1) Believing The Cops Know You Are The Good Guy Just Because You Are
2) Believing You Don't Have To Follow The Cops Directions Because You Are The Good Guy
3) Thinking The Cops Won't Shoot You If You Reach For The Gun, Because You Are The Good Guy
by Bob Walsh
This unfortunate multi-layered visit from the fuck-up fairy cost a young man his life. It seems that Jason Washington was trying to break up a fight in a sports bar at 1:30 a.m. Officers from the Portland State University Police responded to the incident at the Cheerful Tortoise bar and saw Washington reaching for a gun on the floor. They ordered him REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY to not touch the gun. He grabbed the gun. They shot him. He died.
It turns out the gun was his. It fell out of his holster while he was playing peacemaker (shitty holster, another morality tale there) and hit the floor about the time the cops showed up.
The two campus cops had been with the force for 16 years and four years. The University is in the city and has a student population of 27,000. They did not arm their cops until mid-2015, after six months of training. There is the to-be-expected screaming from liberals to disarm the department and downgrade it to a security guards and not a police force.
It is not known yet how drunk or sober Washington might have been. Fortunately there are a million witnesses, some of them sober, and mucho cell phone footage so what actually happened is not really in question. Under the law that will be good for the cops and the university. The court of public opinion will make it's own judgment, in all probability regardless of the facts.
2 comments:
"The court of public opinion will make it's own judgment,.."
Well, it happened in Portland so...
Follow directions. If a cop tells you to do the Chicken Dance, you do the Chicken Dance.
I think this is a bad situation where the man was trying to retrieve his gun for safety reasons. Cops can't read minds.
Post a Comment