University of Alabama police officer kills naked student

[tblue37]

60. The subject was NOT in his room He was outside the police station.

Last edited Sun Oct 7, 2012, 02:53 PM - Edit history (1)

I wonder why the officer could not simply retreat into the police station and bar the door, then called for help--assuming he was, for some reason, the only officer there at the campus police station.

I suppose that is possible, since it is campus police, and it was 1:30 a.m.--though since that is a time period when drunk college students abound, there should be more, not fewer, cops on duty.

Still, it does seem that when he realized the kid was out of control and belligerent, he should have retreated more completely--back behind a locked door at the station. Instead, it sounds as though he continued to dance around with the kid by himself instead of getting to someplace safe and calling for backup.

It seems the officer got himself into a situation where he could no longer fully retreat, because he initially overestimated his ability to handle by himself a single naked teenager--whom he undoubtedly assumed was simply drunk, but who was probably on bath salts, since those seem to lead to extreme aggressiveness and total psychotic breaks.

He went outside to confront the kid, didn't leave himself a safe route back into the station where he could barricade himself and call for backup, and then got scared because the kid was strong and super aggressive.

Still, if he originally thought the kid was drunk, he should not have gone out to confront him with no other means of subduing him but a gun. At the very least he should have had a Taser or a club and a cannister of pepper spray.

And since we have all read about bath salts and how people react to them, the fact that the kid was naked and pounding aggressively should have led the cop to be prepared for the likelihood that the student would not be able to be controlled with words, and that he would be too aggressive and wild to be physically controlled by hand by just one cop.

The cop's training is obviously at fault here--as well as the cop's own judgment, of course.

Cops should be trained to handle people with mental disabilities, people with mental illnesses, people with physical handicaps (like deafness, which would prevent them from immediately obeying a spoken order), people on drugs, drunks, etc.

They should be aware of the signs that someone is on a drug that can make him aggressive and virtually impervious to pain. But they should also be aware of the signs of insulin shock in diabetics, so they don't assume the guy is an uncooperative drunk who "needs" to get the sh** kicked out of him for not obeying commands.

Instead, their training is woefully inadequate--or nonexistent--and their only way of handling any situation seems to be to escalate violence and force, to beat the crap out of and Tase citizens (even a citizen who happens to be the one who called the cops for help because he/she was being victimized by someone else!), and shoot to kill.

The cops really are out of control in this country, and no matter what they do, they never suffer any real consequences that might cause the next one to maybe pause for a moment before brutalizing the citizens whom they are supposedly there to protect.

Cops are the largest and most dangerous armed gang in America.