Dubious Half Dozen Deaths: Michigan Police Citizen Kills for 2014

[XLFD]

Exactly one year before this article is posted, two Michigan State Police troopers entered the house of Bill Marble, (pictured to the left) where his wife had made two drunken phone calls to 9-1-1 to check whether her phone was working after a night of drinking.  Without announcing who they were, they entered the back of the Marble's house after Bill's wife answered the door just a little before midnight. 

One of the troopers, James Luttrull, apparently thinks that a homeowner coming to the door with added security when someone else comes to your door uninvited and with their own gun brandished in the middle of a snow storm is a reason to kill them without any communication.  If Luttrull had done the same thing without having a badge, the charge of murder would not only be justified, but hard to argue with.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the shooting, not counting the screaming of Nancy Marble as she sees her husband killed in front of her eyes, or the seeming indifference the shooter has to the plight of the person he has just shot, is the image of Nancy Marble being led out in handcuffs and being manhandled less than twenty minutes after the shooting, on her way to be repeatedly interrogated by the police for a crime she was a victim and witness of.  In the picture below from Luttrull's dashcam, she is actively being shoved and corralled by some unknown officer as if she was some common criminal. 

Ironically, the perpetrator of the homicide committed that night stayed at the scene for awhile without anyone asking him about what transpired, having him turn over the weapon involved, or treating him as if he may have done something wrong.  After all, they probably considered him more of a victim than the dead guy lying on the ground untended for awhile and the wife whose combined actions somehow (in their minds) led to the justified death of Marble.  Or at least that's how the official story would turn out to be, generated by the investigation led by Luttrull's fellow troopers.  See more here.

But Marble's questionable death at the hands of law enforcement is not an isolated event.  Last year throughout the nation, over a thousand people were killed by police.  Many of these were criminals that posed an actual threat and obviously the death was justified by the circumstances.  But many, like the Marble situation, were questionable at best.  The homicide of Bill Marble by the MSP was one of six such killings by police in Michigan that have sparked controversy about whether the use of deadly force was warranted. 

Everyone wants police officers to be able to be able to go home at the end of the day, but it is as important that they do not unjustly kill those they are supposed to protect and serve, or go against their common sense and training in encounters.  Here is a brief synopsis of the other five deaths by cops in Michigan during 2014 and some links for further research, courtesy of the statistically minded site http://www.killedbypolice.net/.  Several other deaths have occurred to Michigan residents by police in 2014 that appear to be justified by the circumstances as reported and are not included here.

1)  January 16, 2014:  Bernard Adams was shot two days after Marble in Roscommon County, the Ludington Torch reported.  The news sources concerning the event agree that Adams had threatened two others with a gun earlier, but had left the building.  Adams walked out on his porch with his gun and was shot by the police surrounding the house.  Sources differ on whether he was just holding the gun, or wielding it with any intent, but lethal force was used at 4:00 AM by the local SWAT squad. 

None of the findings were ever publicly disclosed of this investigation, but one has to ask whether de-escalation methods could have been employed or non-lethal force utilized on this 75 year old veteran.  The only thing to be said about the situation after January came in August from some poster named Spockon who listed no source for his statements but talks like he knows what happened:

2)  January 29, 2014:  Michigan's "I can't breathe" case, happened in the Northland Mall in Southfield.  McKenzie Cochrane, pictured left, was acting suspiciously according to one of the merchants in the mall, and so they contacted mall security.  They arrived, confronted Cochrane, and dramatically escalated the situation into a homicide.

News reports are not clear on what upped the action, even though security cams caught most of the event's beginnings and mall patrons provided their own recorded footage after Cochrane was pepper sprayed and brought to the ground by three officers.

The three burly security officers then got on top of Cochrane while he said repeatedly that he couldn't breathe, with the officer reportedly saying:  "If you can talk you can breathe."  Just like in the New York choking incident, the man was found to be asphyxiated.  In September, the prosecutor decided he would not press charges against any of the officers.

  

Whereas, Southfield Police or any other police were not involved, the civil lawsuit response from the security company blamed the SPD for not administering any first aid when they responded to the scene.  Also, the arming of the security officers with the pepper spray and acting with the authority of police officers allows this episode to be included herein and in the Killed by Police roster.

3)  July 15, 2014:  Timothy Mitchell led police through a chase in Munising up on the shores of lake Superior, until his car left the road.  The first arriving officer to his crash advanced toward him with a drawn gun, allegedly instructing Mitchell to get on the ground.  Mitchell advanced towards the officer, after the officer backpedaled a couple of steps he fatally shot Mitchell.  It registered on the dashcam:

In August, the prosecutor said he would not press charges, believing the officer to be actin in self-defense.  Mitchell's parents who believe it was murder hired Jeffrey Fieger for a civil suit who said:  "This is 100 times worse than anything that's been alleged in Ferguson. This is an unarmed man, who is clearly unarmed, who is simply walking toward a police officer, who is gunned down in cold blood."   Hard to argue with that, unless we want to make it a crime to walk towards a police officer.

4)  November 10, 2014:  Aura Rosser was alleged to have been wielding a knife menacingly when she was shot in her home by Ann Arbor police.  Several questions surround the homicide of this young black mother of three, and many protests have been organized around the area since that shooting questioning the use of lethal force by the AAPD, and the blockading of transparency about the shooting has led to a FOIA lawsuit to get official reports. 

It seems proper to ask whether the officers actually feared for their life from a diminutive young woman, whose boyfriend that called in the domestic disturbance was pretty confused as to why lethal force was used, before he prepared for the upcoming civil suit against the AAPD.

5)  December 8, 2014:  Randall Minier (pictured below) was riding in the backseat of a car in a traffic stop when he presented a threat to the two officers who stopped the driver.  Allegedly, the young Hispanic man had shown the officers his gun to show that he was armed, and was shot.  Driver Tyrell Washington told the Lansing State Journal that Minier was not threatening officers and showed the gun simply to alert them that he had it.  The investigation by the MSP continues where the police claim there is dashcam video, but have not released it publicly yet.

All six shootings are similar in regards that officers seem to have used deadly force in situations that did not seem to call for it, they are all similar in that the homicidal officer(s) never faced any criminal prosecution, and they are all similar in that survivors of the deceased should have excellent bases for federal civil lawsuits against the various Michigan police agencies because the rights of the deceased appear to have been trampled on and shot to death in the encounter. 

[Willy]

Well done X. A large part of police training should involve how to de-escalate the situations they encounter. The police emphasizes training on how to shoot someone but not how to calm a situation. Many times the actions of an officer will increase tensions dramatically. I think a lot of the officers now engaged in police work are doing so because they watched to many episodes of "Cops" when they were at an impressionable age.

[XLFD]

 An update on Aura Rosser, that has the unsurprising result of the officer's homicide of Rosser ruled as justifiable by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor.   As usual, the lack of any sort of recording by the AAPD in a situation that could very easily become ugly by the way it was dispatched is really unexcusable.  The prosecutor's report seems reasonable enough, but I can see it not being believed by reasonable people anyway, simply because all of the evidence to the contrary is dismissed, and there isn't any record thanks to the officers not even being miked. 

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An update on the Minier shooting.  In a move that surprised nobody that is aware of how these things work, the Ingham County prosecutor gave a press conference where he declared that the police officers involved would not be prosecuted for shooting Minier.  Citing the dash cam video, and yet not showing the video, even an edited version, the prosecutor told us that Minier's displaying of the gun in a non-threatening way was enough for the officers to shoot at the backseat passenger, with little regard for the front seat passengers.  Frankly, if you believe the rationale on this one without seeing the video, you probably believe in Cupid and the Easter Bunny too.