Miami Police shoot, kill man carrying toy gun

reply to post by ChachiArcola


i humbly apologize that i confused the ranges of the m26c and m26. was even 10 feet off, wow, how careless of me. but fine, untill theres video, you are right, the cop was never within range, the victim didnt put his hands up, and pointed his toy rifle at the cops. hes dead now, so he wont tell you what he did or why. wrile me up all you want, its still probably going to come out that the cop made a dumb move because hes programmed that every one of us is a criminal. but whatever, you are right, this guy deserved to die, there was no other solution to it. does that make you feel better? knowing that there was no possible way to taze this guy, or no video to prove there wasnt?

yes then, its ironic that a guy with a rattlesnake from a kids movie as an avatar believes you should use your head when pointing guns at people, that this couldve been resolved without bloodshed... so ironic and on topic

I'm one of the biggest pig haters out there, but i hate to say if i was in the cops shoes, and a man pointed a rifle at me, i'd rather pull the trigger first. now if he was just carrying it that would be different and i wouldnt be suprised if thats what happened and they just reported he pointed it at them.

here what his niece said,

The man shot and killed was my uncle Ernest Vasalle( our family called him ken), he was mentally challenge. He was walking around the neighborhood and must of found a toy gun. People driving by saw him with the toy gun thinking it was real and call 911. Police came and instead of trying to disarm him they shot him 3 times in the chest and murdered my uncle! He was like a child, he wouldn't hurt a fly! I'M SO FN MAD RIGHT NOW! There is no such thing as justice. Justice killed an innocent man! I love you Ken and I won't let you die in vain... I promise that!

reply to post by areyouserious2010



what about his right to carry a gun? are we forgetting about that? the police have no right what so ever to tell you to put down your gun if it's legal to carry one......police sign on knowing what they are getting theirselves into, i doubt very seriously if that cop feels bad about that.....i've never seen a cop remorseful about anything they've done......

Originally posted by Flyer
reply to post by Magnum007

 

A perfect example of a shoot first think later stupidity of the police.

I wonder how youd feel if a fellow moron did the same to one of your family.

My family wouldn't be so stupid as to point a gun at the police, let alone carry one in a public place in plain view...

I will shoot first and I will go home after every shift...

Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing... You would probably have shot him the second you saw he had a gun... you wouldn't even wait until he pointed it at you or your friends/family...

I will enlighten you with some information you will probably not care about but it's important none the less.

Here are the 3 most important things a police officer asks himself before he fires his weapon :

1. Does the person have the capacity to seriously hurt or kill someone? (Are they alone and barricaded? Are they close enough to people to do harm? Are they positioned in a way that is tactically advantageous? etc...)

2. Does the person have the means to do so? (equipment, weapons, tools, etc...)

3. Does the person show intent to do so? (verbal statements, physical actions - pointing a weapon)

If you can look past your prejudiced agenda, you can see that if the suspect says : "# you I'm going to shoot you" and points the gun at you, you are justified to shoot... You don't wait to see if the gun is real, you don't wait to see if the guy is serious or joking, you don't do a psychiatric evaluation on the guy, YOU SHOOT...

All you do is complain and say that the police are this and are that, but you never offer an alternative to the situation. And no, creeping up the guy and tazering him is not an option...

Imagine that the guy is pointing a gun at you... What do you do.... BANG!!! You're dead... too late... you should have shot first because he didn't hesitate, and he's still alive...

Too bad...

Originally posted by patternfinder
reply to post by areyouserious2010

 

what about his right to carry a gun? are we forgetting about that? the police have no right what so ever to tell you to put down your gun if it's legal to carry one......police sign on knowing what they are getting theirselves into, i doubt very seriously if that cop feels bad about that.....i've never seen a cop remorseful about anything they've done......

With every right comes serious responsibility... If you want to have the right to carry a gun, you should be ready to face the obvious fact that you are a danger to yourself if you think you can not listen to the police because you "have a right to bear arms"...

IF you listen to the police, you will be let go scotch free, if you are law abiding and permitted to carry a weapon of course...

Otherwise you better listen to the police, or you WILL GET SHOT and you WILL PROBABLY DIE... Simple as pie...

And yes, I have no remorse for what I do because I know I do it according to the law, without prejudice, without malice, and without ill intent...

Originally posted by jibeho
This is a toy A little black paint on the muzzle and you'd never know that your staring at a gun that only shoots plastic bb's.

Hell, when we were kids, they never had that orange piece, then one summer, all the toy guns had them, I guess because of similar tragedies.

We were such fools that we'd sit there for 45 minutes, carefully chipping away at the orange plastic bit until we could get it to come off. Damned if our guns weren't going to look realistic as possible. It's a miracle we didn't get killed.

Edit: I don't want to add in a lot of quote unnecessarily, but Magnum007, I agree with practically everything you said. People rarely want to look at it from a realistic point of view, instead preferring to see everything through the lens of whatever they believe about the subject already. Well I say, this is quite a tragedy, but it's a reasonable tragedy without malice, as you said, at least in my eyes.

I have seen the police do some truly brutal and vicious things, but in this situation, doing anything else could have been a death sentence for that officer.

You can hate on cops and lords knows they make it easy, but without them, this country would be a lot worse off. We owe them a debt of gratitude for risking their lives everyday. The good ones, at least.

reply to post by jibeho


I wonder just how long it will be until some one puts blaze orange paint on the muzzle of a real gun? Just think about that for a second. You see someone carrying a "toy" gun with blaze orange paint on the muzzle and say "Oh, it is just a toy" until the lead starts to fly. I see this happening sooner or later.

Not trying to make any kind of point for or against the blaze orange paint on the muzzle thing but just saying that sooner or later some one is going to do just that and then what?

Originally posted by Dreamwatcher
reply to post by pryingopen3rdeye

 

Yes they are. The Police are not going to wait for somebody who is brandishing a weapon to actually kill somebody before taking action.

Brandishing.... Interesting word to use.....: to shake or wave (as a weapon) menacingly
2: to exhibit in an ostentatious or aggressive manner .

I may be wrong but is brandishing the right term to use or should it be carrying until the man was flustered and harrassed by the authorities, In that case one could safely assume the police were the ones who escalated the situation. Thereby relinquished their role as peace officers to trouble makers... Thats how i see it.
The second amendment gives me the right to bare arms and you too. I have no problem with a thug, punk kid, cop, grandma, moms, waitresses or anybody for that matter to carry their armament on their person at any time.
I have two young sons that go squirrel hunting with his other buddies on my farm and they all take their guns with them when they walk to the store, while they are hunting,( they just make a circle around the farm and the store is the halfway point) because it borders the back side of my 300acre place. The store owner welcomes the kids and has even put a gun rack by the deli counter so the boys and girls can set their rifles down to eat a sandwich. We live here in rural United States and if you look at the constitution....there isn't an age limit on who has rights and who don't. My point is that it is mainly about the mindset of the people around you that dictate what is acceptable or not.

I just realized the story about my sons was really off topic lol! sorry OP

reply to post by Flyer


They probably thought his gun was a camera.



On a serious note, it sucks that some guy had to die because he was toting a toy rifle. I wonder if it's true that he pointed his toy gun at the cops, to me that sounds like cops trying to cover their asses. I could be wrong though.

A tazer is usually only good for about 15 feet

I agree with some of the posters. The cops did not have proof that 1) the gun was real and 2) that the man was threatening to use deadly force to take the cops life 3) did not bother to find out if the man was mentally capable of actually trying to harm the stupid cop.

This is a typical action/reaction that the cops are stupidly taught. They have to kill the guy with the gun because if they don't they could get killed. In this case, There is no thought of intelligent fact finding involved at all. I'd rather the stupid cop got hit by a bus on the way home but since he did not, I will settle for a life of torment. Perhaps He will be lucky and get some mental illness that causes him to go mad and relive this moment where he murdered a mentally challenged man in cold blood every minute for the rest of his life before going straight to Hell.

Originally posted by Flyer


He was mentally disabled and they murdered him. Another example of the shoot first, think later by the police.

Cant the police tell the difference between a toy and a real gun? They couldnt tell a man was disabled?

Yet another shoot to kill policy. This is why people dont trust the police, how can they when the go around shooting innocent people and the disabled,



www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I am very saddened by this, but until I see what the gun looked like I cannot blame the cops here.

Do to the current economics time I have taken a job at a sporting goods store, and I can tell you, some of the toys and airguns out there are perfect replicas of real guns. Heck, many gun companies, such as beretta and HK, make the toys and airguns.

Please watch the video, this shows how the replica guns look real:

Of course replica guns look real. They are supposed to. That still doesn't excuse a cop from getting The Facts. This is America. I can legally own a gun and transport it without it being registered/licensed/permitted where I live.

So the man had a toy gun. So what? The cops first task was to find out if the guy was threatening harm. Without knowing the mental state of the man, just pointing a "gun" in a cops direction and not dropping it does not mean the guy is putting the cop's life at risk.

I can think of many good situations to point guns at cops where I would be in the right and the cop in the wrong if he shot me - legally.

Too many of these kinds of things happen let alone one incident which is bad enough. Florida cops it seems have been in the news for this type of thing before.. one would think they learned their lesson by now. Too much sun frying the brains I suppose.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


as i said in the video, you point the weapon i have at the cops, i wouldnt BLAME em for flooring me, they dont know if its real OR fake til AFTER

The truth of the matter is that if they want you dead, you are dead, they have killed people for watering their gardens and claiming that they thought he was waving a gun, which proves that they are either working to a covert set of rules, or that the police force only employs mindless, brainless, bully boys with no conscience or morals. I wonder how they will feel when one day it is their child, parent, dog, which another fellow officer kills because they answered him back or questioned an order from the cop. They are no better than the gangmembers which roam the streets spouting out that they will kill you if you disrespect their homies, well the cops do exactly the same, although they usually throw you to the ground and beat the crap out of you before they shoot you.

Originally posted by Flyer


He was mentally disabled and they murdered him. Another example of the shoot first, think later by the police.

Cant the police tell the difference between a toy and a real gun? They couldnt tell a man was disabled?

Yet another shoot to kill policy. This is why people dont trust the police, how can they when the go around shooting innocent people and the disabled,



www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Here we go again...more cop bashing.....no...we cant tell a fake from a real gun sometimes...ive seen guys spray an orange tip on real guns to make them seem fake...there are people taking airsoft parts and using them in real guns....airsoft guns look as real as it gets.....there are cases of bank robberies with old plastic toy guns...where people didn't know they were fake....it is difficult to tell...

now and that note...id like to see the fake gun because there are some out there that are obvious...then maybe we can have a better argument...i cant stand that you just read one sliver of the story and think murder...

Originally posted by Flyer
How could lots of people have been hurt?

The maximum is one because he would have been taken down after the 1st shot.
Id have no problem with a person being shot and killed then.

What if it were you?

The guy comes rolling out with a weapon. The police, taking your wonderful advice, wait to see if it's a real weapon.

You take a hollowpoint into your brainpan, scattering your rocketscientist knowledge all over the wall.

Then, the police shoot and kill the suspect.

Great idea.

Hey ATS...Long Time Reader. First Time Posting....Simply Because I Cannot Believe How Many People Agree This Is How It Should Have Went Down....All These "What Ifs"...But No Evidence.
By That Logic Anyone Holding Anything That Can Be Misconstrued as a Fire Arm...Deserves To Be Shot Dead???? I Fully Disagree.

Do We Really Live On a Planet Where The Police Can Walk Around And Brandish These FireArms, But No-one Else Can!!! Thats Called Hypocrisy.
Because Now They Have Murdered An Innocent Man. And IMO, They Are Now The Threat. But, Who Shoots Them Down When They Do This???.....(Or Who Polices, The Police, of the Police, of The Police???....And So On)
No One Is My Guess.

Its No Misunderstanding...Its Police Brutality, And it Is Rife.
Secondly, If The "Threat Level" Were So Severe, Surely It Would Have Been a Seige, of Some Sorts. Maybe a Stand Off.
Instead It Was Only 911 Calls Made, And Incorrect Ones at That.
This Is Where We Are as a People. Involving Ourselves With Others Business...I Wonder If The Persons, Who Made Said Calls, Actually Felt In Any Danger. Probably Not...But This Is Where We Are Today, Thanks To FearMongering.

Even IF...I Say If, They Felt It Was Necessary To Shoot, Then Why Not Aim For The Legs, Arms, Feet etc...Or Any NonLethal Attempt, To "DisArm" An UnArmed Man.

Thanks For Letting Me Rant...

Originally posted by fixer1967
reply to post by jibeho

 

I wonder just how long it will be until some one puts blaze orange paint on the muzzle of a real gun? Just think about that for a second. You see someone carrying a "toy" gun with blaze orange paint on the muzzle and say "Oh, it is just a toy" until the lead starts to fly. I see this happening sooner or later.

Not trying to make any kind of point for or against the blaze orange paint on the muzzle thing but just saying that sooner or later some one is going to do just that and then what?

Actually they already are. you can buy AR's in all kinda shapes and colors. even a hello kitty one!. also here we had a few a while back painting the guns red because they know we train with what is called "redman" where you wear a red padded suit for training and we use red replica Glocks. they are red so you know they arent real and feel safe with them. so when a cop sees one being pointed at him he thinks for that split secod that it is safe.

as far as the rest of this story i cant really comment because i wasnt there. i myslef have been placed in many "almost" shoot situations that have come out good on both ends so far (other than that one time during Katrina). but i can tell you this right now. if it looks real and is pointed at me, im shooting. simple as that. if it is later determined to be a fake gun carried by a mentally retarded person then yes i am going to feel horrible. guilt wouldnt even begn to describe it! but that is the way it falls and i have to do what i have to do to keep myself alive also. an old police saying is "better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6".