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Police Asked Facebook To Deactivate Woman's Account During Deadly Standoff (abc7.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KABC-TV: In the midst of a five-hour standoff that turned deadly, Facebook granted an emergency request from the Baltimore County Police Department to take offline the social media accounts belonging to a woman who wielded a shotgun at officers. Baltimore County Police officers shot and killed Korryn Gaines, 23, after she barricaded herself inside her Randallstown apartment with her 5-year-old son and pointed a shotgun at officers attempting to serve an arrest warrant. Police Chief Jim Johnson said Tuesday that the department made the emergency request to have Gaines' social media accounts suspended after she posted videos online showing the standoff. People who saw the postings, Johnson said, responded by encouraging her to not comply with police. Videos posted on Facebook and Instagram appeared to show Gaines, who was black, talking with police in the doorway to her apartment and to her son during the standoff. The standoff Monday began after three officers went to Gaines' apartment to serve arrest warrants on her and her boyfriend, Kareem K. Courtney, 39, according to police. Gaines' bench warrant stemmed from charges during a March 10 stop, including disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Authorities said she was armed with a 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun that was legally purchased last year and toward the end of the negotiations pointed it directly at an officer and said, "If you don't leave, I'm going to kill you." An officer shot at her and Gaines fired two shots, but missed the officers, who returned fire and killed her, police said. Facebook's policy says that it may grant law enforcement permission to suspend accounts in cases where there is a substantial risk of harm. Facebook has received roughly 855 requests for emergency disclosures of information to government agencies due to the threat of harm or violence between July and December 2015, according to their Government Request Report. About 73 percent of those requests were granted.
how the hell does one get in contact with facebook anyway?
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Like that her supporters on Facebook were egging her on?
That she was pulled over for having a cardboard license plate.
That she was one of those "free range Americas" that have opted out of the government and believe its law does not apply to them.
She refused to go to court because she did not recognize its power over her.
There is only so much a Police Officer can do.
A smarter move by police would have been to de-escalate by saying "ok, lady, have it your way," and rather than shooter her dead, simply ended the stand off by going away. Then they could have arrested her without incident the next time she actually went anywhere, because its likely she would have left her shotgun behind. Who walks around with a shotgun? This woman should still be alive, but the police seem to have no ability to understand this. Its madness how many people police have killed "cleanly" when the more ethical choice would have been to back off, come at them later when a low value, low risk suspect least expects it. Trying to arrest someone who is upset has a lot more drama and risk attached than arresting someone that doesn't see them coming. Police, by and large as a group, lack wisdom, and once a gun is involved, it immediately reduces the value of a suspects life. It doesn't need to e that way.