Police who fatally shot a pregnant woman are sued by her family in Colorado
Police who fatally shot a pregnant woman are sued by her family in Colorado
The family of a pregnant woman who was shot and killed by police in Colorado have filed a lawsuit against the police officers who were on the scene.
Destinee Thompson was supposed to be on her way to lunch with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a robbery suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mother as she fled in her minivan.
Snelling added that the agency later discovered Thompson had warrants out for her arrest and the autopsy found illicit drugs in her system.
Man, I hate it when the cops bring up this irrelevant bullshit. All they’re trying to do is make the victim look less sympathetic, and make themselves look less bad in comparison. Even if the officers had known about the warrants and drugs, these facts don’t make it okay to gun a woman down.
I wish reporters would flip this on the cops. "Two officers, with no active warrants, killed a woman."
Two officers, with two active affairs for abuse of power, killed a women
I wish reporters would flip this on the cops. "Two officers, with no active warrants, killed a woman."
Ha ha ha! I would LOVE that!
Remember when a cop broke into Botham Jean's apartment and shot him in the face while he was sitting on his own couch eating ice cream? Remember when afterward they had a press conference to show off the <1 gram of marijuana they found just in case that made him a bad person who deserved to die.
Yeah they had no reasonable suspicion to target her.
Running from the police with an active arrest warrant while your high is pretty relevant lol
Afaik, running from the police also isn't a reason for them to gun someone down.
It's not irrelevant at all. It's likely the reason she didn't identify herself, which in turn led the police to believe she was their robbery suspect. Outstanding warrants and drugs wouldn't justify gunning her down, but a robber is much more likely to go on and hurt or kill someone.
Or, the constant barrage of videos thanks to people having smartphones where we see cops regularly exploiting their position and maiming and killing random innocent people. Might also be a decent reason why somebody may not want to just get ol buddy buddy with the police.
I mean I for one have seen more cops kill innocent people in videos than I saw people die on rotten.com.
Funny how "fatally shot" takes the sting out of "gunned down" or "killed".
"Murdered Two Innocent People." Allegedly. But also actually.
And it's so easy to get around that too. Just say "the Police killed a woman..." That is an absolute fact. Not saying murder which is a crime that they haven't yet been found guilty of.
💀
"heavy metal poisoning"
"Haemorrhagic issue" (i.e. bled to death on the kerb)
Officer-adjacent ballistic event resulted in a cessation of vitality in a non-suspect personage
They take your life in the street, then they take your humanity at the press conference.
Agreed. Too ambiguous. Plus the photo makes it seem like she lived! WTF
They murdered her because they thought she was a shoplifter?????
In what universe did it become ok to murder anyone for shoplifting???????
#ACAB always and forever
Doesn't matter how small the crime is or how unthreatening the suspect is. Failure to comply is cause for any and all escalation.
We heard about that first when it happened, and nothing at all was done when it was just some old lady hurt. (edit: Even with bodycam) THEN the laughing video came out a few days later and THEN the public outcry ramped up enough they had no choice. Only then was there any action against those officers.
But… but… she used a knife! She backed into an inanimate object! That made her an immediate, deadly threat!
Edit: that was sarcasm, folks. Jeez.
Pretty much. 😠
Frustrated by the district attorney’s decision last year not to charge the officers, Thompson’s family filed a wrongful death and excessive force lawsuit on Tuesday against five officers from the Denver suburb of Arvada who were present when she was killed.
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I don't like "the shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. I always thought a cop should be a white knight. They need to be ready to throw down their lives to save someone. A us vs them mentality, the fact the police are people and some have families and their own wants and needs will mess with anyone's line of thinking. Police have to be ready to risk opening the door to confirm a dangerous suspect before they use force to try and save themselves.
Yeah, I don't know why so many people seem to forget this, but cops aren't supposed to shoot guilty people either.
Judge Dredd was suppose to be cynical satire not something we actually want
Then maybe we should have actual standards for who becomes a cop? But that'd leave us with no cops. Problem solved?
@ivanafterall @MicroWave @samuraipizzacat420
Sounds good. 👍
the fact the police are people and some have families and their own wants and needs will mess with anyone’s line of thinking.
Almost like they should be carefully evaluated and trained to make sure they can properly handle tense situations.
Police have to be ready to risk opening the door to confirm a dangerous suspect before they use force to try and save themselves.
Not if they are protected by every level of the system from any possible consequences. So much easier to just assume all citizens are a potential enemy and go in gun's blazing. Just to be safe (for themselves).
💀
fact the police are people and some have families and their own wants and needs will mess with anyone’s line of thinking.
As human beings with families and wants and needs they should have the empathy to realize their escalations are going to end or permanently change the state of someone else's life. They are the trained professionals.
The person they are trying to talk to could be stupid, deaf, high, mentally challenged, terrified, in the midst of a panic attack or breakdown from other causes, or any of a million other things that will cause them to not comply as expected.
Once she was in the car, block her in, call for backup. While you wait for them do one of the tens of other possible choices I'm not taking the time to list right now to immobilize the vehicle without smashing a window and putting a potentially innocent person deeper into their very human, very biological fight or flight response.
This isn't so clear cut, the police did try to ask questions first. They asked her to stop and speak to them, she kept walking and got in the car. They asked her to get out and speak to them, she refused. They broke the window (escalation) so she panicked and tried to drive away, smashed a police car behind and then drove forwards over the curb. At that point she's using her car in a very dangerous manner, so lethal force is potentially justified.
However the police shouldn't have escalated by breaking the window to begin with. They had her contained, she was no longer a risk, not until they escalated.
This isn’t so clear cut, the police did try to ask questions first.
I appreciate your attempt to try taking a nuanced view, but you prove yourself wrong by the end of it.
However the police shouldn’t have escalated by breaking the window to begin with. They had her contained, she was no longer a risk, not until they escalated.
So in other words, it is clear cut.
Thompson, sitting in her minivan and surrounded by five officers, locked the doors and refused to get out, repeating, “It wasn’t me,” the district attorney wrote in the 2022 letter explaining their decision not to charge the officers.
One officer smashed the passenger window with a baton, and Thompson backed the car up, hitting a police vehicle parked behind her. She then drove forward over the curb and onto the road.
One officer began shooting, according to the district attorney’s letter, because he believed another officer was struck by the car or being dragged under it, and eventually shot and killed Thompson. Her unborn child also died.
Right out of the playbook.
- Terrify and/or physically attack the suspect.
- When the suspect responds as all humans do to being terrified or attacked:
- Ramp up the use of force, and if you don't kill them you at least get to add resisting arrest or assaulting an officer.
- No worries if you've destroyed someone's life, permanently decreased their overall health, or killed them. The taxpayers will pay the inevitable settlement, and there's almost no chance of criminal charges.