3 cops cleared in shooting death of man who fired at themNow that could be a fine decision, the report was after all that the dead guy fired at the cops first. But 3 or 4 cops shot him several times each. The guy had 20 to 30 bullet holes in him.
That cannot be right. What better illustration could there be of excessive force?
In reference to the decision exonerating the cops, the DA had this to say.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment."I'm very saddened at D.A. Williams's office for rendering that decision.
"The medical examiner's report doesn't lie. The holes in this man's body do not tell a lie. If they followed the lines of the medical examiner's report relative to the number of bullets in his body and the position of those bullets, it would tell the story that this man was murdered by the Philadelphia police."
Hmm, 5-10 bullets put in the deceased by each cop, not counting how many missed shots there were.
ReplyDeleteI'll get into assumtions here; the average police shootout has about a 25% hit rate, so giving them a generous 50% for the benifit of the doubt, they could have fired an average of 15 rounds each. Or in other words, about as much as a standard pistol magazine holds (i.e. 13-18).
Hypothetically speaking, it is possible that the officers emptied their weapons on the guy. That does sound excessive, even to me.
Two things to comment on here:
ReplyDeleteOne, it is easily and quickly done. I can empty the magazine in a gun downrange in mere seconds. In fact, it took longer to type this sentence than it takes to dump fifteen rounds onto a target and reload. Emptying the magazine is quick, but unless one practices, one isn't likely going to do better than the police in their hit-to-miss ratio.
Two, an unfortuante and growing phenomenon amongst police is that when a suspect is being held at gun point by multiple officers, and a gun shot is heard, other officers will engage and fire, even if they don't see a gun in the hand of the suspect. A witness to an armed robbery in Puerto Rico recently died from this, after being erroneously held at gun point by a couple officers. Another officer got out of his vehicle with his gun drawn, tripped and had an ND. The officers holding the witness at gunpoint opened fire because they heard shots.
You think that doesn't happen here?