Judge rejects suit over Oakland police shooting

[alp227]

Source: Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

(01-16) 11:45 PST OAKLAND --

A federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed man who was shot and killed by two Oakland police officers on New Year's Eve 2007.

Officers Hector Jimenez, who was fired after shooting another unarmed man to death in 2008, and Jessica Borello were justified in shooting 20-year-old Andrew Moppin-Buckskin at 47th Avenue and International Boulevard after he ran from his car following a traffic stop, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in Oakland.

Moppin-Buckskin was not armed, but the officers believed he was reaching for his waistband when they opened fire, Wilken said in a 15-page ruling Tuesday.

"The undisputed evidence shows that Officers Jimenez and Borello acted reasonably when they used deadly force against Mr. Moppin," Wilken wrote. "The officers shot Mr. Moppin only after he failed to come toward them, as ordered, dropped his hands and then made a movement toward his waist area as though reaching for a weapon."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/16/BALV1BJ8IB.DTL

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Ian David]

2. Baggy Pants falling down, or just a lame excuse by the cops? n/t

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Ian David]

6. Waiting for the "I thought he was a werewolf" defense. n/t

[greennina]

4. Someone independant should rule on these things!

Rather than someone that is inside the system. Of course the corrupt protect one of their own.

[IsItJustMe]

7. The good old boys takin care of there own. Move along folks, nothin to see here.

[EFerrari]

5. This is not the end of this matter.

[Bitwit1234]

8. Look at it this way

You see someone running away FROM YOU, if you are a police officer. You tell them to stop, they don't. They look as if they are reaching for a gun, ARE YOU GOING TO YELL...HEY GUY DO YOU HAVE A GUN AND ARE YOU GOING TO USE IT, OR DO YOU FIRE. We used to have off duty police officers who guarded our place of work. They said by the time they stopped and asked if the person running from them had a gun it would be too late to defend themselves and the citizens.

[bitchkitty]

11. If someone is running away from you, it generally means

that they are not going to shoot you.

[ManiacJoe]

12. What do you base that wild assumption on?

[bitchkitty]

15. Guess I'm just a dreamer. n/t

[ThomCat]

13. If you are smart you at least wait until you see a gun before you

kill someone. :grr:

It seems like more and more often police officers are allowed to shirt first, and make up excuses later.

When officers shoot and kill one guy who is holding his wallet ("I thought it was a gun") and lots of other who are completely unarmed, cops are shooting without thinking. There is no justification for being that trigger-happy, I don't care how dangerous their job is. Being that trigger-happy kills people, and makes that job more dangerous for everyone else.

The fact that judges accept obviously fake excuses like "We thought he was lowering his hands to his waste," or "We thought he was reaching for a weapon" means that they will let any cop shoot anyone, because any cop can claim at any time that anyone might have been reaching for something.

The only legal option these excuses leave you is to immediately stop and submit to the cops, but we know that even this doesn't save people, because the cops sometimes STILL kill people (as in the shooting almost exactly a year ago in the San Francisco Subway Station) and brutality at the hands of cops seems to be increasing in prevalence and severity. And judges are accepting any excuse for that violence too.

So we left with in a situation where there are no safe options when dealing with the police, and you might be killed no matter what you do. :(

[Robb]

9. A $10 million civil rights lawsuit?

Two things are interesting in this story to me. First, that the officer involved was fired for (essentially) another shooting incident after this one. The other interesting thing is that person's family also filed a suit, which settled for $650,000, according to the story.

So another family wants 20 times that and it gets tossed. :shrug:

[bitchkitty]

16. I wonder if they were offered a settlement too?

The article doesn't say.

[placton]

10. please understand

the federal judiciary is mostly staffed now with fascists - reall ones. Clinton appointed moderates (rofl - that is slightly less convervative) and Obama will do the same.

[winyanstaz]

14. No wonder people are running away from the cops....

They can kill you for lowering your arms.

[No Elephants]

17. When someone is running away from you, how do you tell if he or she is reaching for a gun?

[Heywood J]

18. This is the type of situation where the Taser would be called for.

I'm usually one of the first to jump in when cops use them for compliance on Granny or five year olds, but in this case, a single Taser burst would likely have meant survival for this man. Of course, given the apparent character of the other officer fired for shooting another unarmed man, who's to say how likely a single burst would have been...