WALKER COUNTY, Ga. – Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are looking into an officer-involved shooting in Walker County where a deputy shot and killed a man in his Rossville home.It all started in the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day when a woman called 911 and said her estranged daughter-in-law threatened to kill her child and then herself…
After the 911 call claiming there could be a murder-suicide in progress, deputies surrounded the home and GBI officials said those deputies stated several times who they were, but the family members said they were sleeping and didn’t hear the deputies.
When Mark Parkinson, who lives in the house, finally heard the commotion outside, he got out of bed to see what was going on.
He was armed, looking through a window, and that’s when Deputy John Chandler fired a fatal shot.
Clear violation of basic firearm safety: Be sure of your target. Reckless disregard. I still would like to see if there is body cam video of the events. It did not go well either for another officer in a similar situation:
OCOEE, Fla. — An Ocoee police officer was not justified in shooting into a home in the middle of the night after a dispatcher sent him to the wrong address for a domestic disturbance in 2016, an Orange County jury ruled Thursday.
Officer Carlos Anglero was found guilty of shooting into a building, a second-degree felony. Jurors deliberated for about 2½ hours after a two-day trial, during which he testified in his own defense. He declined to comment about the verdict.
Fla. officer found guilty of shooting into home
Go read the rest of the article. It is a frigging comedy of errors that could have killed somebody, but by the Grace of God, nobody was hurt unlike the case in Georgia. Officer Anglero is now facing up to 15 in prison. So much for Cops never seeing the inside of the Big House.
I am starting to get the feeling that some departments have some serious training issues. [end sarcasm]
Part of that training should also be impose on judges, to teach them what the 4th Amendment means. Because it’s clear none of them have any clue.
Jesus, that Ocoee shooting was a cluster fuck.
I have a rule, once someone invokes the “Nuremberg defense,” their defense if forfeit and they are admitting guilt. “I was just following orders” is not morally defensible position.
I’m leaning towards a similar rule for law enforcement in relation to the statement “I feared for my life.” It’s become a cliche to justify any shooting. It’s a canned statement. It means nothing. “I feared for my life so I emptied my M16 into a bus full of nuns.” When a cop says “I feared for my life” what I’m sure he meant was “I panicked and fucked up bad.”
It is (or was? I’m not sure) part of the military oath to “follow all *lawful* orders of my superior officers”. That’s a great choice of words, because it captures two points: the obvious (not all orders are lawful) but also a duty, imposed on everyone, to judge personally whether an order is lawful and obey it only if it is.
In other words, “I was only following orders” is a way of expressing “I was violating my sworn duty to judge whether orders are lawful or not”.
Just what in the hell did that Ocoee officer think he was accomplishing by that shot?
snappycrow; “think”? Where would anyone come to the conclusion that that officer actually had a thought about what he was doing. From the reports he did that without thinking and just from ‘Man with a gun!!! SHOOOOOOOT!’
I hate, absofuckinglutely hate, to say this as my family has been in Law Enforcement back into the 19th century.
Both Dad and I having been Deputy Sheriffs for the same Sheriff many moons ago, Gramps a Deputy of the old home county back in the hills and one GGF a Justice of the Peace.
But these days, the most dangerous place for your normal average law abiding citizen (as opposed to your average thug member of a street gang dealing in drugs) is to be in the vicinity of these new younger LE officers.