A Seattle police officer is alive this morning because he took decisive action. Because of his actions there will be no further victims of Maurice Clemmons.
On routine patrol in a residential area of South Seattle at about 2:45 a.m., the seven year veteran, as yet unnamed, spotted a car with its hood up, its engine running. He ran the plate. The car had been stolen earlier in another part of the city.
As he sat in his vehicle doing paperwork, the officer saw a man approaching, a man he recognized as the suspect in the killings of the four Lakewood cops. The officer immediately got out of his car -- he's lucky to be alive -- and ordered Clemmons to stop. Clemmons ignored the order, which the cop repeated. As described during a middle of the night press conference, Clemmons then either sought cover behind the car, or attempted to escape. The officer shot him. Dead.
I had hoped for a different outcome.
Nothing excuses what Clemmons did in that coffee shop Sunday morning. But had he lived we might have heard something of an explanation. We might have learned, with whatever degree of clarity and certainty, even as the system worked to hold him accountable, why he did what he did. There's so much speculation: He was a sociopath, or psychotic. He was the Messiah. He hated cops, and wanted to take out as many as he could before his (likely) return to prison. He enjoyed killing, particularly (exclusively?) those in blue who, in his mind, had done him wrong. He wanted to die, suicide by cop. Perhaps out of shame for having raped a 12-year-old? All of the above, or any combination thereof?
Most who responded to my initial post on the killings were deeply saddened to learn of the deaths of the four officers, their hearts and prayers going out to their families. They worried about the effects of cop killings on society. A few of these same readers joined other, harsher critics who condemn police misconduct that contributes to built-up rage among those dealt injustices at the hands of police. Good cops who cover for bad cops. The drug war and the many harms it's caused. Others focused on guns. Or a former governor of Arkansas. Or a couple of Washington State judges.
I'll be looking at these issues in future posts. But now, I want to say to those who have jumped to condemn the Seattle police officer for killing the suspect: Put yourself in his shoes.
Clemmons, nursing a two-day old bullet wound to the stomach, having killed four cops already and facing at least life in prison, frantically searching for a way out of the state if not the country, and packing one of the dead officers' sidearms, would have beyond a shadow of doubt murdered again. There and then.
He was denied that chance. Whether Clemmons was seeking cover to pull the gun and fire, or about to flee, the officer did precisely the right thing. It was not a "cold-blooded murder," as at least one reader has asserted. It was a courageous and necessary act.
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As a police officer, you should understand that we have a legal system for a reason. Our system is supposedly designed to OBJECTIVELY determine guilt (though it often PRESUMES guilt nowadays). If the only thing citizens have to look forward to is street justice by cops in the place of the ridiculously flawed criminal justice system we already have, these types of situations will just escalate.
Based on the suspects prior actions, that the suspect was armed, and that the suspect was obviously not afriad to approach a clearly identified police officer - when he knew the cops were looking for him and he had been actively avoiding them, we can be pretty sure that he was not coming over to the cop to offer him seasons greetings. Indeed, the officer is lucky to be alive. Clemmons had a sidearm, was not afriad to use it, deliberately approached the officer, and made a movement as if to draw the weapon. Had the officer not acted the was he did, the officer could have easily been shot and possibly killed.
And thanks for nothing to the HucksterBee™ and the misguided fools in Washington State who let this "deranged individual" out of prison on two separate occasions. Idiots.
I agree with you on this. The officer did it correctly. Being a cop, if I am faced with a wanted suspect in a quadruple homicide, considered armed and dangerous, deliberately approaching me, a uniformed officer, and after being ordered to stop and show his hands twice, any furtive movement on the suspect's part would likely result in me pulling the trigger as well. Clemmons represented a direct and immediate threat to the officer even if the firearm was not visible. And the subsequent discovery of one of the murdered officers' sidearm on Clemmons is proof of this.
J
In this case, the officer acted just as he should have. Had he not shot Clemmons, Clemmons would very likely have killed him, still been on the loose, and armed to shoot another day.
Don't know what area you're in, but I was born in Oakland and grew up in the Bay Area. The cops there were definitely racist and even as a white girl I was scared of them. Here in the Pacific NW I have witnessed something altogether different. This is the least racist jurisdiction I have ever lived in or visited. The police here have a much better reputation than in other places. Ssdly, there is much racism, homophobism, and sexism to be found in jobs where people are uniformed and armed - just ask any domestic violence group.
I'm glad the officer defended himself and our community.
I'm really not saddened to know some publisher won't make money off telling the killers story and perhaps end up having some other poorly adjusted individual find inspiration in it. Not that someone else won't innevitably sell it for profit.
Just perhaps some stories are best left untold and some perspectives don't deserve an audience even if they by right could have one.
I mean, really, why do you think cops having been carrying guns ever since you were born?
Clemmons will now be never held accountable for his actions of the last few days. He was never arrested, never charged, never put on trial, never convicted, never sentenced, for the murders of four police officers.
There is no justice here for anyone. And as long as the facts of this case remain at the will of the police to control and distribute, there is no accountability. This is that you are defending here Mr. Stamper.
You and I may disagree on the circumstances of what's transpired, but till that's honestly brought to the public, I for one do not view what's happened here as a 'a courageous and necessary act'.
So, police officers are unable to apprehend murder suspects alive?
4. However, Dyer goes further than simply describing the bureaucratic and economic practices that enabled government and corporate investors to defraud the public sphere and incarcerate people at an exponential rate, for the penal system itself is only one part of Dyer's "perpetual prisoner machine." The other half operates in and through the news and entertainment media, polling practices and politics. As he reminds us throughout his analysis, what has been driving this shift in the penal system is the public perception that crime is omnipresent, that it is violent, on the rise, and generally perpetrated by poor, young men of color. By tapping into this general fear, politicians have run successful campaigns, and as we've just seen in the presidential race, continue to do so.
the rest:
http://www.scribd.com/full/23447379?access_key=key-b70pp58gnsea9pedld5
of Malthusian vanguard organization which heard testimony from assorted
"race scientists," sponsored legislation and otherwise propagandized the
zero-growth outlook. In its 50-odd hearings during these years, the task
force provided a public forum to nearly every well-known zero-growth
fanatic, from Paul Ehrlich, founder of Zero Population Growth (ZPG), to
race scientist William Shockley, to the key zero-growth advocates infesting
the federal bureaucracy.
Giving a prestigious congressional platform to a discredited racist
charlatan like William Shockley in the year after the assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King, points up the arrogance of Bush's commitment to
eugenics. Shockley, like his co-thinker Arthur Jensen, had caused a furor
during the 1960s by advancing his thesis, already repeatedly disproven,
that blacks were genetically inferior to whites in cognitive faculties and
intelligence. In the same year in which Bush invited him to appear before
the GOP task force, Shockley had written: "Our nobly intended welfare
programs may be encouraging dysgenics -- retrogressive evolution through
disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged.... We fear
that 'fatuous beliefs' in the power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic
foresight, may contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of
society."
http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=visit&lid=152
Population Task Force
Among Bush's most important contributions to the neo-Malthusian cause while
in Congress was his role in the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources
and Population. The task force, which Bush helped found and then chaired,
churned out a steady stream of propaganda claiming that the world was
already seriously overpopulated; that there was a fixed limit to natural
resources and that this limit was rapidly being reached; and that the
environment and natural species were being sacrificed to human progress.
Bush's task force sought to accredit the idea that the human race was being
"down bred," or reduced in genetic qualities by the population growth among
blacks and other non-white and hence allegedly inferior races at a time
when the Anglo-Saxons were hardly able to prevent their numbers from
shrinking.