We’ve seen lots of bodycam footage of officer-involved shootings in the last year or so since the Michael Brown shooting. As more and more police departments video officer interactions with the general public, we’re getting better and better intel on what’ “really” goes down when the cops send lead flying. I put the word “really” in quotes because context is key; action footage can be extremely misleading. In fact, I reckon the number of “bad shoots” now is a lot smaller than the number of police murders in days gone by. But despite the new technologically-enhanced accountability, there’s still a police culture of coverup and contempt for the rule of law. Here’s proof [via photographyisnotacrime.com] . . .
Three teens mistakenly walked up to the home of a New Jersey state trooper at 2 a.m. last Sunday and began knocking on the door, thinking it was their friend’s home, who lives on the same block.
But when a man on the other side of the door began yelling and cursing at them, they realized they had the wrong home and began walking back to their car.
When the angry man stepped out of the home, they began running and hopped in their car.
And when they saw him aiming a gun with a laser pointer towards them, they stepped on the accelerator to make their escape down the street in front of the home.
But the off-duty trooper, whose name is Kissinger Barreau, stepped into the street and fired three shots, including one that struck the tire.
And that’s when things got seriously squirrelly for the Garden State teens . . .
About a mile-and-half away from the trooper’s home, once they believed they were safe from the crazy gunman, they stopped the car and one of the teens called his mom to tell her what had happened. He then called police to tell them what had happened.
Minutes later, when the teens noticed police helicopter and police dogs conducting a search in the area, they figured the cops were looking for the trigger-happy gunman.
But then they found themselves surrounded by cops, who searched and handcuffed them before leaving them in the back of a patrol car for hours on accusations that they had attempted to burglarize his home.
They were then driven down to Sparta police headquarters where they were photographed and placed in different cells.
Then they were transported to State Police Barracks where they were handcuffed to a steel bench for five hours before they were interrogated.
During that interrogation, police kept trying to get the teens to say they drove the car towards the cops, which, of course, would have made him fear for his life and justify the shooting.
But the teens just wouldn’t take the bait.
“That’s the exact opposite of what we were trying to do. We were just scared and trying to get out of there with our lives,” Barkhorn told the local news site.
The teens were eventually released when the cops confirmed that they did have a friend living on the same block and realized they were not going to admit to something they did not do.
Is it a coincidence that this blatant abuse of police power went down in New Jersey, a state where gun rights go to die? Maybe so. But it’s certainly true that NJ troopers are a law unto themselves, for themselves, armed both on and off duty. The question is: are police body cams doing anything to reverse this unaccountable Only Ones attitude that you find amongst police in states where the Second Amendment is ignored, defiled and destroyed? And, of course, elsewhere (*cough* Waco biker shooting *cough*).