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News & ArtsMonday, August 30, 2010
Crime More on the Fatal Shooting by a Cop
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 7:03 PM
Police spokeswoman Renee Witt said the officer was driving his patrol car south on Boren Avenue near Howell Street about 4:15 p.m. when he saw a man holding a knife who was seated on a short wall on the northwest corner of the intersection. The man appeared to be whittling a piece of wood, Witt said.The officer, who thought the man was acted strangely, stopped his patrol car and got out, Witt said.
The man stood up and approached the officer, ignoring several orders to stop. At that point, the officer opened fire, she said.
UPDATE: Seattlepi.com also has more details.
1
The INSTANT a cop starts thinking of you as "suspect" instead of "civilian" your life becomes a billion times less important to them than theirs.
But seriously don't walk at them with knives
But seriously don't walk at them with knives
2
Yeah, maybe if a cop is pointing a gun at you and telling you to stop and drop the knife you're carrying, you should stop, and you should drop the knife you're carrying.
4
I wonder if it was one of the shit birds from the 1811 Eastlake Apartments just around the corner.
5
If only the poor bastard had been carrying a GUN, because a concealed KNIFE is considered dangerous. But a gun? Nah.
8
@6: Too easy to miss. They're trained to fire into the target's center of mass for a reason. Outside of television, anyway. :)
9
@6: I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING. Or tasers. Or some other non-lethal method of subduing someone who potentially has no fucking clue what you're telling them to do (which is entirely possible--bad day, tired, language barrier, developmental disability, drunk, etc).
10
@9 Exactly. It seems like he was a homeless man, or at least someone who frequently pan-handled in the area. That makes the odds pretty good that he met at least one, if not all, of the criteria you list: bad day, tired, language barrier, developmental disability, drunk...
11
predicable circus will now ensue, on the one hand Real Change crowd demanding that all public inebriates have full right to be as dodgy and sketchy as they want, leading up to another Shannon Harps incident, on the other, the reasoned bystander who can't understand how cops go from "excuse me sir" to "ON THE GROUND NOW" in 2/3 of a second, but in that time in their report it will say the man was given every opportunity to comply yet did not..... And don't forget the cop union exonerating all involved.
12
To be clear: The man was not killed for whittling. The man was killed for attacking the police officer with a knife.
13
"it's just a knife, officer. see? just a knife. here, take it. see? just a knife, i'm just whittling."
5 shots? FIVE?
5 shots? FIVE?
14
@12: We get that. It's just a question of whether the officer really needed to confront the whittler in question and (perhaps -- we weren't there) escalate the situation unnecessarily. What if he had just called for some back, surrounded the man and subdued him. It worked for the guy with the green pepper (and yes, I was about 20 feet away from that one).
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