cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/176874
Kentucky dispatchers repeatedly told police officers the address of a house they were supposed to raid over an alleged stolen Weed Eater, only for the cops to raid the wrong home and kill the man inside.
But the man who police say admitted to stealing the Weed Eater from a home of a local judge had already been in custody prior to the deadly raid that took place minutes before midnight last month, according to WLEX. That man told police he had stored the stolen Weed Eater at a home at 489 Vanzant Road which is a rural area outside of London city limits.
But London police chose to raid a home at 511 Vanzant Road where they shot and killed Douglas Harless, a 63-year-old white man who had nothing to do with the alleged stolen Weed Eater.
Fuck these cops. 2020 memories getting dim already I guess.
Over and fucking Over:
Police: Create deadly situation for someone else to react to, because despite being empowered to use deadly force, they don’t see the need to worry about any kind of rigor or care in their actions since they work in a system that will back them no matter what.
Someone else: Reacts
Police: Use the situation they created as justification to kill the person.
The system: Shrugs.
Police Union: Giggity.
Remember folks: Police exist to protect property and wealth, not people.
I want those body cams.
Alright, so much wrong here.
- Seems unlikely they had a warrant as they kept requesting the address, despite supposedly having a warrant that always lists an address on it.
- Went to the wrong address anyway, despite the fact it would be listed on the warrant if it exists and dispatch repeating it to them half a dozen times (and 489 and 511 addresses would likely be on different blocks).
- The address in question was outside of their jurisdiction, meaning they have zero right to police there unless they’re in active pursuit.
- They had the theif in custody and were, presumably, just searching for and retrieving the stolen goods, yet this search somehow became a “raid”.
- Broke into an innocent old man’s home at midnight, and murdered him for being armed.
- The stolen good in question was a fucking lawn tool. But it was owned by a judge. I have zero doubt that the escalated response was motivated by an entitled power-tripping judge and a bunch of cops excited to be given the go ahead to bust some shit up.
Someone needs to lose a job for this, and hopefully see jail time too. Such an abuse of power and complete incompetence.
To make it all the more wild, they got this alleged warrant and performed this raid at roughly 12am on Christmas eve as if they were rescuing a kidnapped child or something.
An additional detail is that after killing this man, they went out to the driveway to have a huddle and several minutes later relayed to dispatch that shots had been fired.
The Civil Rights Lawyer did a video on this yesterday.
That judge was David Westerfield.
Regarding point 2, since it’s in a rural area it’s entirely possible that those addresses are neighbors. Numbers get weird outside of the city. Not that it excuses anything.
No clue if it’s like this where this happened, but here in Finland the numbers in rural areas are just “how far your house is from the main road.” So smallroad 42 and smallroad 69 are simply 420 and 690 metres from where smallroad started from mainroad, and can indeed be neighbours.
It’s similar in the US for county roads, or at least in Indiana where I’m from. County Road 100 E is 1 mile east of the road that divides the county vertically (often called Meridian Road) and County Road 350 N is 3.5 miles north of the road that divides the county horizontally (often called Division Road). I also know that in city limits, usually house numbers indicate the block they are on. Any individual block can have 100 addresses. Like one block will have the 300-399 addresses, then the next block will be 400-499 addresses. But I’m not sure how the numbers work in rural areas. I’m not sure if they are divided in blocks similarly or if they also somehow indicate the distance north/south or east/west.
The reason the roads are gridded and numbered like that is to make it easier for emergency services to respond to a given location.
Not even the most berserk military police does this to their own citizens
I mean… Saddam used a firetruck to gas a village so they wouldn’t suspect anything before hand. There’s been some pretty fucked up shit out there.
The “wrong man” bit is just an additional layer of evil really - it’s not as if they could’ve killed the “right man” over a stolen weed eater.
Although true, I noticed this little tidbit in the article.
But the man who police say admitted to stealing the Weed Eater from a home of a local judge
🤔
Which is the real crime.
Not stealing a cheap PoS weedeater.
its stealing from one of the elite.
And thus the jackbooted deathsquad was mobilized.
When the right man was already in custody
stolen weed eater…
meanwhile how many thousands of rape kits sit on the shelf for years before (if ever) being processed?
The rape victims should have been a judge, I guess.
Or a CEO
I’m all for the fucking enormous backlog of rape kits being processed with due speed. But I would prefer the processing be done by scientifically competent forensic professionals, not police officers, especially this crew.
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You know, this sort of thing would be way less likely if cops weren’t armed with guns. Or cops were completely abolished.
Or they were just accountable for their actions like the citizens they are.
It took me a while to figure out weed eater was not a stoner that just had some edibles.
Weed whip, string trimmer, Weedwacker, Whipper Snipper.
Considering how often they keep getting away with it, this is how you order a hit on someone you know no one is going to miss. Wait for the barest semblance of an excuse, and then treat them as a dangerous criminal. This probably isn’t what happened, but this is also why you make sure to punish the people who make this messes and make sure they are never in any position of leadership ever again.
Yup. This tactic is referred to as “Swatting.”
What I’m saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if a suddenly vacant lot wouldn’t suddenly be auctioned off to a pig’s relative in areas with a high predominance of this.
That guy looks terrible! Hopefully they did the proper thing and shot him while he was a sleep? Right? How else can you survive a warm smile and beautiful eyes like that?
Buy I understand. Maybe he screamed back something like “get the fuck out of my house dogs!” Something like that deserves capital punishment. Good thing we all voted for this.
