Cleveland.com:
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland police pull their guns too fast, fire at fleeing cars and people who pose no immediate threat and ignore potential danger to bystanders, the U. S. Department of Justice found.
A biting 58-page report released Thursday concluded that police violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, including by shooting an underwear-clad hostage victim and an unarmed driver who made an illegal turn.
The report blames several reasons for the “unreasonable” shootings. Police often lack the training and confidence necessary to control a situation without resorting to force. They are not required to tell their supervisors when they pull their weapons. And the prevailing police culture promotes an “us-against-them” mentality.
“They too often fire their weapons in a manner and in circumstances that place innocent bystanders in danger; and accidentally fire them, sometimes fortuitously hitting nothing and other times shooting people and seriously injuring them,” the report says.
The Justice Department examined nearly 600 use-of-force incidents from 2010-13 and did hundreds of interviews for the report, released less than two weeks after Cleveland police shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was waving an airsoft pellet gun outside Cudell Recreation Center.
Training shortfalls are a consistent issue in the report. Officers also push situations to an unnecessarily dangerous level, “either because they do not know how, or because they do not have an adequate understanding of the importance of de-escalating encounters before resorting to force whenever possible.”
Let that wash over you again. Think about that. They see themselves as Judge Dredd. Cleveland police fired weapons at drivers who committed misdemeanor traffic infractions by making illegal turns.
Of course, this violates the Supreme Court ruling in Tennessee versus Garner, clearly and without equivocation or qualification. And while training may play some role in this, thuggish behavior by social deviants who have been licensed to act out their criminal sociopathy upon the public by the corrupt court system unfortunately wasn’t listed in the DoJ report.