George DeCoursey, Shot in the Back After Stealing Nickels

In another thread Don asked if these incidents of cops shooting people [for trivial crimes] was increasing or if the reporting of such incidences was increasing. This was in Sunday edition of my local paper.

A St. Paul police officer fatally shot George Raymond DeCoursey in the back on June 12, 1930. His offense? Stealing nickels from pay phones at the dawn of the Great Depression and fleeing police. He was 35 and left behind his wife, Alice, and their six kids.

Today, cop shootings and excessive force make big headlines. In 1930, the police shooting of DeCoursey received only a couple of paragraphs in Twin Cities newspapers.


“Shot while trying to escape from two patrolmen who had arrested him on a charge of robbing pay telephone boxes,” the Minneapolis Tribune reported on page 11, misspelling his name. “DeCourcy was arrested at his home but broke way from the officers and fled down the street. He was found under a porch and ordered to come out.”


The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that patrolman Lloyd McVay fired when DeCoursey ran again and “failed to heed the officers’ command to stop.”


When he died the next day at Ancker Hospital, coroner Carl Ingerson ruled his death a homicide and found “he died from gun shot wound of spine caused when he was shot while resisting arrest.”

http://www.startribune.com/minnesot...in-the-back-after-stealing-nickels/336666091/