Crusader

From Rodney King to Amadou Diallo to Sean Bell, stories of police over-response continue to fill the news. But the latest shooting, in Cleveland, has many asking if it will ever stop. Mansfield Frazier reports.

The phenomenon is common enough that there’s a name for it: High-Speed Pursuit Syndrome. It’s the “condition” police officers sometimes suffer from during a high-speed chase, when, as an ACLU spokesman once put it, they “get so angry and pumped up, and the adrenaline rush is such that … you see violence visited on suspects at the end of a pursuit.”

Rodney King was a prime example, but it happens all the time, and it rarely makes the national news. Take the Nov. 29 shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in Cleveland: After leading police on a 25-minute chase through city streets, Russell found himself surrounded in a dead-end in East Cleveland. Police have said that they opened fire when Russell tried to run one of them over. That version may eventually be tested in court, but what is undisputed is that 13 officers unloaded a total of 137 bullets into Russell’s 1979 Chevy Malibu, killing both him and Williams.


In an interview with The Daily Beast, Williams’s uncle, Walter Jackson, said that 24 bullets had been removed from her body and the damage to her face and torso was extensive. Williams’s mother, Martha Mae Williams, said, “I’m not going to let them close her casket … They’re going to have to look at what the police did to my child.”


High-speed police pursuits have been under increasing scrutiny in recent years: according to a 2010 FBI report, someone dies every day as a result of a police pursuit, and the majority of those pursuits begin with a stop for a traffic violation. The same report found that innocent bystanders constitute 42 percent of those killed or injured in police pursuits.


The pursuit of Russell and Williams started near the downtown Justice Center, after an officer radioed that he thought shots had just been fired from Russell’s vehicle. The coroner’s office has yet to complete gunshot-residue tests to determine if either of the victims had recently fired a weapon, but no gun or shell casings were found in the victims' car or along the chase route. (Russell’s brother, David Russell Jr., said in a video interview that he’d recently given Russell the vehicle and that it had a defective muffler that could have caused it to backfire.)

The investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation will initially focus on how the pursuit of Russell and Williams played out. On just-released police tapes, the voice of a male senior officer can be heard saying, “No cars have permission to pursue,” followed by a woman’s voice saying, “Fifth District cars, terminate pursuit.” An officer in the pursuit can be heard responding, “Yeah, but this is our patch and we’re going to see what’s going on.”


Under Cleveland police department rules, high-speed pursuits are to be terminated when there exists “sufficient identifying information and high probability of arresting the suspect later.” A dashboard-camera video from one of the vehicles pursuing Russell shows an officer running the plates on the Malibu.


The rules also state that except under special circumstances, no more than two police cruisers are to be involved in a chase. Police union officials are claiming such circumstances existed in this case—specifically, that officers believed they were under fire.


According to a local government official, officers from other jurisdictions were also present at the shooting, but evidently none of them discharged their weapons.



The incident is further complicated by the fact that the victims were both black, and all but one of the officers were white. But Russell also had a history of theft offenses, and on two previous occasions he had fled from police.


Regardless of what happened on that dead-end street, 137 shots is a lot of shots, and like the shootings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, the sheer volume of firepower unleashed on two apparently unarmed people has caused outrage in Cleveland’s minority community. The head of the local NAACP chapter, Hilton Smith, has called for the Department of Justice and the FBI to step into the case.


At a news conference on Dec. 3, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson stated his administration would support the 13 officers, provided they were within “the box”—or departmental rules regarding pursuit and use of deadly force. “But if they went outside the box,” Jackson said, “there will be consequences.”

Police Shoot 137 Times Into Car After Chase, Killing Unarmed Couple - The Daily Beast


Of course you should stop your car when asked to turn over but even if they ran 137 bullets seems like overkill to me (no pun intended).

You kids get off my lawn!

Mardigras9

really pretty simple

Crusader

It sure is. But two wrongs does not one right make.

saintfan

I'm not (necessarily) justifying.

But I understand.

The kid the cop killed on BART out here a couple years ago didn't DESERVE to die.

But I understand.

His two buddies did what they were told and are alive today. He chose to be difficult, to argue, and to fight when they attempted to subdue him. He's dead now.

Cops have families too. Wives. Husbands. Kids. Mothers and Fathers. Just like the rest of us do. They aren't super-human. They have fear too, and they're dealing with the unknown. When a cop says stop, you stop. You don't reach into your jacket. You don't move quickly. You don't take off running because you're on parole. You respect the man or woman who is putting his or her life on the line and you do what you're told. If you have some s'plaining to do, do it in court.

Now, those in New Orleans and in other places across the country are well versed in corrupt cops. I get that too. But you address that through other means. As my grandpa once told me, you don't argue with the man with the gun because he has all the power. You know what else you don't do? You don't lead police through city streets on a high-speed chase where you force them to pin you down. That's just stupid.

STUPID

So yeah, lady, I truly do feel your pain about your daughter. Leave the casket open so that all can see, and while you're at it, hang a sign on it that reads as follows:

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

Because that's the best way to drive that particular point home.

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel...

Crusader

I get what you are saying but 137 bullets? Really? You would've thought the first 50 or so would kill just about anyone but 137? Thats way past self defence.

And for the girl, you don't know she wanted to run from the cops just because the driver wanted to. You might argue that she shouldn't have gotten into the car with him but I never knew getting into a car with a dumbass was punishable by death.

saintfan

Maybe the girl was forcing the driver? Who knows? Maybe they reached under the seat for something? Who knows? If you're a cop do you fire one bullet and then wait to see if you hit the target. If you're a cop and you've just participated in a high speed chase through a city that put innocent people's lives at risk, maybe you give the chasee the benefit of the doubt by putting your own life on the line...again...after the chase? Lets see how much YOU are willing to assume (or not assume) when YOUR life might be on the line.

Once again I'm not justifying necessarily. I'm simply saying it's very easy to take one side of the argument. And the best practice is to respect officers of the law, if not for the sake of the law then at least for the sake of their position and your own willingness to not put them in a position where guesswork is involved.

Again I say:

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel...

Danno

If ammo's free, 137 bullets seems OK to me.

If I pay for my own, I'm thinking 10-15 shots should be enough.

We just had a young Deputy shot to death on a routine call near here. Several of my co-workers knew this young man.

Baldwin County sheriff's deputy killed in shooting identified as Scott Ward | al.com

RIP Scott Ward. You served honorably in Afghanistan and Kuwait with the USAF and USCG. Killed while serving and protecting.



A guy in one of my meetings is an ex-cop who was shot thru the chest running around a corner on what he thought was a girl being harassed but turned out to be a drug deal going bad. He managed to get a shot off and nailed the guy right thru his right eye. DRT.

That kind of stuff may go on pretty reglarly in other areas, but not around here. I have very little problem with what happened.

A bit excessive? Perhaps, but I understand.

I think we have a couple ex-cops that post here. I'd love to hear their take on this and similar events.

Danno

Don't forgetthat there were 13 cops there, so each cop fired approximately 10to 11 shots into the car, and I'm sure all 13 were likely firing at the same time. it probably only takes a few seconds to empty a clip.

Its not like there were 137 shots fired by one cop one after another.

Crusader

Which IMO actually is part of the problem. The aim for the police can never be to kill somebody (unless you are a murderer or terrorist or such) but that is pretty hard to avoid when 13 guys fire at a vehicle at the same time.

But be clear, I'm not saying they were wrong to fire at the suspects but there has got to be better ways to do it than turning into a firing squad.

[offtopic]The police in sweden has started using hollow point bullets, they say it is to lessen the risk of a bullet going trough the target and hitting a bystander but I don't know... One of my inlaws is a police officer and had to fire at a criminal last year and that hollow point destroyed his leg to the point whee they had to cut it off. My inlaw just said that a regular bullet would have done the job just as well. [/offtopic]

You kids get off my lawn!

TheOak

I seem to have an over simplistic point of view... Some may even call it cold..

None the less, stupidity can cost you your life.

You break the law, you run from the cops: THERE IS RISK INVOLVED.

DON'T RUN FROM THE POLICE! If you are innocent, Don't Run; if you are guilty, Don't Run! Had they pulled over when they saw the police lights they would both be alive today.

Where is the concern for the people who could have been killed in 25 minutes of high speed pursuit? In 25 minutes you cover a LOT of road and endanger a lot of innocent lives. I am pretty tired of the criminals being sides with.


If I understand correctly the car is full of bullet holes? Perhaps exiting the vehicle when the police said "exit the vehicle", would have been a good idea. Hind sight I suppose.....