Officer Bob

SWISSVALE, PA: Gee, great. The FBI is once again investigating some local cops just because they somehow ended up with a corpse on the udder end of their tasers. Like the feds don’t have enough to do what with fighting terrorism and all. All to get some boys in blue. What’s dis country comin’ to anyway? When are we gonna learn that the word of witnesses can’t be trusted when we’re out there puttin’ da force back into law enforcement?

Officer Bob and Officer Tom work the oldest trick in the policeman’s handbook.

 Officer Bob Episode #9 - Good Cop, Bad Cop [1:42m]: Download (974)

MIAMI – Eyewitnesses claim Miami Police used a taser several times on an unarmed man named Kenneth Oliver, resulting in his death. Of course, alla you liberal ACLU types will ignore the man’s “long criminal record” in this story. Sure, he didn’t have a rap on him for the last eight years, but you can’t be too careful with these career criminal types, can you?

A South Florida man has died after, witnessed said, police used a Taser on him early Friday morning.

The incident occurred around 3:30 a.m. in the area of Southwest 107th Avenue and 146th Terrace. According to a witness, Kenneth Oliver was under the influence, knocking on people’s doors, while screaming for help.

Someone called police to the scene who tried to get the 45-year-old to comply but were unable to. “When the police came, I told them, you know, ‘He’s under the influence, so you guys should be careful,’” said Paul Severence, a neighbor who witnessed the incident.

According to Severence, police told Oliver to get down and put his hands behind his back. Apparently, Oliver didn’t put his hands behind his back quick enough and Severence said he watched police use a Taser three times. “They Tased him three different times. They just kept Tasing him. I told the police, ‘You’re going to kill that man,’ so after they did it a third time, I just walked away,” said Severence.

Severence said his friend saw police shock Oliver a fourth time.

Edwin Oliver said his brother has pins in his shoulders, which make it too difficult to put his arms behind his back.

NEW YORK – The New York Civil Liberties people have sued the NYPD over records pertaining to shootings by the NYPD in the course of their crimefighting duties.  I don’t see what all the fuss is, myself.

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Civil Liberties Union has sued the New York Police Department seeking records identifying the race of everyone shot by city police officers since January 1997.

The NYCLU says the lawsuit filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court is part of its effort to determine if race has played an inappropriate role in police shootings.

The group says that about 90 percent of people shot by police in years past were black or Hispanic. The NYPD says the finding comports with the fact that 98.6 percent of all shooting suspects in the last six months and 97.5 percent of shooting victims were black or Hispanic.

The city’s Law Department says it hasn’t received the legal papers but would review them upon receipt.

WINNFIELD, LOUISIANA -

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/28/taser.death/index.html

(CNN) — A Louisiana grand jury will decide whether a fired police officer should face criminal charges in the January death of a man who was Tasered nine times while handcuffed, the parish’s district attorney announced Monday.

Baron “Scooter” Pikes, a 21-year-old sawmill worker, had tried to run from police in Winnfield, Louisiana, when they tried to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for cocaine possession.

But a coroner’s report found Pikes had been handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser and might have been dead before the last two shocks from the 50,000-volt device were delivered.

…

Nugent is white; Pikes was black. His death led to demonstrations that drew several dozen people in Winnfield, where the population of about 15,000 is roughly half African-American.

In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records — with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent, who had no public disciplinary record.

Hey, even I got nothin to say about dis one.

NEW YORK CITY – When you’re a cop, you deal all day with the mistakes of people who can’t deal with stress. Instead of counting to ten, or drinking to excess, or just taking home the rage to share with the family, sometimes regular people pop under the everyday stress. It happens.

That’s why I’m a cop. I don’t have the limitations of regular people. I get to handle road rage in a very satisfying manner. For example, if someone cuts me off in traffic, I don’t honk the horn and get all wife-beaty. Instead, I can pull out my piece, shoot the guy who cut me off, then drive away and leave him to die.

“But Bob,” I hear you say, “won’t that result in criminal charges for you? Isn’t that against the, you know, law?” Technically, yes, but as you probably noticed in the above link, New York grand juries know how to treat their police officers – with a pat on the back and a “on your way, sir, to protect and serve.”

A grand jury voted Thursday not to file criminal charges against an off-duty New York City police officer who shot and killed a Manhattan man in October during what was considered an alleged fit of road rage, CBS 2 has learned.

District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced that Officer Sean Sawyer will only face an administrative review and sanctions by the NYPD in the shooting death of 25-year-old Jayson Tirado.

Tirado was killed in the early morning hours of Oct. 21, 2007 when Sawyer, by his own admission, shot at Tirado’s car at 117th Street and First Avenue after Tirado had apparently cut him off while trying to avoid an accident.

Angry words were later exchanged between Sawyer and Tirado and a chase ensued. Sawyer later pulled out his licensed off-duty firearm and shot twice at Tirado after Tirado apparently made a gesture as if he had a gun.

Tirado was struck by a bullet near his right shoulderblade and later died from his wounds.

Sawyer left the scene and did not learn of Tirado’s death until the next day. Leaving the scene of a shooting is not a violation of the New York State Penal Law, but may be a violation of the New York City Police Department’s Patrol Guide.

“I’m sure that most people would be shocked to learn that it is not a crime for a police officer to leave the scene of a shooting without reporting it as soon as practicable,” Morgenthau said in a statement.

“I share their outrage. But, that is the law. As a result of this case, we will be submitting legislation to change that,” he said.

Remember the lesson of the Sean Bell shooting in New York City back in ‘06: if you’re out on the town and you’re acting like an (unarmed) asshole, you just might get shot fifty times by the cops. And then, as a lesson about how things go out there, your surviving relatives get to watch the cops walk away from the incident with no punishment.

Okay, I’m kind of exaggerating. To get shot a few dozen times by the cops, you don’t have to be acting like an asshole at all. In 1999, Amadu Diallo learned that when New York’s finest lit him up 41 times for the crime of taking his wallet out of his pocket.

In the 300 year history of New York City, there have been only three cops convicted of homicide in the line of duty. What do you call that? I call that job satisfaction.