Excessive force on a Queens street
It was nice to hear New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg concede that it appeared excessive force had been used in the fatal shooting in Queens over the weekend in which a vehicle carrying three unarmed men was fired on by police 50 times. Yes, 50 shots - 31 of which were fired by one officer - does seem excessive. Twenty one of the shots hit the vehicle. Others hit nearby homes and shattered windows at a train station.
Will it result in any charges against any of the five officers involved in the shooting? That's far from a slam dunk given the outcome of the Amadou Diallo case. Four police officers involved in the 1999 fatal shooting of the unarmed West African immigrant outside his Bronx apartment were acquitted of all charges. Diallo was struck by 19 of the 41 shots fired at him.
While the district attorneys and grand juries are sorting out all the facts in the Queens shooting, Bloomberg should sit down with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and discuss whether assigning seven undercover officers to a single strip club is an optimal utilization of police department resources and whether the policy of allowing the officers to have up to two drinks a piece on undercover duty needs to be amended.
Will it result in any charges against any of the five officers involved in the shooting? That's far from a slam dunk given the outcome of the Amadou Diallo case. Four police officers involved in the 1999 fatal shooting of the unarmed West African immigrant outside his Bronx apartment were acquitted of all charges. Diallo was struck by 19 of the 41 shots fired at him.
While the district attorneys and grand juries are sorting out all the facts in the Queens shooting, Bloomberg should sit down with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and discuss whether assigning seven undercover officers to a single strip club is an optimal utilization of police department resources and whether the policy of allowing the officers to have up to two drinks a piece on undercover duty needs to be amended.
posted by Randy Bergmann at 2:13 PM
2 Comments:
Bloomberg is an idiot, a walking contradiction. In one sentence he says that the 50 rounds fired constituted "excessive force." He then immediately backpedaled and qualified his remarks by saying that he made those remarks as a "civilian" who is not a professional law-enforcement officer.
He also went on to urge New Yorkers not to "rush to judgment" with respect to the shooting that happened just days ago. He then immediately began to talk about where the trial(s) should be held, this despite the fact that no crimes have, to date, been alleged.
I guess as a politician, one has to be sooooooo politically correct with the verbage...."not that there's anything wrong with that...".
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