United Liberty

Remember last year, when the NYPD had a shootathon outside the Empire State Building? Many claimed that the NYPD acted recklessly during the incident; indeed, all 9 injured were shot not by the criminal, but by the cops. You may have thought that the NYPD would get away with it, but it looks like one victim is going to try and sue the pants off them:

A University of North Carolina student wounded in last summer’s shooting outside the Empire State Building is suing New York City police department.

Chenin Duclos (SHEHN’-ihn DOO’-kloh) and eight other bystanders were wounded by police gunfire, ricochets and fragments. Officers were engaged in a gunfight with a man suspected of gunning down a former co-worker.

Duclos alleges the officers were grossly negligent.

The lawsuit says police should have taken steps to avoid the confrontation. It suggests they should have waited until he moved away from bystanders.

The shooting happened as thousands were on the streets surrounding the landmark on a bright August morning.

There was no immediate comment from city officials.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. It was filed Tuesday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court.

How’s that for a kick in the butt?

In some ways, I find this morbidly humorous. On Monday, I published a rebuttal to TPM editor Josh Marshall, who wrote a long essay about the “non-gun owning tribe of Americans” and how he felt about guns. One thing I left out about his essay, because it didn’t flow with the rest of my piece, was a response to this (emphasis mine):

[A gun] frightens me. I don’t want to have those in my home. I don’t particularly want to be around people who are carrying. Cops, I don’t mind. They’re trained, under an organized system and supposed to use them for a specific purpose. But do I want to have people carrying firearms out and about where I live my life — at the store, the restaurant, at my kid’s playground? No, the whole idea is alien and frankly scary. Because remember, guns are extremely efficient tools for killing people and people get weird and do stupid things.

Trained? In this NYPD case, hardly.

I’m not saying that cops should be unarmed, like the guys in the UK. But I do think we should stop being so trusting of cops, who, like every other human, make mistakes—and to pardon a very terrible pun, they make grave mistakes. Like shooting an unarmed man in Macon, Georgia, for apparently no reason. But maybe Josh Marshall would want the cops to be unarmed. After all, the guy doesn’t like the Second Amendment, and is deathly afraid of guns. Here’s an instance where the cops caused a lot more harm than the criminal. Wouldn’t, under Josh’s logic, cops be disarmed?

It just goes to show you that you shouldn’t put so much faith and trust in cops. While I’m sure many of them are good people, just as many are terrible, and just as many are just not great at their jobs. They’re people, just like everyone else.