joelrosenberg ([info]joelrosenberg) wrote,
@ 2007-10-24 08:17:00
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Roadraging cop gets special treatment
Offduty cop involved in road rage shooting not arrested -- and no, I'm not talking about Landen Beard from Robbinsdale.

This one's from New York.  Sean Sawyer, pictured at right, shot and killed Jayson Tirado, early Sunday morning, after Tirado pointed a finger at him.  "This is how people get shot," he said.  (Ooops; sorry.  My bad -- that was Beard, in the Coon Rapids roadraging offduty cop incident.) "Don't you know how to drive?" he reportedly queried, shortly before shooting Tirado dead, after Tirado pointed a finger at him.  (In addition to the finger pointing, Tirado had refused to let the undercover police officer merge.)

There are some similarities -- both Sawyer and Beard were working undercover; both are fairly new to the job, and involved in narcotics investigations.

There are differences; unlike Beard, Sawyer fled the scene.  (This may be because Beard was the one shot, rather than the shooter.)  Beard is still getting paychecks; Sawyer has been suspended without pay.

A scant nineteen hours after the shooting, Sawyer turned himself in; he was promptly released, without being charged.

Amazingly, this is being spun as SOP:  "When there is a claim of self-defense, as there is in this case, there is usually no immediate arrest," Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said.

His pants then immediately burst into flame.

[ETA:  Welcome Instapundit readers.  If you're interested in the Coon Rapids Roadraging Cop case, the best place to start is probably with Mitch's summary, here].

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(Anonymous)
2007-10-24 05:41 pm UTC (link)
I guess jayson tirado didn't have the moral character to be posessing such as dangerous weapon such as that found between the index and annular fingers in the state of new york. I can only wonder if sawyer "does not recall" having been in such an incident. Or was he sleeping off a hangover or just retaining a lawyer in those 19 hours? Or simply holding at the time of the "alledged incident." As is often suggested on Fox's Cops, why where you running if you didn't have anything to hide? Step out of the car, put your head on the hood, put your hands behind your head, and spread your legs. Sawyer looks like a big guy, so if he was a perp they'd have to kneel on his head while tasing him and shouting to hold still. Then again, its not unheard of for uniformed LEOs to shoot a plain clothes officer (on or off duty) after shootings, so it was probably in sawyer's best interests to skidaddle.

(Reply to this)


[info]ua_dubhne
2007-10-24 07:00 pm UTC (link)
>>>Amazingly, this is being spun as SOP: "When there is a claim of self-defense, as there is in this case, there is usually no immediate arrest," Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said.

His pants then immediately burst into flame.

No,no, Joel, this is GOOD! We need more prosecutors who are willing to give self-defense shooters the benefit of the doubt. There ought to be more DA's of this caliber here!

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(Anonymous)
2007-10-24 08:01 pm UTC (link)
>Officer Sawyer then sped off ahead of the Honda. But Mr. Tirado chased him,
>pulled his car in front of Officer Sawyer’s Nissan and hit the brakes,
>coming >to a stop. At that point, Mr. Tirado said, “You want to see the new
>Ruger I got under my seat?” referring to a make of a semiautomatic handgun,
>law enforcement officials said.
>
>Mr. Tirado made a shooting motion with his hand, as if he was pointing a
>weapon back and to his right at Officer Tirado.

Ummm...that sounds pretty scary. Why isn't that a credible claim of self-defense? If somebody did that to me (i.e. chased my car, pulled in front of me and stopped, and then threatened to pull a gun, and then acted like he was shooting), I'd be scared out of my wits.




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[info]joelrosenberg
2007-10-24 08:13 pm UTC (link)
Sure, it sounds scary.

I'm not sure it is or isn't a credible claim of self-defense -- pointing a finger shouldn't, by and large, terrify any grown man or woman, and "naked fear" doesn't justify the use of lethal force. (Statutes vary, but there are generally three or four requirements, depending on how you count, for a successful self-defense claim, and fear of imminent death or GBH is only one of them.)

I doubt that you'd want to have your fate put in front of a jury over shooting somebody because they'd made a threat and pointed a finger at you.

But forget that for a moment: the notion that it's SOP for a killer who makes a possibly credible self-defense claim -- after fleeing the scene of the crime -- not to be arrested fails the laugh test.

Flight, while not proof of a guilty mind, is pretty strong evidence, and this perp fled. If he didn't have that NYPD "Get Out of Jail Free" card, he'd be at Rikers, awaiting a skeptical judge who might or might not remand him until trial.

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Cops rage causes death of citizen
[info]iralarry
2007-10-26 03:10 pm UTC (link)
How does a 4 year veteran of the police force allow a minor right of way driving incident to escalate into the death of a civilian? I always thought that the police were here to serve and protect, not take out their personal grudges on innocent citizens! This officer should be incarcerated for second degree murder, or minimally, criminally negligent homicide. All he had to do was act like an adult and let the driver get his way on this one. Many of us tolerate this daily. Instead he did exactly what he should not have done and antagonized and spurred on the rage by confronting the driver like a child. Where were his skills as a sworn officer or his tactical ability to calm a situation? There is no excuse here. Let justice be done. Look at it like this, he was off duty at the time so treat him like a common citizen rather than as a cop and maybe that will allow justice to prevail. I have so little faith in the police of this city. I bet he fled the scene to avoid the field sobriety testing mandated after a police shooting, hum?

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Re: Cops rage causes death of citizen
[info]joelrosenberg
2007-10-26 03:19 pm UTC (link)
Generally, my assumption is that when somebody flees the scene of an accident and then turns himself/herself in after there's been time for the BAC to recede to something unobjectionable, that's why they did it. I don't see any need to make an exception in this case.

As to his behavior . . . there is a syndrome among some cops involving aggressive driving that, I think, is more prevalent than in the general population both because driving aggressively, at times, is a legitimate part of police work (so there's more experience doing it) and there are fewer checks on it.

I've heard from an unreliable source, for example, that just two weeks or so before the Coon Rapids shooting, the cop/perp had tinned his way out of an aggressive driving charge in Minneapolis. I'm not going to take that source's word to the bank, but I don't find it improbable.

I've never understood anybody who doesn't drive like a wimp. (Other than, of course, for the rare situation where it's necessary to drive aggressively for safety reasons -- I once jumped a truck into a cornfield to avoid a crash.) There's so little to gain and so much to lose from even lawful aggressive driving, after all.

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