Chilling cell phone video surfaced Tuesday of two Louisiana cops killing a 37-year-old man selling music outside a Baton Rouge convenience store after an anonymous caller claimed he had a gun,” nydailynews.com reports. “The police gunfire sparked impassioned protests that continued past midnight outside the store — 24 hours after authorities shot Alton Sterling during a fatal 12:35 a.m. encounter. More than 100 demonstrators shouting ‘no justice, no peace’ clogged the street, setting off fireworks and blocking an intersection to protest Sterling’s death.”

In the video, you can clearly here an officer shout “gun” before opening fire. And a gun there was. The store owner watching the incident said he saw officers pull a gun from Sterling’s pocket after the shooting. He said Mr. Sterling purchased the firearm days earlier for protection after learning that other disc sellers in his area had been robbed.

There’s also this:

GotNews.com has obtained the police records of Alton Sterling and boy are they a doozy. Sterling, a Bloods gang banger and a registered Democrat, had quite the rap sheet before he was gunned down in an altercation with the police. The charges include battery, assault, drug and weapons charges, and being a dead beat dad. He was also a pedophile.

Anyway, there were security cameras at the scene (evidence seized by the police) and maybe bodycam footage. The BPD have promised a full, independent and transparent investigation. Here’s the raw video that made its way into the Internet:

https://youtu.be/CaAik-EvI3o

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

170 COMMENTS

  1. Registered sex offender resists arrest and reaches for a gun…

    Didn’t do nutins come out of the woodwork to defend the scum of the earth.

    News at 11.

    • This is a “distraction”.

      I’m not saying it is or isn’t newsworthy, but the news media loves to distract people from larger and more important news items (which they often suppress-hide-ignore).

      For example, Puerto Rico just went bankrupt, and the Federal government is planning to bail them out. Most States, Counties, and Cities, are right behind them and are on the verge of bankruptcy. A major economic depression is on its way. Our governments are just as fiscally bankrupt as Greece.

      Get out of debt, lose some weight, grow a garden, and build some resilience in your life everybody.

      • As the wheels are falling of the Hillary/server/email story BIGTIME. Need a shiny thing for the libtards to look at NOW.

      • A major economic depression?

        Try nationwide bankruptcy.

        The national debt argument always tickles me. The debt really isn’t that big of a deal. A few years of discipline (bwahahahahaha!) and it can be paid off.

        The real killer is unfunded liabilities. Estimates on those run up as high as $200 Trillion due in the next 20 years. That means we need to start paying an average of $10 Trillion/year right now. Currently all levels of government combined take in about $7 Trillion annually and nearly all of them spend more than they take in.

        So yeah, we’re boned. Without selling off assets there is no way we can pay this off.

        • I wouldn’t worry about the national debt so much because what the US government and the Federal Reserve are doing is more of a slight of hand than anything else.

          Approximately 60% of all outstanding US government debt is held by US governmental entities. So that $17 trillion debt in reality is about $7 trillion actual, but here’s where the magic begins.

          When the US government needs cash they go to the Federal Reserve and sell bonds at market. Fed credits the government’s account and takes possession of the securities, all done on paper, just little bits of electrons on a computer.

          When the bond, or the coupon, comes due the Fed collects the payment, retains a minor portion for overhead expenses, and by charter any excess reserves are given back to the US government. This allows the US government to fund deficit spending without actually firing up the printing presses and devaluing the currency outright.

          Granted this can’t go on forever and at some point the house of cards will eventually collapse, but we’re not there yet.

        • You are right. My phrase “major economic depression” really downplays the seriousness of the situation. It is far worse than that.

          The underfunded liabilities are the real killer. Medicare, Social Security, Federal employees pension system, State, and local government pension systems, Medicaid. There is no way everybody gets the money they’ve been promised.

          As a guy in my 40’s, I assume that Social Security, Medicare, and my pension system won’t be there for me when I retire. I don’t expect the 401K will do too well either.

          On the plus side, the house is paid off, and the fruit trees, grapevines, blueberry bushes, and raspberry vines are all highly productive.

        • To Daily Beatings;

          Intragovernmental debt doesn’t make up 60% of total US debt from what I’ve seen. Every source says about 5 Trillion. Of that the Fed holds about half, and that half is the only amount that really matters that the US is the holder. We could order to Fed to forgive that debt, but something like the Social Security Trust Fund might as well be a separate entity. By law the government can’t absolve that debt and any lawmaker would be grilled who tried.

          Unfunded liabilities are insane. There’s no way to keep track with it. But what’s even more ominous is the Treasury average interest rates. The Fed can’t keep them at 1%ish forever. Right now it costs us about 225 billion per year to service it at these insanely low rates. If we go back to the historic average of around 4%, we’re talking trillions per year to service it. We’ll be borrowing more to pay more interest. We know how that vicious cycle ends.

          Fun fact; in the 80’s Treasury interest rates were close to 14% for a time. Imagine what that would do to us now.

    • latest vid shows clear ND and homicide. both cops on top of the guy, one draws his gun pointing at guy on ground with finger on trigger, then shoot twice quickly and rolls off as appearing surprised he just fired. second rolls off it seems in reaction to a gun just being fired a foot from his head, and shoots twice more point blank. The worst part is they start immediately screaming “get on the ground” after putting 4 into the guy point blank, the guy twitching as he is dying, and more “get on the ground” – clearly an assumed method of fabricating a threat of noncompliance when one did not exist. they are so screwed, and im ok if they get a violent felony conviction and never allowed to own a gun again – demonstrating clear homicidal negligence.

    • No one should die in a police encounter. Police aren’t the law. They certainly have to protect others if the suspect is running away armed and they think someone in their path could become a hostage or victim. Unless we are moving to Judge Dredd.

      What you know about the perp is irrelevant. If you think all inner city residents should deserve this treatment then bring on the police state. Why? Because you’re next. Who has easy access to guns in NYC? The 1-5%. Our problems aren’t race based they are about class.

  2. The video I see makes it tough to call it a good shoot. I might be mildly outraged, but somehow I’m resisting the urge to burn and loot…

    • I am not able to conclude anything with that video because I cannot see exactly what the arrestee was doing. He looked to be resisting to some extent is about all I can conclude.

      With nothing other than intuition to go on, I don’t see how someone can reach for a handgun in their pocket while two good size cops (neither of them looked short or skinny in the video) are on top of him/her.

  5. He was not reaching for the gun. The cops simply noticed it existed. It could have been your holstered gun that the police kill you over.

    • He’s a registered sex offender, he should not have had a gun in the first place.

      • Where in the Second Amendment is that exception? I can’t find it in my copy.

      • That’s irrelevant. The police did not know his criminal history. If he was reaching for the gun in his pocket then the officers did the right thing. If they saw the gun in his pocket and shot him than they did the wrong thing.

      • I didn’t realize that was grounds for execution-by-cop, especially when the police don’t yet know it.

    • No they won’t. See, I’m not a gang member, pedophile, illegal music seller resisting police arrest.
      Not saying this was a good shoot. But I guaran-god damn-tee you I would never get into this situation.

      • “But I guaran-god damn-tee you I would never get into this situation.”

        I wonder if Jonathan Ayers said the same thing? Daniel Shaver might have said the same thing, but we can’t ask him since he was murdered by cops.

      • Except for when u are that person. Removal of most if not all of the bill of rights and we all become felons with an extensive rap sheet. I don’t want an Leo’s job to become harder but I sure don’t want my job as a private citizen to become damn near impossible either.

    • “He was not reaching for the gun”

      You can’t see that clearly just from this vid. I do see that they take him to the ground and as they are gaining control 1 cop says gun, then ‘if you fucking move [something something]’ then BANG.

      Failing more evidence I am going with, he fucking moved.

      Dindu Nuffin seems to have had ample chances here to be still consuming oxygen.

      • It was more like BANG BANG….(pause)…. BANG BANG. You can hear them when the vid goes dark. I can’t think of a ready explanation for the shots after that delay, especially when the cop had his gun pointed at the guy’s head.

        What is of greater concern is that a “man with gun” call to 911 engenders a violent takedown (the part we don’t see). Someone merely HAVING a gun is not evidence of a crime, and there are many people in Louisiana who have CCWs. So there must be more to this story.

        • “… a ‘man with gun’ call to 911 engenders a violent takedown … Someone merely HAVING a gun is not evidence of a crime …”

          This is the key in this case. I am surprised that I had to get this far down in the comments to read it.

        • I don’t disagree in principle. Here’s the thing though. I suspect that if Dindu did not have himself an illegal gat, that he would still be alive today – tell me I am wrong.

          Not trying to excuse the cops in this specific case – there is obviously more to this.

        • Yes, the rest of the story is the police were called because the deceased PULLED A GUN ON SOMEONE outside the store.

      • What is it with cops and their fetish with making citizens prostate themselves (BS “take control”)? “On the ground” my ass. A curtsey not enough? How about a deep bow? Or need to lick their shoes or crawl across broken glass to prove their “power”. King George is long dead.

        • Sure thing tough guy. You’re probably a fat redneck with a beard who thinks he’s operator AF because he bought a cheap AR.

          Grow up.

    • The police were called BECAUSE HE PULLED A GUN ON SOMEONE. The call was “man with a gun”.

    • jsled – OMG. Were you there? Are you God? You have no idea what he was reaching for or even doing. I abhor people who spout off with “expert” knowledge who not only have no knowledge, but are willfully ignorant.

  6. Based on the video, I have to wonder why one of the cops just didn’t step on his wrist or pin it down. Since he was flat on his back with most of the weight of 2 grown men pinning him down, I would think that drawing out of his pocket and getting the gun into a position to shoot would be difficult at best. It doesn’t look good. Especially since both of their body cams just happened to fall off and not record the incident. But the video and the observations of the store owner are all we have to go on at this point.

    • Not taking sides here before the final report, but if that rap sheet is accurate it is a pretty safe bet that he was known to these officers and they acted with an abundance of caution after discovering the pistol.

      Good shoot? Hard to say, but it certainly was not an innocent unarmed black man gunned out for no cause at all.

    • Might have worked. If someone had thought of it in that second instead of now, that is.

  7. First, they were all “unarmed.” Then, having any weapon other than a gun (knives, rocks, etc.) was “unarmed.” Now, the deceased is perfectly innocent because, even though armed, he hadn’t drawn his weapon. So, by this progression, the next Black Lives Matter outrage is going to be, what, “He had a gun and it was drawn, but he wasn’t shooting?” “He was shooting toward the cops, but not at them?” “He shot several officers, but none fatally, he didn’t deserve to die like that?”

    My question is and will remain: if police shooting unarmed, compliant, innocent black men is such an “epidemic,” why do all of the examples put forward involve a suspect with a record resisting arrest?

    • They already do that.
      I can’t count how many times I’ve heard a wailing family member or friend of a room temperature thug shout “The gun wasn’t even loaded!” or “he never pointed it at no one!” though some could argue waving it haphazardly qualifies as pointing it at everyone.

    • ^This- look I don’t think someone deserves to die based solely on the fact that they resisted arrest (up to a point anyway). However if “all” cops are racists and looking for any reason they can to kill a black guy, don’t give them a reason. As someone mentioned in an above post, a guy with a rap sheet like his probably (not definitely) was known to police. Especially if he was a bona fide Blood- I think there’s a validation system utilized by most law enforcement today to determine if one is a true, active, involved gang member. Mix that with the action of resisting arrest, you’re immediately one foot in the grave.

  8. What the “protesters” really want is room to destroy because it worked so well in Baltimore.

  9. Notice how bootlickers cite previous records, as if they justify a delayed death sentence. Their contempt for the Constitution shines through.

    “The BPD have promised a full, independent and transparent investigation.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA good one. We all know how that goes.

    • Not that concerned that a child molester got what he had coming to him. As far as I am concerned, he should have gotten a bullet to the back of the head far earlier.

    • “Notice how bootlickers cite previous records, as if they justify a delayed death sentence.”

      I think the point is that his criminal history makes it more likely that he was doing something to threaten the police officers, like reaching for his gun. I sincerely hope no one on this site holds the belief that you posted.

      • If the citizen did not have his gun out and firing it, the cops had no business even touching their weapons.

        It is well past time to disarm all cops. Citizens should be armed, not cops.

        • Waiting until the gun is out and being fired before touch your own is a sure way to end up dead!

        • George Lucas, is that you?

          Also, I thought everyone here was sure that cops ARE civilians.

      • Yeah, I remember how bootlickers were defending Slager by ranting about Scott missing some alimony payments.

        So by parity of logic, has there ever been a peep about cops caught on video committing assault or murder, who has been accused of brutality in the past (i.e. a record). Oh right, the bootlicker laughs about how having complaints against a cop means he is doing his job. 🙂

        • Ah, you are still posting BS videos with heavily selective recuts to justify police murder. We’ve already gone over this months ago and your understanding of the physics of taser wires was shall we say, hilariously non-existent.

          You’re not rustling anyone’s jimmies. 🙂

  10. So the question goes…Was this man legally armed for self-defense.? Was he SWAT’ed..? Looks to me like the cops had the guy on the ground…Point blank, multiple gunshot wounds to a partial restrained man..? I Don’t know…Obviously the store owner didn’t appeared to be worried about this Patron…But this is Louisiana… Where their have been credible reports of police overreach….Not just on black folks either…

    • If he’s a gang-banger and convicted felon, then no, he’s not “legally armed” – that’s pretty much the very definition of illegally armed. Remember that’s why we need “universal background checks” to keep the guns out of this guy’s hand.

      Now as to whether this was a good shoot or not – I can’t tell from that video, and I’m also glad it’s not my call to make, that looks like it might be a tough one. Hopefully a better video is around.

  11. This looks alot like a freaking murder, so I expect Black Lives Matter and the media to ignore it. They tend to pick events that honestly aren’t even close so they don’t get too many white people at the protests.

    • That article is a joke. With enough time and thought the actions of the players could be divined quite easily. The scenarios are the same used in force training (the bee sting one in particular.)

  13. My babies wernt doing nuffin! He was jest fixin to turn hos life round. Dey just be shooting fer no reason blahblahblah
    and all you police experts show everyone how its supposed to be done
    put up or shutup

    • Yep. And it will probably work, too.

      9 people shot and killed in Chicago so far in July, and nary a peep.

      Only ‘killed by cop’ counts they say? Well, 6 so far in Chicago for 2016. And….crickets.

      Source: http://heyjackass.com/

      It’s ALL theater…the MSM goes to bat for Michael Brown and gins up sympathy for HIM, yet ignores John Crawford and the scumbag PoS that set him up?

      Wag that dog, MSM.

  15. I am extremely disturbed by the initial information available. The only mitigating factor is that his rap sheet included “registered Democrat.”

    Note that “somehow” the police body cameras became dislodged and didn’t record properly. And five shots??? Into the chest at point blank range? Very messy for the police.

  16. Very prelimonarily, it looks like murder to me. He’s on his stomach, with his arms under his chest and two cops on top of him. There was a gun apparently in his pocket, but he couldn’t reach it and didn’t try. All the 2nd officer had to do was to get that gun and slap on the cuffs.

    Now, had he not been selling illegal discs, refusing to comply, an perhaps brandishing a firearm earlier, prompting the police call, he’d be alive today. That doesn’t absolve the officer at the moment he pulled the trigger.

  17. These might be stupid questions, but:

    1. How did the store owner know that the guy had bought the gun only a few days earlier? Were they friends? Did this guy pull out his gun and show it to the store owner? How else would a conversation like this go?
    2. There are other CD disk sellers in the area? There is a popular black market CD business in Baton Rouge? Better question is was he really selling CD’s or something a bit more illegal?

    • The fact that he’s a “CD seller” makes me think he’s an “aspiring rapper.” Certain parts of my town have guys like him constantly hawking their self-produced rap albums, hoping to make it big. He might be selling bootlegs, but in this day and age, selling music CDs on the street is more a promotion thing and less a black market thing.

  18. “gang banger and a registered Democrat” which is important because republicans never commit crimes. Everyone locked up for anything is a democrat. Got it.

    • More or less. Conservatives commit a tiny fraction of homicides in this country. Just look at the voter demographics and compare to the FBI UCR.

      • I don’t think you understand statistics nearly as well as you think you do. Or at all.

        • … and which one of us is a PE?

          Let’s take an example…

          48% of homicides in the US have a black perpetrator, 88% of blacks vote Democrat.

          So… Unless you’re going to tell me that criminals are a radically different that a comparable general population politically, it stands to reason that 42% of all homicides are committed by black Democrats.

          Let’s take a look at the rest.

          Latinos are clumped together with “whites” in the FBI report, and we’ll, generously assume that the latino percentage is he same in the criminal population is the same as in the general population.

          So… 17% of the total population is Latino, 63% is “white”… That means that 21% of the FBI “white” homicides were committed by latinos or, 11% of the total. Latinos vote democrat 67% of the time. That means that another 7.4% of the homicides are committed by “white latino” Democrats. (We’re at 49.2% at this point of total.)

          So let’s take at the “white” population, responsible for ~39% of the homicides. 44% of “whites” vote Democrat, on average. That means that of that remaining 39%, 17% are committed by “white” Democrats. That gives us a total of 66.2% of total homicides being committed by white, black, or latino Democrats.

          So, unless you can point me to a source that would make it reasonable to infer that the criminal population is far more conservative than the general population, ~1/3 of all homicides are committed by people who don’t vote Democrat. (Not conservatives, mind you, just not Democrats.)

          So… Yeah, I’ll stand by my math.

        • Yep, confirm you have no idea how logic and statistics work. The gaping hole here is you assume *both* crimes and political affiliation is spread evenly, in order to do your laughable grade-school percentage calculations. What is correlation? What is a biased sample pool?

          Just to finish off your argument: young people are the least likely to be registered to vote, and especially black youths, and a majority of homicides are committed by youths of any race. Therefore your flat association of race, crime and politics is hopelessly skewed.

          Nice throwing in the PE reference… if you really are one, you should know most engineering disciplines don’t really deal with statistics all that much. 🙂

        • Oh that’s rich… Engineering disciplines don’t “deal” with statistics. Ever heard of Six Sigma? ISO? Yeah…

          But please, point me to the reference that shows that the criminal population is significantly more politically conservative than the general population. I’ll wait.

        • Six sigma isn’t even about statistics, it is an overall methodology to eliminate defects and isolate variation. Note how I said “most disciplines”, not “all”. Industrial engineering being one that does deal with it. When you throw “PE” around without specifying an actual field, it doesn’t really mean anything.

          So, are you an industrial engineer? Makes sense… the inside joke being, “I’m an Engineer???”? IE? Get it? 🙂

          “point me to the reference that shows that the criminal population is significantly more politically conservative than the general population”

          No one said that. So now you suck at both statistics and dialectic. Can you actually explain your modeling method (specifically, your assumption that the world is flat), or can everyone just assume you have no idea what you are talking about?

        • It’s called deductive reasoning FLAME DELETED.

          We know the criminal breakdown by ethnicity, we also know the voting trends by ethnicity. Given the absence of evidence to indicate any radical political differences between the two groups, my math is logical. It’s not 100%, but if you have a source to contradict my inference, I’d love to see it.

          Actually, my undergrad degrees are in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Industrial engineering is a grossly oversold major that doesn’t teach you anything worth learning. Most of the course material is at least a decade behind the curve. Hell, most of the PLCs universities use are supplied by one company using their own proprietary ladder logic format.

        • “if you have a source to contradict my inference, I’d love to see it”

          You make the claim, you justify it. If you have a source to prove the claimed correlation as well as the unbiased nature of your two sample groups, please post it. Otherwise, as one man put it: “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.

          By the way, “deductive reasoning” depends on a sound chain of logic, one your argument sorely lacks.

          As an aside, what airplanes have you designed (if any), so I can avoid them?

        • So given two similar groups with no observable political differences, it is not reasonable to assume they have similar political splits? Really? Do you even logic bro? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It’s called a logical inference. To defeat it, you have to show that the inference is factually incorrect.

          If A1 is a random subset of A, it stands to reason that A1 has a similar proportional makeup to A.

        • This is what I refer to as an ASSumption, as yours came from a dark and smelly place.

          “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

          Translation: I no longer have to prove my statements, it is the burden of others to disprove my unbacked statements. Oh my. 🙂

          “If A1 is a random subset of A”

          Your A1 is not a random subset of A. I have already posited a counterexample earlier. People have been arguing about the correctness of “random” for decades, yours does not even pass the smell test (see what I did there?)

        • Keep dreaming kiddo. A logical inference of the concurrence of two similar sets is perfectly valid if no evidence exists to the contrary.

          It’s basically like stating that a particular piece of space between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn is similar to the net average of all space between Jupiter and Saturn.

          You’re basically trying to disprove basic logic without a source. Good luck with that.

        • Your inference is based on a foundation which has no ground. I already pointed out the gaping hole in your “logic”, specifically, unjustified assumptions of uniformity and lack of proof of any sort of correlation between voter registration and crime. Of course, garbage in garbage out. Your posts are a case in point.

          Nice attempt at a counterexample, by the way. Obviously you have not heard the joke:

          “An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, “How odd. Scottish sheep are black.” “No, no, no!” says the physicist. “Only some Scottish sheep are black.” The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions’ muddled thinking and says, “In Scotland, there is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears black from here.”

          Looks like you are satisfied with the astronomer’s level of logic. Hilarious. 🙂

        • A better example would be a study showing that in Scotland, 50% of all sheep are black. Then inferring that a random sample of sheep from Scotland will have 50% black sheep. Do you even logic bro?

        • Except in your case, no study has been done, no correlation proven, nothing, nada.

          You keep using the word “logic” like you know what it is. Just stop. 🙂

        • So, according to you, no study has been done about what percentage of certain demographics vote a certain way? Really?

          What part of inferring random subset criteria from complete set data don’t you understand? It’s a valid logical deduction in the absence of concrete data disproving it. We know water is wet, it does not take a specific study to find out that a certain body of water will be wet.

          In order to refute such a logical deduction you would need to show that the sample is not, in fact, random in respect to the variable in question.

          Good luck.

        • Hardly. You would need to demonstrate that there is a correlation between a specific demographic (criminals) and voter registration, and furthermore prove there is no source of bias in the link (race) you used to attempt to bridge the two. You have not shown any data for the former, and I already pointed out one strong likelihood of non-uniformity for the latter. By the way, that shows your groups are not random, thus answering your supposedly rhetorical question. 🙂

          As before, there is nothing to refute, your claims are self-evidently baseless.

        • Random as to the variable in question you commie sack of shit. Do you even English bro?

        • You mad? 🙂

          As I said before, “random” requires uniformity and you have none. QED. Deal with it.

      • pwserge – i agree that “more dead soldiers” is right to question your conclusions. While you may have a valid construct it is being applied too specifically to too large a group. i hate this psuedo science when the left does it, so i have to rail against it when we do it. it speaks to the least intelligent amongst us.

        more dead soldiers – i agree with “pwserge” that crime (especially violent crime) is committed more by ‘progressives’ than ‘conservatives’. My reasoning is because it is obvious on its face.

        I would love for someone to actually do a study on this but then others would quibble with the base line (like how do we identify a progressive?). But, pwserge offered a methodology and all more dead soldiers does is criticize. That is fair, but childish unless he has something to offer at least as good as pwserge.

        • “i agree with “pwserge” that crime (especially violent crime) is committed more by ‘progressives’ than ‘conservatives”. My reasoning is because it is obvious on its face.”

          What is correlation for $200?

          Also note that the black community is noted for supporting many social conservative values (against the wishes of their Democratic overlords). I can see some extremely funny results from any such ‘study’.

        • See how you ignore the point that blacks are overwhelmingly socially conservative.

          Stay mad. 🙂

          • First off, I said “Progressives” not Blacks. Second, here are many ways to define conservative and progressive. However, when u vote for Democrats at 92%, you really are not a conservative no matter how “socially conservative” you claim to be. That, or u are insane! The little old Black grandma who has some conservative beliefs is offset exponentially by the 22 year old thug who has committed a dozen violent crimes and supports progressive beliefs.

  19. How about, DON’T RESIST ARREST, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE A GUN. I have been pulled over a couple of times, while carrying a concealed weapon (legally), in California. Don’t be a dick, do what they ask and you will be fine, even if they make you do some BS, have a lawyer work it out after you go home, you will not win an argument/fight etc on the street with a cop.

  20. Sir, we have a report that a man in a red t-shirt pointed a gun at somebody in this location.
    KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT IN THE OPEN AND DON’T MOVE WHILE YOU TELL US WHERE THE GUN IS.

    Sounds better than yelling “get on the ground” before knocking him down and shooting him because you can’t see his hands after he used them to break his fall and you’re now pinning him down on his hands.

    • Anything that isn’t immediate compliance is resistance.

      The cops are not going to allow someone who they believe has a gun any time to get to that gun, they just want that person on the ground and under their control so they can’t do harm.

      Shooting someone in the back when they are on the ground does not look good to me, and I do think that some cops are going farther then they should, but there is a way to avoid it and it is pretty simple.

      • “Anything that isn’t immediate compliance is resistance.”

        Yeah, no.

        Standing there “not complying” on it’s own is neither “Resisting” nor justification for deadly force.

        For example, “immediate compliance” assumes the person heard and understood the command given. Even with those to factors, there can be a delay in compliance due to a moment of confusion. Most citizens don’t react with immediate comprehension when shouted at, for example.

        Or, well, at least that’s the kind of thing that was taught back when I went to “how to be a cop” school…back in the day.

        • Again, I’m not saying that it’s right, but that is the way it is right now.

          In fact, the TSA just tackled and bloodied an autistic girl for ‘not complying’ it’s not right, but unless you want your ass beat, or worse, you should understand that that is the way it is. I’m all for getting it changed, and I think body cams will be very helpful in changing things, but it’s gonna take time.

          note: not referring to ‘you’ specifically

        • The TSA is hardly the best exemplar for proper or legal police practices.

          Regardless, there’s simply no way a “resisting” charge would stick if the only thing it was based on is not instantly complying to verbal command. At least it wouldn’t use to.

          Nowadays? I’ll grant you: all bets to “common sense” are off.

  21. I dont believe thats a police body cam recording. Seems to be a bystander in a car, according to the vouces

    • You know, you just might be right.

      From the very first words of Farago’s article:

      “Chilling cell phone video surfaced Tuesday”

  22. Yawn.

    Guys this is red meat – 100% completely irrelevant red meat.
    After the Hillary ruling you can expect some completely unrelated national “crisis” to appear and dominate news coverage for weeks in 3… 2… 1…

  23. MEH-I’m with serge. I watched this and I wasn’t there. Upstanding citizen gets capped. Sure…

    • “I watched this and I wasn’t there”.

      Indeed. Watching this means we heard most of it and saw some of it.

  24. so absolutely nothing was lost who cares? aside from people trying to turn this into a race war

  25. From the posted videos, it looks entirely inappropriate for the officers to have escalated to deadly force. The mere presence of a firearm should not be a writ of execution, and from the video, the suspect was in no position to fire, much less aim at anything except himself. The point blank nature of the shot (presumably) only adds fuel to this fire. To be fair though, it appears the officer drew on the suspect and yelled something at him, and the suspect continued struggling. Not an excuse, but an interesting note that demands further investigation.

    I’m sure there will be lots scum from both sides of this issue come out of the woodwork. Cops are neither saints nor sinners folks, they’re just people like us.

    I think the biggest issue here, is why does it matter if he was armed or not? He was in no position to do anything, so an escalation was unnecessary. End of story.

    • Can you say “lowest bidder”?

      Sticking a camera to someone chest is not going to work well in a struggle. Think about how everything else is secured on a cop- usually via a thick belt and heavy retention.

      • Probably. I know that the cheapish “body cam” that I use wouldn’t stay on in a serious scuffle. I can only imagine what low bids could purchase for a department. As a CYA for everyone involved, I would want something rock solid on personnel.

  27. Are you dexterous enough to swiftly retrieve and accurately fire a weapon rearward while pinned on your stomach by two cops? I know I’m not, and doubt Sterling was either. He could have been disarmed and cuffed, but alas, #OfficerSafety strikes again. The ages of both parties involved in that carnal knowledge case will determine whether Sterling was a sickening pedophile or just another violent criminal. Either way, he gets none of my sympathy. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If you live near a metropolis, enjoy the fireworks.

    • I don’t see accurately as being relevant. Blindly waving a gun in ones direction in desperation with intent to fire it is sufficient cause to defend with a gun. Even if it’s behind the back.

      I cannot tell if this happened from the video, but the video doesn’t rule out the possibility.

  28. I would like to know who will pay for the damages to that silver car he was body slammed into?

  30. yeah and you left out that he NEVER pulled the gun our OR reached for it. they didn’t know there was a gun until he was already pinned down.
    its funny how selective you people are when it comes to forgive and forget and who rights matter. all of a sudden because he has a criminal record, its ok to shoot him, but you RF are the one who propagates the idea that once they are released from prison they should get ALL their rights restored.
    he was not fighting them at all when they tackled him, he was just standing there.
    the road rage in NY though is a different story, THAT was justifiable.

    • The point is that a child molester should never have been released from prison in the first place.

  31. May or may not have been a good shoot. There is more that the video doesn’t show than does. That being said I don’t think that Baton Rouge will put up with their shit being destroyed like in Baltimore and Ferguson. If the BLM machine does come to town you may see some major stuff go down. Us Louisiana folks don’t take kindly to burning and looting.

  33. I believe the Daily Beast has a video with another angle, it shows one officer retrieving a gun from Alton’s front right pocket.

  34. Two thoughts come to mind . . .

    First, why would anyone in their right mind resist arrest? Let them arrest you and if you didn’t do anything you’ll be home soon. Alive.

    Second, it looked to me from the (admittedly poor quality) video that the guy was down and controlled, so why shoot him?

    I’ve put handcuffs on a few people as a Probation Officer, and once you have them face down on the ground they are pretty much not going to be able to draw a weapon and shoot you while you have their face pressed into the asphalt.

  36. Something isn’t adding up in the report for me (a lot of things really). If he was a registered sex offender and felon with previous weapons charges, how did he purchase the gun? It seems like that part is just conjecture because it’s worded in a way that makes it sound like he bought it legally. He obviously did not have a CC permit though, which is the tip of a long list of really poor decisions he made.

    • He had an individual natural right to keep and bear arms just like the rest of us.

    • That angle makes it look like the gun was in his front right pocket. Anyone else seeing that?

      • That’s what I see too (actually, for some reason it looks like the lower front pocket of cargo shorts when the officer retrieves it), and it also looks like the Mr. Sterling was twisting over toward that side immediately prior to the initial gunshot. I’m not saying that he was going for his weapon, but we’re talking about a split second decision here.

        • Yeah, that’s what I see. I don’t know if he was going for the gun, but it looks like his hands were right there. Oddly enough, it does look like he’s reaching for it after he was shot, while he was laying on his back.

  38. As with every other time this happens I will wait for a full report before passing judgement.

    This case will likely be no different than the others. People will line up on both sides without knowing the facts and hurl insults at each other and make outrageous claims of the innocence or virtue of someone they didn’t know existed until this case came up.

    Good shoot? Bad shoot? I sure as hell don’t know. I wasn’t there and I didn’t see what the cops saw.

    Either way, cue the lynch mobs.

      • As Patrick Henry famously said “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience…”

  39. i just watched the latest vid….those cops are so screwed. the first guy to shoot has his weapon drawn, with finger on trigger under a foot from the guys head. looks like a glock. he clearly pulls trigger in quick succession, then rolls of it seems in surprise, and other guy rolls off and shoots him twice as well – im guessing as the result of surprise and having a gun discharge a foot from his head. clear negligent discharge and homicide. no blue line on this one – they are criminals and should never be allowed to own a gun again. just disgusting.

  40. Stop over at Bearing Arms and read through their detailed analysis. No indisputable visual evidence of misconduct. Good shoot.

    • By that argument, Slager shooting Scott was a good shoot until it wasn’t.

      Observe, the non-logic of the bootlicker.

    • I am amused that a site that is constantly advocating both open and concealed carry has a comment advocating the government murder for carrying.

      • “I am amused that a site that is constantly advocating both open and concealed carry has a comment advocating the government murder for carrying.

        Um… what? All he said was that you could see a gun being removed from the dead guy’s pocket.

        There are a few ways you could take his statement, but “advocating the government murder for carrying” isn’t one of them. At least not one that’s intellectually honest based on the actual comment that was made.

        • The favored pro-cop line is that he had a gun and therefore it is a “good shoot”. As if having a gun is in itself a death sentence.

        • @MDS – No one here made any automatic assumptions about whether or not this was shooting justified based on his possession of a gun alone, nor could you point out any.

          No one here made any statements even remotely implying any advocacy of state-sanctioned homicide for the mere act of carrying a weapon, either, nor could you point out any.

          I am equally amused that you would knowingly and deliberately out-and-out lie in order to make some kind of “point” that was completely unfounded in the first place.

          The purpose in pointing out this fact is simply to add another piece to the puzzle. Nothing more.

          Feel free to add anything else you might have yourself. Or not. I’m not in the business of telling other people what to do.

    • I was gonna say “no one doubts that he had a gun…” but based on previous experience I’m sure BLM and related organizations would probably claim that too if there was no video.

        • Here is what I know:
          People are lying when they say Sterling was unarmed. You see the police remove the gun from his pocket.
          People are lying when they say the police had both of Sterling’s arms pinned. His right arm was under the car and he had access to his right front pocket that contained the gun.
          People are lying when they say these cops were racists that executed a black man. They were called to the scene because a man matching Sterling’s description was reported to have pulled a gun on someone. When they made contact, they had justifiable reason to believe they were dealing with a hostile armed person. They ordered him to the ground. He did not comply. They had a taser out and may have deployed it (less lethal). They tackled him (less lethal). They asked him “what have you got on you?” Then the cop feels the gun as he is frisking him and says “He’s got a gun!” At this point the other cop draws his gun but does not shoot (less lethal). The cop warns Sterling “You fucking move I swear to God!” (verbal warning less lethal). At this point, a reasonable person has to deduce that the cop, knowing where the gun is, warning the suspect not to move, was attempting to get the suspects gun.
          The next thing we hear is the cop, that was going into Sterling’s pocket to secure the weapon, yell “he’s going for the gun!” A reasonable person has to believe that when the cop started going into the pocket containing the gun, Sterling resisted this attempt which is a fight to control the firearm. That is is a fight that lethal force becomes justified.
          Stay tuned for the riots when these cops avoid indictment.

        • IMHO, they ought to release all of the video on this incident, early and unedited.

          (From the link:)
          ‘Marcelle told WAFB there is at least one surveillance camera from the store and one dashcam that captured the shooting, but police have not released them.

          “What I said to the chief is he has to have transparency in this matter because as you can see this is getting out of hand. People are clearly upset and they want transparency,” Marcelle said.’

  42. “i agree with “pwserge” that crime (especially violent crime) is committed more by ‘progressives’ than ‘conservatives”. My reasoning is because it is obvious on its face.”

    What is correlation for $200?

  44. I’m a conservative gun owner, yet I’m appalled at what I see as the knee jerk “always support / justify” the police actions, regardless of how questionable they may be. Yes, in this case and in the Minnesota twin cities case, both were carrying concealed weapons. In neither case is there any evidence that the suspect reached for or tried to retrieve the weapon. Yet both are dead, shot by jumpy police officers. Regardless of their race or previous history, I would think, as a concealed carrier myself, that this would be the main issue on a website like TTAGs. Have those of you immediately supporting the police officers actions even watched the video? Even questioned their aggressive approach and the need to throw him to the ground for a comment made in a 911 call? Anyone can say anything when calling the police….doesn’t make it true. Ever heard the term “swatting”? Yes, police have to be cautious, but we, as citizens, also have the expectation that we will be treated reasonably, without excessive force or being forcibly thrown to the ground, unless our actions warrant such behavior. Questioning why police are stopping you or questioning you is not such an action. Simply carrying a concealed weapon while black is not classification for such treatment, not to mention being killed. Police officers need to be held accountable for their actions, just like we would be in similar circumstances, which means questioning and critiquing what they did, not immediately defending and justifying their actions.

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