A Tale of Two Cop Videos

I'll name no names -- anybody who wants to can go look them up -- but within the last two weeks we've seen two different videos of cop/civilian interactions that really need comparison.

The first was taken by a security camera, and the cop obviously didn't know it.  It shows an unarmed civilian running away (unfortunately in a straight line), the cop firing no less than eight shots after him which finally bring him down, then the cop going up to the body and dropping a throw-down gun next to it.  No, the civilian did not survive.  It turns out he was pulled over for a broken tail-light and late child-support payments.  The local police department is having a hard time claiming this was a Righteous Shoot, the usual suspects are trying to justify it, and the usual activists are trying to bring murder charges.

The second, which has gotten a lot less on-air time outside of Arizona, where it happened, was taken by the cop's own car-cam.  It shows the car rolling up from behind a walking civilian who's holding a rifle, then swerving to aim toward the civilian, then finally running him down and crashing into a wall.  The civilian and his rifle, at separate angles, go flying over the wall.  Another cop-car rolls up, and the cops therein run out and cuff the civilian.  Yes, the civilian did survive.  Before that incident the civilian had spent the morning robbing a convenience store, burglarizing a house, stealing a car, then robbing a department store to steal the rifle and a box of bullets.  Before the cop-car came into view he had also fired that rifle, so it was clearly loaded and he was quite willing to use it.  The local police have no trouble calling this a Righteous... Take-down, but they're puzzling over how "appropriate" it was to knock the crook down with a car instead of a gun or taser.  The politicos aren't saying anything about it.  The various activists are likewise arguing over how "appropriate" the run-down was, and nobody but the crook's lawyer is trying to claim that he wasn't a public danger.  Nobody's mentioning the fact that a .30-caliber-or-better rifle bullet can go through a police armor vest, or a car.

The lesson I draw from this is that Arizona cops tend to have more sense and more imagination (as well as being better shots) than cops in other states -- which, perhaps, is only to be expected in a state where everybody has guns and knows how to use them well.  Also that politicos, Left or Right, think in predictable patterns and don't know how to react when something out-of-the-ballpark happens.  The run-down video makes it clear that a car, too, is a deadly weapon -- in fact, cars kill more Americans every year than guns do -- which is something that the politicos don't want to think about.

--Leslie <;)))><