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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.
On facebook people were reportedly egging her on telling her no to give up and fight til the end. Pretty much pushing her to try to kill cops. Police have asked FB to keep a record of it all pending a warrant later.
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.
They didn't silence her right to free speech. They just stopped her from using Facebook to propagate her free speech, which, BTW, violated Facebook's terms of use.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
She can speak all she wanted. Facebook is not required to help. People egging her on while she is holding out with a 5 year old is not being helpful. How about the 5-year old's rights?
Like, "shut down the printing press because the letters to the editors page might have information that might cause the editor to behave unwisely"?
Even Russia didn't try to justify their actions with an excuse that stupid.
A long time ago, a man named Randy Weaver barricaded himself in his remote Northern Idaho cabin against federal agents, who wanted him to infiltrate the Aryan Nations. Weaver had refused, fearing that the Aryan Nations knew he was not a white supremacist and would kill him.
The siege was widely reported in the news media at the time. Police of all stripe described Mr. Weaver as a white supremacist, racist, and all sorts of other names. In reality, Mr. Weaver was opposed to white supremacy and its movement.
During the siege, a helicopter carrying a large object was seen flying towards the cabin. But here's the actual quote from the time:
Mr. Gritz said that he and a local real estate agent were in the area near the cabin. They saw a helicopter approach with a large object hanging from the helicopter -- like one of the fire-fighting helicopters.
Both men were out in the open and Mr. Gritz was sure that they were spotted by the men aboard the helicopter. The helicopter changed direction and left the area.
Mr. Gritz suggested that just possibly the Weaver cabin was about to have a fire -- I can spectulate how it would have been reported -- "White supremacist kills wife, children, and self with arsenal of napalm bombs and flamethrowers! Federal agents look on in horror, wait for rest of arsenal to explode."
I personally remember Mr. Gritz being interviewed at the time on camera by someone famous (perhaps it was Morely Safer), and my memory of his verbal account matches the one quoted above.
I'm uncomfortable with this "turn off all social media" sort of action, because it also turns off the victim's ability to call for help, give their side of the story, and perhaps prevent law enforcement from telling a one-sided narrative.
We've recently seen how law enforcement's version of events don't track with video camera footage of events.
I'm very much in favor of keeping all channels of information open.
It keeps both sides honest.
(*) Weaver was later awarded 3.1 million dollars for the death of his son and wife, and the government admitted no guilt in the matter.
If she's dumb enough to take advice from FB crowd that are urging her on to resist ARMED police at her front door that are trying to convince her to surrender peacefully, she deserves everything she got.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
They weren't even really there for her. Serving her warrant was done out of convenience because they were also there for a guy who had an aggravated assault charge at the same address. But then she pulls a shotgun, gets in a several hour long standoff with the cops while using her son as a shield both figuratively and at times literally, regularly telling him the cops are gonna kill him, and then threatens to kill the cops while pointing a shotgun at them short range.
You have no right to a internet connection or access to facebook while in an armed standoff with the police, especially when they were serving an entirely valid warrant..
Cops kill woman and shoot child over traffic stop warrant. What's to twist?
Learn to love Alaska
No, her warrant was a FTA for a traffic stop that included multiple issues, including disorderly conduct and resisting arrest as the components, which unless you think the cops had some Mad Max style of writing traffic tickets going on, happened after whatever they pulled her over for. Moreover, they served her only because they were already there for the guy who had an assault warrant. Her FIRST instinct is to hold her child in her lap while pointing her shotgun at the cops and you think the disorderly and resisting charges were bullshit? What are you smoking and where can I get some?
Nuance is often lost on the masses, give or take an M. As stated, the advice helped get her killed. Not killed her, but helped get her killed. Obviously the police killed her AFTER SHE SHOT AT THEM WITH A 12 GAUGE. That's completely 100% justifiable. However, if she hadn't gotten terrible advice maybe she would have given up. They should have blocked incoming comments on her page, not her ability to post.
Ahhh I see. +1 insightful! Dr. Dre must have multiple PhD's.
Well, that's what you get for forgetting about Dre.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because she had mental issues? Because she thought that if they served a warrant against her, she'd lose her children. I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Nobody was in danger until the police came. The police killed someone, rather than backing off. The "crime" was a traffic stop. No spin. Yet no reason for the cops to rush in. White people get hours, and teargas. Black people get bullets.
Learn to love Alaska
Obviously the police killed her AFTER SHE SHOT AT THEM WITH A 12 GAUGE.
She shot at the police after the police stormed her home. Yes it's unwise to fight the police, but there was no reason to storm in. She was a danger to nobody, until the cops came. She would have been a danger to nobody after the cops left. Executing her for a traffic stop doesn't seem a reasonable outcome. But fighting was the only option she saw when they broke in and charged her with guns up, threatening her and her child.
Learn to love Alaska
They pointed first.
At some point, the cops should try some tactic other than always escalating the situation.
Learn to love Alaska
She was claiming she was being lead poisoned, and in the end, she was right ~
"In retrospect, I feel that I was foolish to checking to see how I was trending in my social media while engaging in an armed standoff with all the collective tri-state SWAT teams. I think I will be more focused, and I will definitely be on my 'a' game next week when I have a stand off with the ATF agents at my fortified compound."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Yes she was pointing a gun at them. Merely pulling out the gun is grounds for use of deadly force. Actually your rights do change. It's called exigent circumstances. You have your rights, they are defended in the courts, not on the spot with the police. You threaten violence (the mere presence of the gun let alone pointing it at them as the report clearly states she was doing) is such a threat, and the police are justified in cutting off outside communications and use of deadly force.
Rights are not without limits and exceptions. We task the police to enforce the laws of the land, in order to do that they need to be able to temporarily limit some rights when they seek to detain (arrest you). They were serving a warrant, they had cause to be there. She resisted and pulled a weapon on them. Their use of deadly force is justified. She was being encouraged by outside communications breaking the situational control the negotiators need to be able to end these situations peacefully. Cutting communications is standard operating procedure for such negotiations, it is legal and constitutional. He freedom of speech was not infringed by the brief loss of connection. Had she been arrested her speech rights would have been restored.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
1. There are plenty of people that live in metropolitan areas and go to hunt in rural areas.
2. It would be very odd / weird / unconstitutional to say 'well, we decided that your county doesn't get gun rights but this other county does; the fact that your county is overwhelmingly black and theirs is white is completely irrelevant, of course.'.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
You have to understand that when a judge issues a constitutionally sound warrant and execution order, the police are obligated to serve it.
Nope. The cops have sued in court that they have no duty to stop a crime in progress, prevent a planned crime they have the details, or take any action that may put them in any kind of risk. I don't think the judgements specifically included or excluded serving a warrant, but they would imply inclusion.
They have no choice in the matter
Cops have complete discretion. There are millions of unserved warrants in the US. Cops are under no duty or obligation to serve them all by next Tuesday.
Learn to love Alaska
Also add to that that "warrant" in general (outside the specific legal sense) means "permission" or "justification", not "command". A legal warrant is the judge specifically OKing certain action; but it is not a command that certain actions be taken, just an official declaration that those actions are warranted, justified, permitted.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Only in the legal sense that they won't be tried for murder.
In every moral sense, they had an obligation to deescalate the situation. She was not a threat to anybody but the cops, and the video proves it.
Just...no. You don't win a moral argument by trolling morality.
Certainly, they had a moral obligation to act. But morals aren't absolute. They shift based on context. The minute she leveled that shotgun, the context changed.
The video proves that the cops grokked the situation rightly. You can't deescalate a situation that is already escalated. You did notice that part, right? Maybe in your ivory tower, you can, but here in reality, you don't negotiate with somebody who is saying they are going to kill you while simultaneously bringing a weapon to bear on you.
The new context obligated the cops to preserve their own lives and the lives of bystanders (you did notice the five-year-old bystander, right?)
She was a threat to the cops, to the bystander, and a case could be made to society at large (pulling a weapon on a cop with the stated intention to kill him is, by any definition you care to invoke, sociopathic behavior.) Leaving aside the threat to society (and the host of morals that would, according to you, obligate all sorts of action) the cops acted morally by acting to preserve their lives and the life of the bystander.
Since you opened this with a troll, I'm going to close it with an ad hom. What would you have done differently in that context? I strongly suspect you have neither the training nor the temperament to react rationally (let alone morally) when threatened with deadly force. I think you would have just crapped your pants and froze.