"So The Cops Shot 9 New Yorkers?"

"So The Cops Shot 9 New Yorkers?"
by Karl Denninger

"We need the law to be enforced upon the law enforcers. Police said it is unlikely that Johnson (ed: The bad guy who is dead) fired during the shootout.  One witness told investigators that Johnson fired, but ballistics tests don’t back that up, authorities said. At least nine other people on the street were also shot, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it is unclear whether they were shot by the suspect or police.

Oh really?  They were shot by Martians then?

The bad guy apparently had a beef with an old boss, walked up to him and put three bullets in him.  He then put the weapon away and started walking.  Upon being chased by cops (duh!) he then pulled said weapon at which point the cops started shooting at him, ultimately shooting and killing him. Ok so far. Except that the cops also apparently shot nine bystanders.

Now look, I understand that it's tough being a cop.  It's especially tough when a bad guy pulls a weapon and you know he just shot someone else.  However, the law is clear: you are responsible for every round that leaves your weapon until it comes to rest. This sometimes means you can't shoot, because despite the fact that you might want to, and have legal justification to, you can't be reasonably assured that your rounds will not wind up hitting innocent people. That is the case here- nine rounds didn't either find their target or harmlessly strike the ground or some solid object that is not subject to material amounts of harm (e.g. the side of a building.)

I restrained myself from commenting on this case originally until we had more facts, although it appeared yesterday that in fact the cops were the ones who shot the civilians.  Today, with multiple news reports out (another one here) it appears that it is nearly-certain that most if not all of the civilian wounded, other than the target of the assailant's assault (who died immediately before anyone could respond) were in fact shot by the police, not by the gunman.

This sort of kill everyone in the village to save it mentality is common in times of war.  It's no more defensible there, however, than it is here and now. Robert Asika was among those wounded, shot in the elbow from a distance of around eight feet by one of the two police officers who confronted Johnson. He accused police of "shooting randomly", and said he saw at least two others hit by police bullets. "If you're gonna aim try and aim perfectly. If you wanna aim at the target, you got to know what you're doing because it's the street," Asika said. "I could have been dead right now. I could have been dead."

We, the people of this nation, must take a stand.  Those officers who fired negligently into a crowd without not only knowing what their target was but also what lay beyond it and what they might hit if they missed must be held to account for their decision to fire without caring that innocent civilians were in the path of the discharge of their weapons.

If Mayor Bloomberg will not demand that these officers be charged then he is in fact declaring himself King and his minions possessed of the right to shoot innocent civilians through gross negligence any time they'd like. If that is the case then I respectfully submit that The Mayor himself is complicit in this act and approves of it and he thus must be removed from office.

So long as such an attitude persists among New York's government I will certainly neither visit or spend money there.  After all, I have no right to be free from felony abuse by its police force via their negligent misuse of deadly weapons.”

- http://market-ticker.org/
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Related:
http://www.dailypundit.com/2012/08/24/armed-cops-more-dangerous-than-crazed-shooters/

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