A Calgunner’s comment: “There’s a possibility that she came blazing out her house wearing a bandoleer of shotgun shells, with two sawed-off Mossbergs in each hand, screaming “I’ve always wanted to bag me some cops…looks like now I got me a chance to do so!”, but I don’t think that happened. I think she was scared and blinded by their spot lights, and because of the good ‘ole federal employee deciding what he wanted to do was more important than what anybody else wanted, an old lady is dead before her time.”
Shortly before sunset, a census worker knocks at the door of an upscale home where a 67-year-old sister of a judge and former D.A. lives. Not the criminal type exactly.
The census worker reported a manwith a gun answered the door… pointed a firearm at her, said they would not answer any questions, then closed the door.
So of course she reports it to the cops, who arrest the guy more than three hours later “on suspicion of assault with a firearm on a peace officer.” Grandma, no doubt freaked out, approached the door with a shotgun and they kill her. Yeah, the officers were in uniform. Yeah, they say she refused orders to put it down and pointed it in a threatening manner. Maybe so, but I’m also thinking there’s a good chance she might not have heard their commands due to age, seen their uniforms in the dark, or just been too slow. Moreover, since when the fuck do census workers count as peace officers?
One of the biggest reasons to promote the awareness of the gun culture in the media is that when it vanishes under the radar, as it has in California, you get government regulators, census workers, and cops who all think that if you have a gun, that’s a bad thing that needs to be Reported to Someone.
Sorry people, this has little to do with the “gun culture”. this is all about the runaway militarism and runaway anti-socialism of the police. I’m here to tell you that after being a cop for 25 years.
What needs to happen is that every time a PD hires a new police chief, the public needs to get involved. That person needs to be rigorously questioned as to his/her use of Special Weapons Teams or any other special-duty team for that matter. Look at the uniforms the street cops are wearing: if they are some sort of military battle dress, or have subdued highlights/insignia, question the Chief candidate as to why that is necessary (it isn’t, and no statistic can support it, other than maybe cost of purchase/maintenance).
If your city government structure does not allow public input into the selection of a Chief, file an initiative, support that initiative with your money, and get the town charter changed so that it does.
Again, this is a Big Government thing, not a “gun culture” thing.
If you’re going to point a gun at someone, shoot.
Disappeared census workers tell no tales.
How do we know the person was actually pointing a gun at the census worker? For all we know, the occupants could’ve just been answering the door with a pistol in hand, and the census worker became frightened due to the gun’s proximity. When wallets become pistols in cops eyes, and semi-auto rifles become full-auto machine guns according to the Media, who knows what really went down.
Riverdog,
As another 25 year cop, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. I linked here from the “View from the Porch” blog, and she recently posted on a similar situation where SWAT accidentally killed a child in the service of a search warrant and another where SWAT killed the two family dogs inside the house in front of a 7 year old doing a dynamic entry in the middle of the night, I made a number of lengthy comments there expressing similar sentiments to yours here.
Dynamic entries and similar tactics that used to be rare have become common tactics of choice, resulting in a LOT of shootings like this one. The further militarization of civilian police can only lead to more of the same. As I said at VFTP, “Hell, if I wanted to line up on a stick, and kick doors with grenades and full-auto, I could have stayed in the Army”.
OK, I was finally able to get the link to the news story to work and it appears a couple of uniform patrol officers were involved, but the gist of what I said before still holds true.
I too wonder if the guy actually pointed his gun at the census worker or was simply holding it. I would have wanted to talk to the census worker first hand to get a good take on the situation and make damn sure she knew to tell the truth without embellishment because the difference in police response to “pointing” and “holding” could result in someone getting hurt or killed.
I also wonder about the charge on the grandson which references poing a gun at a “police officer”. How do you get there from “census worker”?