Headline is kind of funny, but I wanted to know what he shot at
In body cam footage shared across social media, the officer was seen jumping to the ground and shouted “shots fired” after the acorn strikes the roof of his car. He then turned and emptied every bullet from his gun, each aimed squarely at his squad car.
Funny again...
While Hernandez fired on the car, Marquis Jackson, who was accused of stealing his girlfriend’s car, was in the back of the police cruiser. Officers had searched, handcuffed and loaded the accused into the back of the police car and, despite being cuffed, it was Jackson that the officer thought was shooting at him.
Nope, he was trying to kill someone handcuffed in the back of his squad car and had already been searched for weapons.
Cop should at least be facing reckless endangerment, if not attempted murder.
He also yelled "I'm hit" while unloading on his own vehicle.
Same as when they think they're doing on fentanyl...
After hearing the sound of the acorn, the deputy reported that he also felt a “tingliness” all along the side of his body. He then said his “legs just give out” and he fell to the ground, assuming that he had been seriously injured by something.
Because of this, the video also showed Hernandez complaining about feeling “weird” and shouting to his colleague that he’s been hit. It’s all very dramatic.
Cops are constantly terrified because of their training, so they panic and mistake a panic attack for something else.
Being a cop sucks so much (because of their own leadership and culture) that good qualified people do t want to be a cop. So we end up with these fragile snowflakes that shouldn't be allowed to carry at all. Let alone be a cop
These idiots are so convinced that merely touching fentanyl will make them collapse that it actually happens to them.
If fentanyl was that strong, people would buy one bag and it would last for like a year.
Just so we're clear, those cops were tested after that ordeal and had absolutely zero fentanyl in their system.
And the tingling he felt was just piss running down his leg.
Imagine a drug you only had to touch. You'd never run out!
What? I always ran out of LSD and all you have to do is touch it because it's skin permeable.
True, but fentanyl is generally not. They do make fentanyl patches, but casual exposure, like a cop touching a tiny bit of fentanyl, will not result in fentanyl being absorbed.
I know this, but I was responding to the idea that a drug you could touch and get high from would somehow last forever.
Please don't take away my dream of endless LSD.
Get yourself a degree in chemistry and you'll be able to make a lifetime supply.
I know. I just felt clarification was necessary for people who don't understand the difference.
That's just because you don't know how to make it, and they are selling it to you a few drops at a time. I believe the ingredients are actually pretty cheap. Chemistry students make it.
Sell a man some LSD and he trips for a day. Teach a man to make LSD and he trips for a lifetime!
Yeah, right. I don't believe you. HOW would they do that? What steps could they possibly take!? What ingredients would they need and where would they even get them!?
We need details, dammit.
More seriously, a friend of mine was a chem student, and he says pretty much every one of his classmates knows how to run off 2 liters of LSD. Which should be enough to send every horse on the planet straight to the moon.
Maybe LSA, but probably not LSD.
Synthesizing the drug isn't the issue, as long as you have the right equipment and knowledge. The difficult part is getting the correct precursor chemicals.
I mean, step one: acquire the precursors. Step two: take organic chemistry 1; then organic chemistry 2; perhaps something strange like p chem, or environmental chem or chemical instrumentation; ask the professor between classes how to make it; take another class like drug discovery and design, or advanced organic chemistry....
Step three: make the good stuff.
I am not recommending that anyone do this but you don't need anything more advanced than Orgo 2. The issue isn't making the compound, at least once you have the precursors, it's ensuring that it's not contaminated with other products in a way that harms or kills you. It's not enough to get any yield, you need a safe yield.
That was the joke. You technically don't even need the ochems if you just ask the professor like I said. We're trying to lead kids down the dark road of the chemistry cult.
I took Advanced Orgo for fun so I'm with you.
Only If it’s wet
Not quite. Drugs that can be absorbed through the skin, well, they get absorbed.
It's not an infinite drugs glitch, just like powdered Fentanyl can't be absorbed through the skin.
Yeah... I am sure there are some idiots who believe in the horrors of fentanyl.
The reality is it is a catch all to excuse all the other drugs in their systems. If someone notices a cop is clearly amped up on amphetamines then the reality is that someone in the tri-state area had a single particle of fentanyl on them and THAT is why the cop who just killed four people is alternating between growling and crying while looking even sweatier than alex jones.
Does fentanyl amp you up? I would think it would make you super mellow.
Fentanyl does whatever you want it to baby. Just so long as that involves beating your wife and kids when there isn't a black kid nearby.
Fentanyl itself is an opiod so it is a downer. But fentanyl, as reported by the media and embraced by cops, is a magic wonderdrug where a single particle in a hundred mile radius will instantly infect every cop through enough PPE that they could survive a zombie infestation and make them do whatever crazy shit they got caught doing.
good people get fired as cops because they hesitate to shoot unarmed people and won't lie for officers doing questionable things.
My goodness what a fucking snowflake. Maybe you shouldn't be in the profession if you're "scared shitless" 99% of the time. But we all know that's a cover for them. They love killing people.
...fragile snowflakes that shouldn't be allowed to carry at all.
Yeah but deputy tacticool has holo sights. Not wasted on him at all.
Poor Durango.
Training? What training?
"It hit my vest" and "I feel weird". Them be signs that his fat ass has coronary artery disease. Fucking Okaloosa County. Good riddance. Don't miss it.
Is he trying to use the South Park ‘He’s coming right for us’ defense?
Aren't they all?
Even if he wasn't trying to kill Marquis Jackson, he clearly didn't care if he killed him.
You don't mag dump like that if you don't care. He very much was trying to kill him.
You do if you're an idiot and a coward.
Would just be an idiot and a coward trying to kill a man.
I am not saying he definitely wasn't trying to kill Mr. Jackson intentionally. I'm saying that the other possibility is that he's a stupid coward that empties his clip at his own car because he's terrified and doesn't think about and/or care that there's a person in his car.
Was he intending to kill Mr. Jackson? Maybe. That's definitely not an unlikely possibility. But I think stupid cowardice where the motive wasn't murder is also not unlikely because cops are stupid cowards.
I got ya. I'm agreeing that he's a coward and an idiot, but disagreeing that he might not have been trying to murder a guy. He might not have believed it was murder, because of the idiot part...but the video convinced me he was intentionally trying to kill the unarmed man in the back of his car.
... who's handcuffed in your backseat.
The utter stupidity of cops astounds me daily. One would think I'd be used to it now, and yet ...
this is their training. its SOP to do exactly this.
So they've been trained to murder and endanger the public?
Pretty much. Did he have a clean backdrop? Nah. He was in a fucking neighborhood
At an active threat, sure. When the dude's been searched, handcuffed, and trapped in the back of a car...there's some personal responsibility, imo.
I deal with PTSD vets every day so I understand the snap buuuuut.... No one else gets to get away with a slap on the wrist because of their mental illness so fuckem
Yeah. The "having PTSD" part isn't what should be punished, it's the "and yet still carrying a gun while putting yourself in a position to have your PTSD triggered like this" part that's egregious.
Well, Philip Brailsford, the murderer who murdered Daniel Shaver, claimed PTSD for murdering Daniel so he could draw on his pension and retire early. Because he murdered someone and it hurt his fee-fees.
Fuck that.
Indeed fuck that, but I don't see what it has to do with what I said.
I was making the point that even the “has PTSD” is egregious when it comes to cops.
I mean. Being in combat and being a cop are two different things.
Maybe this guy was in a shootout and has PTSD, maybe this is the only time he's ever fired on duty and he's just a coward who panicked.
During the course of the investigation into the shooting, deputy Herandez resigned from the force.
Oh wow. Good for him. I'm honestly surprised.
Many times cops retire to avoid being investigated and move to a different department.
Yeah at this point we should assume the worst until proven otherwise.
And most of us would still wait for an actual target in a built up area.
No where in the article does it mention PTSD.
See I'm like, I don't even think you could qualify most of the things you would do to this guy as being punishment. Preventing this guy from being a cop forever (pretty unlikely, but could happen), isn't really a punishment. If he's discharging his firearm into his own car, he's obviously just unfit to be an officer and that's a pretty clear safety concern. If you sent him to prison, that might be more of a "punishment", but that's also, you know, what cops do basically their whole careers, is send people to prison, and we still have all the same problems with the prison system as we've always had, so, you know, I'm like. I dunno. That doesn't seem like a clear "win", to me, both in terms of improving society and in terms of helping him out if he's mentally ill which, you know, seems to clearly be the case, here.
You could also maybe think, hey, this guy goes to an asylum or something for mental illness, but that kind of has the same problems as sending someone to prison, it's not usually a helpful system.
Cop should at least be facing reckless endangerment, if not attempted murder.
The review board found his conduct was not reasonable; so, it'll be up to the prosecutor (which I'm sure in FL is an office eager to go after cops). The other officer, who began shooting after the officer wearing the bodycam in the OP began shooting, was found to have acted reasonably.
Essentially, you can't think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn't make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
Nah, it kind of makes sense for the second guy.
Remember, he's not getting triggered by the acorn, he's reacting to his coworker yelling that they've been shot and actual gunfire. That's a justified reason to pull out your weapon IMO
Granted, he should've tried to take control of the situation and de-escalate so he could "save" his panicked coworker, but that kind of calmness "under fire" would take actual training
It does mean that the assisting officers aren't required to actually confirm their target, though.
What if this was real. If a 3rd party shot at them. 1st officer fires, blindly assuming it's the perp in cuffs in the car. 2nd cop shoots and kills perp in car because he saw that's what his partner was shooting at. When, in this hypothetical scenario, it was really a 3rd party that wasn't identified yet, which would be the only plausible source of a gun shot anyway since the perp was already searched and cuffed.
That doesn't make sense to me, but that's how they're trained. Ride or die with their comrads. Once the first shot is fired, it's shoot first and ask questions later for all additional officers.
That's not good policy. That's not good for civilians.
It's not a great policy, but it's a decision that, you know, has ups and downs either way. On one hand, if you have a particularly sharp officer who can peep out someone shooting at them, locate where that person is, and then fire back and understand exactly what they're shooting at. It would be better if that officer was able to also get their partner to follow their instructions, rather than relying on their partner, who, you know, being part of the police, might not be a sharp, and might not really be able to understand what's going on or what to do without external instruction.
That's if you have it as a kind of top down encompassing training thing, but that's really kind of the stupidest way to handle it. It's why the military has rank, and specialists, and roles, you can have a more clear chain of command where the more capable can, at least theoretically, rise to the top and be able to give those instructions. But then, none of this really prevents the person above you snapping randomly, and deciding to shoot a detained and searched person because of an acorn. Of all of what I've said, cops have a very mild amount of ranks and shit, too, but they're obviously subject to much less training, have more uniform ranks, and, like the military, they're very insular and have very little faith in anything but themselves. So more often than not they're just going to all collectively default to kind of whatever will keep them the "safest", which is going to be killing everyone around them that twitches kind of weird. Internal to the police, the life of every cop is worth infinitely more than the life of a criminal, and even the life of your average civilian, or, better put in their terms, potential criminal. When realistically it should be the opposite, but yeah.
I dunno, I kind of think sometimes that, I dunno if it's just a lack of news reaching over here from other countries, but I never hear about police brutality from other countries nearly as much. Maybe in britain, and france, and places where I can kind of think, oh, yeah, the power structure above them is kind of fucked up, america style, but maybe a little less so. But, so, I kind of wonder if police corruption is really it's own internal thing, and we should just abolish the police, like everyone says, or if it's really just every overarching power structure that's actually fucked up, and if we were like, finland, everything would be fine, cause I've not really heard a lot about the police of finland being super corrupt. Basically, I wonder if we target the symptom, and not the problem, because the police are obviously the slammer, you know, they're the pog which gets thrown by the long arm of history to flip everything over, they're the direct force that anyone who's doing any political action, or anyone who's a victim of the government, they're who they interface with. But is that because they're intrinsically a problematic institution, or is that because they're just the face, just the tool? I dunno. I find myself wondering that, in the face of, you know, so much evidence that the police is full of like, fucking morons.
Essentially, you can’t think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
IIRC Sympathetic Fire seems to be insta-forgiveness (by other police and the courts) whenever it comes up.
As one example, I think it played a role in the Daniel Shaver case, but it's been a long time since I read all those details and I really don't want to dive into that pool of anger and sadness again to verify.
Keep in mind, this is Florida. It is perfectly legal to murder anybody if you can prove that you felt threatened.
If a random loud bang from an acorn falling nearby is enough to get someone to behave like this, they really should not be walking around with a gun. This is completely insane and unhinged behavior.
theres no reason for most officers to be lethally armed their entire shift.
they are trained the exact opposite; be afraid of everything and empty the clip. ask questions later.
this cop behaved as he was trained
The good news is, the guy did resign. So I guess he agrees.
Or he resigned to just join a police force one county over.
Coming soon to a police department near you!
or a school 'safety officer'
Fun fact: ‘police officer’ isn’t even in the top 10 most dangerous professions in the US. It’s solidly beat by things like garbage collector, delivery driver, maintenance worker, and pilot. None of those professions typically carry weapons on the job.
Lots of police officers were former bullies with an inferiority complex. Some are wusses who only feel powerful because they’re carrying a deadly weapon.
Another fun fact: police in several other western countries don’t carry deadly weapons and yet are able to do their jobs just fine.
American police are trained to think everything and everyone is against them, through programs like David Grossman’s Killology course. Weird how a program designed to teach recruits to kill without empathy would result in people killing without empathy.
Elsewhere, police are learning de-escalation tactics, but police in the US are learning escalation.
It’s absurd, and leads to scared, trigger-happy morons shooting at acorns.
e: missed a word
What was he shooting at? This man just blindly ptied his gun at something or someone he couldnt see!
He was shooting at the unarmed suspect cuffed and trapped in the back of the police car.
Read the story.
From the body cam footage it was quite a soft bang
I want to stress that I am in no-way attempting to excuse this cop, nor am I suggesting that there is any reasonable way to confuse the sound of an acorn with the sound of a gunshot. Even if there were, there is no justification for blindly "returning fire" in the general direction of the noise. That is so batshit crazy a scenario that it is completely irredeemable. This cop needs to be in prison.
That being said, I do want to comment on the capabilities of recording and playback. They completely lack the dynamic range necessary to make any sort of reasonable judgment on the intensity of the "bang". What we hear in the video and what the officer heard in real life are two completely different things.
I have heard black walnuts (golf ball to tennis ball sized outer shell) hitting vehicles at close range. While they certainly can't be reasonably confused with a gunshot, they are startlingly loud.
Again, I want to stress: completely unreasonable that an acorn hitting the cruiser could be confused for a gunshot, and criminally stupid to fire in the general direction of the noise.
I appreciate your dedication to science (I'm still going to call you a nerd)
You can call me anything you want, so long as it's not an apologist for this criminal cop.
In that case I’m going to call you Shirley
Kinda sounds like PTSD or anxiety or something.
That doesn't make it ok. Just ml saying police need more support and supervision.
And yet the most surprising thing about the story is that the bodycam footage was released, smh
Likely to protect the cop/department too, since he shot at his own car that already had a disarmed, detained suspect inside. He very nearly killed someone that was already a non-threat. If the body cam footage got out it might make people think their cops are negligent or improperly trained! /ghasp
It's like a business. If the liability rests with their officer and they are afraid of a lawsuit causing significant political blowback they are going to take action against the officer to minimize their liability. Hearing about an officer doing something like this and then leaving the force means there is nothing left for them to take action for.
If he didn't resign, perhaps it would be slightly harder for the chief a town over to hire the guy, but since he resigned he may have minimal marks on his record.
I'd bet a thousand bucks this guy gets another job as a cop within 1yr though.
I'd bet a thousand bucks this guy gets another job as a cop within 1yr though.
I'd bet a thousand bucks I know which video they're going to be watching in the morning briefing on his first day.
Of all the stupid that exists in Florida, they actually have pretty powerful open records laws.
It's actually one of the reasons Florida has the "Florida Man" reputation. We know more about what's happening there.
More like that it was on in the first place.
Not even close. The most surprising thing is that the cop resigned, by far.
He resigned when he knew he was going to be fired. Probably easier to look for a job in another department before the dust settles.
And the leading cause of injury/fatality for police officers by far: vehicle accidents. Not being shot at.
Also COVID for a couple of years there as they refused to wear masks in most cases.
Bullies are always cowards.
That's why they form a gang, because the only way they can feel strong is if they outnumber you.
That's why it takes fifteen fucking cops to "deal with" a single homeless person in a public park who isn't bothering anybody.
If they do that during the day, with enough people around, people will whip out their phones to record the cops and the cops will give up and leave and stop harassing.
If they do it during the evening, and there's not very many people around, and only one person whips out their phone.... The cops will arrest the person who whipped out their phone, too, because they outnumber them.
Yep, and this is just tracking mortality. You would think, oh hey maybe they look better if you included things like workplace violence......nope. Pretty much 80% of work place violence happens to healthcare workers and social workers.
So pretty much every healthcare worker has experienced more violence in their work than police officers. I've had patients take swings at me in my hospital, it's a fairly natural response to being in pain, on drugs, or disoriented. But just because your occupation has the potential to introduce you to a violent environment, that doesn't justify your own participation in it.
I’m a very nonviolent and nonconfrontational person, but I once had a boil in a sensitive spot lanced without adequate pain control, and it took all my self control to not FIGHT it. Stone cold sober, knowing it needed to be done, my body physically wanted to fight the doctor to make it stop. It’s nuts to expect someone who’s not completely there for whatever reason to be completely in control of that instinct, but it’s what cops expect people to do.
Cops will taser or shoot you before you can take a swing at them. Healthcare workers and delivery drivers don't get tasers and guns.
Looking forward to my next traffic stop so I can mention that crossing guards have a more dangerous job than cops 🫡
Small engine mechanics
Fatal injury rate: 15 per 100,000 workers
Total deaths (2018): 8
Salary: $37,840
Most common fatal accidents: Transportation incidents, violence and other injuries by persons or animals
What the absolute fuck?
Crossing guards being on a list with derrick operators and power linemen is a disturbing commentary on our road infrastructure priorities.
Virtually every main cause of death on this list is falling or getting struck by a vehicle.
Yes. A lot of them also involve being killed by the machines they use too. Safety measures can only go so far.
Obtaining a barber license means that you have completed a minimum of 1,250 hours of instruction in barbering education within a period of at least 9 months or completed 1,250 hours of training.
It takes 1,250 to 2,000 hours to be a cosmologist.
Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training, and in Finland, police education takes three years to complete.
Police in the USA get 750 hours.
USA intentionally dumbs down its people.
Exactly. The PD will also reject applicants if they are too smart.
When I first heard about it, I could not believe it. Fair enough there is shortages of police so they want recruitment process to hasten. But this is at the expense of public safety as there are too many trigger-happy police. Which is counter to "protect and serve" motto!
Plus, it's one of the few jobs that will disqualify you for being too smart.
cosmologist
uh... this is why we didn't approve of the word "cosmetology". It takes more than 2000h to be a publishing cosmologist/astronomer.
This is unironically the most embarrassing video I have seen in my entire life. I am not exaggerating at all. I would kill myself if there were footage of me acting like this. Dude gets scared by an acorn, does a Max-Payne-backwards-dive, unloads 20 roads into his own car (luckily not murdering the unarmed guy in the back of it), does some horrid Arnold-Schwarzenegger impression while crawling over the floor bawling his eyes out, and then forces an armed stand-off with literally no one. Actually absolutely insane, the most unhinged behaviour I have ever had the pleasure to witness.
He quit afterward. Probably because he was teased mercilessly by other police officers. If only we could harness peer pressure to reduce police shootings.
Imagine doing this and just being able to quit your job, meanwhile a citizen would be arrested and charged with a felony.
This sounds like a scene out of super troopers that would have been cut for being too unbelievable.
"save me Tom Cruise, save me Oprah Winfrey!"
"SHOTS FIRED!"
(combat roll)
"SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" (still rolling around)
(gets up, unleashes hail of bullets at the car with his partner pretty much directly downrange)
(slight pause, beat of silence)
(falls backwards into the road)
"Eaaahhh!"
(fires several more times, now lying on his side in the road)
"I'm hit! I'm hit!
(fires until his gun is empty)
(his partner asks something)
"What?"
"Ablbla! Abinica!" (crawling across the road now) "In the car! Ow!"
(catches his breath, taking cover behind a different car)
(after a while, his partner comes nearby, frantically asking if he's okay)
"I'm good! I feel weird! But I'm good!"
"Dude, did I get hit?" Is probably my favorite line
As funny as it sounds, my understanding is that it's often not immediately obvious in the adrenaline of a life-threatening situation whether or not you got shot. You have to kind of check yourself over and make sure because you literally don't feel pain.
I'm going to be honest, there is a part of me that's hesitant to be so so harsh on the guy, because it's hard to say how you would react in (what you perceive to be) a life-or-death situation. It's not unusual for people not to react well. There was one shooting video like that where the cop did something embarrassing and I had full sympathy and support for him (A woman pulled a gun on him during a traffic stop and shot at him, and he stumbled back and shot her, and he thought for a second that he might also have hit someone in a jeep full of people that was randomly stopped behind her. He was on bodycam just overall losing his shit from having shot her, not even understanding why she tried to shoot him in the first place, and thinking for a second that he might also have also hit someone in the jeep by accident. That I can have a lot of sympathy for honestly.)
That said, you need to not have this kind of reaction if you're a cop. In a personal capacity I have sympathy for him; he learned he doesn't have the right stuff for what he wanted to do; this humiliating display is etched in permanently as his legacy, and he has to find a new job and he's just lucky that no one got killed because of him. In a professional capacity, fuck him and let's all laugh at him rolling around in the road and wailing.
(Edit: Personally, for me the absolute peak of the comedy is when he half-empties his gun, and there's a little beat of stillness, and then out of nowhere he just falls down and wails before starting shooting again. Again I shouldn't laugh because someone could have been killed. But it's fucking hilarious and I can't see it as not so.)
My dad was in the military, and he got shot in the leg. He said it was the most painful thing that he’s went through so far, so I don’t know if I believe that. I bet this cop has never been shot in his life.
By most accounts it is definitely common enough that you should REALLY check everything, because adrenaline can be a hell of a drug. Like: people noticing a fairly small entrance-wound but being completely unaware of a gigantic exit-wound is apparently so common that I’ve heard that it is the very first thing you should check for in case of a shooting.
Wow. Listen to those screams of traumatized neighbors as he continues to claim he was hit ~1:35/1:40 in. Can't tell if it's the other cop yelling at screaming people to stay back, or a mother yelling at her screaming child to stay back or what.
And that guy in the car - they're just going to shrug and say "my bad" about the fact that if the cop was even the slightest bit competent with that firearm he'd be dead?
It's easy to shit on cops but I hope the guy is okay. It kinda sounded like he resigned after self-realizing how this is not an okay situation. He's probably been in a handful of fucked up situations to be triggered like that tbh.
Either that or he's actually retarded.
Why do you assume there's trauma? He's just reactingly exactly how he has been trained to react.
Headlines like this are often a stretch, if not outright BS. Read the story. The headline does not begin to do justice as to how fucked up this was.
Even better, watch the video without any sort of narration or commentary.
Lul, that was a good suggestion. He 'felt weird', hid out of the acorn way (with some epic fat-rolling), still decided his car needed suppressive fire and get shot (maybe) multiple times (I guess fancy red-dot sights don't improve skills like they show us in vidya games?). Just perfect.
But the cherry on top will be his inevitable medal, promotion, lifetime rent for emotional damage suffered, and a whole bunch of murders he will commit (after all, anyone could be hiding acorns, or perhaps would have at some point in the future, can't take that chance).
But the cherry on top will be his inevitable medal, promotion
He resigned.
For real or for like two weeks or like went to cop elsewhere?
(Legit question, I don't know things, but see posts about this sort of stuff)
Red dots are a performance enhancer for someone who is trained, not a substitute for training in and of themselves.
Anecdotally, people who are not trained to the point of second nature tend to forget about their sights, especially on pistols, during a shootout.
While the cop’s failure of aiming ended up being an overall positive against the rest of his incompetence, it still highlights incompetence strictly within the realm of shooting.
Link?
The video is in a tweet which is embedded in the article, because of course it is. I'm not gonna link that, but it's hilarious.
Edit: Found a youtube link posted way down in the comments:
This story pairs nicely with the other one that's currently trending.
Florida Legislator Files Bill That Would Keep Killer Cops From Being Named And Shamed
This dipshit is what they want to protect so he can just go work in another district and kill someone else.
Police aren't brave, they 're the biggest cowards in societies, and we let them kill without consequence... This should frighten you
One of the biggest reasons I'm glad I did an enlistment in the Army is having got a couple years experience in Iraq to genuinely understand what a fucking joke American cops are.
What a very composed and calm individual that is perfectly suited for a job as a public servant.
I’m sorry, this is fucked up and I shouldn’t be laughing, but you really can’t make this shit up
What’s more, in his body cam footage you can clearly see the acorn fall into frame and strike the roof of his car. When asked if this was the sound he heard, Hernandez had this to tell investigators:
“I’m not gonna say no, because I mean that’s, but what I, [10 second pause in speaking] what I heard [3 second pause in speaking] sounded almost like [12 second pause in speaking] what I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof of the car, but there’s obviously an acorn hitting the roof of the car.”
Guy served two tours overseas.
I think it's kinda fucked up to laugh at what clearly seems like a PTSD attack. He shouldn't be a cop, and it's a good thing he resigned, but you shouldn't mock someone for this. Even if it's super easy to.
"Man killed people for a living for years so we gave him a pistol and let him corral the civilians around!"
Making fun of it and shaming this dumbass system is the only hope of it ever changing
And in order to shame the system, you shame the man?
Wise.
Yeah I know, taken out of context it’s really funny but it’s not when you consider the circumstances.
I hope he actually resigned and found a safer job instead of just being moved to another department and that the mental health checks for cops get better, but I’m not holding my breath for the second one.
So has he been tested for drugs already?
Thanks for that. You really captured it
If US police is this incompetent, the only real solution is to take their guns away. It works in the UK.
And yes, there are more guns in general in the US, but that means that the police needs to be BETTER at deescalation than in the UK, not worse.
(Also: Obviously there are exceptions for specialized units in the UK, and the same would have to happen in the US, but your standard run-of-the-mill cop really doesn’t need more than pepper-spray and a stick.)
How about we also give them actual training? You know, basic 4 year training like in Europe, to become basic police officer, additional training to become more, and not the "6 months and here is your gun" as they do in the US?
Imo this is a key problem with police in the US. You're meant to take something like this video, analyse it, grow from it and provide a better procedure/training in what to do in that sort of situation so that it is more safe for both police and the public in the future.
Instead you get "police tried to stop a robber by shooting into a crowded street, two civilians were killed and the robber only has slight injuries". And the police response is "oh we have qualified immunity, this is actually whats meant to happen, we stopped the robber didn't we etc etc etc" and nothing is learnt.
If you look into this story a little further, it turns out that there are a few things to consider.
One, this is actually the result of training. The man served two tours overseas, this is quite literally what he's trained to do. Do you have any idea what a gunshot sounds like from far away? Because it's not exactly a clear sound, and there are a shitload of different bullets (and gun barrels, compensators, silencers, sub sonic ammunition as an even further layer) to make different noise. When you're used to being shot at from far away, yeah a sound like this actually does sound like you're being shot at. I could also easily see someone mistaking it for a bullet landing near them.
He also describes experiencing a tingly sensation and thinking something was wrong with his left(? going from memory, lazy) side. It very much sounds like he had a PTSD attack.
Lastly, he resigned during the course of the investigation into the shooting. Not to mention, the investigation into him concluded that no he should not have unloaded his firearm after hearing an acorn hit the car.
Should he be a cop? Fuck no! He likely has undiagnosed PTSD and should be getting help, not putting himself into circumstances where he is much more likely to be shot at.
However this is not the result of incompetence. This man is a military veteran. He will likely be more proficient with firearms than you or I ever will be. You need to stop thinking of cops as pigs in tight bullet proof vests. This guy, and there are absolutely others like him, is not at all untrained.
He may have PTSD and he may have had 1,000 hours of firearms training, but if you empty your magazine the way he did, under the circumstances he did, you're incompetent to be a police officer. Period.
And even he apparently recognizes that since he resigned (though whether he'll just go get hired the next town over is probably a decent bet).
I'll preface this saying that I own firearms and I spent 11 years in the military, I've had people shoot in my general direction, but I've bever been in a firefight.
Police and military operate in different environments that require different skillsets and different training. People expect, incorrectly, that police are there to protect citizens (this isn't a rant about them protecting only the owner class...the judicial branch has upheld that police had no duty to protect). IF they had a duty to protect, they wouldn't be allowed to open fire without a target in site and awareness of what was beyond that target and endangered when they miss that target.
Hearing a gunshot is not a valid excuse for randomly discharging your weapon.
I'm glad nobody was hurt, and I really hope the VA or some other organization is able to help this guy recover from his combat trauma. The department that hired him should have done better, and I hope they revisit their candidate screening policy...
This is the result of having minimal training and not having enough training to be competent.
His description of legs feeling weak and tingly are that of an adrenaline dump.
i.e officer has been trained in handling firearms but not "stress innoculated" he's not been trained to respond properly in a stressful situation.
His firearm handling is also below an acceptable standard. He emptied his mag without so much as landing a single hit on the car and when he goes to reload fumbles numerous times, isn't sure if he wants to reload or find cover and does both badly.
Cops are trained to say that before shooting as a psychological trick to manipulate witnesses. Your brain doesn't perfectly record the order of events in a situation like that, so to make sense of things you're likely to misremember one or more of the gunshots being before the "I'm hit" rather than correctly remember that the cop shot first.
"It's coming right for us!"
-South Park hunting episode
Because he's a hysterical fucking moron who believes himself to be some for of hero warrior.
He probably got it from South Park with the "its coming this way" defense for hunting out of season
This is Chewbacca, Chewbacca is a wookie...
First rule of the Chewbaca defense: you don't elaborate upon invocation of the Chewbaca defense
but is a wookie a bear ?
THE ACORNS ARE COMIN' RIGHT FER US!
Reading the article is hard.
... felt a “tingliness” all along the side of his body. He then said his “legs just give out” and he fell to the ground, assuming that he had been seriously injured by something.
My bad, just watched the vid on another thread and was asking here
Officer and ACORN are a dangerous aural combination to some folks
Was the dude they had the in the back of the car hit? They just casually mention they had a guy in the back of the car and that's who they were shooting at but then just never bring him up again.
That is incredibly fortunate and I am happy they are unhurt. However, that isn't really a better situation imo. That means that the cop fired multiple shots and never managed to hit their target. That puts them in danger if they ever are in a fire fight, and dangerous for everyone nearby who isn't who they are trying to shoot.
Yes. I actually just made another comment with a similar sentiment.
I have interacted with police as a guest, and some of the things I witnessed and heard from them regarding weapons were worrying. Obviously anecdotal and not a universal statement, as I have also interacted with tactical teams that were both capable and restrained, but some of the small town teams can be very Acorn-mode.
That cop if a fucking moron and should never be trusted to be in this situation ever again because they should be summarily fired.
And disqualified from ever owning so much as a paintball gun if their first instinct on hearing a loud noise is spray and pray.
As the arrticle mentioned, he resigned.
And got rehired elsewhere.
This usually doesn't fix things. Bad cops that get fired just get hired as a cop in the next town, city, county, etc. It's a serious revolving-door problem.
Officer Scaredy Pants is luckily a very, very bad shot, as are his fellow officers.
Did I miss what's been done about this? Surely he has been fired and disqualified from ever working in LE again. And surely the handcuffed person in the back of the police car has been offered therapy for the PTSD he must suffer from? (sadly, /s)
The officer has been fired. The internal investigation actually did rule against him.
The suspect, Marquis Jackson, has not as far as I know been offered anything but he likely has a very good case against the city with a combination of the publicly embarrassing footage and the official LEO determination of, in the investigation’s words, unreasonable excessive force.
Both of you missed the article says he resigned while the investigation was going on...?
When the internal investigation concluded that he failed the standard for “objectively reasonable force” and therefore further concluded that he applied unreasonable excessive force, and he quit immediately without even attempting to fight the process, I consider that functionally a firing.
Absolutely does, in cuffs and in their car he's their responsibility and his safety is up to them.
Yeah, the Jalopnik article is shamefully written. The cop wasn't shooting at his car, he was shooting at a handcuffed suspect in his car. Regardless of his terrible aim, his intent in that moment was to kill a man because he imagined that he had been shot so hard that he actually fell down. When the New York Post gets gets it more accurate, you know the journalism is bad.
What's even more horrifying about the situation is that another officer on scene also started shooting even though she didn't fully know what was going on. Oh, actually, not just an officer, she was a sargent. She didn't fully assess the situation, she just started shooting as well.
These people are no smarter and no more stable than poorly trained dogs.
There's also a post on FB by him detailing the experience:
A few moments later I hear an officer scream "I’m hit, he’s armed"! As soon as that was announced multiple shots were fired at me while I was stuck in the backseat. All I could do was lean over and play dead to prevent getting shot in the head.
Windows were shattering on me the whole time as bullets continued flying across me.
It's a miracle he got physically unscathed
I had to read the article three times to make sure I didn't miss something. How do you write this article and not mention whether the person in the car was hit?
In the past I would have thought someone procrastinated on a deadline, but these days it's probably written by an AI.
If you’re that scared you have no business being a cop. What a fucking idiot thinks he got shot too.
This is what happens when you spend your life fantasizing about how you're a hero under constant attack.
To any who might doubt this: this us-vs-them hostile attitude against the public at large is exactly how they train members.
It even exists within Canada’s RCMP, FFS.
It's literally what the "thin blue line" represents which all the police has swapped in place of "protect & serve". And that's ignoring the racist undertones.
Those were sweet rolls, though.
LOL it reminded me of those people who dress up in mismatched tactical gear.
Tbf The acorn sounded like a bag of Skittles
Florida Man has nothing on Florida Squirrel. This brave officer barely escaped a brazen assassination attempt by the infamous terrorists, Squirrels Anonymous!
Damn, if squirrels started going after fascists in uniforms we really could start getting some serious positive momentum couldn't we.
empties one full magazine on the car, not a single hit Would you like to enlist in the imperial army?
Dude should have applied to be a Stormtrooper. Would have fit right in, got to wear a snazzy set of white armor, black little pew-pew laser rifle, the works.
and he can create all the drama he wants and no one will say a thing "The rebel scums were shooting at me!"
The only thing more dangerous than a Florida man is a Florida cop.
Isn't that just a Florida man with a gun tho...
No, it's Florida man with a badge.
Reminder that Uvalde is only the most famous example of cops being cowards.
I am loathe to use the word retarded... but I just have no other words to describe this.
It's a trauma reaction tbh. Huge red flag that they need to be in therapy.
He has no known history of trauma. He was, IIRC, a special forces officer that was deployed (Afghanistan?), but he never saw combat operations.
This is more likely the result of being trained that everyone is out to kill cops, that cops are the "sheep dogs", and that they need to be ready to kill people at a moment's notice ("Killology").
If there is no trauma before the police academy, it’s created and cultivated in the academy.
Isn't the training period only like a couple of weeks. I feel like that's not long enough to learn to be a cop. At least not a good cop.
When I learnt to be a network admin, the training course was a year, and I've never shot anyone so clearly the longer training works.
In California it’s a bit longer, 3 -4 months. Still not really long enough, and aimed towards a certain type of person. It may not teach how to be a good cop, they will teach you to be in constant fear.
How is this a trauma reaction?
This is a big old pussy with a gun who doesn't have the functioning braincells to think.
Being a cop is dangerous for everyone around you, not you yourself
Sometimes war veterans who have been in combat suffer from PTSD and react to loud gun like noises as if they are shots being fired. That is not the case here as it seems he did not take part in any combat while deployed but it certainly can be trauma.
Every story such as this contains at least one police lie. Even this one.
In his statement, Sheriff Aden said that the department was “limited in further response due to pending litigation.” Motherboard could not find court records related to the incident online and reached out to the Okaloosa County Courthouse, which confirmed it did not have any recent records related to either party. Motherboard reached out to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office for clarification but has not received a response.
They are pieces of shit like that. That's part of why you don't ever talk to them without a lawyer
We as a society have really dropped the ball on the low IQ population among us. We need more options that don't include giving them guns. We can give them badges if they want - and whatever quasi military rank they prefer without giving them the means to kill us.
You mean dropped the acorn...
Problem is, they would take guns away from us too as a compromise. Then they'd give the cops their guns back.
From other accounts, he had arrested a suspect, handcuffed and searched them, and put them in the back of the squad car, and apparently thought that the suspect--the one they'd searched, cuffed, and locked in the car--was shooting at him. So, in his mind, he was returning fire.
I gotta ask - did he hit the guy in the car? Did he even his his car? Where did the bullets all end up? When you start shooting in public, you're supposed to be responsible for each on of those pieces of lead.
Saw a comment somewhere else that the guy in the police cruiser somehow didn't get any bullets in him.
Ahh, so this cop is a storm trooper. That tracks.
I just did a 2 gun match over the weekend. Gossip among the competitors was that two of the guys there were cops from the Atlanta suburbs, and that they withdrew after the first stage because it was "too hard".
Yeah, it was a hard match, but that was the point.
The guy in the car was not hit, but mentally fucked up, according to a better news article I just found on Reddit a few minutes ago.
Wait did you shoot at his own car? That's amazing.
Both officers riddled the cop car with bullets at the front and back of the car. None hit the guy at the back seat of the car who immediately ducked on the floor.
The only good thing to be said is that for a short time there was one less cop car pulling over black people, then it came back from the body shop.
Honestly, my first thought after reading this was “like they wouldn’t spend the money on having more cars than officers.” I have no idea if that’s ever a thing though, lol. Maybe they temporarily use the armored vehicle for laughs.
The next evolution of "Florida man" is "Florida cop". A wild acorn appears. Florida cop uses "9mm Glock". Is is not very effective.
This is the kind of video they should show in the academy. A cop so scared that he put the public (and a person in his care and custody) in danger.
a person in his care and custody
hahaha
they would be showing this video at the academy as a demonstration of a failure to kill the guy in the back seat, therefore allowing all this to look ridiculous. to other cops, this is a grim tale of not sufficiently escalating the reality of the situation to match their internal narrative, and with this cop's public humiliation, a demonstration of how vital it is that there be a corpse if you ever act rashly for some reason.
Killology is replacing "policing" with "warlording".
That cop was way to squirrelly for the job.
Nah, if he were squirrelly, he'd know exactly what an acorn falling would sound like...
Me looking around the article for a satire tag.
One commenter added some critical context to the story:
I actually just read about this, early today. I think two things were involved here, neither of which were mentioned in this article:
The officer served (2) tours overseas. Seeing the lasting affects a tour in Afghanistan has had on a relative, I believe this officer has undiagnosed PTSD which impacted his reaction here.
The officers had reason to believe Jackson owned/possessed a firearm with a suppressor. The sound of a suppressed 9mm isn’t terribly dissimilar from an acorn falling on sheet metal.
Doesn't matter if it was a perfect replay of an exact recording of the weapon they expected to be facing. He emptied a clip into an unknown target with no visual confirmation.
PTSD will do that. Not an excuse, but a possible explanation.
A pistol with a suppressor on it is still loud as fuck though. You would have been able to hear it in the cam footage.
Also, these are the kinds of situations that happen when you get soldiers trained to kill to come back and play police duty with civilians. Its inexcusable, even if he does have PTSD.
Fact is that guns with silencers are still really loud with silencers, correct. Not like in the movies... with normal ammunition. In that case, the sonic boom is what you hear. But with subsonic ammunition and a slightly larger silencer it is really very quiet and can sound like in the video or in movies almost. It's hard to find on youtube because very few people want to shoot with such weak cartridges + with a silencer additionally, but if you're really interested you can find it. If I remember after work I can look for another demonstration and post it here. if you are interested.
They patted the suspect before cuffing and putting him in the car.
So it's a story about the absolute state of mental healthcare in the US after all.
Especially for veterans.
From now on when I feel stupid I will make sure to remember I'm not this level of stupid....
If only cops had training.
No, we should never hire people to be cops and then train them. We don't do that with any other people who have command over life and death AND operate autonomously that I can think of except maybe some positions in the military. Even EMT certification is basically "you exist because we need way more EMT's than we could possibly hope to have if being an EMT required a four year degree, and you won't be reasonably expected to do anything other than what we train you to do".
We should require cops to be well trained. Make it a four year degree at a minimum, and let the rage hearted idiots be weeded out in college when they fail all the ethical training courses.
Firing indiscriminately at an area without a clear sight of the suspect?
This is what happens if way undertrained people are hired for police work. People who think with their guns.
I think they're overtrained by fear based training like Killology. They're afraid of everything. I guess we can now add acorns to the long list of things that justify astounding incompetence and willful endangerment of others.
Have you seen acorns? At any moment they can just spring into a giant tree, you turn your back for 300 years and, bam a tree.
Acorns beget acorns. Stop the cycle of acorn violence. Take em out before they sprout.
It's also a product of the America the gun lobby has built.
This guy isn't undertrained! He served two tours in Iraq. This is literally the result of training, not only training but training cemented by military service.
This guy likely has PTSD. Should not be a cop, but you're dumb to think he's untrained. Not only has he likely seen live combat, the guy will likely be more proficient with firearms at 80 than you are right now; if he lives that long.
Yup, the problem isn't necessarily the total lack of training, but that the wrong training is happening, which could potentially be worse
Absolutely, as evidenced by this guy freaking out about an acorn as if it were a silenced rifle being shot at him.
This guy needs help, and should not be in a line of service that requires him to be in potentially dangerous situations. When your brain is wired to constantly evaluate threats you will create them.
He is undertrained in handling situations. He fired blindly without a single hint of what was going on.
Fuck the police, this dumb fuck idiot could have killed someone. Hell, he wanted to.
I'm GLAD this very Stable Man has a License to Freely Kill anyone he wants!
-Pro Life Republicans.
If we had proper care for the mentally ill and living on disability payments wasn’t so awful, people with severe PTSD (and likely sleep deprivation) wouldn’t be forced to have jobs.
The few, the proud, the acorn popper.
Sorry folks... I dropped something.
My bad.
How the actual fuck do you mix up an acorn hitting a car to a gunshot? Has he never been to the range?
I watched the video with the volume all the way up, and I couldn't even hear the acorn.
I definitely heard him unloading his gun into the car where the unarmed suspect was trapped.
You are just not trained to properly recognize modern acornfare.
Considering he is a police officer... probably not.
So,,, he's already in Florida, where is he gonna go to get re-hired?
Next town over. Probably make his comute shorter too
I hope he's oakay
Acorn hardly believe he didn't kill someone.
So where exactly did he fire at? The site itself is crap and the way it's written it sounds almost made up. Not saying that it is, Florida police officer shooting at acorns sounds about right, but do we have a better source?
He shot at his own squad car. I guess he assumed the suspect inside that they had already performed a search on earlier was firing from within.
He shot at the unarmed, and handcuffed suspect he had locked in his car.
In the video it also looks like there is an officer or bystander down range. Like if you pause the video and forget the context it would not be obvious if he was sitting at the car or pedestrian.
...............the video is right in the article.
To Serve and Protect
Nice Motto
Somehow thinking of this today, on the anniversary of Parkland.
Headline is kind of funny, but I wanted to know what he shot at
Funny again...
Nope, he was trying to kill someone handcuffed in the back of his squad car and had already been searched for weapons.
Cop should at least be facing reckless endangerment, if not attempted murder.
He also yelled "I'm hit" while unloading on his own vehicle.
Same as when they think they're doing on fentanyl...
Cops are constantly terrified because of their training, so they panic and mistake a panic attack for something else.
Being a cop sucks so much (because of their own leadership and culture) that good qualified people do t want to be a cop. So we end up with these fragile snowflakes that shouldn't be allowed to carry at all. Let alone be a cop
These idiots are so convinced that merely touching fentanyl will make them collapse that it actually happens to them.
If fentanyl was that strong, people would buy one bag and it would last for like a year.
Just so we're clear, those cops were tested after that ordeal and had absolutely zero fentanyl in their system.
And the tingling he felt was just piss running down his leg.
Imagine a drug you only had to touch. You'd never run out!
What? I always ran out of LSD and all you have to do is touch it because it's skin permeable.
True, but fentanyl is generally not. They do make fentanyl patches, but casual exposure, like a cop touching a tiny bit of fentanyl, will not result in fentanyl being absorbed.
I know this, but I was responding to the idea that a drug you could touch and get high from would somehow last forever.
Please don't take away my dream of endless LSD.
Get yourself a degree in chemistry and you'll be able to make a lifetime supply.
I know. I just felt clarification was necessary for people who don't understand the difference.
That's just because you don't know how to make it, and they are selling it to you a few drops at a time. I believe the ingredients are actually pretty cheap. Chemistry students make it.
Sell a man some LSD and he trips for a day. Teach a man to make LSD and he trips for a lifetime!
Yeah, right. I don't believe you. HOW would they do that? What steps could they possibly take!? What ingredients would they need and where would they even get them!?
We need details, dammit.
More seriously, a friend of mine was a chem student, and he says pretty much every one of his classmates knows how to run off 2 liters of LSD. Which should be enough to send every horse on the planet straight to the moon.
Maybe LSA, but probably not LSD.
Synthesizing the drug isn't the issue, as long as you have the right equipment and knowledge. The difficult part is getting the correct precursor chemicals.
I mean, step one: acquire the precursors. Step two: take organic chemistry 1; then organic chemistry 2; perhaps something strange like p chem, or environmental chem or chemical instrumentation; ask the professor between classes how to make it; take another class like drug discovery and design, or advanced organic chemistry....
Step three: make the good stuff.
I am not recommending that anyone do this but you don't need anything more advanced than Orgo 2. The issue isn't making the compound, at least once you have the precursors, it's ensuring that it's not contaminated with other products in a way that harms or kills you. It's not enough to get any yield, you need a safe yield.
That was the joke. You technically don't even need the ochems if you just ask the professor like I said. We're trying to lead kids down the dark road of the chemistry cult.
I took Advanced Orgo for fun so I'm with you.
Only If it’s wet
Not quite. Drugs that can be absorbed through the skin, well, they get absorbed.
It's not an infinite drugs glitch, just like powdered Fentanyl can't be absorbed through the skin.
Yeah... I am sure there are some idiots who believe in the horrors of fentanyl.
The reality is it is a catch all to excuse all the other drugs in their systems. If someone notices a cop is clearly amped up on amphetamines then the reality is that someone in the tri-state area had a single particle of fentanyl on them and THAT is why the cop who just killed four people is alternating between growling and crying while looking even sweatier than alex jones.
Does fentanyl amp you up? I would think it would make you super mellow.
Fentanyl does whatever you want it to baby. Just so long as that involves beating your wife and kids when there isn't a black kid nearby.
Fentanyl itself is an opiod so it is a downer. But fentanyl, as reported by the media and embraced by cops, is a magic wonderdrug where a single particle in a hundred mile radius will instantly infect every cop through enough PPE that they could survive a zombie infestation and make them do whatever crazy shit they got caught doing.
good people get fired as cops because they hesitate to shoot unarmed people and won't lie for officers doing questionable things.
My goodness what a fucking snowflake. Maybe you shouldn't be in the profession if you're "scared shitless" 99% of the time. But we all know that's a cover for them. They love killing people.
Yeah but deputy tacticool has holo sights. Not wasted on him at all.
Poor Durango.
Training? What training?
"It hit my vest" and "I feel weird". Them be signs that his fat ass has coronary artery disease. Fucking Okaloosa County. Good riddance. Don't miss it.
Is he trying to use the South Park ‘He’s coming right for us’ defense?
Aren't they all?
Even if he wasn't trying to kill Marquis Jackson, he clearly didn't care if he killed him.
You don't mag dump like that if you don't care. He very much was trying to kill him.
You do if you're an idiot and a coward.
Would just be an idiot and a coward trying to kill a man.
I am not saying he definitely wasn't trying to kill Mr. Jackson intentionally. I'm saying that the other possibility is that he's a stupid coward that empties his clip at his own car because he's terrified and doesn't think about and/or care that there's a person in his car.
Was he intending to kill Mr. Jackson? Maybe. That's definitely not an unlikely possibility. But I think stupid cowardice where the motive wasn't murder is also not unlikely because cops are stupid cowards.
I got ya. I'm agreeing that he's a coward and an idiot, but disagreeing that he might not have been trying to murder a guy. He might not have believed it was murder, because of the idiot part...but the video convinced me he was intentionally trying to kill the unarmed man in the back of his car.
... who's handcuffed in your backseat.
The utter stupidity of cops astounds me daily. One would think I'd be used to it now, and yet ...
this is their training. its SOP to do exactly this.
So they've been trained to murder and endanger the public?
Pretty much. Did he have a clean backdrop? Nah. He was in a fucking neighborhood
At an active threat, sure. When the dude's been searched, handcuffed, and trapped in the back of a car...there's some personal responsibility, imo.
I deal with PTSD vets every day so I understand the snap buuuuut.... No one else gets to get away with a slap on the wrist because of their mental illness so fuckem
Yeah. The "having PTSD" part isn't what should be punished, it's the "and yet still carrying a gun while putting yourself in a position to have your PTSD triggered like this" part that's egregious.
Well, Philip Brailsford, the murderer who murdered Daniel Shaver, claimed PTSD for murdering Daniel so he could draw on his pension and retire early. Because he murdered someone and it hurt his fee-fees.
Fuck that.
Indeed fuck that, but I don't see what it has to do with what I said.
I was making the point that even the “has PTSD” is egregious when it comes to cops.
I mean. Being in combat and being a cop are two different things.
Maybe this guy was in a shootout and has PTSD, maybe this is the only time he's ever fired on duty and he's just a coward who panicked.
Oh wow. Good for him. I'm honestly surprised.
Many times cops retire to avoid being investigated and move to a different department.
Yeah at this point we should assume the worst until proven otherwise.
And most of us would still wait for an actual target in a built up area.
No where in the article does it mention PTSD.
See I'm like, I don't even think you could qualify most of the things you would do to this guy as being punishment. Preventing this guy from being a cop forever (pretty unlikely, but could happen), isn't really a punishment. If he's discharging his firearm into his own car, he's obviously just unfit to be an officer and that's a pretty clear safety concern. If you sent him to prison, that might be more of a "punishment", but that's also, you know, what cops do basically their whole careers, is send people to prison, and we still have all the same problems with the prison system as we've always had, so, you know, I'm like. I dunno. That doesn't seem like a clear "win", to me, both in terms of improving society and in terms of helping him out if he's mentally ill which, you know, seems to clearly be the case, here.
You could also maybe think, hey, this guy goes to an asylum or something for mental illness, but that kind of has the same problems as sending someone to prison, it's not usually a helpful system.
The review board found his conduct was not reasonable; so, it'll be up to the prosecutor (which I'm sure in FL is an office eager to go after cops). The other officer, who began shooting after the officer wearing the bodycam in the OP began shooting, was found to have acted reasonably.
Essentially, you can't think an acorn is a bullet and get away with shooting at a detained and secured civilian. But, if another officer on scene thinks, even unreasonably so, that an acorn is a bullet and starts shooting at a detained and secured civilian, you can too. If this doesn't make a lot of sense to you, take that as reassurance that your critical thinking remains, at least partially, intact.
Nah, it kind of makes sense for the second guy.
Remember, he's not getting triggered by the acorn, he's reacting to his coworker yelling that they've been shot and actual gunfire. That's a justified reason to pull out your weapon IMO
Granted, he should've tried to take control of the situation and de-escalate so he could "save" his panicked coworker, but that kind of calmness "under fire" would take actual training
It does mean that the assisting officers aren't required to actually confirm their target, though.
What if this was real. If a 3rd party shot at them. 1st officer fires, blindly assuming it's the perp in cuffs in the car. 2nd cop shoots and kills perp in car because he saw that's what his partner was shooting at. When, in this hypothetical scenario, it was really a 3rd party that wasn't identified yet, which would be the only plausible source of a gun shot anyway since the perp was already searched and cuffed.
That doesn't make sense to me, but that's how they're trained. Ride or die with their comrads. Once the first shot is fired, it's shoot first and ask questions later for all additional officers.
That's not good policy. That's not good for civilians.
It's not a great policy, but it's a decision that, you know, has ups and downs either way. On one hand, if you have a particularly sharp officer who can peep out someone shooting at them, locate where that person is, and then fire back and understand exactly what they're shooting at. It would be better if that officer was able to also get their partner to follow their instructions, rather than relying on their partner, who, you know, being part of the police, might not be a sharp, and might not really be able to understand what's going on or what to do without external instruction.
That's if you have it as a kind of top down encompassing training thing, but that's really kind of the stupidest way to handle it. It's why the military has rank, and specialists, and roles, you can have a more clear chain of command where the more capable can, at least theoretically, rise to the top and be able to give those instructions. But then, none of this really prevents the person above you snapping randomly, and deciding to shoot a detained and searched person because of an acorn. Of all of what I've said, cops have a very mild amount of ranks and shit, too, but they're obviously subject to much less training, have more uniform ranks, and, like the military, they're very insular and have very little faith in anything but themselves. So more often than not they're just going to all collectively default to kind of whatever will keep them the "safest", which is going to be killing everyone around them that twitches kind of weird. Internal to the police, the life of every cop is worth infinitely more than the life of a criminal, and even the life of your average civilian, or, better put in their terms, potential criminal. When realistically it should be the opposite, but yeah.
I dunno, I kind of think sometimes that, I dunno if it's just a lack of news reaching over here from other countries, but I never hear about police brutality from other countries nearly as much. Maybe in britain, and france, and places where I can kind of think, oh, yeah, the power structure above them is kind of fucked up, america style, but maybe a little less so. But, so, I kind of wonder if police corruption is really it's own internal thing, and we should just abolish the police, like everyone says, or if it's really just every overarching power structure that's actually fucked up, and if we were like, finland, everything would be fine, cause I've not really heard a lot about the police of finland being super corrupt. Basically, I wonder if we target the symptom, and not the problem, because the police are obviously the slammer, you know, they're the pog which gets thrown by the long arm of history to flip everything over, they're the direct force that anyone who's doing any political action, or anyone who's a victim of the government, they're who they interface with. But is that because they're intrinsically a problematic institution, or is that because they're just the face, just the tool? I dunno. I find myself wondering that, in the face of, you know, so much evidence that the police is full of like, fucking morons.
IIRC Sympathetic Fire seems to be insta-forgiveness (by other police and the courts) whenever it comes up.
As one example, I think it played a role in the Daniel Shaver case, but it's been a long time since I read all those details and I really don't want to dive into that pool of anger and sadness again to verify.
Keep in mind, this is Florida. It is perfectly legal to murder anybody if you can prove that you felt threatened.
If a random loud bang from an acorn falling nearby is enough to get someone to behave like this, they really should not be walking around with a gun. This is completely insane and unhinged behavior.
theres no reason for most officers to be lethally armed their entire shift.
they are trained the exact opposite; be afraid of everything and empty the clip. ask questions later.
this cop behaved as he was trained
The good news is, the guy did resign. So I guess he agrees.
Or he resigned to just join a police force one county over.
Coming soon to a police department near you!
or a school 'safety officer'
Fun fact: ‘police officer’ isn’t even in the top 10 most dangerous professions in the US. It’s solidly beat by things like garbage collector, delivery driver, maintenance worker, and pilot. None of those professions typically carry weapons on the job.
Lots of police officers were former bullies with an inferiority complex. Some are wusses who only feel powerful because they’re carrying a deadly weapon.
Another fun fact: police in several other western countries don’t carry deadly weapons and yet are able to do their jobs just fine.
American police are trained to think everything and everyone is against them, through programs like David Grossman’s Killology course. Weird how a program designed to teach recruits to kill without empathy would result in people killing without empathy.
Elsewhere, police are learning de-escalation tactics, but police in the US are learning escalation.
It’s absurd, and leads to scared, trigger-happy morons shooting at acorns.
e: missed a word
What was he shooting at? This man just blindly ptied his gun at something or someone he couldnt see!
He was shooting at the unarmed suspect cuffed and trapped in the back of the police car.
Read the story.
From the body cam footage it was quite a soft bang
I want to stress that I am in no-way attempting to excuse this cop, nor am I suggesting that there is any reasonable way to confuse the sound of an acorn with the sound of a gunshot. Even if there were, there is no justification for blindly "returning fire" in the general direction of the noise. That is so batshit crazy a scenario that it is completely irredeemable. This cop needs to be in prison.
That being said, I do want to comment on the capabilities of recording and playback. They completely lack the dynamic range necessary to make any sort of reasonable judgment on the intensity of the "bang". What we hear in the video and what the officer heard in real life are two completely different things.
I have heard black walnuts (golf ball to tennis ball sized outer shell) hitting vehicles at close range. While they certainly can't be reasonably confused with a gunshot, they are startlingly loud.
Again, I want to stress: completely unreasonable that an acorn hitting the cruiser could be confused for a gunshot, and criminally stupid to fire in the general direction of the noise.
I appreciate your dedication to science (I'm still going to call you a nerd)
You can call me anything you want, so long as it's not an apologist for this criminal cop.
In that case I’m going to call you Shirley
Kinda sounds like PTSD or anxiety or something.
That doesn't make it ok. Just ml saying police need more support and supervision.
And yet the most surprising thing about the story is that the bodycam footage was released, smh
Likely to protect the cop/department too, since he shot at his own car that already had a disarmed, detained suspect inside. He very nearly killed someone that was already a non-threat. If the body cam footage got out it might make people think their cops are negligent or improperly trained! /ghasp
It's like a business. If the liability rests with their officer and they are afraid of a lawsuit causing significant political blowback they are going to take action against the officer to minimize their liability. Hearing about an officer doing something like this and then leaving the force means there is nothing left for them to take action for.
If he didn't resign, perhaps it would be slightly harder for the chief a town over to hire the guy, but since he resigned he may have minimal marks on his record.
I'd bet a thousand bucks this guy gets another job as a cop within 1yr though.
I'd bet a thousand bucks I know which video they're going to be watching in the morning briefing on his first day.
Of all the stupid that exists in Florida, they actually have pretty powerful open records laws.
It's actually one of the reasons Florida has the "Florida Man" reputation. We know more about what's happening there.
More like that it was on in the first place.
Not even close. The most surprising thing is that the cop resigned, by far.
He resigned when he knew he was going to be fired. Probably easier to look for a job in another department before the dust settles.
Our brave boys in blue, ladies and gentlemen.
There are 22 jobs in the U.S. statistically more dangerous than being a cop.
Cowards. So many of them are cowards.
You missed the most dangerous job: US president.
1/10 of all presidents have been assassinated and 1/5 of presidents died in office
Might as well climb K2. 1/4 summit to death rate.
Presidents Georg, who lives in white house & dies every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I'm so stealing this!
Barbers have a more dangerous job. People are very particular about their hair, and can run out without paying.
And the leading cause of injury/fatality for police officers by far: vehicle accidents. Not being shot at.
Also COVID for a couple of years there as they refused to wear masks in most cases.
Bullies are always cowards.
That's why they form a gang, because the only way they can feel strong is if they outnumber you.
That's why it takes fifteen fucking cops to "deal with" a single homeless person in a public park who isn't bothering anybody.
If they do that during the day, with enough people around, people will whip out their phones to record the cops and the cops will give up and leave and stop harassing.
If they do it during the evening, and there's not very many people around, and only one person whips out their phone.... The cops will arrest the person who whipped out their phone, too, because they outnumber them.
Yep, and this is just tracking mortality. You would think, oh hey maybe they look better if you included things like workplace violence......nope. Pretty much 80% of work place violence happens to healthcare workers and social workers.
So pretty much every healthcare worker has experienced more violence in their work than police officers. I've had patients take swings at me in my hospital, it's a fairly natural response to being in pain, on drugs, or disoriented. But just because your occupation has the potential to introduce you to a violent environment, that doesn't justify your own participation in it.
I’m a very nonviolent and nonconfrontational person, but I once had a boil in a sensitive spot lanced without adequate pain control, and it took all my self control to not FIGHT it. Stone cold sober, knowing it needed to be done, my body physically wanted to fight the doctor to make it stop. It’s nuts to expect someone who’s not completely there for whatever reason to be completely in control of that instinct, but it’s what cops expect people to do.
Cops will taser or shoot you before you can take a swing at them. Healthcare workers and delivery drivers don't get tasers and guns.
Looking forward to my next traffic stop so I can mention that crossing guards have a more dangerous job than cops 🫡
What the absolute fuck?
Crossing guards being on a list with derrick operators and power linemen is a disturbing commentary on our road infrastructure priorities.
Virtually every main cause of death on this list is falling or getting struck by a vehicle.
Yes. A lot of them also involve being killed by the machines they use too. Safety measures can only go so far.
Obtaining a barber license means that you have completed a minimum of 1,250 hours of instruction in barbering education within a period of at least 9 months or completed 1,250 hours of training. It takes 1,250 to 2,000 hours to be a cosmologist. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training, and in Finland, police education takes three years to complete. Police in the USA get 750 hours.
USA intentionally dumbs down its people.
Exactly. The PD will also reject applicants if they are too smart.
When I first heard about it, I could not believe it. Fair enough there is shortages of police so they want recruitment process to hasten. But this is at the expense of public safety as there are too many trigger-happy police. Which is counter to "protect and serve" motto!
Plus, it's one of the few jobs that will disqualify you for being too smart.
uh... this is why we didn't approve of the word "cosmetology". It takes more than 2000h to be a publishing cosmologist/astronomer.
Since the article seems allergic to clearly providing the video.
Top comment really nails it:
He quit afterward. Probably because he was teased mercilessly by other police officers. If only we could harness peer pressure to reduce police shootings.
Imagine doing this and just being able to quit your job, meanwhile a citizen would be arrested and charged with a felony.
It's entirely like something out of a comedy.
Too far fetched fiction.
This sounds like a scene out of super troopers that would have been cut for being too unbelievable.
"save me Tom Cruise, save me Oprah Winfrey!"
"Dude, did I get hit?" Is probably my favorite line
As funny as it sounds, my understanding is that it's often not immediately obvious in the adrenaline of a life-threatening situation whether or not you got shot. You have to kind of check yourself over and make sure because you literally don't feel pain.
I'm going to be honest, there is a part of me that's hesitant to be so so harsh on the guy, because it's hard to say how you would react in (what you perceive to be) a life-or-death situation. It's not unusual for people not to react well. There was one shooting video like that where the cop did something embarrassing and I had full sympathy and support for him (A woman pulled a gun on him during a traffic stop and shot at him, and he stumbled back and shot her, and he thought for a second that he might also have hit someone in a jeep full of people that was randomly stopped behind her. He was on bodycam just overall losing his shit from having shot her, not even understanding why she tried to shoot him in the first place, and thinking for a second that he might also have also hit someone in the jeep by accident. That I can have a lot of sympathy for honestly.)
That said, you need to not have this kind of reaction if you're a cop. In a personal capacity I have sympathy for him; he learned he doesn't have the right stuff for what he wanted to do; this humiliating display is etched in permanently as his legacy, and he has to find a new job and he's just lucky that no one got killed because of him. In a professional capacity, fuck him and let's all laugh at him rolling around in the road and wailing.
(Edit: Personally, for me the absolute peak of the comedy is when he half-empties his gun, and there's a little beat of stillness, and then out of nowhere he just falls down and wails before starting shooting again. Again I shouldn't laugh because someone could have been killed. But it's fucking hilarious and I can't see it as not so.)
My dad was in the military, and he got shot in the leg. He said it was the most painful thing that he’s went through so far, so I don’t know if I believe that. I bet this cop has never been shot in his life.
By most accounts it is definitely common enough that you should REALLY check everything, because adrenaline can be a hell of a drug. Like: people noticing a fairly small entrance-wound but being completely unaware of a gigantic exit-wound is apparently so common that I’ve heard that it is the very first thing you should check for in case of a shooting.
Everyone's experience is different. Sometimes it's excruciating, yes.
I would bet that this is accurate, yes.
Wow. Listen to those screams of traumatized neighbors as he continues to claim he was hit ~1:35/1:40 in. Can't tell if it's the other cop yelling at screaming people to stay back, or a mother yelling at her screaming child to stay back or what.
And that guy in the car - they're just going to shrug and say "my bad" about the fact that if the cop was even the slightest bit competent with that firearm he'd be dead?
Everyone, stop what you are doing and check your local police department for this guy.
He is out there somewhere, getting scared and shooting at his own car.
Yeah. Both he and his partner opened fire without a clear sight of a target.
It's easy to shit on cops but I hope the guy is okay. It kinda sounded like he resigned after self-realizing how this is not an okay situation. He's probably been in a handful of fucked up situations to be triggered like that tbh.
Either that or he's actually retarded.
Why do you assume there's trauma? He's just reactingly exactly how he has been trained to react.
I do hope he gets the treatment he needs. It is not normal behavior.
I also don't want him with a gun near a school, mall, or any other place with lots of bystanders. Not until he has a good record of not overreacting.
Frank's got donkey brains!
Headlines like this are often a stretch, if not outright BS. Read the story. The headline does not begin to do justice as to how fucked up this was.
Even better, watch the video without any sort of narration or commentary.
Lul, that was a good suggestion. He 'felt weird', hid out of the acorn way (with some epic fat-rolling), still decided his car needed suppressive fire and get shot (maybe) multiple times (I guess fancy red-dot sights don't improve skills like they show us in vidya games?). Just perfect.
But the cherry on top will be his inevitable medal, promotion, lifetime rent for emotional damage suffered, and a whole bunch of murders he will commit (after all, anyone could be hiding acorns, or perhaps would have at some point in the future, can't take that chance).
He resigned.
For real or for like two weeks or like went to cop elsewhere?
(Legit question, I don't know things, but see posts about this sort of stuff)
Red dots are a performance enhancer for someone who is trained, not a substitute for training in and of themselves.
Anecdotally, people who are not trained to the point of second nature tend to forget about their sights, especially on pistols, during a shootout.
While the cop’s failure of aiming ended up being an overall positive against the rest of his incompetence, it still highlights incompetence strictly within the realm of shooting.
Link?
The video is in a tweet which is embedded in the article, because of course it is. I'm not gonna link that, but it's hilarious.
Edit: Found a youtube link posted way down in the comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxnuPgiPHLA&pp=ygUNQ29wIGd1biBhY29ybg%3D%3D
holy fuck lmao. Dude does a triple roll and does he actually yell "I'm hit" between 25 and 30 seconds or am I hearing it wrong?
Yeah, he yells "I'm hit" a few times, like he thought he got shot.
arguably the best scene.
I think 1 roll and his stamina bar dropped zero.
This story pairs nicely with the other one that's currently trending.
This dipshit is what they want to protect so he can just go work in another district and kill someone else.
Police aren't brave, they 're the biggest cowards in societies, and we let them kill without consequence... This should frighten you
One of the biggest reasons I'm glad I did an enlistment in the Army is having got a couple years experience in Iraq to genuinely understand what a fucking joke American cops are.
What a very composed and calm individual that is perfectly suited for a job as a public servant.
I’m sorry, this is fucked up and I shouldn’t be laughing, but you really can’t make this shit up
Guy served two tours overseas.
I think it's kinda fucked up to laugh at what clearly seems like a PTSD attack. He shouldn't be a cop, and it's a good thing he resigned, but you shouldn't mock someone for this. Even if it's super easy to.
"Man killed people for a living for years so we gave him a pistol and let him corral the civilians around!" Making fun of it and shaming this dumbass system is the only hope of it ever changing
And in order to shame the system, you shame the man?
Wise.
Yeah I know, taken out of context it’s really funny but it’s not when you consider the circumstances.
I hope he actually resigned and found a safer job instead of just being moved to another department and that the mental health checks for cops get better, but I’m not holding my breath for the second one.
So has he been tested for drugs already?
Thanks for that. You really captured it
If US police is this incompetent, the only real solution is to take their guns away. It works in the UK.
And yes, there are more guns in general in the US, but that means that the police needs to be BETTER at deescalation than in the UK, not worse.
(Also: Obviously there are exceptions for specialized units in the UK, and the same would have to happen in the US, but your standard run-of-the-mill cop really doesn’t need more than pepper-spray and a stick.)
How about we also give them actual training? You know, basic 4 year training like in Europe, to become basic police officer, additional training to become more, and not the "6 months and here is your gun" as they do in the US?
Imo this is a key problem with police in the US. You're meant to take something like this video, analyse it, grow from it and provide a better procedure/training in what to do in that sort of situation so that it is more safe for both police and the public in the future.
Instead you get "police tried to stop a robber by shooting into a crowded street, two civilians were killed and the robber only has slight injuries". And the police response is "oh we have qualified immunity, this is actually whats meant to happen, we stopped the robber didn't we etc etc etc" and nothing is learnt.
If you look into this story a little further, it turns out that there are a few things to consider.
One, this is actually the result of training. The man served two tours overseas, this is quite literally what he's trained to do. Do you have any idea what a gunshot sounds like from far away? Because it's not exactly a clear sound, and there are a shitload of different bullets (and gun barrels, compensators, silencers, sub sonic ammunition as an even further layer) to make different noise. When you're used to being shot at from far away, yeah a sound like this actually does sound like you're being shot at. I could also easily see someone mistaking it for a bullet landing near them.
He also describes experiencing a tingly sensation and thinking something was wrong with his left(? going from memory, lazy) side. It very much sounds like he had a PTSD attack.
Lastly, he resigned during the course of the investigation into the shooting. Not to mention, the investigation into him concluded that no he should not have unloaded his firearm after hearing an acorn hit the car.
Should he be a cop? Fuck no! He likely has undiagnosed PTSD and should be getting help, not putting himself into circumstances where he is much more likely to be shot at.
However this is not the result of incompetence. This man is a military veteran. He will likely be more proficient with firearms than you or I ever will be. You need to stop thinking of cops as pigs in tight bullet proof vests. This guy, and there are absolutely others like him, is not at all untrained.
He may have PTSD and he may have had 1,000 hours of firearms training, but if you empty your magazine the way he did, under the circumstances he did, you're incompetent to be a police officer. Period.
And even he apparently recognizes that since he resigned (though whether he'll just go get hired the next town over is probably a decent bet).
I'll preface this saying that I own firearms and I spent 11 years in the military, I've had people shoot in my general direction, but I've bever been in a firefight.
Police and military operate in different environments that require different skillsets and different training. People expect, incorrectly, that police are there to protect citizens (this isn't a rant about them protecting only the owner class...the judicial branch has upheld that police had no duty to protect). IF they had a duty to protect, they wouldn't be allowed to open fire without a target in site and awareness of what was beyond that target and endangered when they miss that target.
Hearing a gunshot is not a valid excuse for randomly discharging your weapon.
I'm glad nobody was hurt, and I really hope the VA or some other organization is able to help this guy recover from his combat trauma. The department that hired him should have done better, and I hope they revisit their candidate screening policy...
This is the result of having minimal training and not having enough training to be competent.
His description of legs feeling weak and tingly are that of an adrenaline dump.
i.e officer has been trained in handling firearms but not "stress innoculated" he's not been trained to respond properly in a stressful situation.
His firearm handling is also below an acceptable standard. He emptied his mag without so much as landing a single hit on the car and when he goes to reload fumbles numerous times, isn't sure if he wants to reload or find cover and does both badly.
That too.
Take their guns away and give them acorns.
Why did he say "I'm hit"
Cops are trained to say that before shooting as a psychological trick to manipulate witnesses. Your brain doesn't perfectly record the order of events in a situation like that, so to make sense of things you're likely to misremember one or more of the gunshots being before the "I'm hit" rather than correctly remember that the cop shot first.
"It's coming right for us!" -South Park hunting episode
Because he's a hysterical fucking moron who believes himself to be some for of hero warrior.
He probably got it from South Park with the "its coming this way" defense for hunting out of season
This is Chewbacca, Chewbacca is a wookie...
First rule of the Chewbaca defense: you don't elaborate upon invocation of the Chewbaca defense
but is a wookie a bear ?
THE ACORNS ARE COMIN' RIGHT FER US!
Reading the article is hard.
My bad, just watched the vid on another thread and was asking here
OfficerandACORNare a dangerous aural combination to some folksThat's nuts
Thank you.
Was the dude they had the in the back of the car hit? They just casually mention they had a guy in the back of the car and that's who they were shooting at but then just never bring him up again.
He was not hit.
That is incredibly fortunate and I am happy they are unhurt. However, that isn't really a better situation imo. That means that the cop fired multiple shots and never managed to hit their target. That puts them in danger if they ever are in a fire fight, and dangerous for everyone nearby who isn't who they are trying to shoot.
Yes. I actually just made another comment with a similar sentiment.
I have interacted with police as a guest, and some of the things I witnessed and heard from them regarding weapons were worrying. Obviously anecdotal and not a universal statement, as I have also interacted with tactical teams that were both capable and restrained, but some of the small town teams can be very Acorn-mode.
That cop if a fucking moron and should never be trusted to be in this situation ever again because they should be summarily fired.
And disqualified from ever owning so much as a paintball gun if their first instinct on hearing a loud noise is spray and pray.
As the arrticle mentioned, he resigned.
And got rehired elsewhere.
This usually doesn't fix things. Bad cops that get fired just get hired as a cop in the next town, city, county, etc. It's a serious revolving-door problem.
Officer Scaredy Pants is luckily a very, very bad shot, as are his fellow officers.
Did I miss what's been done about this? Surely he has been fired and disqualified from ever working in LE again. And surely the handcuffed person in the back of the police car has been offered therapy for the PTSD he must suffer from? (sadly, /s)
The officer has been fired. The internal investigation actually did rule against him.
The suspect, Marquis Jackson, has not as far as I know been offered anything but he likely has a very good case against the city with a combination of the publicly embarrassing footage and the official LEO determination of, in the investigation’s words, unreasonable excessive force.
Both of you missed the article says he resigned while the investigation was going on...?
When the internal investigation concluded that he failed the standard for “objectively reasonable force” and therefore further concluded that he applied unreasonable excessive force, and he quit immediately without even attempting to fight the process, I consider that functionally a firing.
Absolutely does, in cuffs and in their car he's their responsibility and his safety is up to them.
Yeah, the Jalopnik article is shamefully written. The cop wasn't shooting at his car, he was shooting at a handcuffed suspect in his car. Regardless of his terrible aim, his intent in that moment was to kill a man because he imagined that he had been shot so hard that he actually fell down. When the New York Post gets gets it more accurate, you know the journalism is bad.
What's even more horrifying about the situation is that another officer on scene also started shooting even though she didn't fully know what was going on. Oh, actually, not just an officer, she was a sargent. She didn't fully assess the situation, she just started shooting as well.
These people are no smarter and no more stable than poorly trained dogs.
There's also a post on FB by him detailing the experience:
It's a miracle he got physically unscathed
I had to read the article three times to make sure I didn't miss something. How do you write this article and not mention whether the person in the car was hit?
In the past I would have thought someone procrastinated on a deadline, but these days it's probably written by an AI.
If you’re that scared you have no business being a cop. What a fucking idiot thinks he got shot too.
This is what happens when you spend your life fantasizing about how you're a hero under constant attack.
To any who might doubt this: this us-vs-them hostile attitude against the public at large is exactly how they train members.
It even exists within Canada’s RCMP, FFS.
It's literally what the "thin blue line" represents which all the police has swapped in place of "protect & serve". And that's ignoring the racist undertones.
Those were sweet rolls, though.
LOL it reminded me of those people who dress up in mismatched tactical gear.
Tbf The acorn sounded like a bag of Skittles
Florida Man has nothing on Florida Squirrel. This brave officer barely escaped a brazen assassination attempt by the infamous terrorists, Squirrels Anonymous!
Damn, if squirrels started going after fascists in uniforms we really could start getting some serious positive momentum couldn't we.
empties one full magazine on the car, not a single hit Would you like to enlist in the imperial army?
Dude should have applied to be a Stormtrooper. Would have fit right in, got to wear a snazzy set of white armor, black little pew-pew laser rifle, the works.
and he can create all the drama he wants and no one will say a thing "The rebel scums were shooting at me!"
The only thing more dangerous than a Florida man is a Florida cop.
Isn't that just a Florida man with a gun tho...
No, it's Florida man with a badge.
Reminder that Uvalde is only the most famous example of cops being cowards.
I am loathe to use the word retarded... but I just have no other words to describe this.
It's a trauma reaction tbh. Huge red flag that they need to be in therapy.
He has no known history of trauma. He was, IIRC, a special forces officer that was deployed (Afghanistan?), but he never saw combat operations.
This is more likely the result of being trained that everyone is out to kill cops, that cops are the "sheep dogs", and that they need to be ready to kill people at a moment's notice ("Killology").
If there is no trauma before the police academy, it’s created and cultivated in the academy.
Isn't the training period only like a couple of weeks. I feel like that's not long enough to learn to be a cop. At least not a good cop.
When I learnt to be a network admin, the training course was a year, and I've never shot anyone so clearly the longer training works.
In California it’s a bit longer, 3 -4 months. Still not really long enough, and aimed towards a certain type of person. It may not teach how to be a good cop, they will teach you to be in constant fear.
How is this a trauma reaction?
This is a big old pussy with a gun who doesn't have the functioning braincells to think.
Being a cop is dangerous for everyone around you, not you yourself
Sometimes war veterans who have been in combat suffer from PTSD and react to loud gun like noises as if they are shots being fired. That is not the case here as it seems he did not take part in any combat while deployed but it certainly can be trauma.
Pigbrained
Every story such as this contains at least one police lie. Even this one.
They are pieces of shit like that. That's part of why you don't ever talk to them without a lawyer
We as a society have really dropped the ball on the low IQ population among us. We need more options that don't include giving them guns. We can give them badges if they want - and whatever quasi military rank they prefer without giving them the means to kill us.
You mean dropped the acorn...
Problem is, they would take guns away from us too as a compromise. Then they'd give the cops their guns back.
From other accounts, he had arrested a suspect, handcuffed and searched them, and put them in the back of the squad car, and apparently thought that the suspect--the one they'd searched, cuffed, and locked in the car--was shooting at him. So, in his mind, he was returning fire.
I gotta ask - did he hit the guy in the car? Did he even his his car? Where did the bullets all end up? When you start shooting in public, you're supposed to be responsible for each on of those pieces of lead.
Saw a comment somewhere else that the guy in the police cruiser somehow didn't get any bullets in him.
Ahh, so this cop is a storm trooper. That tracks.
I just did a 2 gun match over the weekend. Gossip among the competitors was that two of the guys there were cops from the Atlanta suburbs, and that they withdrew after the first stage because it was "too hard".
Yeah, it was a hard match, but that was the point.
The guy in the car was not hit, but mentally fucked up, according to a better news article I just found on Reddit a few minutes ago.
Wait did you shoot at his own car? That's amazing.
Both officers riddled the cop car with bullets at the front and back of the car. None hit the guy at the back seat of the car who immediately ducked on the floor.
The only good thing to be said is that for a short time there was one less cop car pulling over black people, then it came back from the body shop.
Honestly, my first thought after reading this was “like they wouldn’t spend the money on having more cars than officers.” I have no idea if that’s ever a thing though, lol. Maybe they temporarily use the armored vehicle for laughs.
The next evolution of "Florida man" is "Florida cop". A wild acorn appears. Florida cop uses "9mm Glock". Is is not very effective.
This is the kind of video they should show in the academy. A cop so scared that he put the public (and a person in his care and custody) in danger.
hahaha
they would be showing this video at the academy as a demonstration of a failure to kill the guy in the back seat, therefore allowing all this to look ridiculous. to other cops, this is a grim tale of not sufficiently escalating the reality of the situation to match their internal narrative, and with this cop's public humiliation, a demonstration of how vital it is that there be a corpse if you ever act rashly for some reason.
Killology is replacing "policing" with "warlording".
That cop was way to squirrelly for the job.
Nah, if he were squirrelly, he'd know exactly what an acorn falling would sound like...
Me looking around the article for a satire tag.
One commenter added some critical context to the story:
Doesn't matter if it was a perfect replay of an exact recording of the weapon they expected to be facing. He emptied a clip into an unknown target with no visual confirmation.
PTSD will do that. Not an excuse, but a possible explanation.
A pistol with a suppressor on it is still loud as fuck though. You would have been able to hear it in the cam footage. Also, these are the kinds of situations that happen when you get soldiers trained to kill to come back and play police duty with civilians. Its inexcusable, even if he does have PTSD.
Fact is that guns with silencers are still really loud with silencers, correct. Not like in the movies... with normal ammunition. In that case, the sonic boom is what you hear. But with subsonic ammunition and a slightly larger silencer it is really very quiet and can sound like in the video or in movies almost. It's hard to find on youtube because very few people want to shoot with such weak cartridges + with a silencer additionally, but if you're really interested you can find it. If I remember after work I can look for another demonstration and post it here. if you are interested.
https://youtube.com/shorts/_1GRjRH9tKA? https://youtu.be/9c36ujvK9bs? basically just the mechanical parts that are audible. still not like the movies but pretty close. In person i felt like it's actually less loud than in these vids depending on the gun.
They patted the suspect before cuffing and putting him in the car.
So it's a story about the absolute state of mental healthcare in the US after all.
Especially for veterans.
From now on when I feel stupid I will make sure to remember I'm not this level of stupid....
If only cops had training.
No, we should never hire people to be cops and then train them. We don't do that with any other people who have command over life and death AND operate autonomously that I can think of except maybe some positions in the military. Even EMT certification is basically "you exist because we need way more EMT's than we could possibly hope to have if being an EMT required a four year degree, and you won't be reasonably expected to do anything other than what we train you to do".
We should require cops to be well trained. Make it a four year degree at a minimum, and let the rage hearted idiots be weeded out in college when they fail all the ethical training courses.
It's more than the Uvalde cops did at least
Firing indiscriminately at an area without a clear sight of the suspect?
This is what happens if way undertrained people are hired for police work. People who think with their guns.
I think they're overtrained by fear based training like Killology. They're afraid of everything. I guess we can now add acorns to the long list of things that justify astounding incompetence and willful endangerment of others.
Have you seen acorns? At any moment they can just spring into a giant tree, you turn your back for 300 years and, bam a tree.
Acorns beget acorns. Stop the cycle of acorn violence. Take em out before they sprout.
It's also a product of the America the gun lobby has built.
This guy isn't undertrained! He served two tours in Iraq. This is literally the result of training, not only training but training cemented by military service.
This guy likely has PTSD. Should not be a cop, but you're dumb to think he's untrained. Not only has he likely seen live combat, the guy will likely be more proficient with firearms at 80 than you are right now; if he lives that long.
Yup, the problem isn't necessarily the total lack of training, but that the wrong training is happening, which could potentially be worse
Absolutely, as evidenced by this guy freaking out about an acorn as if it were a silenced rifle being shot at him.
This guy needs help, and should not be in a line of service that requires him to be in potentially dangerous situations. When your brain is wired to constantly evaluate threats you will create them.
He is undertrained in handling situations. He fired blindly without a single hint of what was going on.
Fuck the police, this dumb fuck idiot could have killed someone. Hell, he wanted to.
Hope the boot tastes good.
Fire that cop and give the acorn a badge.
I'm GLAD this very Stable Man has a License to Freely Kill anyone he wants!
-Pro Life Republicans.
If we had proper care for the mentally ill and living on disability payments wasn’t so awful, people with severe PTSD (and likely sleep deprivation) wouldn’t be forced to have jobs.
The few, the proud, the acorn popper.
Sorry folks... I dropped something.
My bad.
How the actual fuck do you mix up an acorn hitting a car to a gunshot? Has he never been to the range?
I watched the video with the volume all the way up, and I couldn't even hear the acorn.
I definitely heard him unloading his gun into the car where the unarmed suspect was trapped.
You are just not trained to properly recognize modern acornfare.
Considering he is a police officer... probably not.
So,,, he's already in Florida, where is he gonna go to get re-hired?
Next town over. Probably make his comute shorter too
I hope he's oakay
Acorn hardly believe he didn't kill someone.
So where exactly did he fire at? The site itself is crap and the way it's written it sounds almost made up. Not saying that it is, Florida police officer shooting at acorns sounds about right, but do we have a better source?
He shot at his own squad car. I guess he assumed the suspect inside that they had already performed a search on earlier was firing from within.
He shot at the unarmed, and handcuffed suspect he had locked in his car.
In the video it also looks like there is an officer or bystander down range. Like if you pause the video and forget the context it would not be obvious if he was sitting at the car or pedestrian.
...............the video is right in the article.
To Serve and Protect
Nice Motto
Somehow thinking of this today, on the anniversary of Parkland.
The story of piggie little and his panic attack.
c/nottheonion