Dave Smith
It is a pursuit even if a cop is chasing someone who doesn't realize that he is being pursued. It is a pursuit if it consists of only a fifty yard foot race across a parking lot.
You keep ignoring the facts as they have been laid out for you.
The results would be similar. AS I said, in such as case the cop certainly could not be blamed UNLESS he drew his gun to apprehend, say, a shoplifter.
It's a term, alright? At the kid's trial much was brought up in the kid's defense. The fact that he had never been accused of committing a violent act. The fact that the cop had been on several occasions counseled about his rudeness, his harsh treatment of people he had pulled over. But you are trying to paint me into a corner, trying to make me out to be an apologist for the thief. Why? I do blame the kid. I do also blame the cop. For the last time I'm going to say this: there was plenty of blame to go around: the cop sure as hell deserves a measure of it. He sure as hell does not-- as you keep inferring-- deserve a f***ing medal. Whatever the kid was doing-not doing during the moments before the impact, the cop was clearly in the wrong for driving like a maniac with a hard-on through a school district-- the streets were filled with kids walking home from school! Any one of which could have been end by his car. Now, for a moment let's return to the original subject of this thread: a cop who apparently was not out on a call was racing down the freeway without lights or sirens, apparently weaving through traffic, and he rear-ended another car and end four people. By your statements to this point, this cop too should be deemed faultless-- he did after all have a badge!!!
I said **maybe** he was more scared for that reason-- the cop's record for acting precipitously was mentioned in trial. Dave, you are Canadian, and I understand that Canadian cops are all first-rate and never abuse their power. Belton, SC is a small southern town. The kind of small southern town that for 150 years hung black teenagers for smiling politely at a white woman. The bigotry and the urge to break heads is hidden now, like a colony of termites eating the town from the inside-- oh, did I mention that the cop is white and the boy is black? At the rates they pay, these small southern towns attract not career minded, but the Barney Fife mentality. And most small southern towns don't have a benign Sheriff Andy to keep his dogs under control. In such towns, people learn not to give any lip to a man toting a badge.
The f***ing cop poured gasoline onto a spark. He did not commit an act of willful liquidate, but his unprofessional overreaction ('Gonna teach that african american a lesson!') led indirectly to the rest of a 9 1-2 year old child. The kid could have been picked up two hours later at his house...as he had been on two other occasions. The first got him a scolding as he was only 13 at the time; the second, probation. This time, yeah, he probably figured he'd go away for a couple of years. I agree that he should have been in prison when the accident occurred.
My granddaughter's "story" has not changed one iota. Your insistence that the cop is blameless has not changed. I repeat: there was plenty of blame to go around. The kid got his, didn't he (30 years); the uncle is covered in guilt for making a *mistake* that was in fact understandable under those circumstances; my grand baby got hers: she is dead and buried for unfastening her seatbelt. The only party to this tragedy who was not adequately punished is the cop. He admits privately that he did wrong, but his department, like you, smugly avers that he deserved a medal. Been a different story, I suspect, if the mayor's or the sheriff's daughter had been end because one of their employees wanted to prove who had the biggest privates.
