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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.
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.
Contempt of Cop is a capital crime, to be punished on site by Judge Dredd. The cops don't walk away from a confrontation, once you've challenged the cops. "de-escalation" isn't a term cops are familiar with. "Escalate at all costs" is the only term they know.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm a huge believer that police often overstep boundaries, but no, that is exactly what they should not have done. Then you go from having 0.1% of arrests going badly, because someone became violent and police had to counter that with force, to more like 20%, because "holy shit I might be able to actually WIN!" This isn't Game of Thrones: we can't allow Trial by Combat - if we do, even legit nonprejudiced cops (however many of those there are) will get hurt, good people who feel like "I just can't afford to be put in jail, it's worth a shot" will get hurt or killed... or more likely, both will happen, often in the same incident.
Bullshit. The cops frequently empty their magazine or use a ridiculous quantity of ammo to suppress someone who isn't even confirmed to be a threat.
http://www.thewire.com/nationa...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
In recent years I've met only two kinds of people:
1) affluent boot lickers who think law enforcers only brutalize working class and poor people
2) folks who are absolutely scared shitless of American law enforcers
I'm white, middle aged, clean cut, and don't hang out with crooks. Law enforcer brutality is not a race issue, no matter how hard the financialist media try to make it into one. It's an issue of cops, as a caste, holding the common people in open contempt.
Nationwide, law enforcers are rampaging out of control - almost always with the consent of their masters in the judicial oligarchy. Our once-free country is headed down a bad road. I fear things may get much worse before they get better.
When she started to resist, the police gained justification in escalation of force.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)