tvc184

I don’t disagree. I have seen enough occasions where the robber panicked and shot people or killed witnesses. If I am the victim of a robbery, I am worried about the weapon he is carrying, not the cash. An example is an executed prisoner from Port Arthur. He robbed a store, shot the clerk and if I remember correctly, left but then came back and shot the two witnesses in the head. So when you hear…. but he was going to leave….. [Hidden Content]

When people see the entire video, they typically seem kind of shocked. It is then that they understand what people are talking about. Like I have said (and most people), it doesn’t bother me that a robber was killed. If the shooter put 4 or more rounds into his back and he died from those wounds, oh well. No matter, it is still wrong to shoot a person after he is clearly out of the fight.

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Extra shots don’t really matter in my opinion if they are part of stopping a threat. If you give me three seconds from the holster at about 5 yards, I can probably get about 10 rounds on target. A person going back and watching a slow motion video in hindsight, could say, after the seventh shot the guy appeared to be going down. Maybe… but I can’t react that fast. But if the guy goes down after those 10 shots and is clearly no longer a threat, should I be able to pause about 3 seconds and then walk up and shoot the guy the head… you know, just to make sure? The law is that you can shoot to end the threat. That is why you will always hear the police say, I am not shooting to kill, I am shooting to end the threat. If a guy is coming at me with a knife and I shoot him a couple of times and he drops it and makes no effort to pick it up, should I lawfully be able to go ahead and just kill him because of what he did before? If the guy was a threat to me and I lawfully stop him with deadly force and EMS gets there in time, saves his life and he gets to go to trial later, great. If they don’t, the bad guy made his own bed. I saw some lawyers on YouTube mentioning the autopsy and discussing whether the robber was already dead. Do you want to see the full video?

By the letter of the law it appears that the shooter might have broken a couple of laws. On an emotional basis I think a majority of the public would think that there is no issue with the robber causing his own death therefore any actions by the shooter to be justified. I think that the grand jury, being made up from the public, might no bill this case for that reason in a form of jury nullification. Kind of like, technically he should not have fired that last shot but…… The “other side” wants to letter of the law upheld regardless. Well…. at least for this instance. When the shoe is on the other foot, they will likely want discretion. Imagine if a Black guy shot and killed a White guy in the same situation. I am sure that some of the same people who want the shooter in this current case to be indicted, would want the case dismissed if the rolls were reversed. In many respects it is much like the political discussions on this website. “I want THE LAW FOLLOWED!”…. unless. Such as, Trump had classified documents in his home that the FBI was aware of but he refused to turn them in under executive privilege but was negotiating for return anyway. The left including people in this forum, demanded that Trump be held accountable, probably even with jail time. When it turns out that the current Democratic president had the same kinds of files in three locations, some of which were likely not secured and the FBI did not know about it… nothing to see here, move along. I have said it many times in these discussions. When someone wants to make an example of a person from the other side, he better get ready because someone on his side will soon be found doing something worse. So in this case, should the grand jury go by the letter of the law of “immediately necessary” or should the grand jury go by the old Texas saying, some people need killin’? I believe that the people supporting this guy either have a misunderstanding of the law and think you can shoot to your heart’s content or they know that technically the guy violated the law but the robber caused his own death so, oh well. Then I think people on the other side demand absolutely the letter of the law be upheld, because…. a White guy killed a minority. I suspect that if you swap the circumstances, both opinions would change. I believe that it will be hard to get an indictment from a Texas grand jury, even in Harris County. A lot will likely depend on how the DA presents the case.

Your confusion is understandable. An insect flying at 35mph will cover the 50 yards in 2.90 seconds. An insect flying at 25mph would cover that distance in 4.01 seconds. Without anticipating a accurate speed test, it would be difficult for a person being surprised by a beetle to take note of the 1.11 second time difference. 🙃

And with the escalator always reminds me of this, government workers taking an escalator to work…. [Hidden Content]

Riding the Sears escalator was an adventure like a train ride.

So much Bill Cosby never being accused of anything…. 🙃

…. and there was still in my memory some chocolate candy that you could only buy at Sears. I think you had to buy it by the pound. It was blocks of chocolate and I swear I can still taste it.

In addition to Sears and the Toy land, the streets in Beaumont were completely lined down and across the streets with lights put up by the city. There were very few parking lots and we usually had to walk up and down the blocks. I don’t know if anyone even locked their vehicles. There were lots of faults back then but safety was not one of them.

Yeah, even for trivia, that is trivial.

I believe the bill was to rescind the previously passed $87 billion to hire new IRS agents. It is irrelevant however, since the Senate will not take up the issue. I believe it was Representative Jim Jordan, I saw a few days before the speaker was even elected, who said that the Republican led House was going to pass several single item bills. That means one issue and one bill. That also means not half a dozen riders like $1 million for a new art center in downtown NY. So when the 2020 for elections roll around and the independent and undecided voters ask, what did you do in the last two years, the Republicans can list several bills that were attempted to be passed into law but they were stopped by the Democrat controlled Senate. Such as: We passed a bill that would lower your taxes. We passed a bill that would defund the IRS hiring new agents. We passed a bill, requiring the closing the border. We passed a bill…… Because the noncommitted and center voters are the ones who are going to decide the elections.

My opinion is that the last shots (and especially the last one) was completely unnecessary, making it illegal. The penal code uses the phrase, “immediately necessary” to justify force or deadly force. In other words, had the threat ended? Reaction time is such that even if the threat ended, a person may fire a couple more shots before the cease firing reaction is transmitted to the finger that is pulling the trigger. When we learned driving in driver’s ed, most of us learned that there is a 1/2 to a 3/4 second reaction time before hitting the brakes. Even if you see something ahead such as a child running into the road, there will be a lag time before that is transmitted to you hitting the brake. Your eye saw the child instantly because of the speed of light but by time your brain processes it and sent the message/nerve impulse to your feet, you will travel a distance. I believe it is the same thing with shooting. While it may be easy to see a person going down, when you were pulling the trigger at 3 to 5 times a second, it will take a couple of shots before you stop shooting even if your eyes perceived the threat ending. In a case like this, I understand a person pulling the trigger multiple times in a second or two. The people online that claimed it should’ve been one or two shots probably have no clue what they’re talking about. Using an electronic timer, about five years ago an officer was testing me on shooting skills. It was about 20 feet away and it all had to be head shots on target, not simply center mass. I could not start shooting until I got the audible beep from the timer and I could not be pointing at the target already. After the beep I had to the move the pistol on target and make the shots in the very small aiming point. The entire time was 2.3 seconds from the beep to the last shot. Counting the actual lag time between me hearing the beep and then having to move my hands into the shooting position, the five hits in the head size target was probably about 1 1/2 seconds. That is having to shoot a bit slower to try to make sure the pistol was on target. The only point of that is, when shooting that fast and if it was a real human trying to hurt someone, I believe it would be extremely hard to stop shooting the moment the threat ends. With that in mind, what appeared to me was that the shooter put multiple shots on the guy for a couple of of away and he went down. It looks like he dropped the gun and was no longer a threat. I have no issue at all with the number of rows fired while the guy was standing. But there was lag time with the shooter to perceive what was happening because he then got out of his chair and moved over to the now what appeared to be down and out of the fight robber. It looked like the shooter pumped a couple of rounds into him and that time. Even after that, it was a very obvious lag time and it looked like the shooter then made a final kill shot, probably to the head. Was that "immediately necessary"? The two shots after the shooter moved in on the guy and shot him in the back while he was faced down (and I think dropped the gun behind him) was questionable but then with the pause and what appeared to be a headshot, was almost certainly not necessary. In my opinion, the way, the Penal Code is worded, questionable actions are in the favor of the shooter going by the Penal Code definition of a defense to prosecution. The final shot however I did not appear to be questionable. It seemed clearly unnecessary. BUT…. will it cause an indictment? Part of me says absolutely not and part of me says absolutely yes. The shooter under Texas law, and in my opinion, had the right to use the deadly forcethat likely killed the robber. Even if the last shot was unnecessary, can you kill a dead person? If the autopsy shows that he would have died within a few seconds regardless of the last three shots, would it, then be unlawful? I don’t have a clue. Probably not but who knows how the DA will present the case? There is that old saying in Texas, some people just need killin’. So after that long winded reasoning, I don’t have a clue but I would probably lean toward a no-bill.

There is no love for McCarthy. Those weren’t his ideas, he was forced to concede which was the original intent. The rules were passed so now he is stuck with them.

He came in and gave a statement today.

They used to call it compromising. I remember Mrs. Kelley’s Humanities class in 6th grade (1967) during the government section of the class. She was telling us that a compromise (new word for us) was the way that most laws were passed unless everybody agreed on an issue. Both sides gave up something in order to come together and get a bill passed. Now it is caving?

What is ridiculous? Do you mean the 200 members of a party all think in lockstep? When the Democrats go behind closed doors, are they all robots? Are you saying that there is never a debate or is it that they want to act like they are all the same person? The Dems are like a man and a woman going behind closed doors to talk about an issue. They step out and the woman has a black eye and a bloody lip as they smile and announce that there were no differences in opinion and no debate was needed. Can you imagine what went on when Democrat Senator Joe Manchin behind closed doors told the rest of the Democrats that he was siding with the Republicans on not changing the 200 year rules on the filibuster in the Senate last year? His lone vote shut down a takeover that was ridiculous. I am sure there were group hugs all the way around. The only thing that Republican showed in this case was that everybody does not think the same. The Democrats are the same behind closed doors but they walk out with the bloody wife and smile and say everything was okay. They feel that honesty is best, kept behind the closed doors.

But it wasn’t Bogart. BD loses 1/2 a point…

Can’t answer that one without google. I think I remember on the American charts the Beatles holding all top 5 spots at one time.

I have a relative who was acting like it was the end of democracy. Oh my gosh, this has really turned Congress on its head kind of stuff. When I brought up that this is nothing but a comical media side show, the response was that I didn’t understand, the government was going to shut down because the spending ceiling resolutions would not pass, laws would cease to be enacted (a good thing) and blah blah…. It was pure Chicken Little nonsense. No Henny Penny, the sky is not falling and Foxy Woxy is leading you into a trap.

Again, a spirited debate confuses Democrats.

Should have used Google….. 🙃

And speaking of badge numbers…. About 4 years after I started, we finally got a computer system and started issuing permanent badge numbers beginning with 110 and progressing by seniority. Originally the numbers 96-99 were reserved for the command staff. The 96, 97 and 98 were division commanders and 99 was the chief. Those were not permanent badge numbers but just a means of knowing who was doing the talking. My permanent badge number picked by seniority? 184… which is coincidentally part of my screen name. So my original unit number 84 eventually became my permanent badge number of 184. When a few years later we got semi-permanent locker and mailbox numbers after I left detectives, I was assigned 84. And when was I hired? January, 1984 or…. 1/84.

I also remember Car 54, Where Are You? It was the first place that I remember seeing Herman Munster when he was just Officer Muldoon. When I first started on patrol we didn’t have badge numbers and only went by our unit number. I was assigned to Car 84. 🙂 🙃 And they probably never knew where I was….