Another unarmed St. Louis teen shot and killed by cops

Extra extra, read all about it! Yet another unarmed St. Louis teen shot and killed by an off duty cop.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/10/09/3577923/why-did-an-off-duty-st-louis-cop-kill-a-black-teen-last-night/

Cops say he fired a gun, relatives of the 18 year old boy said he wasn't holding a gun. The off duty cop was working as a security officer at a second job and saw one of three black teens start to run away.

The off duty cop said they shot at him 3 times and that caused the cop to return fire 17 times.

Discuss.

Vonderrit? That's a new one, and I've seen some right corkers.

I'm not surprised at all. When cops see young black kids all they seem to think is "SHOOT TO KILL, SHOOT TO KILL".....

The plan at this point seems to be to kill enough unarmed kids to make us desensitized to it...

Thank God... unarmed black teenagers are such a threat to us "normal" (read: white conservative Christian) folk, it's about time somebody did something about the problem.

Eh, pardon my sarcasm, I know I'm only stirring the pot here, but I've seen this kind of crap firsthand too often to not be pissed off. I'd blame it on the fact that I grew up in Texas, but moving to Minnesota didn't change anything, people still assume "black" = "troublemaking lawbreaker."

So no one believes what the off duty officer said that he was shot at?

Right now I would rather not assume anything. No one has any hard evidence that he didn't have a gun & the police have told the news that they recovered a pistol. It's absolutely tragic and deserves a certain scrutiny but there's no point in jumping on the bandwagon until the facts are verified. Incidents like this practically bleed misinformation, so I'm keeping an eye on this from a step back until I hear more.

geo said:

So no one believes what the off duty officer said that he was shot at?

HE DIN DO NUFFIN!

I would respect the officer more if he admitted that he wasn't shot at. Courage is the willingness to admit one's mistakes. I see it as a disgrace that one would lie about one's own actions.

We need to hear both police and citizen eyewitness accounts before making a decision. This shit is getting ridiculous and getting out of hand, why the hell are our country's cops the most triggerhappy in the world?

Is it just me or are southern police departments trying to make American cops look bad?

geekmarine said:

I would respect the officer more if he admitted that he wasn't shot at. Courage is the willingness to admit one's mistakes. I see it as a disgrace that one would lie about one's own actions.

I'm probably going to be e-lynched for this, but how do we know that the cops are wrong? The cousin said he had a sandwich instead of a gun, but there's no more proof that they are correct then there is that the cops are. And, when you think about it, it makes sense that a family member would think of a story like this in defense of his cousin. Not saying he did, but we don't know. The cops did go into detail about it; the weapon used, amount of shots fired, what started the chase before the shooting, etc. Honestly, I don't think a "correct" side can be determined now.

TheMightyHeracross said:

I'm probably going to be e-lynched for this, but how do we know that the cops are wrong?

We don't. Jumping to conclutions make's for better conversation.

Hmm, well glad to see that I'm not the only one with that mentality. I honestly think that it is unfair to instantly blame the cops for lying when the cousin (who very well may be trying to clear his brother's name due to the accusations of the police) is just as likely to have lied as well. (Again, not saying either did for sure).

Patch93 said:

Is it just me or are southern police departments trying to make American cops look bad?

Well um, St. Louis is not really "southern" by any metric.

Quast said:

Well um, St. Louis is not really "southern" by any metric.

Is it south of the Mason Dixon line? Its somewhere around there.

geo said:

unarmed ... black teens

Den they weren't really "unarmed", hombre, if you catch my drift

Black people have long arms.

I'm still waiting for ANY witnesses---other than the victim's family, who it seems weren't even at the scene---to come forward and dispute the police report that this kid had a gun. If he was unarmed and never fired a shot, then why hasn't there been a peep from the other two teens who were allegedly with him at the time? Or from any other witnesses? I haven't seen anything like that from any of the reports I've checked.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/09/crowds-in-streets-of-st-louis-after-fatal-shooting-by-off-duty-police-officer/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/09/st-louis-police-shooting-white-officer-black-teen/16959545/


http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/09/us/st-louis-officer-shooting/index.html

These are just a few of the sources I've checked. Note that the top one mentions a police report that the weapon was reported stolen back in September, which (if true) would explain why the kids family would claim he didn't have a gun; they were unaware.

Of interest also is this nugget from the bottom of the same article:

"Myers had been scheduled to stand trial in November for unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest charges related to an June incident in which he was a passenger in a car involved in a high-speed chase with police, according to the Post-Dispatch. After the car crashed, Myers reportedly exited the car and threw a loaded .380-caliber pistol into the sewer. He was later caught by police, the Post-Dispatch reported."

Every time one of these threads pop up I like to imagine Uncle Ruckus responding to it.

"Dis nigga was in the wrong, he knew better than to terrorize these innocent white folk."

Caffeine Freak said:

"Myers had been scheduled to stand trial in November for unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest charges related to an June incident in which he was a passenger in a car involved in a high-speed chase with police, according to the Post-Dispatch. After the car crashed, Myers reportedly exited the car and threw a loaded .380-caliber pistol into the sewer. He was later caught by police, the Post-Dispatch reported."

Yeah I heard he just got out of jail, but I was too lazy to look anything up. One can say what's prior crime got to do with it? :-)

geo said:

Yeah I heard he just got out of jail, but I was too lazy to look anything up. One can say what's prior crime got to do with it? :-)

Technically nothing, except for the fact that in this case, it establishes that he was no stranger to guns or confrontations with the police. Makes the whole 'he had a gun and fired at the police' narrative a little easier to believe.

Extreme criminal behaviors are often repeated behaviors. To draw a bit of an analogy, if someone accused of molesting a child turned out to have a prior conviction for exposing himself to a few kids, he suddenly might seem to be an even likelier suspect.

I don't get how the "white people" (American, British ect) invaded countries, kidnapped, raped and killed thousands of black people, but still do this.

Sqrrt121 said:

I don't get how the "white people" (American, British ect) invaded countries, kidnapped, raped and killed thousands of black people, but still do this.

In the words of Louis CK...

Louis CK said:

I'm white, thank God for that shit - That is a huge leg up. Are you kidding me? Oh, God, I love being white. I really do. Seriously, if you're not white, you're missing out. Because this shit is thoroughly good. Let me be clear, by the way. I'm not saying that white people are better - I'm saying that being white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option, I would re-up every year.

[...]

Here's how great it is to be white: I can get in a time machine and go to any time, and it would be fucking awesome when I get there! That is exclusively a white privilege. Black people can't fuck with time machines! A black guy in a time machine's like, "Hey, anything before 1980, no thank you. I don't want to go."

[...]

I don't want to go to the future and find out what happens to white people because we're gonna pay hard for this shit, you got to know that. We're not going to just fall from number one to two. They're gonna hold us down and fuck us in the ass forever. And we totally deserve it. But for now, wheeeeeeee!

Louis CK said:

I'm white, thank God for that shit - That is a huge leg up. Are you kidding me? Oh, God, I love being white. I really do. Seriously, if you're not white, you're missing out. Because this shit is thoroughly good. Let me be clear, by the way. I'm not saying that white people are better - I'm saying that being white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option, I would re-up every year.

Ironically for "antiracists" everywhere, it's a well-known fact that fairer skin is associated with higher social status and is more desirable even among societies that you wouldn't call exactly "white", like the Middle East, Brazil, India, Japan but also many African countries. Not necessarily "Caucasian White" but a "whiter than thou" kind of white (though the status of mixed-race people is not always better, even if they do appear fairer).





Trying to re-educate a bunch of whiteys living comfortably in their First World countries in order to feel "white guilt"? May be possible. Re-educating some 4 billion of more or less brown or dark-sinned unprivileged sods not to associate fair skin with higher status? Impossible.

I guess it's just different kinds of popularity for different ranks of stature.

geo said:

So no one believes what the off duty officer said that he was shot at?

Considering that the police have been caught in a lie where they made up some shit about him jumping out of a bush when no bushes even exist to jump out of, the police testimony looks pretty dubious.

It seems that the only undisputable fact is that he was a thug and that he got shot running away.

That's enough material to be terrible. How can he just fucking shoot a guy who demonstrates no harm to him?

Why doesn't the higher authority step in and stop this bullshit already?

Avoozl said:

Why doesn't the higher authority step in and stop this bullshit already?

You mean like a district attourney? DAs have to work with cops on a daily basis; they can't afford to come out too far on the side of punishing cops, particularly when the circumstances are dubious.