Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Dog Day Afternoon in Detroit Courtroom

Related: Day in Detroit 

Guess who is out of order!

"Grandmother testifies about night police killed child" Associated Press,  June 11, 2013

DETROIT — A grandmother testified Monday that she could only watch in terror as masked police officers with guns drawn stormed her home in a hunt for a murder suspect that led to the fatal shooting of her 7-year-old granddaughter.

Beneath a quilt of Disney cartoon characters, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones lay on the living room couch of her grandmother’s first-floor flat on Detroit’s east side. Mertilla Jones lay at the other end.

Within seconds a stun grenade smashed through a window, exploding over the couch. The officers swarmed into the living room and, moments later, Aiyana was bleeding to death with a gunshot wound to her head.

‘‘As soon as they came in, their guns were just pointing right there, and he pulled the trigger,’’ Jones, Aiyana’s grandmother, said Monday of Joseph Weekley. She was testifying during the Detroit police officer’s involuntary manslaughter trial in Wayne County Circuit Court.

Members of the Detroit police special response team were being shadowed by a crew from a reality TV show during the May 2010 nighttime raid

Can anyone really tell what is real and what is not from television anymore?

Armed with an MP5 submachine gun and behind a shield, team veteran Weekley was selected as point man for the operation, a search for murder suspect Chauncey Owens.

Weekley has said his gun accidentally fired when Mertilla Jones, 50, bumped into him or grabbed it. Prosecutors say he was negligent in failing to control his weapon. 

She was on the couch in terror! WTF?

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That's some rough testimony there judging by the photograph, and to then have to endure the insult of the official cover story....

"Officer’s errors killed girl, jury told" Associated Press,  June 04, 2013

DETROIT — Armed with a shield and a submachine gun, a highly trained Detroit police officer made critical errors during a house raid that led to the fatal shooting of a sleeping 7-year-old girl, a prosecutor told jurors Monday.

God help us all.

There is no argument that an unintentional shot from Joseph Weekley’s gun killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones on May 16, 2010, as police stormed the home in search of a murder suspect.

They can't ever just accost someone on the street and arrest them anymore? I mean, if they "knew he was there." Or did they just get the wrong house? 

And why didn't they just call the NSA and ask for all the communications records? That's how you find or monitor people now (and then).

But the officer is on trial for involuntary manslaughter because authorities believe he was extremely negligent in failing to control his weapon.

Police, accompanied by a crew from the reality TV show, ‘‘The First 48,’’ fired a stun grenade into the home to cause confusion.

Yeah, come along for the bust, this is going to be great p.r. for the police state! What an agenda-pimping pre$$titute has become the AmeriKan media. 

Btw, they unleashed about a dozen of them on that allegedly wound bomber in the boat back here in Boston. Then they unloaded with bullets on the thing, and, oh, you know, all down the memory hole and back to the AmeriKan myth.

Weekley, a member of the elite Special Response Team, was the first officer through the door — ‘‘the tip of the spear’’ — assistant prosecutor Rob Moran said in his opening statement to the jury.

As if he with the shield and submachine gun is the one in danger as in the door is kicked.

‘‘The flash grenade goes off: Boom!’’ Moran said. ‘‘He stands there. This is called the fatal funnel. You never stand in a doorway. Three seconds after the flash grenade detonates, his gun goes off and that’s when the fatal shot is fired.’’

Aiyana was sleeping on the couch. Police have said Weekley was jostled by, or collided with, Aiyana’s grandmother, Mertilla Jones, causing the gun to fire. Prosecutors disagree.

‘‘No one grabbed his gun. . . . There was no struggle,’’ Moran said.

That is what the video shows?

But Weekley’s attorney countered that this was what happened. In his remarks to jurors, Steve Fishman said Jones grabbed the gun after the grenade went off.

Then they do not stun or confuse anyone.

‘‘He pulls back and his hand hits the trigger. . . . It was an accident. It was not careless. It was not reckless,’’ the defense lawyer said.

He said Aiyana’s death was a ‘‘tragedy of the highest order,’ but not a crime.

Blog editor really doesn't know what to type anymore. Events like these happen every day across this nation, and kill far more people than "terrorists."

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If I come across any more testimony in my Globe I will update.