Saturday, July 17, 2010

For some reason I don't get by Billy Beck's place very often,

and when I do I run into things like these two posts. First,
Back in February, Ithaca Police officers Tase and then shoot dead a "drug suspect" in a convenience store parking lot. This is an ugly case in Ithaca. All officers cleared of wrong in the matter. Some of the weed-level buzz among townies is that while the dead man was a known dealer, the operation was a goof: his van didn't start moving until they Tased him, which happened because it was in gear. Nobody is happy about any of this.

Early last Sunday morning, the house of one of the officers burns down. It's now ruled an arson
.
As the man says, this is not good; it's the kind of spark that can start a really nasty fire. And that's preceded by this one:
His Right arm went up in a defenseless position and it appeared his left arm appeared to be going up but there was NO gun in his hand. He was taserd and shot at the same time. At no time did the man in question ever raise his voice, shout an obscenity or become confrontational with the police. We saw the disabled man stooping to his right facing us with what appeared to be a bullet wound in his upper chest with blood coming from the wound and immediately his eyes became glossy as he began to convulse. At this point he was no threat to anyone, both hands were in full view of us and there was no gun. As he was down, the police continued to shout ‘put the gun down’ several times…but there was no gun in his hand as we had full vantage point view. The injured man was having agonal respirations, he was down when the second volly of bullets rang out.
...
An officer then came up to the injured man who in my opinion was a ‘dead’ man’, was cuffed with his hands behind his back and no attempt by the officer to determine if the man was alive or dead. No apparent life saving aid was given to the ‘downed’ man. The man was totally lifeless when the Paramedics arrived on scene. I was absolutely surprised to see that no attempt at aggressive ACLS was engaged. They simply just picked up the body like a ’sack of potatoes’ and hurled him onto the gurney and into the ambulance This was a crime scene…. the crime scene was violated
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Apparently there are a number of witnesses with similar accounts, and LVPD is dismissing all of them. LVPD better damned well hope there's video of this incident AND that it backs up the officers; because if the officers are lying... then LVPD better clean house with a very aggressive broom or this'll be hanging over the whole agency for years to come. And rightly so.

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