Between Seattle, Washington and Bozeman, Montana
In Seattle, when a police officer has to discharge his weapon in the line of duty, the news stations always show footage of the criminal’s crying relatives blaming the “trigger happy cops” and how the “little angel” was just turning his life around. When the inquest comes out with the “Justified” verdict we get to hear about the family’s lawsuit, which usually gets tossed out as soon as it comes before a judge and then more footage of the crying relatives.
I swear, it is like there is a script they follow.
However, in Bozeman, you get something like this:
A Bozeman police officer was justified in fatally shooting a man who had pointed a gun at the officer during a traffic stop, a coroner’s jury here has ruled.
The jury watched the patrol car video of the shooting and listened to two hours of testimony on Thursday before deciding 6-1 that Lt. Rich McLane’s actions were warranted in the shooting of Gary Gottfried on June 2.
The videotape showed that after McLane asked Gottfried for his driver’s license, Gottfried pointed a semiautomatic pistol at McLane’s face and pulled the trigger, which “clicked.”
There was no bullet in the chamber. Gottfried tried to load the handgun and shoot at McLane a second time.
(snip)
Gottfried’s uncle, Ed Gottfried of St. Ignatius, also attended the inquest.“The verdict was pretty clear,” he said. “(Gary) did point a pistol. It was pretty obvious from the video.”
IÂ normally wouldn’t have posted this, giving it a “finally, an honest family member” exclamation when the wife showed it to me, until she told me that the officer, Lt. Rich McLane, is her cousin.
Small world, indeed.