A Pregnant Woman Loses Left Eye After Police Fire Non-Lethal Round in Ferguson

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...ses_eye_after_police_fire_bean_bag_round.html

Here is an example of one consequences that may occur when a militarized police force are set loose on the streets. Citizens may suffer irreversible harm.

The police maintain that the driver, her boyfriend, tried to drive towards the police officers. If that were true, then why hadn't they shot him?

 

Or maybe its an example of grossly irresponsible behavior leading to bad consequences. From the article:

Go to a town with a riot in progress, try to run down an officer of the law, and you're likely to get hurt. Its very sad that the young woman lost an eye. Thankfully she and her unborn child aren't hurt further, which could have very well had gone down in the incident.

 

That is sad that she had to loose her eye in that manner, but wherever there is a riot, it is nevr the best place to be, there is always achance of getting hurt or even loosing your life.

 

There are so many things in life that occur if someone is at the right place at the wrong time. It is just unfortunate that this young woman became a casualty of a riot. She began her day so expectant of a good day until the riot. The police have a hard time trying to control people who do not want to follow the law. I hope that she is able to overcome this difficulty; so sad it had to happen to her.

 

The sooner all cops start wearing body cameras the less we'll hear of such incidents where one group says one thing and another tells a different story. Anyway since the man admits that he tried to run over the policeman, his action was justified. Unfortunately though, he hit the wrong person. Accidents happen but had the idiot not tried to run over the cop, would this have happened?

If the woman needs to blame anyone for what happened then she should know that her boyfriend is the one who made her lose an eye.

 

Once more, I beg the issue. Why had the police office not shot the driver? Why would they aim to harm an unarmed woman.
That police officer had ever right to protect himself. He should have shot and hurt the driver, and not the passenger.
Now because of her choice in rotten and low down boyfriends, she must suffer for his dastardly actions. He should have been shot, arrested, given a quick trial, and once found guilty perhaps a life sentence. Instead she is the one who has a life sentence.
Then again, this may help her to choose a better character of boyfriend the next time.

 

Its entirely possible the officer simply missed. He was already in a high stress environment (riot in progress) and the almost got run down, so I'm sure the adrenaline was flowing. Fortunately for the occupants of the vehicle, the projectile he launched was a less-than-lethal load (bean bag) rather than the normal fare (00 buckshot).

 

Well seeing as the non-lethal round went through the passenger side window, it's pretty obvious that it was a mistake by the police officer. Sorry to say it, but that's how it goes. A shot through the side window because someone was trying to drive over you is not self defence anymore. (since the car is obviously NOT coming towards you at this point) That being said, in these life and death situations shit does happen. It's normal, the cop had fractions of a second to make a decision, we have all the time we want to talk and judge. So yeah, obviously a mistake by this particular police officer but I can't put too much blame on him... afterall it was this womans boyfriend who started the whole thing by trying to drive over him.

Also Rainman: body cameras could do much more harm than good. As I said above, these people have fractions of a second to make a decision. Make the wrong one and you might be dead. And the media has months to judge them. A lot of police officers will hesitate because they know that the film will be viewed over and over and over again everywhere... and when they hesitate the wrong moment they die.

There is this great video somewhere on the internet... I can't find it now but it shows a suspect who has dropped his weapon and looks to be raising his hands on top of his head get shot point blank by the cop. The media gets their hands on that and it's a huge mess everywhere. The good thing about that video? After playing it in real time, they play it again with sound. And then slow motion or zoomed in.. can't remember which. What really happened is that you can hear the second police officer yell "GUN!" and in the zoomed image you can see that the suspect is in fact going for a second weapon which he had behind his back. It's not always what it seems like...

 

Crimsong is absolutely right, body cameras aren't the end all be all in stopping incidents like Ferguson or the incident he mentioned in the above post. Do you know what the solution IS? A responsible media not talking about what they don't know about and showing video the public doesn't need to see to sensationalize the news and garner more ratings. That will never ever happen though now will it?