Man shot in his apartment by police hopes for justice

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I think what he's trying to say is that this is not a case of modern police running amok in wholly new 'militarization of the police' style like people seem inclined to believe. Rather, it is a problem as old as the firearm itself. What does he have in his hands? Better decide in about .3 seconds. And, don't be wrong.

But, he can speak for himself.

Mike
 
That's pretty much it, though I thought it was pretty obvious. I'll withhold comment on cop bashers/apologists and their kneejerk tendencies as my feelings have been made clear many times and are available here and at TFL.

Edit to add: There's a perfect opportunity to participate in a good old fashioned cop bashing here, but doing it on the current thread will only make you look biased.
 
That's pretty much it, though I thought it was pretty obvious. I'll withhold comment on cop bashers/apologists and their kneejerk tendencies as my feelings have been made clear many times and are available here and at TFL.
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Actually, my first thought upon reading your post was also "how does the presence, and knowledge of presence, of drugs justify the shooting of a naked and unarmed man?" Whether or not he was committing or condoning a crime does not justify the use of deadly force, absent the requisite threat to life. You never made that distinction and the obvious intent of your statement was that he got what he deserved for allowing drugs in.
 
I always love the press stories that follow an officer involved shooting. My favorite was a while back in Memphis where an officer shot a man that had hit him with a 2 X 4 and taken his gun... The officer shot the suspect with his BUG while laying on the ground with the suspect standing over him pointing the officers gun at the officers head.

Now as to how the press reported it: Well, Tyrone (Or whatever his name was) was always a good boy that loved his mama and went to church. He was always supportive of his 13 illegitimate kids and his only trouble with the law had been because of racial profiling and his search for justice in a racist society. Why, if Tyrone had been given the same chances that other people had he probably would have been a brain surgeon or maybe even president but now he is dead because a cop decided to stop and harass him which is what drove him to strik out at the evil police that were harassing him. It was really the fault of the police for being there in the first place. They should have just let him sell his dope so he could support his crack habit..I mean children. It is just typical police brutality. Killing another innocent person and those evil cops will not even be charged. Who would have thought...

Seriously folks, we are only hearing one side of this story and that is the guy that got shot. Do you really think he is going to say "Yep, I am a criminal. I did something stupid like (Insert stupid crime here) and that caused the officer to shoot me...or is he going to play the innocent victim.
 
Seriously folks, we are only hearing one side of this story and that is the guy that got shot. Do you really think he is going to say "Yep, I am a criminal. I did something stupid like (Insert stupid crime here) and that caused the officer to shoot me...or is he going to play the innocent victim.
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Agreed. But I find it hard to imagine a set of facts that would justify this shooting, given that the police dept. would have jumped to claim that the owner was armed, etc., if there were evidence to support this defense.
 
You never made that distinction and the obvious intent of your statement was that he got what he deserved for allowing drugs in.
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Well maybe you're right. How's this? The cops were justified to be a little nervous during the sweep of a home where criminal activity was known to be taking place. They entered a locked room with guns at the ready, as opposed to flowers and girl scout cookies. The description of his wounds leads me to believe that he was the victim of a negligent discharge by a nervous cop. That said, had he not permitted the criminal activity to take place in his house (which I suspect he was fully aware of), the nervous cop would not have been in the house in the first place...much less standing nervously outside the bedroom door with his finger on the trigger. I don't necessarily agree that all this was worth busting a 20 yr old with a bag of weed, but I'm not willing to buy into the innocent victim vs. JBT in this case.
 
Another horribly dangerous marijuana dealer taken off the streets. Yay for the system!

The victim here could have surely not permitted the criminal activity in his house by kicking his brother out and making him someone else's problem. Maybe then the cops would have shot the brother instead. Or maybe before that happened, the brother might have turned to a life of real crime and shot some other innocent person.

Let's rail against the guy for being compassionate with his brother and nearly getting killed for it so the cops could make a pointless bust that amounts to pretty much nothing.:fire:

Rick
 
Well, you have to

think the guy knew that his brother was a user and could be caught. to think that he was safe in his house was stupid.

facts, his brother was a user. It is Illegal. When you are allowing that in your house you are open to the situation that led up to the shooting.


No excuse, illegal is illegal and this was drugs and police do have drug raids.

Was it a tragedy? YES. Did the cop have hours to see the reactions of the man behind the door? NO. Did he have seconds? MAybe split second.


Did the cop know it was his brother? Doubt it. What could he have thought? Another drug user.


I am not a cop and I am all against JBT's. I am one who believes in the fact that by letting the brother have drugs int he house and knowing his past and his interactions with LEO's, he invited this into his house.


Sorry but with drugs comes the possibility of raids. And the fact the man was 100% different than his drug brother, by letting him live in the house while Drugs were still there makes him accountable for what goes on in the house.


I am all for the use of raids and quick thinking of cops. No cop wants to Kill, Come on. Split second.


If there were no Drugs this never would have happened.

This world needs to start taking accountability for it's actions. People are themselves to blame. Enough of these McDonalds type people who never accept blame for things they, not others, do.


Sad story but you face risk when you let drug users in your house.
 
I think a uniformed officer should have opened that door. They had a warrant? Why did they even have a plainclothes officer in the entry team? Anyone in that apartment was not guilty when the police entered it.
The local pd may have provided him with a flag draped coffin if it was my house, and my bedroom door.

More facts needed. IF there had been a firearm in that bedroom it would have been stated in the paper, the police would have been eager to produce it, even if was only a toy with an orange nipple on it.

If a civilian shoots someone with "something" in his hand it had better have bullets in it, and he will see some striped daylight anyway.

The best thing I see for the leo here is that they found 622 guilty dollars to use for legal fees.

I will call excessive us of force here, subject to additional information.
 
Those articles are all dated. They all say "DA is investigating".

Here is the unfortunate follow up. Once again, the JBT gets off scott-free of criminal charges. I hope we see a hefty civil suit announced soon.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/42304-unarmedshooting.html

No Charges in Shooting of Unarmed Man
(Doylestown-AP) April 23, 2004 A Bucks County county prosecutor has declined to file charges against a detective for shooting a naked, unarmed man during a February drug raid.

Officials say Detective Dale Keddie thought 23-year-old James Hoskins was carrying a weapon, but Hoskins had only a wadded T-shirt by him when Keddie entered the dark bedroom of a Levittown apartment.

Hoskins was critically wounded in the abdomen and leg and has undergone at least 30 operations.

His left leg was amputated above the knee. Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons says Keddie "did what he had to do under the circumstances he was facing at the time."

Officers were seeking to arrest Hoskins' brother, who was in the living room. A lawyer for James Hoskins faults Gibbons' decision.

Thomas Mellon Junior, a former federal prosecutor, says he understands the need to be concerned about the safety of police officers. But he says police officers and the district attorney also have a great responsibility for public safety.
 
Ever think that maybe the DA decided not to charge the Ofc because there was no PC to charge him??? Maybe the DA saw the ENTIRE story and not just what the biased media put out... Hmmmmmm. Don't let the possibility of the truth get in your way!
 
FedDC
Here's a link to an editorial which is biased in favor of the officer (because you must have missed it the first time):
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/219-04252004-288997.html

It offers no explanation of why the officer was let off other than the shirt. The author simply writes it off as a mistake as if nobody was troubled in the slightest. In reality a man was put into a coma and lost his leg. How would you react if the same thing happened to you?

Furthermore, the DA hasn't stepped forward to explain why he hasn't besides Keddie believing that his life was in danger.

The facts:
Keddie was not in uniform; Hoskins was naked and carrying a shirt; Keddie shot Hoskins which resulted in him going into a coma and losing his leg; so far, Keddie has gotten off scot free

While walking down the street would one be justified shooting someone who happened to be carrying a "small, dark object"?
 
Am I the only one who noticed that the articles state that the cops were there to bust the victim's brother, who was in the living room. Now, I don't know the layout of the apartment in question, but every place I've ever lived, you had to go through the living room to get to the bedrooms. So I think it's reasonable to infer that the cops already had their man before they started going through the bedrooms. So why didn't they announce their presence before searching the rest of the dwelling?

For that matter, why didn't they just surround the place and knock on the front door? Why do a no-knock entrance (and didn't some court just decide that they had to knock and give 20 seconds?) with a non-uniformed cop in the lead? In my house, as I suspect would be the case in a lot of houses here (assume owner doesn't know about bro's stash in this hypothetical) said cop would have gotten a kisser full of 00 when he came through the door.

Another interesting note: given that none of the stories mentions Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or the NAACP, i'm going to assume that Hoskins is white. Because you know that if the cops had shot a naked, unarmed black man, it'd be national news.
 
All these police shooting, beating, tasering, maceing threads are starting to run together. The details change but the arguments don't vary much.

The common problem that doesn't change is arrogance on the part of the LEOs and prosecutuors involved. It seems to be the attitude that anything they do to anyone is excused in the name of "officer safety". I don't want to see anyone hurt, including the officers involved. If that means a few crooks get away so be it. Back off. It's not like you catch all of them anyway.

No knock raids are always a disaster waiting to happen---for the people on the recieving end. The attitude I see from the LEOs is that the lives of civilians are worth less than their's. If you feel that way you are in the wrong job. Get out before you kill somebody. Somebody innocent.

A man is crippled for life over a handful of drugs and way too many think that is OK. That attitude is scary for other reasons to be discussed on other threads.
 
If there were no Drugs this never would have happened.
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WRONG...If there were no drug LAWS this would never have happened.

This world needs to start taking accountability for it's actions. People are themselves to blame. Enough of these McDonalds type people who never accept blame for things they, not others, do.
Sad story but you face risk when you let drug users in your house.
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Jeez... Guy takes his brother into his home...Cop shoots him and nearly loses his leg... See thats what happens when you try to be a good samaritan.
Glad we have the JBT point of view well represented on THR.

atek3
 
Atek....
[JBT]
Come on man!! Can't you see that the officer felt in danger by the naked man? I mean, jeez! his only problem was his AIM!
[/JBT]

:rolleyes:

I remained objective on this until I read the other article... BOTH articles, written from different viewpoints, illustrate the same to me: unjustified deadly force.

Also, why was this guy not in uniform?

And furthermore, has the war on drugs advanced to the point where it's now justified to cripple someone over a little dope?

Please!


James
 
It said in one of the articles that Keddie was not in uniform because he was posing as a maintenance man in order to get the brother to open the door into the apartment.
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Is it SOP to use deception to gain entrance to a house?

James
 
I wonder if incidents like this would continue if LEO's homes were raided and their families were shot, beaten, and terrorized? How long would the "War on Drugs" be tolerated? :uhoh:
 
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