Remember the video from two weeks ago showing a Leon County (Florida) deputy who was so paranoid, that he sees a guy (Robert) parked at a gas pump, with a gas pump in his hand, trying to pump some gas, and he immediately thinks it’s something else in his hand? At one point in the video an off-duty out-of-state police officer at the scene walks into the gas station and interacts with the deputy. He reached out to me and provided his own footage (and explanation) about what happened…
In Las Vegas, a police officer saw a man with a gun. It wasn’t actually a real gun – just a “finger gun” – a harmless hand gesture. Though harmless, the officer was not happy about it, and decided to get his buddies and go teach the guy a lesson. The officer noticed that the suspect was a black male driving a black Dodge Durango, and saw him turn into a nearby parking garage.
The suspect parked, took the garage elevator to the ground floor and when the elevator opened, there were no cops waiting for him. He walked off and probably had a good time that night. But, when another black male, who had entered the parking garage in a different car, after the black Durango also subsequently took the same elevator to the ground floor, cops were waiting for him – the wrong guy, ready to teach him a lesson….
Coast Guard officer, Shane Sprague, bought a 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 AT4X on June 21 from Doral Volkswagen in South Florida. For many years, Shane had wanted this specific truck: a GMC 1500 AT4X. He worked hard, and made sacrifices, to be able to save money for the down payment. He put down a $15,000 deposit, traded in a 2012 Ford Focus for $1,500, and financed the rest of the $61,230 purchase price through the dealer. A dealership employee even snapped a photo of Shane looking happy with his purchase, and later texted him, thanking him for the sale and wishing him well. But, 10 days later, on July 1, an unmarked F-150 rammed his rear bumper, and he was arrested at gunpoint by Broward County deputies…
Kim received an alert on her phone that someone was at her front door. To her surprise, it was a SWAT team with their armored vehicle, about to break down her front door and ransack her home. Eventually, detectives with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department realized they had arrived at least 5 years too late to find their suspect. Leaving behind over 20 grand worth of damage to Kim’s home, they offered no explanation, no apology, and refused to pay for the damage they caused.
In the blink of an eye, a peaceful day of yardwork for Penny McCarthy turned into a nightmare. She was on her driveway in Phoenix, Arizona, in a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and slippers, when a team of United States Marshals pulled up in unmarked vehicles and aimed firearms at her.
Penny—who is a 67-year-old grandmother—was clearly at their mercy. And yet, the officers threatened to “hit” her, frisked her, placed her in handcuffs and ankle shackles, and drove her away from home. The officers did not so much as check Penny’s driver’s license or run any other basic checks on her identity before violently arresting her.
The whole time, Penny calmly but persistently insisted that there must be a mistake. The officers claimed that she was Carole Rozak, for whom they had an arrest warrant. But Penny was not Rozak, and Penny had no connection to Rozak. The officers had made a huge, inexcusable error.
Derrick House was returning home from a trip to Costco, headed to make dinner with his family. An unmarked car comes speeding up from behind him, suddenly blocking him in. Cops jump out and start pointing their pistols at him, threatening to shoot him in the face. What did he do wrong? Apparently he was just a black male driving a Volkswagen. Even though it was the wrong make, color (and license plate number) the cops figured it was close enough.
Derrick Williams was fast asleep in the apartment he had been living in for about a month (which was leased by a friend/Uncle) when he heard a commotion outside his bedroom. It was the Chesterfield County (Virginia) Police Department, who had just opened the front door and sent in a police K9 to find him and violently attack him. But it was a mistake. He had done nothing wrong. His friend/Uncle’s ex-girlfriend had come by earlier to collect some belongings, saw him asleep in the apartment, and called 911, believing he was an intruder of some sort. Instead of realizing that Derrick was not an intruder, they just went full send with their attack K9, to bite first, and ask questions later. Now a lawsuit has been filed. But the cops are asking for qualified immunity, claiming they did nothing wrong.
Yet again, police officers pulled over an innocent driver, subjecting the individual to the so-called “felony stop” or “high risk stop,” which is the process wherein they treat an innocent American citizen as if they were a terrorist serial killer, forcing the person to get out of their car, walk backwards, and so on, all occurring at the barrel of a loaded gun. This time the victim was a teenage girl in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The taxpayers shouldered the burden of the $250,000 settlement for the obvious police misconduct that occurred. However the police department has “no comment” for the community that employs them. And the city itself doesn’t even bother to say “no comment.”
Here’s the blog post where I last ranted about the unconstitutionality of these “high risk stops” based solely on computer (or human) mistakes about a car being stolen, along with some links to prior videos I’ve done involving similar situations. Therein I list numerous instances of this occurring to innocent people across the country, including Aurora, Colorado, Raymore, Missouri, Fairfax, Virginia, Norwalk, Connecticut, as well as Lehi, Utah (which is what the blog post and video from that post was about).
It all boils down to this: without more, police officers should not be aiming firearms at people. Reasonableness is the key. Aiming guns based on clerical entries and government policy is rarely going to be reasonable. Doing so should be based on actual perceived threats presented by the persons with whom they’re dealing. Here, the officers actions of handcuffing the teen at gunpoint could not have been reasonable, and thus they would most likely be found to be unconstitutional by the courts (which is why they settled).
This is an interesting situation. A black employee of a firearms-related company, apparently run by military vets offering a number of different products, realized they were missing an AR-15 “lower,” which was supposed to have been mailed out by a particular employee. Rather than discuss the matter with the employee, they called the cops, who arrested the employee pretty much immediately, ultimately holding him for multiple hours. However, it seems that the missing lower was found only 10 minutes after this man was arrested. Oops… it was all a big mistake. But the employee was still fired and sent packing, with an apology from the cops.
You may remember the video that went viral showing police officers in Aurora, Colorado, holding a black family hostage in a parking lot outside the car. Supposedly the cops thought their car was stolen, based on their (the cops) mistake. The family filed a civil rights lawsuit and just settled for a whopping $1.9 Million Dollars. But, this will continue to happen. Here’s why…
Here’s my prior post on why it’s an unconstitutional policy for police departments to perform these types of detentions without specific information that is particular to the subjects being detained.
