Shooting Marbles for Keepsies

[XLFD]

Around midnight, a team of police arrives at a private residence, meeting and talking to a woman at the door.  The police enter and were met in the hallway by an elderly man, wielding a gun pointed at them and stumbling towards them.  The old man gets shot by one of the officers, while never getting off a shot himself.  After the shooting, a microphone on the responding officer has the police telling him to repeatedly "drop the gun" after the man was already shot.  The shooter is not reprimanded in any way.  The corpse was a respected professional who lived his whole life without any problem with the law, respected and active in his community the whole time.

 

Does this sound like the recent shooting of William Marble by Trooper Luttrull of the Michigan State Police right here in Ludington?  Very much so, but this is actually the tale of another unfortunate gentleman in California who seems to have been killed in a manner which defies the original claims of the police in their statements and reports, which the police kept from the public for over half of a year.  Maybe, this is more like the Marble shooting than we thought-- I have asked for the recording of the Marble incident which was provided to the prosecutor over a month ago, asked to pay over $100 for it, paid the money over two weeks ago, and have still not received it.  Did the Michigan State Police use deadly force on Bill Marble unjustly?  Their actions indicate guilt thus far.  The California case has the police officer's version of events look very shaky. 

 

 

Police Shoot, Kill 80-Year-Old Man In His Own Bed, Don't Find the Drugs They Were Looking For

 

 

 

In the early morning hours of June 27, 2013, a team of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies pulled up to the home of Eugene Mallory, an 80-year-old retired engineer living in the rural outskirts of Los Angeles county with his wife Tonya Pate and stepson Adrian Lamos. 

The deputies crashed through the front gate and began executing a search warrant for methamphetamine on the property. Detective Patrick Hobbs, a self-described narcotics expert who claimed he "smelled the strong odor of chemicals" downwind from the house after being tipped off to illegal activity from an anonymous informant, spearheaded the investigation.

The deputies announced their presence, and Pate emerged from the trailer where she'd been sleeping to escape the sweltering summer heat of the California desert. Lamos and a couple of friends emerged from another trailer, and a handyman tinkering with a car on the property also gave himself up without resistance. But Mallory, who preferred to sleep in the house, was nowhere to be seen.

Deputies approached the house, and what happened next is where things get murky. The deputies said they announced their presence upon entering and were met in the hallway by the 80-year-old man, wielding a gun and stumbling towards them. The deputies later changed the story when the massive bloodstains on Mallory's mattress indicated to investigators that he'd most likely been in bed at the time of the shooting. Investigators also found that an audio recording of the incident revealed a discrepancy in the deputies' original narrative:

Before listening to the audio recording, [Sgt. John] Bones believed that he told Mallory to "Drop the gun" prior to the shooting. The recording revealed, however, that his commands to "Drop the gun" occurred immediately after the shooting.

When it was all over, Eugene Mallory died of six gunshot wounds from Sgt. John Bones' MP-5 9mm submachine gun. When a coroner arrived, he found the loaded .22 caliber pistol the two deputies claimed Mallory had pointed at them on the bedside table. 

Mallory had not fired a single shot. The raid turned up no evidence of methamphetamine on the property.

To find out more about this case, including details about what the police did find, watch the above video, featuring Mallory's widow Tonya Pate. Pate has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, an agency plagued by prison abuse scandals, questionable hiring practices, and allegations of racial profiling and harassment in recent years. 

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department declined multiple requests to comment on this story.

http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/02/13/police-shoot-kill-80-year-old

[XLFD]

The frequency of these stories is alarming, and it is more a military mindset that has crept in rather than military personnel, in that the police have become more like a band of brothers united against a common enemy (their actual bosses that pay the taxes).  Over 50 cops involved in this one, with one bogus story.

[Willy]

Another reason that police should be video recording their interactions with the public. If those officers in California had cameras attached we wouldn't  have had a different story coming out of their mouths as to what really happened.

[AQUAMAN]

Willy, I'm going to change your statement up for correction, with all due respect: "another reason that police don't want nor endorse video recording of their interactions with the public all too often, and when they do and things don't match, the video somehow gets lost or erased". I might also add: "another reason police jump on citizens with both feet and guns pulled for daring to video tape them in their duties". Another sad story of LE gone wild and truly wrong.

[XLFD]

The trial of Eric Knysz, which begins jury selection tomorrow, is a case where in-car audio and video would have likely been useful in the shooting death of the MSP trooper, Paul Butterfield in nailing the conviction on Knysz. 

But the absence of an in-car camera on Butterfield's car gives the defense some wriggle room.  It opens up a trio of questions that immediately come to mind:  1) Why didn't Tpr. Butterfield have a camera and mike, or if he did, why is it being suppressed?   2)  What actually was the chain of events, and can we believe Sara Knysz's version being that it was part of a plea deal?   3)  Why was Knysz stopped in the first place (911 records have no reason)? 

A good attorney, which I don't think Knysz currently has, would be able to use these to generate some reasonable doubt among jurors about the official narrative.  Probably not enough to gain his freedom, but a narrative that would not be taken seriously if footage was available that corroborated the official story. 

[XLFD]

This was just posted on Photography is Not a Crime tonight, showing why some police officers (the bad ones) don't like video because it confuses their 'facts' that they throw in their police reports.  A New York City cop beat up and arrested a man for video recording him inside a subway station from 30 feet away Saturday night, walking up to him and getting in his face all while claiming the man was invading his personal space.

Officer Rojas, shield number 23404, then deleted the video, never mentioning the camera once in his arrest report, claiming the man had physically interfered with another arrest he was making.

But after spending 24 hours in jail, Shawn Randall Thomas managed to recover the deleted footage, proving that Rojas is not only a liar, but a bullying thug as well.

The incident began when Thomas was video recording another NYPD cop named Dai, who didn’t mind being recorded, detaining a man for jumping the turnstile. The video runs for more than four minutes before Rojas arrives on the scene. Four long minutes of uneventful footage but proving that everything was under control until Rojas arrived.

At 5:00 into the video, Rojas pulls out his iPhone and begins recording Thomas, walking up to him and sticking the phone directly in front of Thomas’ lens, doing this wordlessly for more than 30 seconds.

“You’re violating my personal space,” Thomas tells him.

“You’re violating my personal space too,” Rojas responds.

“What’s your name and badge number?” Thomas asks.

“What’s your name?”

The situation remains tense for several minutes with Rojas not backing down, threatening to arrest him while Thomas stands up for his rights, telling him to “back the fuck off.”

Eventually, Rojas orders him out of the train station before grabbing his arm, twisting it behind him and opening the camera’s battery compartment, removing the batteries and pocketing them.

After walking up two flights of stairs and emerging onto the street above, Rojas told him to leave, knowing that Thomas would no longer be able to record without batteries.

But Thomas pulled out his Blackberry and attempted to turn it on to document how he had just been kicked out for video recording.

“He then knocked the phone out of my hand and slams me to the ground,” Thomas said. “Then he grabbed the back of my head and slammed it into the pavement.”

Thomas began yelling for bystanders to record, which prompted at least one man to record Rojas with his knees on Thomas’ back.

By the time Thomas had been released from jail, the man had tracked him down through Facebook and had sent him the video.

Thomas also downloaded a free program called Recuva, which allowed him to recover the footage in minutes.

But he is still facing charges of resisting arrest, trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstructing government, which should be enough to criminally charge Rojas considering another NYPD cop was charged with falsifying records last year in the arrest of a New York Times photographer.

[wildfire]

So do these officers get paid vacation out of these lieing deals, This is wrong n this will never bring her husband back, these officers aren't getting the right kind of training, or maybe they aren't getting trained at all who knows?

[XLFD]

When you develop raids like this with 50 plus law officers, trained or not, all with loaded pistols and hand cannons at the ready you can expect one to occasionally 'jump the gun' and shoot an innocent person or their own fellow officers.  The way Prosecutor Spiniola framed the investigation which was already framed by the MSP, I am convinced of a cover up on Bill Marble's slaying. 

Plus I still am waiting on that CD I spent over a hundred dollars on; talked with them today, but they are claiming ignorance at this point about it.  They claimed ignorance about E-mails to their FOIA Coordinators too.  Dipsticks-- I (and the NSA) can show you proof they were sent to you.

[XLFD]

Another innocent shot at the door by antsy police officers serving a warrant on his dad.  The officer maintains he had a gun, eyewitnesses say he had a Wii controller in his hand, and opened the door after asking who was at it, and was summarily executed. 

http://opnateye.com/?p=1001

[Willy]

It's obvious the officer did not have adequate training. If we are to believe her story, how did the officer have   time to draw her weapon and fire without the kid getting the first shot unless she knocked on the door with her weapon drawn and ready to fire. Tragic story.

[XLFD]

I would submit that she may be overtrained by her department, in that she may have SERT, SWAT, shooter simulations (like Art Dean and Sherman Jackson adore) and other paramilitary tactical training, where the assumption is that your life is always in danger and every non-badged individual is a threat to your safety.  The mindset an officer can have drilled into their psyche is similar to as what a soldier is trained in the army to do in enemy territory.  That's dangerous.

[AQUAMAN]

That's just the point guys, the Public is NOT the ENEMY! How does a simple probation violation suspect warrant the officer knocking on the door with a gun pulled and ready to fire? Poor LE officer that deserves firing immediately, and charges of 2nd degree murder being filed. But will they rightfully charge her? Or just sweep this episode under the rug as an accident?

[Willy]

The probation issue is irrelevant. The officer could  have been at the residence just checking out neighborhood complaints or for any number of reasons.