20 November 2007

I don't know the rules of being a cop and shooting a "perp". I always thought cops were instructed to shoot to wound but whatever. A rule in a text book doesn't mean ish on Grant Avenue at 7 A.M. on a Sunday... Real life kicks in at 590 Gates Avenue when a kids own mother called the cops on him saying he had knives and a gun...

If someone is hiding under a staircase and refusing to show you their hands, well...

If someone is lunging at you with a broken wine bottle after being told to drop it over and over again, well...

And if someone is taunting you saying "Come get me. I have a gun. Let's do this", well... I don't know what to tell you.

I'm not absolving anyone of anything, just giving my opinion, which often falls on the Devil's Advocate side of the fencing.

"The death of an unarmed teenager in a hail of 20 police bullets should serve as a new cause for his generation", Al Sharpton said today at 18-year-old Khiel Coppin's funeral at the Nazarene Congregational United Church of Christ.

Khiel, who was mentally ill, pointed a hairbrush at officers "as if he were aiming a gun'' and repeatedly ignored orders to "stop, show his hands and get on the ground'' before he was shot.

Before picking up the hairbrush, Coppin waved several knives toward officers -- who had been summoned by his mother -- and taunted the cops by saying, "Come get me. I have a gun. Let's do this."

Still, Sharpton somehow classifies this as "police brutality".

Are the police EVER right, Al? Have they EVER made the right decision; ever?!

"I don't know who shot him, but I know what killed him,'' Sharpton said. "What killed him was a climate of indifference that is pervasive in this city, where we have almost become immune to police brutality.''

"What is this city ... when a mother's cry for help is answered with 20 rounds of ammunition?'' said Sharpton.

"We are not anti-police,'' stressed the Rev. Conrad Tillard, who presided at the service.

"We respect the police department. That is why Khiel's mother thought she could call the police.''

"We acknowledge the brave and courageous police officers that put their lives on the line every day for the citizens of this city. But as a community, we stand firm and are unequivocal in saying that we must tear down this blue wall of silence."

There is no blue wall of silence here; it does not apply. There is a smoking gun and it's not the cops smoking revolvers, its the 911 tape. Its the fact that Khiel's own mother called the cops on him.

According to the 911 call, while the emergency operator took down the address, a male voice was overheard in the background saying, "I got a gun, and I'm gonna shoot you,'' and, "I've got a fucking gun!''

The mother, Denise Owens, told the operator, "This ... you know... this kid is a problem. You can even hear him?''

The operator: "Who is that?''

The mother: "That's supposed to be my son!'' "I'm flipping out,'' "I can't handle this.''

Cops show up and Khiel is flashing knives, screaming out the window at the cops, climbs out the window with a dark object in his hand, approaches the cops, defiantly ignores their warnings to get back or drop the object... and this is police brutality?!?!?!?! This is the 'blue wall of silence'??!

Its no secret I've never been into Reverend Bacon Al Sharpton. I just think he's a whore who only cares about himself and riling people up to continually bolster his own fragile assumed authority. Al going to Khiel's service and yelling about "police brutality" and "indifference" isn't going to inspire anything positive. He riles people up, he exploits their rage and confounds the truth with sloganeering and party lines that smudge the facts and then get passed on like a game of telephone in 3rd grade.

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