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A veteran police officer in Pennsylvania has been indicted for murder after her taser video camera showed her shooting an unarmed man, laying face-down on the ground, twice in the back:
...an arrest affidavit in Mearkle's case said that the video depicts the officer shooting 59-year-old David Kassick as he was on his stomach.
"At the time officer Mearkle fires both rounds from her pistol, the video clearly depicts Kassick lying on the snow covered lawn with his face toward the ground. Furthermore, at the time the rounds are fired nothing can be seen in either of Kassick's hands, nor does he point or direct anything toward Officer Mearkle," the affidavit said.
The Hummelstown Police Department officer, released on $250,000 bail, said she acted in self-defense on February 2, when she attempted to pull over Kassick for driving allegedly with expired tags. She said that he sped away briefly and then fled his vehicle. With the stun gun in her left hand, she fired it several times in a bid to incapacitate him, she said. As he was on the ground, the authorities say she shot him twice in the back with her pistol.
Video evidence of Eric Garner's homicide by police chokehold did not lead to an indictment of the officers involved, which led many to question the efficacy of body cameras to cut down on police abuses. Mearkle's case, however, seems to present a counter-example.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Monday March 30 2015, @02:07PM
Uh, yes.
BTW, it's hard for me to believe that someone doesn't know the term. The Panopticon was one of the seminal thought experiments/touchstones in both social liberty and prison reform movements. I don't know of many folks who've avoided the term. At least unless they were trying to avoid it.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 30 2015, @04:21PM
Well, you've just met one. And no, I was not "avoiding" the term.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 30 2015, @08:02PM
Sorry we're not all as smart as you, or perhaps we're just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the things that are of utmost importance as you clearly are. Or maybe it is because some of us got real degrees and weren't mentally masturbating over in the liberal arts wing.
I know a lot of cool shit from out of my sphere of influence too. Insights into complicated systems. I can sling differential equations with the best of them. I can talk of many things, such as shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. The generalitites of some of the shit I know well, such as the effects of ionizing radiation on people, I truly believe that people can and should know this stuff better, but one thing I don't do is be a dick to them if they don't know it, and then be a pompous ass by suggesting that they must be actively trying to avoid such knowledge.