23 Florida cops shot 377 bullets at two unarmed men in car

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Florida. ā€œThe Punchline Stateā€

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Well, they were probably being suspicious, like wearing hoods while not white or maybe they were throwing popcorn. You know: death-punishable offences in Florida.

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This event is troubling on many levels. Rumors are that illegal steroid use is common among police officers. Is this an instance of ā€˜roid rageā€™?

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Earlier that night, the driver of the Volvo, Adrian Montesano, robbed a Walgreens at gunpoint, and then later shot Miami Dade Police Officer Saul Rodriguez in a nearby trailer park.

At least skim the article. Thereā€™s also a video complete with animated recreation, video of the scene, and audio of the shooting.

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The primary role of the police is to protect and preserve the physical saftey of the public; a goal which is secondary to catching baddies. This simple fact has been seemingly lost by all our nationā€™s power-crazed, goat-fucking pigs.

Do you think these swine would have fired so recklessly had one of their homes been the backdrop? Of course not.

The average citizenā€™s life is less valuable than these mother-fuckerā€™s vengeful, rage-filled, blood-lust.

Itā€™s too bad they only grazed each other in the meleeā€¦

The families whoā€™s homes were needlessly riddled with bullets due to this action should sue the police for millions (reckless endangerment? intentional infliction of emotional distress?).

tl;dr: Fuck. The. Police.

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Aside from the whole ā€˜shooting a cop is one of those crimes where we barely even pretend that we arenā€™t just Judge Dredd-ing this oneā€™ angle(and they ā€˜meh, other guy in the same car as the guy we want? No problem!ā€™ issue) the sheer incompetence is pretty disturbing.

23 officers swarming in like children to an ice cream truck, 377 rounds fired in a residential area in close proximity to wholly uninvolved inhabitants, two officers hit by friendly fire, near-total breakdown of obeying radioed instructions, so much squad car clutter that the unit actually supposed to deal with this sort of thing couldnā€™t get throughā€¦

Only sheer luck kept there from being more casualties among the public than there were.

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Iā€™m guilty of skipping reading the articles too. My justification is that people will probably explain the situation in the comments, and correct the errors in the article. What I donā€™t understand is why the blurb here manages to skip over that extremely important detail. At first I was sceptical when people said it, but it really does seem that bb is getting clickbaitier every day.

Still though, itā€™s disturbing that such excessive force was used. At what point did they realize, if at all, that they were just shooting at dead bodies?

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We see this all over the place, with the Dorner (or what ever his name was) in the Los Angles area, the response to the Boston bombings, etc. Our cops are over militarized, terrified that everyone is out to get them, and yet have no accountability. So we see these monster cluster fucks, we are lucky more of us are not hurt in them (of course, how many were hurt by not being able to go to work for a day or more in Boston, it wasnā€™t the police or the upper class).

And Iā€™m really hating the new layout. For more than a day, the top article has been an old one about how birth control works. Great read, but Iā€™ve read it. The old layout I could just read until Iā€™d read it before, now itā€™s like FUCKING FACEBOOK!!! Already, Iā€™m not reading as much as I used to, for me, this is probably going to kill my bOINGbOING habit.

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Linear format here: http://boingboing.net/page/1

RSS here: http://boingboing.net/feed

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There is something seriously wrong with the Human Resource Department when they hire officers that laugh at endangering civilians and shooting fellow officers.

Hello gun happy USA, MURDURICA!

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Only 377 shots? It doesnā€™t seem enough. They need 30mm grenade launchers and/or flamethrower backpacks to really fulfil their mission of __ ā€œprotect and serveā€__

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Does the documentation show if it was it the 73rd, the 173rd, the 273rd, or the 373rd shot that got the bad men to stop shooting back?

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Ya know the end sequences of The Blue Brothers, where Jake and Elwood are chased by untold numbers of trigger happy cops?

See, that used to be funny, because it was so completely absurd and unbelieveable. Used to be.

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Police documentation actually shows that the men didnā€™t ever stop shooting - you canā€™t stop what you never start, now can you?

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Unfortunately a case of over two dozen bad apples spoiling the bunch.

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Lack of proportionality is the essence of evil.

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I appreciate the felt need to protect the frat --but the rest of us are, you know, concerned.[quote=ā€œThecorrectline, post:18, topic:30906ā€]
5 years from now: police forces with predator drones and hellfire missiles.
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Very concerned.

Open question to the police: How much collateral damage is too much?

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Iā€™d say thereā€™s no such thing as too much collateral damage as far as theyā€™re concerned in a situation like this. Not because theyā€™d be intellectually OK with shooting a bunch of people - itā€™s just that they werenā€™t actually thinking about the issue at all, and thus werenā€™t thinking about preventing collateral damage of any scale. A guy shoots a cop, every cop in South Florida was after the guy, and they all wanted to be the one to execute him. They didnā€™t care about being dumb or reckless or disobeying orders - they became an unthinking, lawless mob out for blood. The sorts of things that keep cops in check - regulations, political blow-back from civilian deaths, etc. - werenā€™t even under consideration here. They ignored orders, they ignored the training and the rules intended to keep both other people and themselves safe. They effectively turned into dumb automatons operating on blood-thirst and adrenaline-based responses. Dozens of people (not counting the dozens of cops at the scene) were at risk and it didnā€™t even come into the equation (much less whoever was actually in the car).

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OT but none the less thank you so much!!! I was going crazy and this saves the day!!! :slight_smile:

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