From "Justified shooting or fair game? Shooter of Ashli Babbitt makes shocking admission" by Jonathan Turley (The Hill).
August 28, 2021
"Legal experts and the media have avoided the obvious implications of the two reviews in the Babbitt shooting."
"Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6 — and officers in cities such as Seattle or Portland, Ore., could have killed hundreds of violent protesters who tried to burn courthouses, took over city halls or occupied police stations during last summer’s widespread rioting. In all of those protests, a small number of activists from both political extremes showed up prepared for violence and pushed others to riot.... Babbitt is considered by many to be fair game because she was labeled an 'insurrectionist.'... Like many, I condemned the Jan. 6 riot.... But that doesn’t mean rioting should be treated as a license for the use of lethal force, particularly against unarmed suspects."
From "Justified shooting or fair game? Shooter of Ashli Babbitt makes shocking admission" by Jonathan Turley (The Hill).
From "Justified shooting or fair game? Shooter of Ashli Babbitt makes shocking admission" by Jonathan Turley (The Hill).
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48 comments:
Perhaps it is us that have yet to realize the implications.
"It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” "
Isn't that the same argument Comey used to not prosecute the obvious crimes committed by Hillary Clinton?
Clearly the white washing of this unjustified police shooting is obvious and unquestionable based on the evidence and the law. The biggest concern is in the fact that this review was completely politicized. Those reviewing this unjustified police shooting did so on the basis of the victim's politics. We know that if the politics were different, if the victim were a minority, if the protest was against a conservative and all the evidence were exactly the same, that the conclusions of the review would have been it was an unjustified unwarranted and probably criminal act. Our justice system is broken.
“In all of those protests, a small number of activists from both political extremes showed up prepared for violence and pushed others to riot…”
To clarify, those people who ‘tried to burn courthouses, took over city halls or occupied police stations’ were NOT from ‘both political extremes’, they were working with and funded by factions coordinating efforts with local political leaders who control law enforcement and the courts in all those jurisdictions.
None of them controlled by Republicans- make that clear. Turley is deliberately trying not to do that…
Like nearly every other institution in the US at the moment the justice system is broken and unsalvageable.
Turley charitably forbore to include the most revealing quote from the Byrd interview: "I believe I showed the utmost courage on January 6." The guy's basically a black Dwight Schrute.
I wouldn't call it murder, but also wouldn't regard it as a justified shooting. Presumably there are procedures to be followed in such cases and it doesn't look like the officer followed them.
The defense looks a little like Weimar-era Carl Schmitt thinking. The regime was threatened, and therefore normal rules don't apply anymore. A situation that wasn't so different from what scores of officers faced in the summer riots somehow rises above ordinary riots to become a battle for the salvation of the Republic which justifies anything.
Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6 — and officers in cities such as Seattle or Portland, Ore., could have killed hundreds of violent protesters
--------
No, because the Portland rioters were part of the protected class and thus had a right to riot and loot. The Jan 6 protesters were conservatives, and therefore were unworthy of life.
There is a British comedy with a sketch involving 2 SS Panzer soldiers and one asks the other "Are we the baddies?" I wonder if someone on the left needs to start asking the others that same question. Which side is using the intelligence agencies to prosecute political enemies? Which side justifies violence for its side? Which side has used the government agencies to harass and deny rights and to access confidential tax records of their political opponents. You can jsutify your reasons all you want, but it is still the actions of "the baddies."
Look at the contempt that people coming from the left even on this blog, have for their political opponents.
I am not saying those on the right are pure, but they are not in power, and that matters a lot. Those in power need to be checked, and the people need to be very dedicated to insuring that happens by withdrawing support for those entities that have too much power.
To read the comments to this article in the Hill are to weep for our fellow citizens. They hate us and they have absolutely no problem expressing it.
Turley's commentary seems balanced and accurate. His point is an important one: the case law surrounding lethal use of force by a policeman and at that time, in that place, and under the circumstances, and Lt. Byrd seems to be in violation of that case law.
Thanks for this. Read the comments at the link, I urge you. Ninety seconds or so is all you'll need.
The content there is maybe the ugliest thing I've seen all week. Inconceivable, really, but there you are.
A bad shoot by a marginal (I won't say "bad") cop, and a slathering of whitewash.
He couldn’t see her hand. To the shooter, it made no difference that this tiny woman was unarmed.
We have two systems of justice in this country.
I saw the interview on MSNBC on the Joy Reid show. Reid referred to Babbitt as a Q Anon follower. What’s that got to do with anything?
In a related note, Prof. Kelly Dineen of Creighton Law just called me a “mediocre white guy” on Twitter. I shot back and said she teaches at a third-tier law school that my lawyer son didn’t even apply to. This law professor is no Ann Althouse!
Brave Professor Turley. He utters a few peeps of protest, after being more or silent for seven months. People were watching the video of Ashli being shot, a couple days after it happened on Youtube, so ignorance can't be the excuse. I have no idea why so many center-right types and conservative news outlets have either minimized this outrage or gone silent.
Sometimes I wonder if people on the Right can be angry or passionate about anything except their wallet.
But anyway, it just shows all the OUTRAGE over George Floyd and all the police shootings was completely FAKE. But how many times do you have to point out the hypocrisy of the MSM and the Left? You don't start to wonder why so many idiots still believe anything they say.
To say the comments on this article at the link are unhinged is an understatement. This from commenter "let freeedumb ring'eth" (spelling errors left as-is):
"im glad she was shot
as a lesson to those idiots
who thinks privilege will protect them
from a functional democracy
with a taxpayer funded police and military"
Good Lord.
And I 100% agree with Diogenes@4:34
You can watch the video.
He never said a word.
Just shot her.
While she was surrounded by a swat team. If you watch the video he fired right into a group of people that included other federal agents.
They should have shot him.
He was the only violent dangerous person in that event.
In 2024 the statute of limitations will not have run out....and there will be new US Attorneys. He is hanging himself.
That crum cop should face charges, be convicted and do time.
There is either one rule for all, or there are no rules.
Rioting always warrants a "shoot to kill response", be it from an officer or a shop owner. The mob must always be stopped. The "insurrectionists" were emboldened by an entire summer of free reign by leftist mobs.
The Capitol Police seem to have a serious problem of a culture of non-compliance and lack of training. Byrd's admission that he saw no weapon will serve the Babbitt family well in their civil suit.
This why there should be no qualified immunity. On the bright side next time Antifa acts up the cops can kill the rioters and the political prosecutors won't be able to do anything to the cops.
and .... we all know who will suffer now that the standards have been shifted to protect police officers who are trigger happy. Hint - in general, it is not gonna be people who spend their free time reading the Federalist Papers.
If you choose to read the comments posted in The Hill, fasten your seatbelts, they are brutal. The division/hatred in this country is increasing with no end in sight.
Turley's argument occurred to me as well several days ago after I saw a video clip of the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, but in a slightly different form: If shooting her was justified, why did Michael Byrd stop? Why not open up on everyone in sight? He was carrying a Glock 22 that day, a .40 S&W caliber police sidearm with a 15+1 shot capacity. It's normal practice for police officers to carry at least two spare magazines, more often three or four, that's 46 shots minimum -- 46 dead "insurrectionists". If an unarmed woman was a clear and present danger to Congress, what about the hundreds of men? It would appear that not shooting everyone in sight would amount to dereliction of duty on Byrd's part if his reason for shooting Babbitt makes sense.
For the people who say that this shooting was obviously justified, they are saying that in order to deter or repel a large mob, it is OK to kill a random member of that mob to discourage the others. Notwithstanding that the person shot was, on her own, obviously no threat to any member of law-enforcement or their protectees.
Maybe that’s morally defensible, but it’s not the standard used by civilian law enforcement agencies around the United States, and the rest of the civilized world.
And it’s sure as hell not the standard that was used to rip apart the lives of police officers like Darren Wilson who actually did use lethal force in a justified manner.
Leland writes, "Perhaps it is us that have yet to realize the implications."
I would have written that sentence differently, nevertheless, it is profound. What it means is that we live under a burgeoning police state, and those of us who are conservative are approaching a condition similar to the Jews of Hitler's Germany -- not only unprotected by the law but fair game, legal vermin liable to be killed at any time for any reason, for cause as argot puts it.
Quaestor asked...
If shooting her was justified, why did Michael Byrd stop? Why not open up on everyone in sight?
A (potentially Armed) crowd is about to Surge into you, over you, and through you
YOU are THE ONLY THING between that horde, and the Speaker of the House of the UNITED STATES
They've Broken the window, and They Are Coming Through
You have Said that "I believe I showed the utmost courage"
And YET! when you saw her brains splatter, You FROZE, like a buk buk Chicken!!!
Why DIDN'T You STOP Them, when you had the chance ???
“ It's normal practice for police officers to carry at least two spare magazines, more often three or four, that's 46 shots minimum -- 46 dead "insurrectionists". If an unarmed woman was a clear and present danger to Congress, what about the hundreds of men? It would appear that not shooting everyone in sight would amount to dereliction of duty on Byrd's part if his reason for shooting Babbitt makes sense.”
Except there weren’t that many “insurrections” in range - which means that he would have had to shoot some of the many other cCapital Police officers in his immediate vicinity to probably get through even one magazine.
Byrd may not have been a quota hire, but he was retained because of political correctness.
He left a loaded gun (Glock...no safety) in a publicly accessible restroom.
Any white cop would have been fired.
So where is the murdering cop’s social media tweets, posts, and likes? Hidden from public view. Why? Because revealing it makes him guilty not of negligent homicide, but of first degree murder- planned and executed. Apparently more than one district cop posted he wanted to shoot a MAGA supporter and the post was found before Facebook scrubbed it from public view. Did the murdering cop say the same thin? Did the murdering cop like the post?
Newspapers are desperately trying to get a court order to see the Facebook postings of Allyn Gibson, who didn’t murder or even assault an, but instead, stopped a shoplifter. They are curiously uninterested in the Facebook postings of the murdering cop who assassinated Ashli Babbitt in cold blood, and from all views, with fellow police in the line of fire.
I have no idea why people keep focusing on these side issues, or saying things like "Well, if the shooting was justified, why did X happen?"
Why complicate it? Why this obsession with being "The wise ol'grey beard" and having "unique smart takes"? Go look at the damn video. Its been on Youtube for 7 months. Babbitt has four SWAT team policeman near her, she's a 110 lbs. unarmed woman going through a door, with 6 guys with guns on the other side.
Who is she threatening? What deadly force does she have? why do I have to keep stating what is so fucking obvious? Why can't the Center-right ever get fucking mad about anything? 70 million vote for Trump, a Trump supporter gets shot down in cold blood, and everyone's like "Gee, wonder if the Dodgers won today?"
Compare Chavin and Floyd and compare it to Bryd and Babbitt. Tell me the justification for the difference in treatment. Anyhoo, I"m tired of being the lone crusader for justice. I'm moving on.
She supported Trump. she had to die. The Stalinists have spoken.
For the MSM and the political left, the word racist has taken a back seat to the word insurrectionist. Interesting that zero protesters have been charged with that.
I hope that murderer Michael Byrd is one day remembered with the same loathing by law-abiding citizens as is murderer Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who murdered Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge for the crime of standing in a doorway with her infant son in her arms.
It would seem like any police officer that has been convicted of using too much force should bring up this condoned murder for their defense. That's the way they do it in washington DC and they've just exonerated Byrd the murderer.
Achilles @ 5:34 is quite right. I watched that video many times. The team was on it right then and there. Why did they not also shoot? Count the "steamboats" between the shot and the arrival of the swat and their M4s. How many of that team have left their service weapons in the shitter?
If you want to see what real hate and violence are...read the comments on the original article at The Hill. You think Republicans are the violent ones? It's brutal, and it is a damn shame. How do we fight foreign enemies when 1/2 the country consider the other half their enemy. They are fighting imaginary Nazi's and White Supremacists...and people call the right nuts??
I guess there were many Trump haters who were always hoping Trump would be assassinated. They had their arguments ready that he had brought it on himself. They may regard Ashli Babbitt as a good start. On the other hand, surely sane people want to say there are cases where violence by a police officer in the line of duty is justified, and cases where it is not. This requires an investigation, disciplinary action like firing this hair-trigger showoff asshole, and potentially (in some cases) criminal charges. Throughout the street protests, one guiding principle seemed to be: police must not be seen as using excessive force. Coulter, whose father I believe was FBI, would always defend the police. Now the Jan. 6 episode. Coulter still defends the police--give her credit for consistency. But I think she is wrong about this one. Probably right about Breonna Taylor, wrong about George Floyd.
Isn’t it exactly what Trump and the Trumpists wanted...? That rioters in Portland and Seattle be gunned down? Trump wanted the military to be there, to do just that. And Trumpists, including some Althouse commenters, liked that idea.
I also just wanted to point out here the pure evil in Donald Trump’s noxious political lie that the Capitol Police Officer who shot the insurrectionist was the chief of security for a top Democrat.
The left has been trying to impose a double-standard in the law for all of my adult life. They assume black people are inferior and need to be helped. This egregious and racist assumption leads to more and more insanity. "We'll help them into schools. We'll help them into jobs. We'll help them after they shoot somebody."
Stop helping, you fuckwits.
To those citing the comments section of Turkey’s piece as evidence of a severely (irredeemably?) broken society, let me make one point:
We don’t know if those commenters are fellow citizens or foreign info-ops. It is pretty clear to me that our foreign enemies are operating on the internet to fan the flames of division and make us think we are more at odds with each other than we are.
Do we have differences of opinion in out country? Of course there are. Are many of us intemperate in our political views and expressions? Certainly. But are we becoming prey to bad actors seeking to divide us more than we are because we don’t know and can’t see the origins of comments and other expressions on the internet? Yes - I’m convinced we are, at our peril.
In Atlas Shrugged :
Dagny shoots an armed guard who would not let her team in to rescue John Galt from Government minions torturing him.
nor would he simply walk away - or shoot her! He wanted to go in and ask for guidance from superiors.
Many so called conservatives have condemned Dagny for it!!
Left and liberals just condemn entire existence of Ayn Rand and her OPERA (her thoughts and works)
Big Mike said...
Turley's commentary seems balanced and accurate. His point is an important one: the case law surrounding lethal use of force by a policeman and at that time, in that place, and under the circumstances, and Lt. Byrd seems to be in violation of that case law.
........
there has never been any law - only politics (gaining and keeping power) by other means.
there is always politics - but it is downstream from morality.
you are no longer moral populace
Trump and his supporters wanted the rioters in Portland and Seatle to be gunned down? Evidence, please.
Those of us who live in cities where the cops close ranks around bad shoots recognize what happened here. Byrd screwed up and his peers covered for him. He told a story as preposterous as the one told by Officer Van Dyke in the Laquon McDonald case in Chicago, but Byrd got away with it. They are two peas in a pod. Van Dyke is in prison and Byrd is making the talk show rounds. But Van Dyke cost the taxpayrts $5 million. I hope Babbitt ‘s family tags the Capitol police.
Byrd’s story is absurd.
The insufferable bragging of Officer Byrd is key to understanding this one thing: He believes he is invincible. 28 years on the force. He saw his chance at glory. The reason he saved "countless lives" is because no one was there to cause physical harm, with the possible exception of the Antifa fakes who embedded themselves in the crowd. Don't know that zero is a countable number.
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