Originally published at: Ohio cops gun down a Black pregnant mother for shoplifting | Boing Boing
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I read things like this and I suddenly no longer want to make snarky or cynical comments. This is just bleak. If it’s not mass shooters, it’s cops killing black people. Fuck off, America.
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In the unlikely event that anyone else reading this disgusting news of yet more vile execution via cop, wanted to know who (what) a “Belford” was, it appears in another bit of the extended article:
Young’s shooting death is currently being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the officers responsible for it are currently on paid administrative leave, Blendon Township police Chief John Belford confirmed.
So here’s hoping, without a shred of actual conviction, that the cop who shot to kill when so many other less lethal options were possible will actually be removed from the force (and then move over one county and get hired there) sigh
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I have my doubts about how sincerely threatened the officer in front of the car actually was; since shooting the driver doesn’t actually stop a car that’s coming toward you. It might, depending on details, cause the driver to stop accelerating; but Sir Isaac Newton is everybody’s copilot; so if the vehicle was actually going to hit you before you’ll still need to take evasive action regardless.
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If you believe the police, which you absolutely should not, then there was an officer in front of the vehicle while it was it moving. If he felt his life was in danger he should have moved out of the way.
He had enough time to shoot his gun then he had enough time to dive to the side.
Welcome to boing boing. I suggest you go read the community guidelines carefully.
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That’s the point - why did the officer choose to put himself in harm’s way in front of a vehicle to stop a shoplifter? There’s an easy answer of course - because it allowed him an excuse to use lethal force.
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Exactly. When a person has a gun and a badge, every problem looks like a target and “justified force.”
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Always great to see that step 1 to any problem in the US is to use guns 
yeah this woman should’ve thought about the consequences of shoplifting, but that cop also has a responsibility towards their community and not to go out of their way to kill someone the second they feel threatened. Let the car go and track it down, shoot a tire out, or do literally anything else besides pull a gun on someone.
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it says the car continued for fifty feet and then hit a wall. so this was a choice the killer made, and one that wasn’t about saving his own life. he’d still have been hit and he was not
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And once again, the issue becomes one of cops escalating instead of deescalating the situation.
It’s become a standard practice for right wing violence at this point- It’s not whether this cop, or the last one, or Kyle Rittenhouse or George Zimmrman were justified in defending themselves at the moment, it’s about every single consistent choice they made to deliberately put themselves in that moment instead of walking away, talking things out, or doing literally anything other than making the situation worse.
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Gotta shoot the bubblegum thief, seriously, this is why I hate capitalism. More effort is put into killing and destroying than what’s materially regained or protected, all the while society seems to be okay with the tragedies of lives lost and families ruined all in the name of ‘property.’
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boots taste great
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And, honestly, whatever was stolen [if indeed anything was stolen] will probably be thrown out anyway.
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not to mention covered by insurance and baked into the cost of goods. we had a never call cops policy at my store.
( also, maybe i have to go re-read but how did the cops get there so quickly? let alone multiple cops? dispatch raised multiple cars over stolen liquor? that too is wild, and not how things should work )
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Disarm the police, yes, and in response to all the morons out there who think carrying a gun is a necessary part of policing, just point to all the countries where the police do not carry guns–the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, etc.–places where the police are nicer and better at doing their jobs than the thugs we have in America.
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How Ohio’s law works: Abortions have been banned since 2019 unless they’re performed by the police.
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…who was in front of her vehicle because she was accused of shoplifting. So, by the transitive property, she was shot for being accused of shoplifting.
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This is the first time [short-lived BBS user] has posted — let’s welcome them to our community!
This message, on any cop-related thread, might as well be a big Blue Lives Matter flag. There’s always one.
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The NYTimes had a whole series about how cops in the US either deliberately stand in (near) the path of a car, or claim, falsely, that a car was moving towards them, in order to justify a completely unjustified shooting. It’s a known thing that cops do. The practice is so common, and so successful for the cops, that really any time you see some claim that a suspect was trying to run over cops in their car, don’t believe it (unless there’s pretty clear video that backs up the police claim).
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