Saving the expense of a trial

[hnumpah]

Police: Officer kills man who beat child to death

TURLOCK, Calif. - Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people's attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.
 
Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh.

"It's been a long night of wondering, 'Why?' ? not only for the officers and the passers-by who stopped and tried to help out, but for anyone. Why would somebody do this?" Singh said.

Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.

The suspect had a child's car seat in the back of his four-door pickup truck. The truck caught the attention of an elderly couple at 10:13 p.m. Saturday because it was stopped in the two-lane road facing the wrong direction, Singh said.

As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.

"What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking," Singh said. "They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn't have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it."

A sheriff's helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.

Paramedics tried to resuscitate the toddler, who was not breathing when they arrived. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

No children within the dead boy's age range have been reported kidnapped or missing in Stanislaus County, Singh said.

The incident happened on Bradbury Road about 10 miles west of Turlock, a city located about halfway between Sacramento and Fresno.

[Plane]

What a nightmare.

None of the civilians were armed with anything?

[Michael Tee]

Leave it to the Republicans to turn this into a political issue.  Arming the onlookers and giving them the power to shoot to kill as they see fit would have undoubtedly saved this one toddler's life at the same time ending many others across the country.

[Rich]

>>Arming the onlookers and giving them the power to shoot to kill as they see fit would have undoubtedly saved this one toddler's life at the same time ending many others across the country.<<

This is of course false. But then we're back to the lima beans and sirs thing. Were citizens are armed, crime is low. Just a fact.

[Michael Tee]

Where citizens are armed with guns, gun-related homicides are high, I would think.  It's hard to think of any of these high-school and college massacres occurring in a community that enjoys strictly-enforced gun-control laws.

[sirs]

Where citizens are armed with guns, gun-related homicides are high, I would think.

The facts, however trump your thought process.  As has been referenced many a time already, that you so consistently ignore to maintain the template of how bad guns and "big gun" are, for every death attributed to a firearm, hunderes more are saved by a gun's use or it simply being brandished

And when you remove suicides from the equation, I do believe that # goes up to over a thousand lives saved by a gun or its brandishing, to every 1 life lost to a gunshot wound

It's hard to think of any of these high-school and college massacres occurring in a community that enjoys strictly-enforced gun-control laws.

"Gun Free zones" are a murderer's/psychoapth's favorite locale

[Michael Tee]

<<The facts, however trump your thought process.  As has been referenced many a time already, that you so consistently ignore to maintain the template of how bad guns and "big gun" are, for every death attributed to a firearm, hunderes more are saved by a gun's use or it simply being brandished>>

The problem I've got with those numbers is pretty simple.  One side of the equation is fairly cut-and-dried.  Dead from a gunshot is dead from a gunshot.  It's a pretty clearly defined situation.  On the other side of the equation, "saved from rape" is at best a highly subjective interpretation.  The alleged perp is hardly going to admit he had rape on  his mind, and the gun-owner is hardly gonna admit, "Well he was talkin' kind a dirty, so I whipped out my 9 mm. just in case."  And in addition, you are balancing homicides on the one hand against everything from homicides down to street muggings on the other.  Maybe even B & Es.  So it's like saying, let's trade off a couple of Columbines for a couple hundred street muggings.  Don't know too many parents who'd agree with that - - they'd probably think it was nuts.

<<And when you remove suicides from the equation . . . >>

Suicides are real tragedies too.  Why would I want to remove them from the equation?  Guns are the easiest sure-fire way to a successful suicide, and I consider suicide reduction to be a worthy goal in and of itself.

[sirs]

Facts are facts, Tee.  I'm not trying to "remove" suicides, simply stating the facts, in this case, the use, or even the brandishing of a gun (read, NOT even used or fired) saves FAR more lives than those taken by a gun. 

Please ignore those facts, as you deem necessary.  It wouldn't be the 1st time, and I'm confident it won't be your last

[Michael Tee]

<<I'm not trying to "remove" suicides, simply stating the facts, in this case, the use, or even the brandishing of a gun (read, NOT even used or fired) saves FAR more lives than those taken by a gun. >>

Well, sirs, I think you are just blindly reciting the stats without any concern for their reliability.  The number of gunshot deaths are easily established.  OTOH, the number of times a crime was "prevented" by firing or brandishing a gun depends entirely on the story told by the gun-owner.  So stats can easily and accurately tabulate one side of the equation but not the other.  One side of the equation is fact, the other may or may not be.  But the stats treat both sides of the equation as equally factual.  That's a problem you don't even try to address, and IMHO for good reason - - you've got nothing to contradict it with.

[sirs]

Last I saw, the #'s were coming from the FBI.  Apparently your beef is with them.  Good luck with that

[Michael Tee]

Well, we all know how infallible the FBI is.  I believe their last major project was trying to force Martin Luther King to commit suicide while their director was scampering around his office in high heels and a dress.  I'd trust their stats like I'd trust the guy selling home insulation door to door.

I actually thought the stats you were quoting were coming from a reliable institution.

[sirs]

ahh yes....when faced with facts, SOP...we delcare ths source unreliable & untrustworthy.  In this case the FBI.  And of course, we need to all embrace that bastian of objectivity & credibility, Vanity Fair as the bible when it comes to fact based reporting, per Tee           




I hope my sarcasm wasn't too thick

[Michael Tee]

That was sarcasm?  To me it's pretty self-evident that Vanity Fair is a lot more reliable than the FBI, but what would I know?  Still, even a bastion of probity like the FBI would have to account for the imbalance between the factual nature of one side of the equation (no. of gunshot deaths) and the less factual nature (crimes prevented) on the other side.  Seems to me that once the victim's dead, his last intentions are pretty much what the shooter says they were.  In any event, they're nowhere near as clear as the fact of the death itself.  Even to the all-knowing FBI.

[sirs]

That was sarcasm?  To me it's pretty self-evident that Vanity Fair is a lot more reliable than the FBI

LOL.....I rest my case

[Amianthus]

Wait a minute.

Weren't you arguing last week (maybe the week before) that government agencies are to be trusted as fair and reliable?