I think this cop is going to have a hard time defending himself because even our gun happy police rarely ever shoot women (of any race). If he shot a man or boy, he might get away with it. However, I just do not see how any cop could get away with shooting an unarmed woman. I think it is pretty hard to defend that. (Sorry, I cannot get the link to work. It will not even let me post the URL without a link. I have never had this problem before on the new hornfans.)
The WAPO managed to write 1200 words on this shooting without ever mentioning the shooter’s name, immigrant status or ethnicity The WAPO's primary concern, as always, was ..... the BACKLASH! (which, of course, never seems to actually happen)
It will be interesting to see if the media's hatred for cops overrides their PC tendency to downplay a man named Mohamed shooting an unarmed, pajama-clad, 40 something, white woman, who called 9-1-1 to report that she thought an assault was going on. Mohamed Noor, the shooter, a Somali-born cop, was reportedly in the passenger seat and shot the woman on the driver side of the squad car. So, he must have leaned across his partner to shoot her and he couldn't have been able to see what was happening clearly. He already had 3 complaints against him in just 2 years on the job.
I can't find many details on the shooting. Is it bad policy, bad cops or a woman who failed to follow police instructions thus frightening the cop into shooting? It's hard to imagine a scenario where the cop keeps his badge. It's much easier to imagine him facing charges, but not many details out there yet.
This story is really strange... "Jessica Damond called police to report a possible crime occurring near her house. Officers arrived, and Noor, at some point, and for an as yet unknown reason, allegedly fired his gun, striking Damond in the abdomen and ultimately killing her. When she was shot, Damond was standing, in her pajamas, talking to an officer on the driver's side of the squad car. Noor, in the passenger's seat, allegedly fired, shooting Damond through the driver's side door, three sources with knowledge of the incident told The Star Tribune. Noor did not activate his body camera – as required by the department in all use-of-force scenarios – and his patrol car’s dashcam did not capture the pivotal moments, either." I also read somewhere else earlier today that the cop's partner appeared 'stunned' by the shooting. Which would lead one to believe nothing life threatening was going on to warrant the cop firing at her across his partner through the driver side door. Who knows what's really going on here. Guess we'll hear soon enough.
It will be over-ridden by the American public's interest in the victim because she is a nice looking white woman and the reaction will be measured versus the same cop shooting a black man.
I'm going to reserve judgment on this as I would on the police shootings of black dudes. We don't have anywhere near enough evidence of what occurred to judge anybody. Right now, it's just a sad situation. However, talk of "backlashes" is stupid. When was the last time, mobs of white people started to randomly attack some minority group in retaliation for, frankly, anything? When BLM is out celebrating and promoting riots, how often does the media frame it as an anti-white "backlash?" Never.
I heard on the radio that Noor's partner, Matthew Harrity, was shocked when Noor pulled his gun and fired. They are claiming, however, that there was a "loud sound" near the squad car just before Noor fired, shooting through the window. But, there's no video record of what happened because they didn't turn on their body cameras or even the dash camera until after the fatal shot was fired. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/1...n-woman-shot-after-cops-heard-loud-sound.html
The backlash that I would see as a possibility is not in riot form but instead in the media over the fact that whites are now interested in a cop killing an innocent person all because she is a pretty white girl. They will contrast that to the apparent indifference or worse of many white people when a black man is shot by a cop. In other words, the prevailing assumption is that many white people automatically assume the black man got what he deserved while this pretty white woman did not. I have to admit my own biases are felt in all of this and I'm trying to be as clean in my knee-jerk reactions as I can be.
I am also trying to reserve judgement but it is very hard to imagine a scenario where this shooting can be justified. If the officer saw her doing something threatening, he should have pulled his weapon and ordered her to hit the ground, show her hands, whatever, not just drill her in the stomach. This may turn out to be the most egregious police shooting that I can remember. I hope not but there sure isn't much info coming out to help the officer's side.
This also dovetails into the profiling arguments as we go through security at the airport. It's died down (I monitor the entire interwebs so I know! ), but people were arguing that it was ridiculous to strip search somebody's white grandma while allowing an obvious male of Arab descent through without any additional safeguards.
As said we don't have all the details and should reserve judgment. But from what we're hearing, there are several key differences in this case that contrast many of the high profile shooting of black men by police. If you look beyond race, first there is a gender difference. This matters as unarmed females are not viewed as the same physical threat to police as unarmed males. But even more so I'm assuming (don't know for sure) she has no criminal record and was actually the one reporting a potential crime to alert police. Plus there was no weapon on the scene, which means the police did not encounter a female with a weapon. Weapons negate gender. In most of the other cases, the victim was either a male (more of a physical threat), some form of resistance was happening, had a lengthy criminal background, OR there was a weapon on the scene. Just making this black vs. white and downplaying all the other differences between this shooting and most other MSM covered incidents would be naive.
Every case should be stand alone. Unfortunately politics rules otherwise. You have more facts than I do about the woman who was shot. I'll go with that. I understand your conclusion.
That's just the details I've read so far. No conclusion made on my end yet. I definitely feel empathy for police with this new layer of threat they face. Has to be scary knowing there's a chance an assailant could ambush and assassinate them without warning or any previous encounter. They were already on alert a crime may be taking place in that area. If some lady ran up to the car frantic and a loud bang is heard, that might be enough to rattle an already antsy officer in this tense climate. I know if I were in their shoes I'd be paranoid as hell. Doesn't take much of a strange loud noise outside my door for me to go get the pistol at home.
one constant in these cases is that the initial news reports turn out to be only a part of the story and things get really complicated as investigations continue. Which is why it is best to reserve judgment until the pros have weighed in.
I will be interested in hearing how gunshots from inside the car did not blow out the eardrums of both officers. Imagine setting off a firecracker inside Willie's guitar while you are in the guitar.
I haven't ruled this out either. Partner was supposedly 'stunned' by the shooting. She was supposedly shot through the car door in the abdomen. One would think a purposeful shot from the passenger seat would be aimed through the window and hit a person standing right outside the door in the upper body or head. Very possible the officer was startled, went to pull his gun, and it fired in the process. In this scenario they wouldn't release that conclusion without a lengthy investigation and much legal consultation. If an accident, the city will be paying through the teeth in a 'wrongful death' settlement. Either way they likely will, but an accident would make the settlement much bigger. They'd def try to cover themselves as much as possible before revealing said conclusion.
I'm noticing a much lower level of "eyewitness accounts" from outraged friends and neighbors, conflicting reports about the crime scene, and general broad speculation about motive. Kinda weird how people don't freak out as much when journalists do their job properly.
It's pretty easy to imagine him getting no punishment other than being fired, too. Unless the gun went off by itself, it wasn't. There are no "accidental" shootings - only justified ones and negligent ones.
I think we need to distinguish between whites in the media and white people in general. Media figures make police shootings front and center any time they can foster a political narrative that can boost ratings, especially when they agree with that narrative. Of course, one of those narratives is the idea that white police officers are actively out to shoot black men and are therefore enemies of the black community, which would justify violent resistance to police officers. Of course, that narrative can't be exploited in this story (because the races are reversed), so instead, we're going to hear about fears of a white backlash, "Islamophobia," and told not to rush to judgment against the Somali officer (which is appropriate in every case but frequently isn't followed). As for white people in general, I don't think they're indifferent to blacks getting shot by police, and I don't think they automatically assume he got what he deserved. I think that's also a political narrative, and since white people are encouraged to be (and actually are) receptive to self-reflection and correction, it's a useful narrative (both for politics and for ratings). What ultimately makes whites unsympathetic to black shooting victims in most of these cases is that they consider the conduct of the shooting victim in rendering judgment, and in the overwhelming majority of the shootings of black men that get into the news, the victim is doing something nefarious that they themselves would never do. He's disobeying the cop. He's smack-talking the cop. He's running from the cop. He's fighting the cop. He's threatening the cop. Once you're doing one of those things, you're going to lose most white people's sympathy, but I think that's going to be true regardless of race. For example, if it's found out that this white woman ran up to the car and started screaming at and threatening the officers or banging on their car, I think the public (including the white public) will be much less sympathetic to her. How do blacks view these cases? I think it depends. Black political commentators on TV basically ignore and dismiss all conduct by the victim if the victim is black. In their heart of hears and when not under political and social pressure, I think most black citizens view them much closer to how white citizens do. Personally, I consider the activity of the victim. (How could anyone not???) However, unlike many white people, I also consider the professionalism of the officer and the relative physical strength of the victim. As a figure of the state, he's charged with respecting the rights of the citizenry, and as a professional, it's his job to keep a cool head and not to escalate the situation, making it worse. For example, many white people would take the side of the cop over the black teenaged girl in McKinney who got tackled and arrested by the cop, because she was smack talking him. I don't take his side - not because she should have been smack talking him. Of course she shouldn't have. However, he was thoroughly unprofessional - stormed onto the scene like an unhinged crackpot, started yelling and swearing at everybody from the get-go, and came after the girl, even though she was dispersing as he had instructed. And of course drawing his gun was crazy and dangerous. He didn't help the situation. He made it MUCH worse, and for that reason, I blame him for the incident. One thing the media hypes up a lot that I don't consider is whether or not the victim was armed. In fact, I roll my eyes when I hear it. Why? Because unless the cop knows or has a reason to know the victim is unarmed, it's not relevant. He basically has to act like everybody's armed, or he could be a dead man.
Stat, at least from a legal standpoint, "accident" and "negligence" often go together. For example, if you rear end somebody on the highway and injure him, we'd call it a "car accident" (because you presumably didn't intend to hit the person), but it's also "negligence," because you failed to do what a person of ordinary prudence would have done under the same or similar circumstances. So it's both an accident and negligent. The same could be true of a shooting. it just depends on the facts.
How do you know that "white people" automatically assume the black man got what he deserved while the pretty white woman did not? Making judgements on an entire race of people is often called bigotry.
Ok ok... I'm not going to fight over this. If you think it's not happening then I can't convince you otherwise.
Facebook posts is one way to identify how some white people feel. Like women, you can't "understand" white folk. You gotta figure them out one at a time.
"... the prevailing assumption is that many white people automatically assume the black man got what he deserved while this pretty white woman did not." If you read my quote I was referring to an assumption using the word "many" and not "all." The assumption to which I refer is by the media and the Left. I also share that assumption to a degree but not by all whites; just "many."
People have gotten way too tied up in the race thing. Brad Austin had a great post in this thread summing up differences between this and other shootings. This case would be exactly the same if a black woman had been shot. It is extremely rare for police to shoot a woman. It is odd. Maybe the officer only saw a dark figure wielding a weapon approaching the vehicle. I do not know yet. We will see what facts come out. I actually agree that our police force is trigger happy and they shoot way too many people. The people they shoot, however, tend to almost always be male, so this is a rare case.
