

      The E.J. Bradford situation is one of those stories that should have made it into a courtroom. The original story from the police was Bradford is the shooter, refused to listen to commands and brandished a firearm. In reality, there was two cops that ran up on Bradford as he was protecting people with his legal gun, which he has a permit to carry, they did not announce themselves and they gave no commands, then one of the cops shot Bradford in the back without taking the time to figure out the situation nor allowing Bradford the time to show his innocence.

      People assumed because Bradford was a young black male with a gun he must have been a thug, thus the shooting was totally justified seeing now there is one less “aspiring rapper” in America. That sounds a lot like racism whether subconscious or not, at least prejudice.

  49. This is one of those justified shoots that many officers would have opted not to force the situation even though you know the sleeping or passed out armed motorist is bought and paid for if he makes the wrong move. Wasn’t there, so I cannot judge if the involved LEO’s truly feared imminent death or serious bodily, but I can say that if I’d shot every person I probably would have been justified to shoot in my 3 decade career, you could fill a dump truck with them. Ranking officer on scene probably could have changed the outcome by directing responding LEO’s not to expose themselves as the suspect came to.

    • There would be a lot of dead suspects if police would go by the old “dead or alive” system. The shoot dead a fleeing felon…

      I think these days that kind of system would cause an insurrection because minorities have guns now.

  50. Confronting could have been handled a little differently but I wouldn’t have taken any chances either. Clean shoot. Perp in the wrong.

  52. A disconcerting number of people that comment on this site just like seeing cops shoot black people regardless of the circumstances.

  53. Everybody in that video screwed up badly. Starting with a passed out driver with a weapon that turned out to be stolen.

    So what did the officers think would happen with a person obviously under the influence of who knows what? Did they expect him to wake up fully aware, with complete control of his faculties and capable of understanding commands screamed at a closed window by multiple men in black behind blinding white lights?

    Rap is noise to me and I’ve no sympathy for a gun thief. Still, cops escalated by taking away their own options. Did not need to be on top of the window. Acted late to box in the driver.

    The extended magazine? The cop thought it was a standard magazine loose in the gun giving the driver only one shot? That’s pretty damned ignorant.

  56. Who taught the officer to shoot like that though? Dude needs to work on his grip. He could easily induce a malfunction with the support thumb wrapped over top of the slide like that; Not to mention blocking view of his front sight. (yeah, at that range, who needs the sights, but still – principle here.)

  57. I once had a coworker who was just like many of the people in here spouting off about how the cops were in the wrong so I talked him into doing an experiment. Using airsoft Glocks and my car I had him approach my car 10 times as if it was a traffic stop and told him I was either going to try to shoot him or comply with his instructions. The result…6 times I shot him before he got a round off at me, and 4 times I caused him to shoot me while trying to comply with his instructions to get my license or registration or something else. The last time I had him so rattled that he shot me when I reached up to turn the car off. The only outcome in these scenarios was that he was shot or shot an unarmed man and had his life ruined by the likely follow up to such an incident.

    Moral of the story…to put it bluntly, if you haven’t been in that situation your uninformed opinion about the decisions made during that situation mean less than nothing to people who have.

    • America is a safe place relative to other countries. Being a cop isn’t nearly as dangerous as other jobs in America. Most cops in America never fire their gun in their career. Being a cop in Mexico is extremely dangerous, including being a traffic cop or a cop on lunch break.

      Your little scenario with your friend is unrealistic and intentionally made to cause a phobia. That kind of training instills fear into almost everyone. Naturally most humans worry about their life, they will react in the most messed up ways to save it. If you are not worried about death being a soldier or cop is much easier because you will be clear headed and able to think critically.

      It’s usually a lot of experience, not the everyone is trying to kill you training, that allows cops to relax and learn the correct way of doing things. They realize the job can be very boring, and more like baby sitting, from time to time there is some excitement or danger.

    • Seems like the actual moral of that story is that if you have a lot of internet and a little training and no experience, you might make a pretty deadly (or dead) cop.

    • if you think that someone is going to shoot at you half the time why don’t you plan for it like bringing a shield.
      or better yet don’t do the routine stops for revenue.

  59. Act like a THUG,,, DIE like a THUG…

    Lets see here, ,, drudged up , passed out wanna be rapper,,, stolen gun ,,, Mercedes Benz,,, won’t follow commands by a bunch of similarly armed POLICE,,,
    Reaches for stolen weapon,,, 😱 = DUMB DEAD ASS…!
    Rap your way out of this mess,,,,

  60. Once again, we have a situation where the cops behave badly, resulting in a bad shoot that should have, and could have been avoided…

    But we have a “victim” that’s hard to be sympathetic with. So plenty of people side with the cops because they are either cop suckers or they have latent racism issues, or they are anti drug warrior types, or they are cops.

    This was a bad shoot. There were 100 ways to deal with this situation that didn’t result in this… ways that might have still resulted in a shooting, but a shooting that would have been justified.

    But no one gives a fuck. Because the deceased is some hood rat wannabe rapper who was behaving in an ill advised manner.

    Being a hood rat is not a crime.

    Being passed out behind the wheel in and of itself isn’t a crime.

    Having a gun on your lap, might be a crime in CA. But it’s not a “capital offense” with a death penalty.

    Having a stolen gun, which the cops didn’t know was stolen, is a crime. Not a death penalty crime.

    But again, no one gives a fuck because it’s hard to be sympathetic in a case like this.

  61. Just being “an aspiring rapper” should be enough to shoot his ass!!! Hate that crap!! 🙂 🙂

    Yet, another building block on the young black man’s BRAND. If you don’t like how others perceive you, change your brand. Same concept whether marketing goods and services as in a company……Nike, Apple, Glock, etc……or marketing yourself as an individual or your race.

  63. Bad shoot from start to finish. The moment they saw the gun they should have backed off. Block the guy in with patrol cars.

    I’ve looked at the scene, there are trees and a block wall for the officers to position themselves behind and wait. There is access to the Taco Bell roof, where an officer or two could have been with a rifle and shotgun. Standing close around a car with an obviously drunk or drugged man behind the wheel and expecting him to react calmly and competently to being awakened by all that racket and bright lights was bound to fail. The driver probably had no clue what the hell was going on and died for crimes that do not carry a death penalty.

    This should have ended in an arrest, a good solid bust. Publicly wasted, blocking a private driveway, illegal firearm possession (shuoldn’t be illegal were it not stolen). We do not know if he stole the gun, but he had it and the dystopian ruin of California, it was illegal for him to have that. So, lots of reasons for a good bust.

    Sadly once the dumber cop (who thought the magazine was loose, falling out of the gun!) took charge and directed the rest, the rest played along to the predictable end.

    Cops have loads of responsibility. One of which is to not escalate when they do not have to. The way they handled this they exposed themselves to potential gun fire with no place to hide. Then they killed a man they created the circumstances for but handling the scene so incompetently.

    That driver should be in a cell right now and the colps on the street doing their jobs. Instead it’s one more hit on the public’s trust and a half dozen cops on administrative leave (not protecting anybody!).

    • ditto
      they have time to plan anything else but what they did..
      there is no threat to life nor limb. nobody can comprehend anything the first few seconds when you are startled from slumber.

Comments are closed.