Police murder homeless man

Sebastian Murdock, who wrote the HuffPo piece linked in the OP, must be an idiot. He's certainly way too young to be trusted to get a story like this right.



Has he even graduated from high school yet?

Let's get a more serious, less unbiased media outlet not out to do a hatchet job involved here: KRQE-TV: APD says officer involved shooting was justified

Among other things Murdock got completely wrong:

• The man wasn't packing his bags to comply, he was picking up to leave, despite a three-hour effort by APD to get him to cooperate, including calling in a CIT officer and an Arizona State Police liaison to try to talk him out of a schizophrenic episode.
• Boyd, the "victim," had a 20-year history of violence towards police officers and repeatedly, throughout this three-hour ordeal, threatened to kill them all.
• Murdock makes no distinction between the use of non-lethal and lethal force. Officers fired beanbags, not bullets, at Boyd.
• After the beanbags were fired, having no effect on Boyd, a flash-bang was used to disorient him, as he had pulled a knife out of his belongings.
• After the flash-bang was used, officers sent in a K9 officer with his dog to bring Boyd down and subdue him, but Boyd attempted to stab the officer, who was unarmed at the time, concentrating on handling his dog.
• It was at that time that two officers fired one three-round burst each at Boyd from their department-issue rifles, in defense of the K9 officer.

The "Officer Sandy" mentioned in Murdock's piece is never identified with a first name. It appears Murdock cut-and-pasted the Albuquerque Journal story and built a series of grossly mistaken and irrelevant "case" against the officer, making a false allegation of him having committed "fraud" in his previous job with the NMSP. It wasn't fraud, though that was the initial charge, apparently used to get him to cooperate. He actually was guilty of an administrative violation of department policy by working as a private security consultant outside of New Mexico State Police rules. It appears Murdock did this hatchet job simply because he decided the officers "murdered" Boyd before he ever sat down to write. It is an exceptionally irresponsible piece of "journalism" that HuffPo should be ashamed of, and retract.

Even KRQE is negligent in living up to journalistic standards. They make a point of stating in their story that they didn't get a chance to ask the APD police chief why officers didn't attempt to use a Taser on Body. Gee, it couldn't be because the suspect was armed with a knife, could it? Sheer stupidity.

 

They did send in the dog. Boyd was armed with a knife. He threatened the dog and the officer. That's plainly seen on the video as well.

Murdock lied. No one says "Do it" anywhere on that video, in the context he claims. It isn't vindictive, gung ho, or any other inappropriate use of the term. It is, in fact, a command -- to use a beanbag gun, not a lethal weapon. And those shots were fired only after Boyd made the threat to the officer and his dog.

There's nothing wrong with this shooting. No matter what you and Murdock want to make up in your minds. HuffPo only posted 56 seconds of the video, and they copied it off the KRQE website. The police have released the entire, three-hour video, but of course, no one wants to look at that video before posting on here,do they? The coverage on this thing, even by the TV station, is geared to prejudice the viewer and show a "good shooting" in as bad a light as possible. These clowns wouldn't know what to do in that situation. They'd probably wind up shooting themselves. But they sure are good at trying to judge professional officers in the conduct of their duties, aren't they?

Here, take a look at actually relevant video of the incident. The "murder" is anything but. If he was shot in the back, where's the blood on his back in the video? And why is he talking to the arresting officers after the "fatal shooting"?

By the way, this is a series of videos. When the first one, which actually shows the shooting, ends, the next one begins. It is part of the three hours of video that police shot at the scene. Get that? The police shot the video! And then released it, despite being "guilty of murder"? Does that make sense?

These efforts to demonize the police are getting tiresome. Find something else to play with.

 

:thumbsup::thumbsup:
They shoot those videos whenever there is a calculated use of force which may turn ugly.....
They shoot those videos in order to PROTECT THEMSELVES from any false accusations that they mishandled the situation.

The court of public opinion notwithstanding.....the video exists so that a REAL court can see the WHOLE thing and exonerate them of any malfeasance. Law enforcement has to do that nowadays to protect themselves from lawsuits or over-zealous prosecutors trying to make a name for themselves.

 

Absolutely, IJ. Good post. :thumbsup: