This one shocks me but I agree with it:
Fort Worth Man Who Shot Texas State Trooper Faces No Charges
A grand jury declined to indict a Fort Worth man who shot a state trooper but claimed he never knew he was a police officer because he was in plainclothes and driving an unmarked pickup.
In an interview, Russell King said he and his wife Myra were driving home near Haslet on April 23 when he saw two pickups that appeared to be racing behind him.
“Two trucks came flying by us at a high rate of speed,” King said.
One of the vehicles exited the highway and the other ended up right in front of them.
“I visibly see him look in his mirror, shake his head like this, and that’s when he brake-checked me,” King said. “It was very deliberate.”
“Brake check” refers to someone slamming on the brakes, forcing the car behind them also brake suddenly.
King said he thought it was road rage – especially when the driver started chasing him, even onto a Walmart parking lot.
“That’s where I saw him giving me the finger,” he said.
Concerned for the safety of him and his wife, King said he tried to speed away through traffic but the driver kept coming.
“He was going into oncoming traffic and made a bus swerve,” King said.
King said he did notice some flashing lights in the grill of the pickup but didn’t think anything of it at the time.
“They didn’t seem to be very official. I had never seen a police vehicle that was a gray Chevrolet truck,” he said.
The Kings said they thought they finally lost him, got home, backed into their garage, and immediately called 911.
A few minutes later, the same man in the same pickup pulled up in front of their house.
King said he watched on his live camera system as the man pulled what he thought was a gun out of the back — and then approached the house and knocked loudly.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life. I really felt as if he were there to harm my wife and I,” King said. “I yelled, ‘Please go away. We called 911.’”
The camera captured what happened next.
King shot through the door. The man was hit in the shoulder and ran.
It sounds like the state trooper was having a road rage incident and was acting outside his lawful authority.
The homeowner was legitimately afraid and fired in self defense.
The jury seemed to agree.
This is the right decision. The police have no special protection when behaving like this outside their legal powers.
I’m just shocked a jury agreed.
This gives me hope.
I’m surprised firing through the door didn’t land King in trouble. Then again, perhaps having a doorbell camera can be seen as evidence one is not, in fact, performing a reckless act, firing “blind” through the door.
In any case, were i King, I’d also consider moving to another country. Right outcome or not from the courts, this bad cop’s colleagues can still make his life hell.
I’m glad the guy got off, and Texas needs to thoroughly examine their state police selection and management practices. Nevertheless, King was stupid. One does NOT shoot through a door under these circumstances. One takes a position of cover while calling 911 and leaves the line open. If the door is broken open, then you shoot, preferably with a shotgun.
Rule 4, remember?
Boris makes a good point, though. Since there was a doorbell camera, Rule 4 wasn’t violated.
One of the factors to self defense is imminence. That is, was the attacker’s threat so imminent as to require force to stop it. In this case, the jury obviously thought so.
Where I grew up in VA, only police had blue lights. Fire/rescue were red, construction yellow.
Here in Texas, flashing lights are flashing lights. Construction trucks will have red/blue/white flashing lights, as will cops. So around here if I saw a pickup dogging me like that I’d assume it was a hothead construction worker.
And the dude is right, You never see cops in unmarked pickups here.
And also, if it were a cop and you weren’t complying, you can expect more than one black & white to show up. IF there’s a chase the panda bears will be in on it.
This was a grand jury, not a trial, which makes the refusal to charge the guy even more impressive. Defendants have no right to counsel present in the grand jury room; instead, if they wish to consult their lawyer they must ask for a recess and go out to another room or a hallway Also, the entire proceeding is controlled by the prosecutor, as there is no judge present. Back in 1982, Thomas Puccio, a lead DOJ prosecutor in the Abscam scandal (Google it if you’re less than about 50 years old) was quoted by columnist Jack Anderson as saying “I could indict a ham sandwich.” He wasn’t exaggerating.
I have long felt that the only police who should be permitted to perform traffic stops are marked vehicles. You hear of so many phony cops trying to pull people over, that this seems to make more sense.
The cops’ reasoning that unmarked cars are needed to catch people committing traffic offenses is BS. The entire goal of traffic police is to get folks to drive in a safer manner. What get drivers to behave more than seeing a cop car?
Divemedic: Funny you should mention that. In the state of Indiana, state law forbids police from making traffic stops in unmarked vehicles. The law was passed after a rash of red-light rapists occurred in the 70s (and after the chief of police in Marion, Indiana, was shot and killed after he curbed someone in an unmarked car and in plain clothes and exited his vehicle with a gun in his hand). As far as I know (I no longer live there), it’s still the law. It hasn’t seemed to hinder traffic enforcement any.
Unmarked cars are everywhere in IN now.
I just looked it up, because I wanted to know if they had changed the law, and it’s still illegal for unmarked cars to make traffic stops in Indiana. The only exceptions are if a uniformed officer is on the scene (that may be a workaround), or if the traffic violator endangers or injures someone by a specific violation (one of which is passing a stopped school bus and causing injury). It’s all in Section 9-30-2-2 of the Indiana Code.
They are always in uniform. I see unmarked cars with traffic stops all the time. They’ve taken to using trucks marked up as highway department to get people now.
Agreed, DM. Especially if the goal is safety enforcement and enhancement, as opposed to, say, revenue enhancement.
I can see a need for unmarked cars, but few to no use cases for traffic stops.
One does occasionally hear of phony cops in fake marked vehicles, but that’s a lot less common since the perp is far more likely to get caught doing that. But a “marked vehicles only” rule is not a 100% safeguard.
I would be OK with a team effort, where the unmarked vehicle observes the violation, but a marked vehicle makes the stop, and then the unmarked vehicle’s officer writes a citation after the uniformed officer makes the contact.
Except that is unlikely to happen, some bean counter police management efficiency expert would nix the “waste of manpower.” Even if it would be safer having another officer backing you up on a traffic stop.
TechieDude,
Here in MN, only police are allowed blue lights. But some of the new high power LED headlights seem to throw a very blue light on the edges of their beam pattern. It has got my attention more than once.
Texas. Last hope for America?
Never would have happened in some states…