My FTIs drilled into me to avoid doing anything in the car. Always tried to pull forward and get out. if I was writing reports I had my gun under my leg.
Hope they debrief it and new coppers can learn from it.
I think about the thousands of times I talked to normal people who approached my car. Could have been any of us. That’s what makes this one so scary …. The only any for Officer Burks to survive was to immediately identify this POS as a deadly threat. And we can’t treat everyone like that. All day. For 2 decades. V
idk. I generally avoided it. if I couldn't, I usually had a gun out of sight pointed thru the door.
but you are correct. you can't be on guard all the time for every interaction. and it just takes one. it's probably more like Vegas... the whole Vegas model is promised on winning 50.1%, just a little but more than the other guy.
You and Paul Cappitelli get it right close to 100% of the time. No mystery since you are only dealing in the realm of reality and not the universe of possibilities.
Great article and thank you for your unhindered retiree free speech!-) I'm in the same boat and am envied by my brothers and sisters still on the job! The "war on police" no doubt started with Obama and, to me, worsened after the Ferguson, MO Michael Brown debacle. The false claim that police are racist and wrongfully killing blacks is a Democrat mantra. ie. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake. It's perpetuated to Soros bought DA's who have been wrongfully indicting officers on justified UOF. I know because the last three cases I've worked on as an expert have all revealed that in prosecution failure mistrials. As Dan Bongino says, it has to get worse enough for things to change and just when I think it has, it hasn't. Thanks again for such a great read!
Truman Burbank spent most of his life living a life that was not his own, but rather one that was carefully curated for him. When something seemed off, he began exploring his boundaries. This leads him to a staircase and exit door, the truth. The next decision he needs to make is retreat into the comfortable and known, or express the true nature of what it means to be human, experiencing free will.
You answered your own question with a question. Who benefits from the misinformation? It’s pretty clear, and it’s not the police, which in turn, means it is not community safety either.
The truth is the only disinfectant for lies and manipulation. It is the only way to combat motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Keep writing pieces like this and grabbing readers one by one.
Misinformation on policing must be countered quickly, passionately, and with empirical data by all agency leaders. There are no criteria for leadership to consider other than the factual truth when responding to these many deliberately false and misleading allegations intended to incite and elicit support for unreasonable behaviors. The long-standing behavior of policing not to disclose some basic factual information about any such law enforcement responses to the media must be revisited in many such instances to thwart anti-policing rhetorical attacks.
This is a hard emotional truth. Thank you Mr Hand, for the article. We must fight against it. Educate those we can. Try to calm the hysteria when we can. Find those in power to back us. Find the reasonable voices in the wilderness. Have legal forces fighting and protecting all rights. Continue to be courageous and follow our calling. Ugliness is easier to get attention; theirs, ours, the victims - but it looks cool to be a misunderstood criminal. Stay safe. Have a plan, and love those that love and support you.
I completely agree with your comments here regarding Police use of deadly force against African Americans and in particular unarmed african-americans. I would however like to add a few comments.
I have been using the Washington Post killed by police database to track police shootings for many years. In particular I track the killings of so-called unarmed African Americans every year and as you pointed out there are approximately 10 to 13 listed by The Washington Post every year. I delve into each one of these shootings on an individual basis and what I have found every single year is that approximately half of these so-called unarmed victims were in fact armed, acting as if they were armed, presenting another object as if they were armed, or using a motor vehicle as a weapon.
The Washington Post does absolutely zero follow up when they post these statistics meaning that for their documentation and claim that someone was unarmed, they use one single source from hours after the incident occurred. That's not something that they do rarely, it is the case for every single shooting that they document. There's one incident source and one media reporting, always within hours of the initial incident with no looking into the incident days or weeks later to see if there is additional information. As an example, there will be a report of a black male who was unarmed and shot and killed by police while he was in his vehicle. That is the information they will post when they claim that someone was unarmed. When the official investigation comes out weeks or months later and says that the subject was using the vehicle to try and run into police officers or another person and only then were shot, it never makes it into their database information. If the investigation later reveals that the subject was reaching for something in the vehicle when he was shot and police found a firearm underneath his seat, again, that information is never updated in their database and the shooting remains listed as the shooting of an unarmed black subject. If it turns out the subject was believed to be armed and kept his hand hidden behind his shirt while being held at gunpoint and then suddenly pulled that hand out and pointed it at police, none of that ever makes it into the database or if it does it's certainly not explained in a way that people would understand that police reasonably believed the subject was armed and only fired when the subject acted as if he were pointing a weapon. 50% of the shootings that the Washington Post lists as unarmed actually turn out to be, armed, using a vehicle, acting as if they were armed or presenting an object as if it were a weapon. That's been the case every year for more than 5 years that I've broken the shootings down. The fact that they never go back in and update the database with new information beyond the first 24 hours shows the disingenuous nature of their reporting in my opinion. They don't want the facts, they want to present a narrative and their failure to update certainly colors that narrative outside of the lines exactly as they want it.
My FTIs drilled into me to avoid doing anything in the car. Always tried to pull forward and get out. if I was writing reports I had my gun under my leg.
Hope they debrief it and new coppers can learn from it.
senseless tragedy. rip
I think about the thousands of times I talked to normal people who approached my car. Could have been any of us. That’s what makes this one so scary …. The only any for Officer Burks to survive was to immediately identify this POS as a deadly threat. And we can’t treat everyone like that. All day. For 2 decades. V
idk. I generally avoided it. if I couldn't, I usually had a gun out of sight pointed thru the door.
but you are correct. you can't be on guard all the time for every interaction. and it just takes one. it's probably more like Vegas... the whole Vegas model is promised on winning 50.1%, just a little but more than the other guy.
stay safe. it's a crazy world anymore
Thank you for shining a light on the Dallas story (heartbreaking!) and the dishonesty that contributes to these tragedies.
And thanks for the shoutout! You're absolutely correct that some of us have to fight for every subscriber. We are most definitely outnumbered.
Keep up the great work!
From a report published by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
“A 2023 poll of US Voters found that 75% believed police violence is a “very or somewhat serious problem.”
We have an uphill battle.
https://www.policedefense.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/LELDF-Report-Fatal-Falsehoods-Police-Shootings.pdf
Outstanding article. Keep up the great work.
Thanks!
You and Paul Cappitelli get it right close to 100% of the time. No mystery since you are only dealing in the realm of reality and not the universe of possibilities.
Great article and thank you for your unhindered retiree free speech!-) I'm in the same boat and am envied by my brothers and sisters still on the job! The "war on police" no doubt started with Obama and, to me, worsened after the Ferguson, MO Michael Brown debacle. The false claim that police are racist and wrongfully killing blacks is a Democrat mantra. ie. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake. It's perpetuated to Soros bought DA's who have been wrongfully indicting officers on justified UOF. I know because the last three cases I've worked on as an expert have all revealed that in prosecution failure mistrials. As Dan Bongino says, it has to get worse enough for things to change and just when I think it has, it hasn't. Thanks again for such a great read!
Thank you sir.
Truman Burbank spent most of his life living a life that was not his own, but rather one that was carefully curated for him. When something seemed off, he began exploring his boundaries. This leads him to a staircase and exit door, the truth. The next decision he needs to make is retreat into the comfortable and known, or express the true nature of what it means to be human, experiencing free will.
You answered your own question with a question. Who benefits from the misinformation? It’s pretty clear, and it’s not the police, which in turn, means it is not community safety either.
The truth is the only disinfectant for lies and manipulation. It is the only way to combat motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Keep writing pieces like this and grabbing readers one by one.
Misinformation on policing must be countered quickly, passionately, and with empirical data by all agency leaders. There are no criteria for leadership to consider other than the factual truth when responding to these many deliberately false and misleading allegations intended to incite and elicit support for unreasonable behaviors. The long-standing behavior of policing not to disclose some basic factual information about any such law enforcement responses to the media must be revisited in many such instances to thwart anti-policing rhetorical attacks.
This is a hard emotional truth. Thank you Mr Hand, for the article. We must fight against it. Educate those we can. Try to calm the hysteria when we can. Find those in power to back us. Find the reasonable voices in the wilderness. Have legal forces fighting and protecting all rights. Continue to be courageous and follow our calling. Ugliness is easier to get attention; theirs, ours, the victims - but it looks cool to be a misunderstood criminal. Stay safe. Have a plan, and love those that love and support you.
I completely agree with your comments here regarding Police use of deadly force against African Americans and in particular unarmed african-americans. I would however like to add a few comments.
I have been using the Washington Post killed by police database to track police shootings for many years. In particular I track the killings of so-called unarmed African Americans every year and as you pointed out there are approximately 10 to 13 listed by The Washington Post every year. I delve into each one of these shootings on an individual basis and what I have found every single year is that approximately half of these so-called unarmed victims were in fact armed, acting as if they were armed, presenting another object as if they were armed, or using a motor vehicle as a weapon.
The Washington Post does absolutely zero follow up when they post these statistics meaning that for their documentation and claim that someone was unarmed, they use one single source from hours after the incident occurred. That's not something that they do rarely, it is the case for every single shooting that they document. There's one incident source and one media reporting, always within hours of the initial incident with no looking into the incident days or weeks later to see if there is additional information. As an example, there will be a report of a black male who was unarmed and shot and killed by police while he was in his vehicle. That is the information they will post when they claim that someone was unarmed. When the official investigation comes out weeks or months later and says that the subject was using the vehicle to try and run into police officers or another person and only then were shot, it never makes it into their database information. If the investigation later reveals that the subject was reaching for something in the vehicle when he was shot and police found a firearm underneath his seat, again, that information is never updated in their database and the shooting remains listed as the shooting of an unarmed black subject. If it turns out the subject was believed to be armed and kept his hand hidden behind his shirt while being held at gunpoint and then suddenly pulled that hand out and pointed it at police, none of that ever makes it into the database or if it does it's certainly not explained in a way that people would understand that police reasonably believed the subject was armed and only fired when the subject acted as if he were pointing a weapon. 50% of the shootings that the Washington Post lists as unarmed actually turn out to be, armed, using a vehicle, acting as if they were armed or presenting an object as if it were a weapon. That's been the case every year for more than 5 years that I've broken the shootings down. The fact that they never go back in and update the database with new information beyond the first 24 hours shows the disingenuous nature of their reporting in my opinion. They don't want the facts, they want to present a narrative and their failure to update certainly colors that narrative outside of the lines exactly as they want it.