Haven’t we yet established that cops who think they are in danger do irrational dangerous things? Things that are unjustifiable and yet always find legal justification.
And wasn’t the lesson of last summer that simply reducing contact with the police tends to reduce such incidents?
Now here is a situation where the cops were so afraid that they risked infamy and derision to feel safe. In a situation where they are that afraid, bad things would happen if they were forced to engage.
Of course I am not saying they should give up, any more than the defund movement is saying that cops shouldn’t exist. I am just saying that there are many ways to police, and choosing to deescalate is often best.
ETA: He was caught the day after last month’s hate crime.
Burlington and surrounding areas have a catch and release policy around the violent criminals around here. Most are white, but that’s not unusual given we have such a small POC community in the state.
We’ve seen the pattern over and over for someone to be charged with a hate crime and assault like this guy, and be on the streets days later to commit another crime. The fact he’s had 20 police encounters just this year doesn’t matter, we can just wait for 21.
Our State’s Attorney has been dropping high profile cases left and right, and it took the VT Attorney General to start re-filing the charges.
Funny how that only happens when the person is white, and mighty coincidental that this guy caught such a break after committing a hate crime against a Black person. Yup. Mighty coincidental.
I hope they have film from the deposition, where they enact trying to count up 50 bullets to stick in the arrestee when they just can’t make the count with what they are carrying, then without looking decide to let this person go. That’s the deadpan shot we hope to achieve…you know, if OCP doesn’t sell us Robocops across the board first.
Um, I could be mistaken but based on the dates of these reports, that seems to be his previous violent attack, back in August. This event appears to have happened this weekend.
The story linked above was about one of his previous arrests (5 weeks ago) after one of his previous violent assaults. But according to newsweek he was arrested without incident after this latest assault as well: