Indict a Ham sandwich but not a cop

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by jms62

Ferguson decision seemed right to me this one however. Choke Holds are a no no and he is photographed choking the guy out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo

I have mixed feelings about this case. When the police put anyone in any type of hold, they need to take it seriously when the person says they can't breathe. I feel like I've seen a few of these cases where the police ignored the person's pleas and the person ended up dying. In this particular case, which I don't know that much about, I think I read somewhere that the guy had a heart attack. Did anyone hear what the autopsy said? I would obviously blame the cops much more if the guy choked to death than if he had a heart attack. The reason I say that is because if this was normally a safe method of taking people down and 99.999% of people would come out of it fine, then I don't blame the police as much if this was just that one person out of 100,000 that had a heart attack from the stress of the thing.

But either way, I think the police have some responsibility. If they didn't choke the guy, he would still be alive. On the other hand, if the guy would have complied, he wouldn't have been choked. The police get criticized when they use deadly force (by shooting someone). In this case, I don't think they were trying to use deadly force but unfortunately the suspect still died.

I think the family certainly deserves some compensation. As I said before, if you're going to put someone in some type of hold, you better take it seriously if they say they can't breathe. If you don't take it seriously and they die, you certainly have some culpability. I don't know if there was any criminal intent on the officer's part. I doubt there was but I don't know if there needs to be criminal intent to charge someone with involuntary manslaughter.

Anyway, I don't know enough of the facts of the case or enough about the law to give an opinion about whether the officer should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. But as I said before, I think the family deserves money in a lawsuit simply because I think there was some negligence on the officers' part for not taking the suspect's pleas that he couldn't breathe seriously.