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Lily Hay Newman reports at Future Tense that the police department in Columbia, Missouri, recently announced that its lobby will be open 24/7 for people making Craigslist transactions or any type of exchange facilitated by Internet services following a trend begun by police stations in Virginia Beach, East Chicago and Boca Raton. Internet listings like Craigslist are, of course, a quick and convenient way to buy, sell, barter, and generally deal with junk. But tales of Craigslist-related assaults, robberies, and murders where victims are lured to locations with the promise of a sale, aren’t uncommon, an item being sold could be broken or fake, and the money being used to buy it could be counterfeit. "Transactions should not be conducted in secluded parking lots, behind a building, in a dark location especially when you’re dealing with strangers. Someone you’ve never met before – you have no idea what their intentions are – whether they have evil intent or the best of intentions,” says Officer James Cason Jr. With surveillance cameras running 24 hours a day, plus the obvious bonus of a constant police presence, meeting in the lobby of the police department can help weed out people trying to rip others off. "People with stolen items may not want to meet at the police department," says Bryana Maupin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @05:25PM
Trigger happy cops don't belong on the force[1] It's their frigging police station lobby - their home ground. If they can't even secure it vs some skinny girl with a knife without shooting her to death they're crap. She was alone in the room - no bystanders at easy reach, they could have sealed the area and then gone and got more suitable equipment AND a team to subdue her (send one guy first, take down if necessary with help of team). If she stabbed herself to death before anything happens that's her problem.
But no, they had just one guy go there, fail to subdue her (how the fuck did he fail to cuff her after smacking her down on the ground?) and then they keep screwing up till she's dead.
Maybe it's self-defense, and maybe even she and we are better off with her dead, but doesn't mean the cops handled the situation well or even properly.
The fact is the first guy went in and he didn't get shot at and she actually seemed to be talking to him, then he gets her on the ground, probably making her angry, and then for some stupid reason he lets her go and stand up so that he can shoot her?
I am a coward, but I don't pretend to be a policeman and shoot people just because I'm too scared to risk my life in the line of duty. It's stupid to take unnecessary risks, but that's why I said they should have backed off rather than sending just one incompetent cop in without backup being ready. Then try to talk it out with her and wait till they had more info and more suitable resources.
Fact is sometimes "normal people" get angry and they do stupid things, but if you give them some time to cool off, they stop doing stupid things and nobody needs to shoot them dead. So the cops handling things like this doesn't bode well for the "normal people".
[1] Cowards don't belong on the police force too they are a danger to others and to law enforcement. There are already too many cowardly cops around - just look at them saying they're scared that waze is letting people report their location: http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/01/27/0037206 [soylentnews.org]