Righteous Kill from Texas Biker Radio on Vimeo.. Are the rules of engagement more strict for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq than for police officers here at home? Are we more protective of police officers than we are our young troops? Has the use of military weaponry skewed the vision of what a police officer is supposed to be? Nervous over hyped units with killing in mind. Just asking?
Daily Wire) "Supporting" cops must not mean defending them in every situation no matter what. we support them, we don't bow before them. jury's give them leeway, but don't give them carte blanche.
There are limits.
Does this case exceed those limits. Philip Brailsford, a former Mesa, Arizona, police officer, was somehow acquitted this week of murder and manslaughter in the shooting to death of a drunk, unarmed man. Unlike more high profile cases of alleged police brutality, this incident was caught — clearly, in its entirety, from start to finish — on camera. we'll tell you what the footage shows, a very brutal calculated shooting Warning: the footage is very disturbing. Proceed with caution.
At least 5 Police Officers and 1 drunk man.
Brailsford was called to a hotel in Mesa back in January of 2016 on reports that someone had been pointing a rifle out of a window. Daniel Shaver, very drunk at the time, had apparently been messing around with a few pellet guns that he used in his pest control job. Exceedingly stupid behavior on his part, but not deserving of the death penalty. Still, Brailsford and the other responding officers could not have known that they were pellet guns, so it's understandable that they were on edge.
But this is where it gets not-so-understandable. Shaver emerges stumbling out of his hotel room. He's told to get on the ground, and he immediately complies. Shaver attempts to follow every instruction shouted at him, but he has difficulty because the instructions make no sense.
Here's a verbatim transcript of everything Brailsford told Shaver to do, as he pointed his rifle at him and threatened repeatedly to kill him: "lie on the ground," "put both hands on top of your head and interlace your fingers," "take your feet and cross your left foot over your right foot," "keep your feet crossed," "put both hands flat in front of you" (while they're on his head and interlaced?), "push yourself to a kneeling position" (have you ever tried to push yourself up while your arms are extended all the way in front of you?), "put both hands in the air," "crawl towards me" (with his hands in the air?), "stop," "crawl," "keep your legs crossed" (while crawling?), "put your hands in the air," "keep your legs crossed," "crawl" (so he's supposed to crawl again with his hands in the air and his legs crossed). In the midst of this flurry of hysterical, arbitrary commands, as Brailsford continually reminds Shaver that he'll die if he "makes a mistake," Shaver cries and begs for his life.
Then comes the fatal moment. As Shaver crawls, awkwardly and wobbly, trying to keep up with this deadly game of Simon Says, his pants begin to fall down. He reaches to pull them up and Brailsford immediately sprays him with bullets. Shaver followed his ridiculous instructions for five minutes and still wound up dead.
Of course, Brailsford's defense was that Shaver reached for his waistband. Fine. But what was he worried about? That Shaver would pull a rifle from his basketball shorts? And even if he did have a gun, how was he going to pull it out and get off a shot from the crawling position? And what had Shaver done during this interaction to at all suggest that he was a threat? He was emphatically attempting to comply with every command. And why didn't Brailsford just walk over, while the man was laying prostrate on the ground, and cuff him? The officers on the scene had ample opportunity to detain Shaver without firing a shot. Instead they chose to have him dance around like a trained monkey. And the monkey died because he didn't want to dance with his shorts around his ankles.
So, was Brailsford acting like a law enforcement officer concerned with serving and protecting, or was he behaving like a jumpy, angry, incompetent, scared little bully on a power trip? And a man is dead because of it. In fact, the Mesa Police Department seems to agree that Brailsford was bad at his job. They fired him several months ago for "unsatisfactory performance." Part of his unsatisfactory performance is the fact that he scrawled the phrase "you're f*cked" on the dust cover of his service rifle. The jury was not allowed to see that piece of evidence, but it does seem to give us a bit of a window into Brailsford's mindset. When he points his rifle at you, he says you're f*cked. He wasn't lying. Nobody can accuse him of bluffing on that score. However we can accuse him of murdering an innocent man. And still make that accusation, no matter what the jury decided. The video, and common sense, speaks for itself.
What Do You Think?
Respect
Popeye
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