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[h/t Instapundit]

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37 COMMENTS

  1. Get down! Get Down! Don’t Move! Don’t Move! Put your hands behind your head! Get Down! Don’t Move! Freeze! Get down! Don’t Move! Typical commands a citizen might hear being given concurrently during a contact with police.

  2. I think this really shows, along with other cases of firearm/equipment misuse, that cops should require more training with a firearm as well as not having the same training as military personnel get when training. I don’t think it’s wrong for a cop to have something like an AR-15, body armor, etc. But that is something for things like riots, large public events, or when high level targets (e.g. politicians, celebs of some fame/notority).

    As for civilians, I think we should have access to some of these things (Hey! I want a MP5 too!) but I think it’s something we should be required/suggested to get training for.

    • You want them to have more training, but less training….um…got it, yea.

      You think civilians should have weapons like that…..we do.

  3. On the one hand, I’m not a fan of the militarization of police departments. On the other hand, Nida was shot twice with a 9mm. Setting aside increased velocity with increased barrel length, what difference does it make what gun fired those rounds? Can it not be argued that this is also a case of wanting to ban a scary black gun? Do we really want to listen to anything that comes out of the Cato Institute? Even if, on the surface, it sounds like something we want to hear?

  4. Another day, another police shooting of an unarmed and innocent citizen, and where’s the outrage?

    Screw gun control. What this country really needs is common-sense police control, because they’re out of control now. Cops will kill more innocent people this year — just like every other year — than Jared Loughner or James Holmes could ever kill. But I guess that it would be inconvenient for the politicians to criticize the people who murder for them.

    • Well, yeah, because those guys remembered to get their permission slips signed before shooting anyone. It’s too late if you try to do it after.

  5. whether you support the police or not is beside the point. when you’re on the street and a cop gives you an order, obey it. do not run. you can’t outrun an ar or mp5. you must survive long enough to get to talk to a lawyer. your next of kin giving tear filled interviews to the media will not bring you back or get justice for you. the police should be demilitarized, but they ain’t. you have to survive to see that day happen.

    • when you’re on the street and a cop gives you an order, obey it.

      You have a civic duty to disobey unlawful orders.

      • this is silly. if you are going to appeal to a sense of duty, then i hope you do so with an understanding of the consequences, which is that the police can shoot you over a disagreement over what is lawful. your duty indeed.

  6. Keep my hands where you can see them? Why, Officer? Because I might be armed? We know you have gun, and you’re standing directly behind my head. Maybe you should keep your hands where I can see them.

  7. Running from police = increased probability of receiving business end of a barrel. Don’t people still watch COPS re-runs? It never goes well when you decide you’re going to see if Red Bull really gives you wings, especially if you break free 2x. Anyone not posing an eminent threat doesn’t deserve to be shot by the police, but being stupid doesn’t help the situation.

    question: do PDs issue full auto rifles to patrol cops? Would the MP5 in question have been a select fire weapon?

    • Don’t people still watch COPS re-runs?

      COPS is heavily edited to show the police in the best possible light, they never show the guys who manage to get away. The producer even goes out of his way to edit it, to show that white people commit far more crimes then they actual do. He has even admitted it in a radio interview.

      I don’t know about MP5s, but I know the DoD gives away tons of full auto M16s to police departments.

  8. If the cop’s name was zimmerman the %^#@@*& would have hit the fan.

    many police carry full aut guns in the car. all mp-5’s are capable of full auto fire.

  9. This is not a case of a bad shoot. You have a guy who is very likely shady(grew up in South LA and had a ‘fear of the police’). He ran from the cops, TWICE.

    Someone who grew up where he did and hung around with shady people(that guy had the look of a cholo to me) knew EXACTLY what it takes for the cops to shoot someone. So he reached into his waistband, knowing the cops were amped up, and he got himself shot.

    MP5? He was shot twice with a 9mm. Some rural departments carry .30-30 carbines. Would he be any less dead if he was popped twice with that round? How about a .45 from a handgun?

    No sympathy for that guy. If you make the police think you’re going to shoot them, they will shoot you.

    • Where are you getting your claim that he reached into his waistband? I’m not where I can rewatch the video to see if it supports your claim, but the news stories I’ve found don’t.

      • My bad. Instead he “turned toward the police in an aggressive manner”.

        I am beyond the point of feeling bad when cops make shoots on people who BRING IT ON THEMSELVES. This guy, the guys who got shot in Anaheim, whoever. I don’t care.

        If you don’t want to get shot, be calm, cool, and collected when the police are around you. If Nida had been anything less than a freaking idiot who resisted arrest and ran from the cops twice, he wouldn’t have been shot.

        Looking like a gangbanger doesn’t help your situation there, either.

        • He turned towards the police in an aggressive manner…except he took two rounds to the back. “Aggressive manner” is also about vague as you can get, especially considering if you’re running and scared, your movements are probably going to be twitchy and quick. He hadn’t presented a weapon before then, despite being detained twice. They were armed with full-auto weapons during an on-the-street questioning.

          Was running stupid? Yes. Did he deserve to die? No.

        • I don’t have enough information to form an opinion about this case. I definitely agree that militarization of police is a problem, and as a general premise despise police and think they commit more crime than the rest of the criminals in the country combined. However, to my recollection, the story as related in the video is misleading in that, it fails to mention that Nida was actually hit five times–once in the chest, once in shoulder, twice in the back, and once in the wrist. Obviously, that information, without more detail, does little to illuminate the situation, but it does mean that there is more to the story than simply “he was shot in the back.”

        • If he “turned toward the police in an aggressive manner” then how did they manage to shoot him in the back? Were they using special police-only boomerang bullets?

          Moreover, he was detained twice, did they not bother to do a pat-down for weapons while they had him there?

          Looked like a gangbanger? The fact that someone doesn’t share your taste in fashion does not mean that they deserve to die.

          If you would consider yourself an advocate of liberty, you ought to criticize the police when they act like the Stasi, instead of make excuses for them and enabling further abuses.

    • You have a guy who is very likely shady(grew up in South LA and had a ‘fear of the police’).

      So just because you grew up in a poor neighborhood, youre a criminal? I have a fear of the police and i’m a white guy from a working class neighborhood in Chicago. I’ve ran from the cops before and got away, whats wrong with that? In Illinois and else where you have a duty to retreat from a threat.

      Someone who grew up where he did and hung around with shady people(that guy had the look of a cholo to me) knew EXACTLY what it takes for the cops to shoot someone.

      It requires them to consider you a threat. I dont know how they could interpret retreating as being threatening.

      When you take in to account this, and what other commentors have said, all I can conclude is that youre a willing apologist and lap dog for the police state.

      • Hey, *I* have a fear of the police and the closest thing you could call me would be an az redneck. I consider it very intelligent to be afraid of the police.

  10. Sheesh! What a non-story used as background to setup this video. So the problem, they imply, is the gun itself…an MP5…not the actions of the guy wielding it?

    I was expecting this to be a piece about a stray bullet sprayed from a rapidly-firing full-auto weapon where the cop lost control of the muzzle climb or something. But no, it looks like the cop shot exactly who he was aiming to shoot and no one else. Thus, the type of device used in the shooting…MP5 or Glock or an old revolver…is moot.

    Indeed, this is a Scary Black Rifle story. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  11. Blaming the victim is easy here but it’s completely wrong. Running from the police is not a capital crime anywhere. Nor is looking like a young Hispanic.

    You also ought to ask yourself what occurred first: Nida turned around in a “threatening manner,” or he got shot in the back?

    • If you look like a cholo(which is a gangbanger, in case you don’t know), cops are going to treat you as such.

      If you run from the police, then escape custody and run again, the cops are going to assume you’re a BAD GUY and be on edge.

      This guy was an idiot. I don’t think we lost much from the gene pool.

  12. The moral of this story is don’t be an idiot…

    And to those who have so much hate for the police and think they are all criminals. You are welcome to go live in some place without the rule of law… let me know how you like it.

    • If I lived in a place that truly had the rule of law, I wouldn’t need the HK 45 Compact strapped on my side right now, would I?

      The police do nothing but manage social ills (at least here in Portland). They do so expensively, with a massive amount of attitude and plenty of serious fuckups:

      – tackled a suspicious/unarmed guy hard enough to give him a flailed chest that killed him

      – shot a unarmed man during a welfare check with an AR in the back

      – hosed down a suicidial man on fire with a riot can of pepper spray

      – shot a man with a designated beanbag gun loaded with 00 buck

      – just this week, refused to intervene in an armed robbery because the officer was “off duty” (in uniform and in his patrol car)

      – Currently have a pathetic clearance rate of 39% for person crimes, 14% for property crimes.

      To say nothing of the fact that the radio car officers around here are rude, drive poorly and are generally a bunch of foul mouthed thugs, none of whom can be bothered to actually live in the city they police (they all live in Clackamas or Vancouver).

      You know what? I’ll take my chances with a police department who’s budget is cut in half, their priorities straightened out and their attitude put on check.

  13. Reason generally does good work, but this is a bit of a hit-piece.

    Mr Nida ran from police TWICE. Running from police is STUPID. When you do stupid things, you are more likely to end up injured or dead. Q.E.D.

    Cops often have an idea of suspect in mind when they make a stop or arrest. In this case, they were thinking “Armed Robber.” While it sucks if you are falsely detained or arrested because you fit a description, the world is imperfect. If you act calm and reasonably, you have a much less chance of being hurt or killed.

    Yes, there are stone cold rotten cops who will abuse you in custody. But running from police?!? That will increase your chance of a bad outcome by many orders of magnitude.

    So rock on, Cop Haters. While emotionally satisfying to blame police, when arrested / detained, the lesson should be:
    – Stay calm. Don’t run. Shut up. Ask to see a lawyer.
    Emoting, Oprah-style, about bad cops without mentioning the stupidity of running will do little to solve the problem.

  14. the type of gun used is irrelevant first of all, and second of all no law abiding citizen is going to run from the police TWICE. He was “scared of the police” because he most likely was a criminal, and therefore he deserved it. I am a law abiding citizen, i have never committed a crime, other than maybe driving a little to fast, and i would cooperate and be let go, not run!

  15. There’s something very wrong about our peace officers being armed as though they were infantry soldiers instead of civilian police.
    It is an incongruence similar to that exploited for humorous effect in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, “The Pirates of Penzance”. A troop of constables, armed with truncheons, is sent out to arrest a band of pirates armed with guns and swords. Here we have that situation in reverse; police armed and armored for combat, to execute civilian police duties.
    If a situation requires such infantry level weaponry, then it would seem that it is time to consider the use of infantry troops, not police, to handle that situation. A unit of the National Guard, under the command of the Governor and available for rapid deployment, would be more like the country I consider America. What we have now is a movement toward a police state.

    • Infantry soldiers, for the most part, don’t carry SMGs.

      The European police carry SMGs and think our usage of police shotguns is barbaric.

      Rural police departments have carried rifles in the trunks of their cars for years. The lever action .30-30 has been standard issue. That rifle is more powerful than an MP5 or even an AR pattern rifle. Is it less oppressive because it’s a cowboy gun?

      You sound EXACTLY like Chuck Schumer or Diane Feinstein.

  16. “Infantry soldiers, for the most part, don’t carry SMGs. “

    Not any more. The M-16 replaced them. How many M-16’s are in police hands?

    “The European police carry SMGs and think our usage of police shotguns is barbaric.”

    Right, SMGs to “keep order” in an unarmed civilian population, while the Bobbies carried — and needed — only nightsticks. Gilbert sent the Bobbies off to arrest the pirates, a job more properly done by the Navy or the Royal Marines, not by issuing heavier weaponry to the Constables. What do the European police think of “civilians”, or “subjects” having any kind of gun? Frankly, I could not care less what the European police think about police shotguns or anything else.

    “Rural police . . .”

    I have no objection to every police car — rural or urban — with a shotgun next to the driver and a rifle in the trunk. I would advise replacing the “thutty-thutty” lever action with an AR-15.

    If I were to sound “EXACTLY like . . . Schumer or . . . Feinstein” (Oops! I mean SENATOR Feinstein, she worked so hard to get that title, we must remember to address her properly), I would have to object to guns of any kind in “civilian” hands, not the police. I have never come across any objection by this pair of hypocrites to any limitation on police weaponry, only that of private citizens.

    Can you cite where they made such statements that police were to be subject to any limitation on what’s in their arsenal?

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