Three Baton Rouge police officers shot near BRPD HQ

Why did he have to be restrained? Why did he have to be tased? Because he was resisting arrest and fighting with the cops. By "fighting" I don't mean "throwing punches" but when a cop is trying to get you in cuffs and you are yanking away from him, you're fighting with him.

He was a guy with a long criminal history that has served serious time before, getting arrested was nothing new to him, he knew what he was supposed to be doing, but he fought them because he knew he was facing 10-20 years hard labor for that gun. Interestingly enough, he fought with cops during another arrest where he was armed but he got really lucky that they managed to subdue him.

 

Commenting on the Alton Sterling incident, what makes anyone believe that the cops "saw" a gun and that Sterling was "fully restrained"?

 

Well, when they said "He's got a gun", it's usually indicative of someone seeing a gun. Also, he wasn't "fully restrained" or he'd have been in cuffs. He was fighting them putting him in cuffs which is why they tried to use a taser on him and why they tackled him when that failed. He knew he was going away for a LONG time and was fighting it.

 

I assumed that the gun was discovered through contact by the officer's hand (similar to feeling a gun during a pat-down). I agree that since his right arm was free that there is no way to qualify his position as being fully restrained.

Also, on one of the videos, the officer can be heard saying "he's going for it".

 

That's fair, he might have just felt it, there's no way to know for sure if he just felt it or if he actually saw it. Unfortunately the camera angles available don't show that side of his body so we can't see what the officers were looking at.

 

They've identified the shooter who was killed as Gavin Long.

 

Unlike our president and the idiots killing cops these days, I will wait for the details of the incident that sparked this to come in. We almost always find the cops were justified in their actions if we wait and see. This could be the opposite but even then it does not justify randomly killing police officers. Unfortunately this will understandably probably lead to even more black shootings by officers which will cause more police shootings. If Obama would actually be a man and stand up and tell people to wait for the facts instead of pushing his agenda, a lot of senseless killing could be avoided but then his mantra of never let a crisis go to waste would be thwarted and he can't have that. The agenda is what is important to him.

 

Read Obama’s full statement below:

I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge. For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault. These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.

I’ve offered my full support, and the full support of the federal government, to Governor Edwards, Mayor Holden, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Department. And make no mistake – justice will be done.

We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None. These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no causes. The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.

Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen. May God bless them all.

That good enough for you? Probably not as I'm sure you'll find something wrong with it.

 

You have to read between the lines. cml reads that statement as kill whitey, kill whitey.

 

One thing I notice about right leaning posters and their criticism of Obama especially on the matter of race relations, they only have vague platitudes about him being 'divisive' while the posters who don't share those sentiments always have explicit quotes and nuanced evidence to back their claim. I haven't seen a poster post a single quote that suggests that he is 'divisive'.

 

[Premium Post]
Obama's press conference was yet another example of Obama working the political angle of this tragedy for his benefit. Let me explain because it's likely that Obama supporters were once again deceived:

1. First objective: Claim that the motives are not yet known. The adoring press follows his lead and the immediate story will be, "motives are not yet known", then once the politically damaging motives are known, the story has blown over and we are on to something else.

2. Pre-emption. Muddying the waters regarding the motive is done in an attempt to pre-empt the criticism that this is an attack on police, as well as to avoid the continued turning of public opinion against BLM. BLM is a huge political liability for Democrats, now that both Obama and Hillary have publicly supported it. Linking BLM to this violence is very bad news politically for Democrats.

3. Ask to withhold judgement until the facts are known. This of course is the complete opposite of how Obama reacts to black people killed by police or otherwise -- see Trayvon, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Baton Rouge and Minnesota. His reaction there is to encourage protests, not to encourage restraint. Yet when the tables are turned, he is inconsistent. Again a divisive political move that the naive will have go over their heads.

4. Call for inclusive rhetoric. Obama knows that complaints will come that this was an attack on police. Obama knows that Al Sharpton and other race hustlers have been on his side for years and invited to the White House 100+ times. He doesn't want to get smeared by that linkage, so the strategy is to pre-empt the criticism by painting his opponents as divisive...when all the while he is pursuing his own political goals, just as his opponents are.

5. Try to mute the impact of the RNC Convention, which starts tomorrow. Trump's team is going to rail against Obama for 4 straight days. Obama wants to get a story in the press calling for inclusive rhetoric ahead of that, in hopes of people not reacting favorably to the calls for law and order from Trump. Really an abuse of the bully pulpit, all done under the false premise of uniting us during a time of tragedy. It's deception.

 

Still no quotes. Still vague platitudes and plenty of conjecture.

 

All that matters is what was happening when the police officers chose to shoot him. His past felonies don't justify it. Him resisting arrest prior to being tased also doesn't justify it.

I don't know what the officers really saw, and I don't think you do either. Personally, I find it hard to believe that he'd reach for his gun while officers are piling on top of him. From the video, to me he looked almost completely subdued while laying on the ground. Maybe his arm was freely moving, and a cop seeing the gun in his pocket shot him in a panic after mistakenly thinking he might be trying to make a move for it.

 

TJ called out before he even posted. That's awkward.

 

Obama should certainly say something, however does ANYBODY really think it's going to stop someone from doing what they're going to do? "Oh Obama says I shouldn't do this....ok". GTFOH!!!

 

You know why? Because many of them are like every other online moron out there who distorts the truth, hyperbolizes every incident, and makes a mockery of reasoned, measured thought. Benghazi becomes the Super Bowl of embassy attacks and Obama becomes some warped combination of Mussolini, Stokely Carmichael and The Wizard of Oz. It's not that they might have a legitimate concern about the tone of his eulogy in Dallas, or the Affordable Care Act, or (Insert Name of Foreign Policy Decision Here). It's that there is no discrimination among any of these. Every decision is wrong. Every policy is ill-conceived. And yet, a similar decision by a President sharing their overall ideology (e.g. Reagan on gun control) is perfectly justified.

It's like trying to teach sex education to a kakapo.

 

It's like trying to teach sex education to a kakapo.

 

More horrible and senseless killing. And the usual politicization by the usual suspects. People who actually feed the hatred engendering this behavior.

We gotta shift the our public dialogue the show sympathy and empathy for all victims of this violence and condemn all attacks against the fabric of our society.

 

His past felonies suggest that he knew what the officers wanted from him. He'd been arrested MANY times before because he was a career criminal, he knew the routine but he was fighting because he knew he was looking at 10-20 years hard labor.

Him being armed and resisting arrest is the reason he was shot. We don't currently have a camera angle that suggests that it wasn't justified. All it takes is one arm to grab a gun and then a cop isn't going home that night. I think the point is that we don't know for sure, but you'd rather believe that the cops unfairly shot him and I see him struggling while armed and feel that it was most likely justified.

If he just let the cops arrest him for his crimes, he'd be in prison right now and still alive. He chose the morgue instead.

What matters is that what Obama says is something that can't be considered support. When you talk about the grievances that the terrorists have after something like this happens, then it can be seen as support. This time around Obama's speech was on point.

 

I'm getting the impression that this was one of those radical "overthrow the government" types.

Is that correct?