This is probably the strangest story I have read this year. Watch the video in the link, you will not regret it. The police officer has the suspect arrested and locked up in the squad car. The officer is walking beside the squad car when the oak tree strikes by dropping an acorn. The officer instantly springs into action by running behind the squad car and sending out an alert that shots had been fired. He then engages the oak tree by mag dumping his gun. Unfortunately all his shots miss the oak tree and instead hit his squad car which holds the prisoner. The officer then sends in a frantic call that he had been hit. It is unknown if the offending acorn was ever found or if the oak tree was arrested. It is known that the cop has already resigned due to PTSD from the incident. This video beautifully illustrates the amount of stress one has when one works in a neighborhood where everybody hates you and will kill you at the drop of the hat. My nephew quit the MPD after 7 years because of this. https://www.carscoops.com/2024/02/a...-rip-after-mistaking-falling-nut-for-gunshot/
First of all, it's Florida, so I'm not surprised. Shoot first, ask questions later. Lastly, how the **** was that dude a cop??
I could never be a cop TBH. I would be the one who dropped a granny for reaching for her registration during my first traffic stop.
Some gun fanatics were talking about arming teachers. If a trained cop can't tell the difference between an acorn and a gunshot, do you actually believe a teacher would do any better? The gun epidemic doesn't only affect those who die of gunshots. It affects everybody. There is likely not a teacher who (like cops) hasn't experienced the horror of believing they were before a shooter. How sad is it that our gun culture forces us to live like this!
Both trigger-happy cops should be fired and never rehired by another department. This attitude is part of the problem and officers with this attitude should be fired.
Sorry dude in a lost of blue districts these days paranoia is the only thing standing between you and an early grave.
LOL - Great OP. I can somewhat relate to that cop's reaction. We have several enormous old White Oaks in our backyard - they've probably been around since the Revolution - and when an acorn drops from the top of one of those suckers and hits the tin roof on our shed it is LOUD, and you can hear it from a considerable distance. I can't say I've ever mistaken that for a gun shot, but I can understand how someone who has never heard that sound before might do so - especially if they're stressed out and afraid of getting shot.
This video beautifully illustrates that some people have no business ever being in law enforcement. He's the one to blame here. It is pathetic to try to blame anyone else for his mistake.
No, that's absurd. Paranoia is a mental illness. And those with mental illness should not be policemen.
I don't really recall Bob Newhart here being a "lefty." And why is potentially homicidal incompetence better than being a "thug"?
Well, cops get jacked up on fear (in this case not anger) and adrenaline. They are also trained to not think but to react. They do have a certain level of qualified "immunity" that allows this type of training to be at the forefront when they are at the academy and they are taught this also on the street. They want to go home in one piece at the end of the day and the city also has a financial interest that they do. This cop should not have been on the street or even a cop, in the first place, but the other dude in the car, he should buy a lottery ticket every week.
Once again absurd. I am definitely not better off with a bunch of policemen who shoot an entire large capacity magazine at figments of their imagination.
Not in favor of homicidal incompetence though no one who supports the war in the Ukraine has any standing to rail against homicidal incompetence. The point is that if you look at what he was quoting that I responded to, you will note that those particual cops are simply responding to the day to day reality in the precinct in which they work in no small part related to the fact that their bosses will not take even the most murderous punks off the streets because some how letting black folks get murdered by gang bangers is less racist than locking up said gang bangers.
Then should have quoted the op rather than complaining about cops who are dealing with the things in their day to day lives.
Defending yourself against an invading military force is not "homicidal incompetence." Unless you were talking about Russia's homicidal incompetence, in which case we agree. He shot at a dude who was already detained
Following procedure and protocol is more important to many LE agencies than critical thinking and calculated responses. The bean counters have determined that quick reactions result in statistically less injuries than stopping to figure out whats going on before reacting. The result is a hiring preference for people who are more easily programmed and more reliably do as they're told than people who think about what they're doing. Thinking and making informed decisions is not something bureaucracies tend to highly value, as it often leads to breaking with procedure and protocol. The result is more and more cops who react instinctually rather than intellectually. The problem is that all humans are prone to perceptive distortion due to heightened emotions. This guy, for whatever reason, perceived a gunshot where there was no gunshot. But whereas most people jump a little, look around, reconsider what they actually heard, this guy (as many cops these days) had been chosen and trained to not do that before reacting to the 'threat'.
Dumping a magazine at a figment of your imagination endangering those around you is not "dealing with the things in their day to day lives." It is a mental illness. As for quoting the OP. That's exactly what I did - see post #7.
