Seattle Times (RVP news partner):
A would-be robber was shot and critically wounded Sunday morning when he tried to snatch a money bag from an armored-car security guard outside a South Seattle McDonald’s restaurant, police said.
The 40-year-old man was shot three times, once in the arm and twice in the chest, after he confronted the Garda armored-car worker at about 10:20 a.m., Seattle police spokeswoman Reneé Witt said.
Witt said the guard was returning to the armored car when the attacker approached him from behind, knocked him to the ground and tried to wrest away the money bag. Read more.
Photos/Peter Masundire
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See what happens when a criminal wants to mug you, and you have a gun and you know how to use it? This was a woman who shot the “heavyset” male attacker, by the way. Now the attacker is in the hospital and he’ll think twice before attacking someone who carries a gun again. Hopefully, he’ll pass the world.
And by the way a stun gun would work well, too. You can buy these on eBay for a very good price.
We that was not very smart. I thought these dumb thugs died at age 25 anyway – he’s lived 15 year too long.
Is this the same clown that tried to rob an armored car in the same area a couple weeks back?
He did not get a Happy Meal…
Look at the picture in the Times. It looks like the perp. was wearing sandals or huaraches, not the best for making a fast getaway.
I hate to be the Devil’s advocate all the time, but if I’ve learned one thing from the law it’s that property crime of any proportion doesn’t belong in the same league as personal, bodily crime.
A million dollar theft is smaller than a slice off a thumb.
If that’s not the case, then I’m ready to defend that new camera with deadly force if needed. A new definition of f-stop.
Might want to be make sure you are fluent with applicable case-law before deciding on that course of action.
Being a 1) unifomed armed money courier 2)working out of a marked armored car, 3)being attacked from behind, and 4)forced to the ground 5)in a robbery attempt, makes for five very easliy “articulable facts and circumstances” as to why you would be in fear for you safety enough to respond with deadly force. And I could probably come up with more sitting here without even interviewing the guard (history of robberies in the area, specific history of escalatiing attacks on couriers, etc…).
A different story when your camer is at stake, unless you are being robbed of your camera (robbery and theft are not the same) in which case all bets are off.
While wishing the the guard well, I can’h help but also wish the guard had fired just one more time. Guarding this maggot at the hospital is sucking up officers who could be doing more productive things.
See you on the streets!
Yes, I’m terrible. I already know.
No, you’re great. Any thoughts on the beating at the bus tunnel? What is the purpose of ST security folks? A true shame that girl got beaten so badly.
1 Jackass in a room watching monitors would have the same effect as far as security as those 3 standing around watching, NONE!
What a waste of money.
Bien, thought you might like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngsKzdKNAmo
Tom T
The purpose of the “security” guards is two-fold: liability shield and cost savings. The King County Deputies told Metro something exactly like this would happen when Metro opted to go with unarmed (and essetnially untrained) security guards over the sworn deputies that are assigned to the Metro Transit Unit. What we all saw on the video is why unarmed/untrained security guards are so cheap to contract for.
This sort of assault is not an abberation. The abberation is that this one was caught on video. This was essentially what has been going on here along MLK at the ST rail stops.
THE OTHER ISSUE:
I was dissappointed but not surprised to see James Bible sucessfully pull a rabbit out of a hat, and make this a police/race issue, specifically police vs. blacks, when the victims, perpetrators, and security guards (as near as I can see on the video) were all the same race!
SPD records appear to indicate that the group of perpetrators was dispersed by police more than once up above at street level before this ocurred.
Before you jump all over me, consider this:
Officers with no probable cause to arrest, and no observed articuable facts and circumstances rising to the level of reasonable suspicion (US Supreme Court case Terry V. Ohio) where they could detain or restrain the suspect’s movement in the time before the assault happened, left them with few legal options. Remember that this sort of teenage running around and “they’re out to get me!” type of thing is something police officers (and teachers, for that matter) all over the city run into every day, on every shift. 99.99999…–>% of the time, it’s the usual teenage antics and playing around. Also, the plain reality is, ESPECIALLY in downtown where there is a mounted camera every 5 feet, and 100 cell-phone cameras per block, officers are more reluctant to stop and detain black males than any other demographic.
I know most of you don’t believe what I just said, but think about this for a minute.
The officer(s) consider this scanario when confronted with no real facts or evidence, and a group of black teens: I have no evidence of a crime, or observable facts that would rise to the level of reasonable suspicion (US Supreme Court case Terry V. Ohio), teenagers running around goofing-off is common especially in the downtown shopping core during business hours, and if I stop this group of black teens, ID them, prehaps frisk (not search, frisk) some or all of them, and then turn them loose with no one arrested or cited and they file a complaint with OPA/IIS, or perhaps go straight to James Bible and the NAACP, what is going to be asked of me…?
I’ll be asked why I “targeted” these young black youths who were just downtown having a good time until I swooped in and harassed them (obviously because they are black and I am blue). I’ll be asked what my justification for this “profiling stop” was. When I explain my acitons, and the complaint of a 15 year old who I never identified and thus cannot prove even existed, I’ll be asked if this sort of teenage playing around and chasing eachother isn’t a common everyday activity? I will have to honestly answer yes, yes it is. So I will be then asked why in THIS case, with these BLACK youths, I chose to stop and harass them?
“Afterall officer, by your own admission 99% of the time, this is just kids messing around, right? So how do you explain than in this case, you decided that the totality of the circumstances indicated my clinets were actually up to criminal misbehavior? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we all know why this happened…”
And that’s how it goes. And once James Bible makes it onto the evening news, I now have to wonder: am I about to get diciplined? Am I about to get suspended without pay? Am I about to get bounced off the streets and thrown behind a desk answering a phone? If SPD gets named in a lawsuit, AM I GONG TO GET FIRED FOR THIS?
That equation goes through every officer’s head in a situation like this, whether they/we admit it or not. So do I think telling the teens to just go their separate ways, TWICE, was a reasonable thing to do, given the totality of the circumstances as we know them right now? Yes, yes I do.
Confronted with a group a possible white suspects would I or another officer feel safer acting a little more agressively? Yes, absolutely.
Why? Because through harsh and unpleant experince, we in SPD have heard the message loud and clear from the public, and we make sure we have got not just the needed justificaiton, but EXTRA justification, before approaching and stopping a black citizen.
James Bible is an educated intelligent gentleman, and most of the time seems perfectly reasonable. He’s even a nice guy. BUT, when he talked about the factor race might have played in this incident as far as SPD is concerned, what he doesn’t realize is that he probably ought to look in the mirror to see part of the source of how these racial politics are playing out, and why.
Harsh, I know. But this is reality.
@SSC
“Bien, thought you might like this”
I liked the fact that you thought of me. Wasn’t so keen on the video.
For one; we’re a lot more safe that this scare tactic video shows. The pro-gun community would love us to think that we’re surrounded by evil, but we’re not. I may live in Rainier Beach, but I’m surrounded by good neighbors. Doesn’t that piss you off?
The evil we’re surrounded by is wolves in sheep’s clothing.
How that elephant got into my donkey’s pajamas I’ll never know…
@SSC
“I know most of you don’t believe what I just said, but think about this for a minute.”
That would be more supportable if we didn’t all see videos, over and over again, of white cops beating the shit out of black “suspects”.
I don’t remember seeing a video of black cops beating a white “suspect”.
I don’t question your need for extra justification in dealing with people not your race, but I think you can understand it. Right?
Not James Bible’s fault.
But if you or those untrained folks use that to keep yourselves from jumping into an obviously not-right situation; shame.
Jump in, then defend your actions later.
I’d support you in that case.
Not saying the security guards should have just stood there like lumps on a log, not defending that at all.
I knew many wouldn’t belive it when I said it. Fighting the mass media as well as “community leaders” who remain relevant to their desired constituency by stoking racial tensions is an uphill battle…perhaps an insurmountable one. All I would add to that before moving on from this topic is: if your perceptions of and beliefs about the world around you and how it works are based on what a for-profit business that succeeds or fails based on how riled-up it can make people by how it spins the “news”, then it may be worth stopping to consider whether, if at all, your perception comes anywhere close to reality.
In advertising: sex sells. It’s money in the bank.
In politics/”news”: race sells. It’s also money in the bank.
If a “news” mass-media outlet fails to take a situation and spin it into a race issue, and repeat that mantra over and over again enough times to get you are eventually convinced of it, then they will have missed a golden opportunity, and a pay-day, when the issue (whatever it may be) is found by those actually looking into facts not to be a race issue at all. Thus, always play the race card up front. If you are a lawyer looking to dig deep into government coffers with a lawsuit, the same rule applies.
See you on the streets.
“found by those actually looking into facts not to be a race issue at all.”
I don’t really think this was a race issue.
I don’t think they would have helped anyone at all.
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