Settle Out Of Court
The CBC has been covering the epic liability law suit in the making: the shooting of Charles Kinsey in Miami.
In Episode One we have bystander video of Mr. Kinsey, a caretaker at a group home, lying on his back with his hands up asking the police not to shoot, while he, Mr. Kinsey, attempts to get his autistic client to comply with police orders. The client had left the group home and was playing with a toy truck in the middle of an intersection. Mr. Kinsey was shot.
In Episode Two we learned Mr. Kinsey asked the officer why he was shot and the officer said he didn’t know!
In Episode Three we have the local police union saying that the officer was actually trying to protect Mr. Kinsey from his autistic client, and hit Mr. Kinsey by accident.
Enter Thomas Matthews, a retired local resident who spends most days sitting outside with his binoculars filled a lot of gaps: The two officers armed themselves with rifles and were in the prone position covering Mr. Kinsey and his client. Mr. Mathews used his binoculars to see what the autistic man had in his hands and saw a toy truck. Mr. Matthews tried to tell another police officer that it was a toy truck, but was ignored.
The officer who fired three rounds from a prone position with a rifle and missed his supposed target was a member of the department’s SWAT team.
The police department should just throw as much money as they and their insurance company can afford at Mr. Kinsey and hope it is enough.
5 comments
Seriously m8, do the Police in the USA actually get any training these days? Or just boot camp and everyone passes so long as they can walk & kiss ass?
I hope Mr. Kinsey get’s one of those really nasty *ambulance chaser* lawyers. He probably will, they can smell money a continent away!
Apparently the North Miami Police Department has been in a bit of turmoil lately. A rotating door of police chiefs, SWAT team disbanded and officers fired because they were practicing on mug shots of black suspects, the works. This particular officer has four years of experience on the force. Four. years. In most departments you need at least twice that to qualify for the SWAT team. But this police department is such a mess that they apparently just grabbed warm bodies and told them, “hey you, you’re on our SWAT team now.” Training? What’s that?
Not to mention that their whole story stinks. So now they’re claiming that this cop was aiming at the white autistic kid and *missed*? With all three shots?! And then, rather than cuff the autistic kid, they cuffed and searched the black man they just “accidentally” shot and waited twenty minutes to call an ambulance in hopes that he would bleed out? WTF?
Kinsey is demanding that the cop, Jonathan Aledda, be fired as a prerequisite to accepting any settlement. We’ll see what happens. Maybe they’ll throw enough money at him to make him give up that demand. But Aledda should be fired anyhow, because he is clearly incompetent. Can’t hit a big fat white target at 20 yards? Can’t tell difference between a toy truck and a gun at 20 yards when he’s had 5 minutes to observe the scene? Fires *three shots* at 20 yards and only manages to hit with one of them? If you can’t hit a target at 20 yards with a M-16, you shouldn’t be armed with anything more deadly than a nerf gun. Cuffs the *wrong man* at the scene, which is his current story? Man, I’ve known cops fired for *way* less than that… remember, this is Florida, the police union has a lot of bark but no bite in Florida (Florida is a Right To Work state and police officers are not allowed to strike upon penalty of firing).
I still wonder: WTF was going through this Aledda dude’s mind? Because I simply don’t buy the story being sold. Not only did he *shoot* the wrong man, but he *cuffed* the wrong man? Yeah, pull the other flipper, y’all…
– Badtux the Skeptical Penguin
This was absurd from the start and I was assuming a walk-up and handguns. Whether it was 20 feet or 20 yards, you are still on the handgun range for qualification.
The ‘kindest’ interpretation I can come up with is that the guy was wetting his pants because of Dallas and Baton Rouge. There is no excuse for what happened and the cuffing of the victim and the 20 minutes stall for the ambulance were signs that they were trying to come up with a story.
“There is no excuse for what happened and the cuffing of the victim and the 20 minutes stall for the ambulance were signs that they were trying to come up with a story.” Badtux’s interpretation at his site was they were waiting for him to bleed out. I kinda agree with his assessment.
The real difficulty is that the Police are given enormous responsibility along with enormous power. Along with that comes the “brotherhood” and a legal system that places the police on the left side of God. I’ll only say two things about that: 1. Private industry does not allow a close “sibling” relationship: Only the board of directors sit on the left side of god. The other problem is, how did diaper boy get onto the police force anyway? Diaper boy does not belong on the police force or in any position that allows him to carry a gun. The system that trained/hired and is covering up for him needs to be re-engineered.
I don’t see how. Thomas Matthews is a hero BTW/
Shirt
Shirt, the statistics say that Mr. Matthews has a more dangerous job, health care worker, than a police officer. If you are looking for excitement become a convenience store clerk on the night shift.
When you go into the job you have to decide if you are going to be a law enforcement officer or a peace officer, was your goal to keep the peace or to arrest people? When the first thing you do at a scene is to pull a rifle out of your trunk before you even know what the situation is, you have escalated the scene and increased the probability of violence.
When this sort thing happened on my shift, I provided backup to the medical personnel hoping that I wasn’t going to have to do anything. We had a large resident mental health facility in my jurisdiction and the patients would occasionally wander away. It was always safer for all involved to let the staff deal directly with the patient while we kept the patient safe.
If you have an adult sitting in an intersection playing with a toy truck, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out that this is a situation that requires training beyond the scope of the police academy.