Thursday, October 01, 2015

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DEADLY SHOOTING OF OFFICER GREG ALIA

What was the rookie cop doing during the deadly struggle between his training officer and a thug, and why didn’t the other responding officers shoot his killer?

Forest Acres is a city of fewer than 11,000 citizens that is located near Columbia, South Carolina. 32-year-old Greg Alia was an officer of the Forest Acres police force. After graduating from the University of South Carolina, Greg realized his lifelong dream of becoming a police officer. The seven-year veteran cop was also the happily married father of a six-month-old son.

Shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday, Alia and his partner received a call of a suspicious person inside a car at the Richland Mall. His partner was a rookie officer whom Alia was training. They spotted 34-year-old Jarvis Hall in the parking lot. When they approached Hall to question him, he ran off into the mall. Alia caught up to Hall by the Barnes and Noble bookstore. Alia and Hall got into a physical struggle during which the officer was shot dead.

Other officers arriving at the scene took Hall into custody. Hall was in possession of a gun reported stolen from Lexington County on or about September 2. He was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Hall’s criminal record shows a number of arrests, mostly misdemeanor charges such as unlawful carrying of a weapon, failure to comply, and solicitation. Hall was arrested by the Columbia police in August for failure to comply.

This tragic shooting of a good police officer brings to mind two questions. What was the rookie cop doing during the deadly struggle between his training officer and Hall? One would think he would at least have shot the bastard.

In addition to officers from Forest Acres, officers with the Richland County Sheriff's Department, Columbia Police Department and other agencies also responded to the shooting. Why didn’t any of those officers shoot Hall? Back in my day, had Hall been caught at or near the scene of the shooting with a gun, there would have been no sweet-talking him into giving up. That thug would have been perforated like a Swiss cheese by a volley of police gunshots.

Now, instead of being toes up, Jarvis Hall will benefit from years of litigation which will be a painful experience for Greg Alia's widow and son. It won’t surprise me at all if Hall’s lawyers will argue that the black man was merely defending himself against the brutality of a white racist cop.

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