Innocent Australian woman gunned down by USA Police

[GT93]

It's good to see someone carrying the can.

I'd assume incompetence rather than sociopathic although Lone Star might be right. I recall reading somewhere both were inexperienced. I'd say 2 years was still a rookie but that's debatable. I think he still needs a more experienced officer for support.

Hopefully coppers go through good psych tests before signing up and that weeds out many of the sociopaths. As would the training which should be intense and personal.

Buddha help a country where women can't approach a police car at night.

[tamada]

May be not that way if you're worried about the neighbours thinking you're ratting on a neighbour. Anyhow the crims are usually from further away. Heaps of people would assist the police if they thought a woman had been attacked. Well OK, I like to think so.

Anyhow, the cops aren't tooled up here although at night many Auckland cops might have access to a firearm in their police car. I've been stopped at least twice by the cops in the dark over the last 20 years in Oz or NZ. It never occurred to me that my life might be in danger in dealing with them. I've even been arrested.

Probably most cities in most countries will have a 'bad' area... except probably Vatican City! When I was working in New Zealand, there were infrequent news items about the Maori gangs but my late aunt who had been living in Whanganui for nigh over 40 years said it wasn't near as bad as it used to be. In most cases, violent acts were gang-on-gang. Personally, I never felt fearful in any of the towns and cities I lived in there. I recall one English friend of mine who emigrated with his family to NZ about 10 years ago and was amazed that making sure the door was locked at night in New Plymouth wasn't such a big deal as it was in Salford, England but was more like he remembered when he was growing up in the UK.

Any idea if the area where the Aussie lass was gunned down was in a 'bad' area? It does look like totally bad police management teaming relative rookies but as mentioned, maybe it was making the best of an under-resourced PD? However, it is common for cops that fall out of the system with a larger US city PD's that has arguably higher standards to easily get work in smaller, less 'policed' PD's. In Texas, if one didn't cut it in the Houston PD, one could always find a position with the Bellaire or Stafford cops who pretty much wrote their own rule book. The worst ones ended up working for the Metro Police (tasked with public transport security) and they were a pretty gormless lot. It was a common joke that in the event of an emergency, don't get a Metro cop involved no matter how close he was to the action.

I was arrested once by the Houston PD and to be honest, I was ---- scared the whole weekend. The HPD cops were pretty hard core but when handed over to the Harris County Sheriffs for weekend detention (till I got bailed out), that WAS scary. Those guys were seriously bad news. Something very sobering when the Vietnamese gangbanger in the holding room next to you is suspected of a nightclub shooting (murder) a few hours earlier. His hands being taped up in HPD paper crime sacks should have been a clue.