White guys shoot up Walmart with BB guns taken into custody by police

[bigdarryl]

Clearly a double standard http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/two-men-shoot-up-walmart-threaten-customers-with-bb-gun-arent-shot-by-police-for-some-reason/

[ellenrr]

1. A few days ago police were able to take a pit bull

into custody, not kill it.
The dog had just mauled its owner to death, and was lunging at the cops.

[bigdarryl]

4. Well you know dogs are more valuable than a Black male

Where I live people are crazy about there dogs

[ellenrr]

11. I'm upset when cops kill peoples' pets for no reason

which happens,
but the contrast between this, and the killing of human beings, often on sight - is mind-boggling.

[Vinca]

2. Wow . . . just wow.

The case of the black guy walking around Walmart carrying their merchandise is probably the most outrageous of all the current police murders. I'm not surprised at the other case you linked, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

[ellenrr]

3. this is the story of US race attitude in a nutshell

Three men walk into Walmart and pick-up a toy gun,two walk out alive

http://www.krem.com/story/news/local/kootenai-county/2014/12/24/police-arrest-two-men-bb-gun-idaho-walmart/20887617/ … @KagroX #blacklivesmatter

(one of the three is John Crawford, shot dead by police.)

[bigdarryl]

5. And he wasn't even shooting the damn gun just holding it while on the phone

In a state that is open carry

[randys1]

26. Well, to be fair, America is a very racist country, hell, there are TENS OF MILLIONS of them

[uppityperson]

42. I wonder if Robert Ritchie who lied in the 911 call ever got charged with accessory or anything?

[marym625]

6. I can't stand it.

We are never going to get anywhere until four things happen:

1. The cops and other law enforcement officers speak out
2. The militarization of police departments stop, including the war attitudes
3. We get rid of the racist, scared and trigger happy cops.
4. The prosecutors, that work so closely with police on a daily basis, are not involved in anyway in deciding if charges are warranted.

I know that those are simplistic, obvious needs. I get that there is much more involved. But without those changes, we don't stand a chance.

[brush]

7. You are 100% spot on. nt

[marym625]

21. Thanks!

[ellenrr]

12. it seems to me that realistically, the only one with a slim chance of happening,

is #4. And for that to happen, I think first, you need a groundswell of public opinion.

I think you put the needs out there clearly. I just don't see much happening, but then I am a confirmed cynic.

[marym625]

14. It's going to take a complete overhaul

If the current system. The only way that will happen is with a revolution.

So, yeah, I agree with you.

[PosterChild]

32. LOL, a "revolution". You and what army? (nt)

[marym625]

35. Nice response

Filled with knowledge, information and understanding that the "I agree" means that I agree with the person I replied to.

[PosterChild]

45. Thanks for the clarification. (nt)

[Cryptoad]

22. 63% dont give a damn enough to vote.........

[randys1]

27. Top of the list simply has to be the following...

You will NEVER be able to disarm the police to the point where they are not so terribly lethal to all of us until you take away THEIR excuse, the Oligarchs excuse to be so heavily armed in the first place.

In a country with the HIGHEST PER CAPITA gun ownership, over

THREE HUNDRED MILLION GUNS

let me repeat that

THREE HUNDRED MILLION GUNS


we must enforce the 2nd amendment, and once the guns are all in locked up militias, the police wont even need to carry guns, certainly not all of them.

[kioa]

33. Your solution for police shootings is to disarm everybody BUT the police?

Can't say I buy that particular idea.

[randys1]

34. Not what I said, once you disarm the population by virtue of the 2nd amendment cops

cops will no longer have an excuse to carry guns, most of them anyway

[kioa]

37. That worked out so well for Mexico.....

Tell me more about the successes of prohibition & how the police will disarm afterwards.

[helpmetohelpyou]

8. Walmart should probably keep their BB guns and pellet guns secured

They are not classified as toys so keep them behind a glass case or secured with a cable .

[randys1]

28. Walmart should probably be seized by the federal government for being traiterous

assholes who turn Americans into slave labor and then use the American system of welfare to supplement payments while at the same time supporting politicians who are dedicated to destroying safety nets.


I cant think of a god damn thing more traitorous than what Walmart has done to small business and the labor force.

[Enthusiast]

9. Kicked

and recommended!

Good comments after the article.

[malaise]

10. The tweet was wrong

Only two of the men were firing the BBguns - the one who wasn't threatening anyone - the African-American was murdered by the cops. Note that the store folks called the cops in the second case.

[Are_grits_groceries]

13. In the second case,

a man deliberately called 911 and reported that the man was waving the gun around. He called back and repeated these lies knowingly. He really set this up because the police were primed by his reporting.
I am not excusing them because they should judge each scene by what they see. I wish the man who called it in could be charged.

[malaise]

15. That's the first case

but otherwise you're correct

[uppityperson]

43. gmta, I just asked this up thread, if Ritchie got charged with any thing

[IDemo]

16. A lol spot-on comment at the link:

Can't you just picture the conversation?

Cop:" OKAY- HOLD IT RIGHT TH --- Cletus? Zeke? is that you boys? what you doin' causin' a ruckus?"

Cletus: "Shucks, Bob, me and Zeke done ran out o' hooch, and we wuz bored cuz Fox News was showin' a rerun of their War on Christmas show, so we came down fer some fancy shoppin' and a little 2nd Amendment fun. You ain't gonna cuff us, are ya?"

Cop:"Heck, no, Cletus, our mama'd smack me upside the head if'n i did that"

Cletus: "so, you comin' over on New Year's? we're aimin' to shoot off some dynamite at midnight - none o' them pussy fireworks in my trailer park."

And they all had a round of drinks at the next Klan rally, and burned a cross together in brotherly love.

[mackerel]

17. The article says that the Idaho men were apprehended later outside of Walmart.

[Paladin]

18. Pro-gun activists keep claiming that open carry isn't a white privilege.

And yet these incidents keep happening, over and over. If these guys had been black, they would be full of embalming fluid, right now.

[Cryptoad]

24. GOP Gun Policy:

A Gun for Every Idiot, an Idiot For Every Gun!

[kioa]

25. Implications of police racism doesn't eliminate any right

It makes the police wrong.

Are you suggesting that the Huey P Newton Club needs to be disarmed? http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20140820-huey-p.-newton-gun-club-leads-open-carry-rally-in-south-dallas.ece

Open carry groups joined in the protests of John Crawfords death.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/10/07/3576457/ohio-gun-rights-leader-police-shooting-victim-likely-would-not-have-been-killed-if-he-were-white/

[Paladin]

29. We can always count on pro-gunners to furnish the exceptions which prove the rule.

I'll see your Huey Newton Club, and I'll raise you the Cliven Bundy "ranch" incident.........

[marble falls]

19. White privilege kept these two from being "justifiable shooting" statistics.

[rgbecker]

20. It's like the Ohio guy, Crawford, was "Swatted".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

Prime the cops with a good story and they are likely to do anything.

[workinclasszero]

23. Ohio Walmart CCTV captures John Crawford shooting - video

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/sep/25/ohio-shooting-walmart-video

White guys shoot up walmart, no problems.

Black guy holds an air gun at walmart...instant execution by the police!

[OilemFirchen]

30. Meanwhile:

A half-mile from my house to the west, 12/24, black man:

Man arrested for pointing fake gun at motorists

A man was arrested for inducing panic after he pointed a fake gun at passing motorists, according to a police report.

Bennie Coleman, 20, was arrested on Tuesday morning and booked in Montgomery County Jail. Police observed him in a firing stance, pointing the gun at passing motorists and waving the gun back and forth from left to right, according to a Dayton police report.

Police were called to the area after a woman called 911 and reported a male was walking north on Keowee Street carrying a pistol with an orange tip, and when she drove by, he pointed the gun at her.

Police ordered Coleman to drop the gun, and he replied, “It’s a toy,” as he raised his hands waist high with the gun still in his hand, according to the report. The responding officer said he started to draw his service weapon from the holster and ordered Coleman again to drop the weapon, according to the report. Coleman then complied and dropped the gun.

A mile from my house to the east, 11/17, white man:

Dayton man shot and killed by police during 911 response

A man was shot and killed by a Dayton police officer Sunday night at a residence on the city’s east side
John Smelko shot and killed by Dayton police officer.

John Smelko, 40, was shot by Officer Raymond Dine at 1101 Huffman Ave. just before midnight, Chief of Police Richard Biehl said at a news conference Monday afternoon.

Dine, along with Officer Jerry Bell were responding to a 911 hang-up call at that address.

Biehl said when Dine knocked on the door, Smelko answered with one of his hands concealed. Dine repeatedly asked Smelko to show his hands, and when he did, Biehl said Smelko raised a weapon and extended it through an opening in the door. Dine responded by firing a shot, striking Smelko in the upper torso, Biehl said.

Is it really useful to draw conclusions based on anecdotes?

[SomethingFishy]

36. Here's an "anecdote".. the gun in your story was VISIBLY FAKE

it was a fucking airsoft with the orange tip still on. You think the cops should have shot him too? Even though you'd have to be a complete and utter dolt to think the gun was real? So you post 2 stories one with an obviously fake gun and another with a man about to shoot a cop with a real gun, and you claim there is no conclusion to be had.

What you seem to fail to see is that a black man who was leaning on a BB gun and talking on his phone was killed. While 2 white guys pulled the guns out and were shooting in the store, were arrested.

If you can't see a problem here, then you are part of the problem.

[OilemFirchen]

40. And that's why I rarely post in these threads.

Your response drips with kneejerk presumptions and allegations:

You think the cops should have shot him too?

... you claim there is no conclusion to be had.

What you seem to fail to see...

If you can't see a problem here, then you are part of the problem.

I said nothing about whether or not someone "should" have been shot. I make no claims as to "conclusions". I don't "fail to see" anything. I'm not "part of the problem".

Rather, I responded to the OP, claiming a "double standard" based upon one isolated incident. Were you to contemplate the two examples I provided, you could, likewise, draw conclusions based on each. In the first case, police didn't overreact when they came upon a man who had been reportedly aiming a gun at passersby. They could have shot him, but they didn't. Despite the orange tip, they still demanded that he drop the "weapon". Were they "complete and utter idiots" to do so? More significantly, did they give him the benefit of the doubt because he was black?

In the second example, the police responded to a hangup call, with no specific reason to believe that an occupant was there, let alone armed . Rather, they were met by a man with an arm behind his back. After several requests to show his hands, he obliged by pointing a weapon. In a split second he was dead. The police took no time to determine the lethality of the weapon, nor his intent. Why? Because he was white?

I certainly wouldn't draw any conclusions from either case, other than that the police seemed to act appropriately. Neither example is useful in a discussion of the larger issue of police violence, especially against persons of color.

Nor is the OP.

See?

[progressoid]

38. How about numbers then.

Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks. In that respect, Medved is correct.

However, Brian Forst, a professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University, said this difference is predictable.

"More whites are killed by the police than blacks primarily because whites outnumber blacks in the general population by more than five to one," Forst said. The country is about 63 percent white and 12 percent black. Rather than comparing the raw numbers, you can look at the likelihood that a person will die due to "legal intervention" in the same way you might look at the chance a person will die in a car accident or a disease like lung cancer. When you do that, the numbers flip.

A 2002 study in the American Journal of Public Health found that the death rate due to legal intervention was more than three times higher for blacks than for whites in the period from 1988 to 1997.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/

[OilemFirchen]

41. Statistics are extremely important.

Anecdotes are not.

[matt819]

31. On the other hand

And I'm not trying to start a riot --

It could be that the police in Coeur d'Alene are better cops than the police in those other incidents. It would be an interesting, if life threatening, test if white guys were to head into the Walmarts in the towns where the black kids were killed and start shooting up the place with bb guns, or simply displaying toy guns, and see what happens. I'm not sure I'd want to be one of the test subjects.

[TorchTheWitch]

39. totally different situation

Did you even read the article??? A) it was known to be a BB gun when police were called. B) the men were apprehended after they left the Walmart and DIDN'T have ANY kind of gun on them at the time they were arrested since they left the BB gun in the store.

The guy that was shot in the store was thought to have had a real bullet firing gun that was loaded because the person that called the police said so and also claimed that he was threatening people with it.

"Clearly a double standard," my butt. The two situations were COMPLETELY different. If the guy in the store that was shot was a white guy and everything else was the same he still would have been shot and killed just as the black guy was.

No stores should have any kind of non-bullet firing gun that is not legally classified as a toy because it does fire some sort of projectile loose on shelves and locked up just as real sport guns sold in stores are. No store customer should be ABLE to take such a gun out of a box that's loose on a shelf and wander around the store with it.

There also needs to be a law that any non-bullet firing guns that are not classified as toys and therefore do not have the bright orange tip that signifies them as toys have some kind of obvious marking similar to the orange tip for toys that signifies them as non-bullet firing guns but guns that do fire some kind of other projectile. Rather than whining about the police shooting people with guns that look for all the world to be real bullet firing guns and are required to assume that they are real bullet firing guns why not petition the government to actually solve the problem by requiring these types of guns to have some kind of obvious marking just as toy guns are so that both civilians and police don't mistake them for bullet firing guns? Then even idiots that wander around in public with a gun that looks exactly like a real bullet firing gun wouldn't scare the shit out of civilians or get shot by the police.

There also needs to be a law that legally classified toy guns tat are required to have the bright orange tip not be sold without packaging that has giant bold print advising that disguising the bright orange tip (which is easy to do) is both dangerous and illegal (and if it isn't illegal it bloody well needs to be) and explains what the purpose of that bright orange tip is in the first place.

[uppityperson]

44. The cops who shot Crawford did not give him the option of dropping the gun, the just came ams and

shot him. Same with 12 yr old Tamir. Police sometimes take time to assess, other times rush right in. In the op, 2 men were known to have be shooting up a store, known to be shooting, not just called in"waving and pointing a gun" but actually shooting in the store. So yes, it was different in that the 1 of these 3 incidents that involved active shooting, they just got arrested. In the other 2, the ONLY shots fired were by cops as soon as they were able to shoot.

[Blue_Tires]

46. kick for truth