Another dispatch from police state America
by David Atkins
This seems reasonable:
Two weeks ago, two Florida deputies shot 15 rounds at a 60-year-old unarmed Florida man who was looking for his cigarettes in his mother’s car, parked in his own driveway. Two of those bullets hit him in his left leg, which was shattered. Roy Howard Middleton says he was compliant when the cops told him to turn around. He says that as he was turning around to face deputies with his hands raised, they opened fire. (He believed his neighbors were playing a practical joke on him). The two deputies said they were responding to a 911 call about a car thief and that Middleton turned and “lunged” at them with a shiny object in his hand. Middleton is black. The two sheriff’s deputies are white.
Sheriff David Morgan of Escambia County hastily took to the airwaves to explain that “the tragedy of this is the noncompliance to the directions of law enforcement officers,” and that Middleton was “both a suspect and a victim.” The two deputies were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the State Attorney’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Sheriff Morgan was quick to clarify for CNN that the officers followed the correct protocols. “Right now we are comfortable from a training perspective that our officers did follow standard protocols. I believe the standard we use and train to is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, which is a reasonable test.” Morgan went on to note that “[t]his is a common occurrence. We live in a very violent society.” Presumably the irony was unintentional.
Some folks have different definitions of what it means to serve and protect.
.