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I'll say again that I'm a supporter of the police. I am. I mean it. But I hold no hope at all that the FWPD leadership will learn anything from this incident. Am I happy that the officer was sent to jail for more than 10 years? Absolutely not. I believe that the verdict further assures a chasm between the FWPD and the community that it serves.

I'm not smart enough to know what the right policies regarding these types of calls need to be. How do we make sure that this outcome isn't repeated? But what I believe is that FWPD leadership is strongly anti-armed citizen. They are not alone within the police ranks in that feeling and I believe that it clouds their thinking at that operational level. And their officers end up paying the price for that mindset when the public pushes back. On the opposite side, this was more politics than reality. The ethnicity of those involved was the main component. I also blame the PD leadership, along with the PD leadership in other places where it has treated Waller-like situations without careful consideration. The public then comes to view this as the second in a pattern and not a unique matter.

I'm strongly opposed to no-knock raids. I won't cause thread drift by going into that here. I realize that there can be bad consequences for the police announcing themselves under some circumstances. But it would seem that is a better path than the one we are on. Maybe that is only me.

I watched part of the Andrew Branca analysis of the closing arguments to this trial. I trust his judgement that the prosecution's approach was pure emotion and not founded in the actual laws and that the defense did an extremely poor job in letting the prosecution get away with what they did. It was Mr. Branca's solution that concerned me.

That solution focused on suing the police department over the failed procedures that the officer followed. Paraphrasing that part of the analysis conversation, the officer was in a no-win situation where if he didn't follow Ft. Worth SOP, he was going to be on his own for anything that happened. But he ended up on his own anyway. I've held that if the procedures in the Ft. Worth department had appropriately changed after the Waller incident, this one might not have occurred. But I see little hope of a successful civil suit against the department for this outcome.

I do agree with Mr. Branca that we all should be terrified about a legal system that is based on a mob mentality and not the law. But the legal system has been twisted in this way for a long time and there has been little progress in making corrections. I don't see any new catalyst for that on the horizon.

Dragonfighter wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 10:00 am

What's the mixed feeling? Both were testified to and both were supported by the fact pattern. The problem a lot of people have is she wasn't a bad guy. There weren't any "bad guys" in this instant. Sadly, that happens regularly. The facts, including Dean's testimony would back up her justified use of force if she was the one left standing.

My problem was the ungodly malpractice by the prosecutors and a feckless defense. Watching this and a few other trials gavel to gavel scared the daylights out of me. I dropped the trigger on some insurance.

The mixed feeling is that she, like Jerry Waller, were in their homes doing nothing wrong and both ended up dead at the hands of a police officer. To believe that is OK is to believe that there is not a reason for someone to have a self-defense handgun on the outside chance that a police officer will show up at their house and kill them because of it.
1. The police have operate on the premise that the home owner might be legally armed if there is not a direct reason to KNOW otherwise. The suspicion of a POSSIBLE burglary is not sufficient Was the chance of catching a burglar in the act worth an innocent person's life? That as exactly the same premise as Waller.
2. The police testimony in the Waller case was as iron clad as it was in this one. Unfortunately, there is no badge came (at least that I've seen or heard about) to corroborate those statements. I'm sorry but to believe that she was well versed in the use of a laser and he didn't enve know how to turn that laser off is a stretch of imagination for me.

Like others on this forum, I'm a strong supporter of the police. That does not mean that I agree with every thing that they do. I imagine myself in this same situation as this woman that that scares me.

Officer found guilty of manslaughter

https://news.yahoo.com/jury-finds-fort- ... 15602.html

I still have a lot of mixed feelings on this case. I personally listened to a radio broadcast of the officer testifying live. He said that she pointed a laser on her gun at him. He testified that he had trouble turning the laser off after he got her gun. Some of reports said that he saw her silhouette with a gun in her hand.

Oldgringo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2019 10:01 pm This is not good for nobody!

The apparent uninformed shooter has apparently resigned from the Police Force. What does this say about the training, education, and training of new recruits, their backgrounds, and their leadership? C'mon, guys, this is TEXAS, let's get it right, please?

Look over the past few years and the chiefs of police in FW. I believe that the outcome of the Jerry Waller case determined that there would be more police shootings of innocent citizens.