and in court!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/..._shot_in_court

This little town is apparently a speed trap special, and the fire chief was ticketed. He challenged it in court, got in a scuffle with the cops and one of them shot the chief in the hip right there in court.

It's getting crazier and crazier out there.


-Richard

Its a sad world in many more ways than one!

its just crazy man.....!

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ooops..... wrong forum!!!

Well, ideally you should fight with a police officer. But ideally, as a police officer, you shouldn't shoot your own fire chief over a traffic disagreement. In fact ideally (and by that, I mean as mandated in every jurisdiction I've ever known), you shouldn't shoot *anyone* without a reasonable belief that your life, or someone else's, is in mortal danger.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything! 14% of people know that!"

Having read through the article, it would seem that the shooting is one of the town's lesser problems with its police.

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

Oh, it's just Arkansas. That's all.

Seriously though - that's some really crazy stuff.

We had a small "town" like that here on the west side of Columbus that operated in a similar manner. Fortunately, I don't recall any shootings; but the department existed for the sole purpose of issuing traffic tickets from unfair speed traps. Now, I'm not saying "unfair" from a public opinion perspective. I'm saying "unfair" based on speed-zone changes that were set up not for safety issues, but to create zones where roads would go from high rates of speed, to low rates, even though road conditions did not change.

Anyway, that department no long exists either. Most of you are aware of my background (and many of you have even more extensive LE backgrounds than myself, either personally or through friends/family). Most of you also know how passionately I'll often defend police, when I think they're in the right.

All I can say about departments like the one in the article is that it's not fair to law enforcement officers world-wide, to call these people "police". They're not. It just shows how being a police officer and a police department is more than just going through some certification program and receiving money from the state. The good news is these types of crooked operations typically don't last. The bad news is, that doesn't undo the considerable damage they do to everyone else in the mean time.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything! 14% of people know that!"

With 174 residents, the city can keep seven police officers on its rolls but missed payments on police and fire department vehicles and saw its last business close its doors a few weeks ago.

"You can't even buy a loaf of bread, but we've got seven police officers," said former resident Larry Harris, who left town because he said the police harassment became unbearable.

Let's see, a town of 174 people and no surviving businesses but 7 cops. They're writing a lot of tickets but no one knows where the money went. Sounds like quite a little racket going on there, perhaps one worthy of a RICO investigation.

I wonder...

Can't the practice of setting up speed zones not to promote safety but to make money from traffic tickets be prohibited or at least discouraged at the state level?

Here in California the state legislature passed a law a couple of years ago regulating the use of red-light cameras for traffic enforcement. It provided that:

A traffic signal with a red-light camera must meet CalTrans standards for timing- you can't set the yellow light duration to 1/2 second to ding people who have the light go yellow just as they get to the intersection for blowing a red light.

Tickets for red light violations based on camera photos can only be issued by a person authorized to issue traffic citations, i.e., a police officer. Having this done by employees of the companies that service the cameras is prohibited.

Whether there was a significant problem with abuse of red-light cameras I know not- but these measures do preemptively plug holes where the temptation to abuse them could lurk.

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Please enjoy your trip through this door.

What is so strange about all this? Isnt that the way it is in all small towns?



Just kidding, although in rural Texas, those 'reduced speed ahead' signs really mean 'speed trap ahead'. Most of the small towns are reputed to raise most of their money that way.

Heck, I got one in a speed trap coming out of one of these small towns, one time.

They have 7 officers on staff. There are 7 officers in the courtroom. No. I'm no great math whiz, but that would seem to mean that there were only... carry the 5... zero actually on patrol. With 7 police officers in the room when the fight breaks out, they still feel the need to shoot the unarmed guy, AND the guy that fired hit another officer in the finger as the bullet went towards the hip of the fire chief, and there are no charges pending against the cop, bu they are looking at filing misdemeanor charges against they guy they shot in court.

As Eddie Murphy said in Beverly Hills Cop, "What's the charge for getting thrown out of a moving vehicle in the town? Jaywalking?"

Wow. Just wow.

Oh, and here's a song ny Hoyt Axton that seems to tie in well.

Speedtrap

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

That's the part that gets me (along with the "no planned charges" for the officer that fired). You see, even police officers have to prove that a life was in danger (and no, not the life of the person the officer is shooting at ) in order to employ deadly force.

And just because the shot struck him in the hip does not negate a firearm's classification as use of deadly force, even if he was aiming for the hip. Hell, upper leg, lower torso shots are as dangerous as any, with the major arteries and veins that run through there.

The only conceivable way that I can think of this actually passing as a proper use of deadly force is if the fire chief was attempting to remove one of the officer's guns from it's holster. They didn't mention that (though I would expect them to start slipping that into their stories, based on the rest of the things we're hearing about the department).

Either way, I don't understand how they can say they're not even going to try to pursue charges. Take it to court, and let the courts decide the officer is in the clear! That's what they're for.

Hell, not that I'm an attorney or anything, but I'd think that you could even get attempted murder, or at least aggravated felonious assault charges to stick.

People won't stop fearing the inherent power of law enforcement until officers like these stop abusing those inherent powers.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything! 14% of people know that!"

I missed that part about hitting another cop in the finger. That's reckless discharge to say the least. (Song dubbed "Bubba shot the jukebox": Sheriff charges him with reckless discharge, to which Bubba objects, "Reckless, hell! I hit right where I was aiming!" ).

And I also didn't know that Hoyt Axton has been dead for about 10 years! Darn. I'll always remember "Jealous Man"; "You got the knife, I got the gun, come on boy, we gone have a little fun. I'm jealous man, I'd die for love".


-Richard

I agree, but for the record. I know about half dozen people that could be unarmed and still represent enough of a threat to justify shooting in self defense. The thing is, unless you actually know them, or see them in action, you won't have any real warning about it. There was nothing in the story to indicate that the Fire Chief is a ninja, so I'm going on the assumption that the only possible way to justify it was that the chief was going for a gun.

That would sort of make him stupid. Seven on one, they're armed, and he's not in any real physical danger. Go for the gun!

The other option (my preferred guess) is that the fight started and Officer Fife pulled his gun to show that he really was a man after all, then fat fingered the trigger resulting in an accidental discharge.

Gotta wonder though... If those cops houses should suddenly burst into flames one night, would the fire department risk getting yet another ticket?

This reminds me of those towns that were on every third episode of the A-Team.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Did you see the Fire Chief's picture? He looks like he could run the hundred yard dash in 33 minutes flat.

Since when do seven cops appear in court about one ticket?

This whole story sounds strange. Yeah, yeah, the freest country in the world.

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

There's a certain part of the USA which seems more afflicted with this sort of "justice" than other parts. And that's all I'm saying about it, ya'all.

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My beautiful city (the view from my front window).

That picture is not the fire chief.

Caption: County Sheriff's Department Chief Investigator Thomas Martin

Yes indeed. It is the part between the shoreline on the east and the shoreline on the west.

Correctissime!

Sorry, I just flew over the caption and saw the word 'chief.' [blush]

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

As Eddie Murphy said in Beverly Hills Cop, "What's the charge for getting thrown out of a moving vehicle in the town? Jaywalking?"

Why do I get the feeling that the judge was in on the racket? As for the cop shooting the fire chief, well, he saw his livelihood being threatened and decided to use deadly force. Life, livelihood, what's the difference? </sarcasm>

If you mean the picture in the linked article, that the chief investigator for the sheriff, no the fire chief.

And one of those guys I mentioned was 5-10 and 375 pounds. Not an in shape 375 either. Despite this, he could throw a kick over my head before I realized it, and I hurt my foot kicking him in the ribs. The staff he used for conditioning was the 15 pound bar out of bench press set.

True, he couldn't chase you for long, but if he got you...

You see a guy built like John Candy, you don't expect much of a fight. Sometimes, that's not a good indicator.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

The Judge voided all outstanding tickets and stepped down from the position, according to the article. It's the prosecutor that is not planning on filing charges.

I also love the line by the prosecutor that says "I don't even recall the officer's name that fired the shot."

He's got 7 cops in the town. Does one of the firing a gun in the courthouse really not register as sufficiently out of the norm to make a mental note?

Okay he probably just said that to protect the cop from the press. I'd accept that. I can also see where the guy they shot could deserve to have charges filed if he was the one that started the fight. But I'm still having a hard time justifying shooting a guy "from behind" who was unarmed and surrounded by cops, and NOT doing anything to get a felony charge against him.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

That happened in Missouri. There was a town called Macks Creek that ran a locally notorious speed trap and derived 85% of its revenues from speeding tickets. Missouri passed a law that prohibited towns from getting more than 45% of their revenue this way, and the town basically had to declare itself insolvent.

Nick

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--
Nick Theodorakis

or every episode of the Dukes of Hazzard, except with evil corrupt people in charge instead of idiotic corrupt people.
it would sure be a shame if a fire was to start at the house of one of those cops, and have the fire department be "out of water"..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Hey, that's my home state you all (notice use of two words instead of contraction) are making fun of here...I call cut-sies.

I've driven through Jericho any number of times but I can't say I remember much about it. Arkansas Highway 77 is a small highway, but has at least one very interesting attraction -- Wapanocca National Wildlife Refuge. Great beetles there. Anyway, I find it interesting that one of the more infamous speedtraps in Arkansas was in Gilmore, which is just a few miles North and on the other side of I-55 from Jericho. It was similar to the Macks Creek, Missouri case that Nick Theodorakis mentioned. I guess it's a Crittenden County thing.

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So many bugs, so little time.

I think the whole episode contains the potential for great humor. Of course, I'm 2,000 miles away from the scene of the hipshot.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

I'm going to tell Brian, the chief of my fire dept, to stay out of Arkansas.

In discussing this locally, I was reminded of something I didn't know about: The so-called "Battle of Athens" or the "The McMinn County War", which happened in Tennesse back in 1946.

The county was absolutely corrupt, indeed run by "Boss Hog" characters (but really mean -- nothing humorous about them), with corrupt local law enforcement as enforcers. The Sheriff got a personal cut of everyone they arrested. They used to stop buses passing through the county and fine and arrest the passengers for whatever tickled their fancy.

After WWII, the verterans came home. Law enforcement started harassing them, jailing and beating them as part of the extortion racket. They'd raid honky-tonks on drummed up charges and beat the devil out of the GIs.

The GIs got fed up. This was just months after coming home from defeating the Nazi War Machine, and they said they didn't fight to come home and live under the same type of regime they'd just went through hell to fight and defeat. They were not to be messed with.

They ran some candidates against the political machine. Of course the election was rigged. They beat up GIs at the polls, and try to a fake count. The GIs had tried the ballot box, and so they went and raided (were given the keys by sympathetic friends in control) a local Guard armory, and armed themselves with M1 Garands and other weapons and assaulted the local jail where the crooked sheriff was conducting the crooked recount.

They won, both the fight and the election and cleaned up McMinn County. It was just like something out of the Old West tales.

-Richard

THAT would make a great movie

Is that what Kate Smith was always singing about?

Or is it the grain of truth behind the Rambo films?

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Credis in alienos extraterrenos terram visitantes? Credis in celeritam super lucem?
Credis in viam inter tempores? O tu stulte, aquire vitam.

Apparently they did make a TV movie based on this story, but they changed the setting to a town in Texas. Turns out Wiki has a entry on this, where it mentions the made-for-TV movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

Linked at the end is a photo of the Knox Henry, the ex-GI candidate who won the election for sheriff, defeating the crooked machine:

http://www.phpsolvent.com/uscamera/knox_henry.jpg

And here's a Time Magazine story on the incident, dated 8/12/1946

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...793138,00.html


-Richard