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Cont: The behaviour of US police officers - part 2

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"...Austin Lee Edwards, a former trooper with the Virginia State Police who was working for the Washington County Sheriff's Office..."

Given the many similarities in many of these types of stories I have to wonder why was he a "former trooper", and what background research was done when he was employed in Wahington County.

Given what comes out too often when US cops are sacked and rehired elsewhere, a call to the chief of his former department who replied something along the lines of "yeah, he's a good kid, bu the woke crowd got a bit uppity after he pistol whipped a black person, who we all know is a drug dealer but could never plant evidence on, and to save the department we 'let him go'."
 
Given what comes out too often when US cops are sacked and rehired elsewhere, a call to the chief of his former department who replied something along the lines of "yeah, he's a good kid, bu the woke crowd got a bit uppity after he pistol whipped a black person, who we all know is a drug dealer but could never plant evidence on, and to save the department we 'let him go'."


From the link:
A spokesperson for the Virginia State Police said Edwards entered its academy on July 6, 2021, and graduated as a trooper on Jan. 21 of this year. He was assigned to Henrico County, which is within the Richmond Division, they said, before his October resignation.
The Washington County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that Edwards was hired on Nov. 16 and recently began orientation there. The office was getting ready to assign him to the patrol division.

"Past employers and the Virginia State Police were contacted during the hiring processing," the sheriff's office said, "however, no employers disclosed any troubles, reprimands, or internal investigations pertaining to Edwards."

Sounds like he didn't make his probationary year. Employers generally, not just police, often won't badmouth an ex-employee for fear of a lawsuit. Sometimes employees will agree to resign instead of being fired in exchange for a positive, or at least a not-negative, reference. Another argument for a national database of police officers that would include disciplinary actions.
 
"...Austin Lee Edwards, a former trooper with the Virginia State Police who was working for the Washington County Sheriff's Office..."

Given the many similarities in many of these types of stories I have to wonder why was he a "former trooper", and what background research was done when he was employed in Wahington County.

I had to read several articles that all called him a "former state trooper" before I found out that he was an active sheriff's deputy at the time of the crime.
 
I had to read several articles that all called him a "former state trooper" before I found out that he was an active sheriff's deputy at the time of the crime.

News organizations vomiting up police talking points. It's just about all they do.
 
I had to read several articles that all called him a "former state trooper" before I found out that he was an active sheriff's deputy at the time of the crime.

I'm seeing headlines of his being "employed" by the Sheriff, and yesterday CNN left any connection out of their headline.

Lets see how much of a copwashing lede I can compose:

"There was an officer involved shooting yesterday after individuals interfered with a deputy attempting to place a teen in personal custody"
 
I had to read several articles that all called him a "former state trooper" before I found out that he was an active sheriff's deputy at the time of the crime.


State trooper is one of the most prestigious law enforcement jobs. State police have some of the toughest hiring standards and training requirements. An ex-trooper going off the rails is more newsworthy than a rural county deputy. And he was a trooper until a month ago. The link says local police haven't said whether he was actually a current cop.
It wasn't clear if Edwards, 28, was a sworn officer when he allegedly killed 69-year-old Mark Winek; his wife, 65-year-old Sharie Winek; and their daughter, 38-year-old Brooke Winek.
.....
In a statement, Andis said Edwards was hired earlier this month and was in the process of being assigned to the patrol division. Edwards resigned from Virginia State Police on October 28, a spokesperson for the agency said.


"Former state trooper" is his most recent confirmed police job.
 
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A different perspective: American doesn't have enough police officers.
Lewis and Usmani complicate the narrative with this statistic: Many other industrialized democracies field more police per capita than the United States does. At 212 officers per 100,000 total residents, this country ranks in the 41st percentile, behind Germany, Spain and Belgium, among others. Relative to its level of serious crime, the United States is even more of an outlier; it has one-ninth as many police officers, per homicide, than the median developed country.

The result is that U.S. police are 44 percent less likely than counterparts abroad to clear cases of serious crime. Lewis and Usmani emphasize that American police devote as much effort — per officer — to such cases; the problem is insufficient personnel.
.....
This is a disaster for public safety, because certainty of arrest is the best way to deter crime. The U.S. criminal justice system relies instead on a far less efficient means: harsh sentences for offenders who get caught, much harsher than those in peer nations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/30/police-criminal-justice-reform/
https://direct.mit.edu/ajle/article...7/THE-INJUSTICE-OF-UNDER-POLICING-IN-AMERICA1
 

Seems a fair point.

It's a pretty complicated dynamic. I will say that if we tripled the number of cops without other reforms things would be way worse because all of this is a series of maladaptive responses to other issues that themselves often are responses and so on. If someone were to take away from this that more cops is the easy solution they'd be in for a surprise.

Cop training and culture is so broken at present that putting more people out there would be tragic. The bar to entry really doesn't need to be lower.

I do wonder about definitions and how the raw numbers track across systems. I suspect a common US problem isn't too few patrolmen/street cops as much as nowhere near enough expert detectives and analysts.


It occurs to me there is no reason a detective needs to be a cop. With the skillset I've developed I'd be an excellent detective w/r/t piecing evidence together and building a case but I'm excluded from that sort of thing because I'm not going to be a cop first. It's somewhat limiting the talent pool.
 
And even fewer good ones.

Sorta like the Border Patrol, I suspect that some of that might be a branding issue. I think that there's much more limited group of people that is attracted to a job where they expect to be hurting people (especially under expected threat because of the pervasiveness of gun culture) compared to the group of people who would be attracted to a job that actually is about helping people.
 
Trigger-happy cop shoots and kills homeowner:

'He did nothing wrong': Family of Texas entrepreneur fatally shot by police say he was defending his home

A tech entrepreneur in Texas wasn’t given ample time to drop a rifle he was carrying on his own front porch before he was fatally shot by police last month, his devastated family told NBC News.

Rajan “Raj” Moonesinghe, 33, had returned from a trip and suspected his home had been burglarized during the early-morning hours of Nov. 15. That’s when he held a rifle outside his front door and was encountered by an Austin police officer who quickly shot him while almost simultaneously ordering Moonesinghe to drop the gun, relatives said.

In an exclusive interview on Thursday, Moonesinghe’s mother, Ruth, and brother, Johann, said they were heartbroken and demanded answers from Austin police as to why their loved one was killed so quickly before being given a reasonable amount of time to drop the weapon.

“He did nothing wrong,” Johann Moonesinghe said. “He had a gun … he was defending his house and he didn’t point the gun. He was not menacing. He didn’t look like he was going to shoot anyone.”

The two-minute Ring video shows Moonesinghe carrying the rifle outside his home while walking toward the street. He appears to briefly hold up the rifle before turning around and walking toward his front door and pointing the rifle.

He appears to say, “Yep, you want this?” Several seconds pass and then Moonesinghe says, “Are you sure?” “Oh my God, you’re f------ stupid. You’re f------ stupid.”

He then points the rifle toward the doorway and a loud gunshot is heard while a police car passes in the background of the video. A second police car then passes. A second shot is heard while Moonesinghe is not in view of the camera, according to the video.

He then comes into view of the camera and is walking on his porch when what sounds like “drop the gun” is shouted, and nearly simultaneously multiple shots are heard on the video.

Moonesinghe then drops to the ground and shouts, “It wasn’t me.” He then yells an expletive, the video shows. “Subject is down, hands are up” is heard on the video.

Moonesinghe again appears to say, “It wasn’t me.”

I'm sure the cop gave him the standard hundredth of a second to comply before he blasted away.
 
Texas again, where it perfectly legal for anyone (more or less) to carry a gun in public.

The jokes write themselves in this country.
 
Heres the Ring video and police bodycam video.

https://youtu.be/e_tLi8EV2yg

It's... Odd. The homeowner appears to shoot twice into his own door from outside it just before police show up, was their a burglar inside or was he having some kind of mental break?

They shoot him pretty much simultaneously as they say to drop the gun which was pointed at the ground.

 
My guess is that the home owner had no idea that the police had arrived.

He looked impaired, I'm wondering if he was impaired by adrenaline.

Firing into his house like that just doesn't make any sense at all.

:(
 
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