KATU.com – Jun 3, 2009:
Although a man was shot by police and died from a bullet wound to the chest, the state medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide because he had cut his own wrists.
The shooting happened Tuesday at the Northridge Condominiums, located at 12600 S.E. Freeman Way.
According to police, when officers responded to the complex on a welfare call, they found a man bleeding and holding a knife. Police said when the officers ordered the man to freeze, he didn’t, causing them to open fire.
Some neighbors said the man never had a knife but the Milwaukie Police Department stands by their account of what happened.
If he had a half eaten steak, would they have ruled it a heart attack because of clogged arteries instead?
Welcome to my neighborhood. Not the first (or tenth time) this has happened. I think the Multnomah County Coroner only knows “Suicide” as a reason for death in a Cop encounter.
If he had cut his wrist and then intentionally charged or approached the police, then maybe his intent was to die.
“If he had cut his wrist and then intentionally charged or approached the police, then maybe his intent was to die.”
An “if” a “maybe” and a nickle will get you exactly five cents.
#4, SN,
What??? No change?
While tragic, we don’t know the whole story. I don’t think the police had any wish to just kill someone for the sake or thrill of killing them. But, that doesn’t mean the cops are totally justified.
Video cameras are turning into cops worst friends.
#6, Bryan,
I missed that part. Where in the story does it say he charged the police? The witnesses seem to think he was unarmed at the time.
#8 Unarmed? Right… He was actually gnawing on his wrists to get them to bleed.
Damn zombies…
I’m surprised us deep thinkers here didn’t catch the obvious. Let’s look at the opening paragraph again.
“Although a man was shot by police and died from a bullet wound to the chest, the state medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide because he had cut his own wrists.”
Did you catch the obvious WTF??
Look again. The reporter says “shot by police and died from a bullet wound” yet the medical examiner says “death a suicide because he had cut his own wrists”.
So what did the reporter do, take the body from the medical examiner and get a second examination?
Or maybe the reporter has psychic abilities?
This is a tainted article. There is no way the reporter could have known the cause of death without an examination, which examination says the guy died from cutting his wrists (blood loss).
Now that we know the reporter is biased, we can’t even take for truth the guy was shot in the chest, and certainly can’t take for truth that any such shot was fatal.
The speaker/presenter teaching a class that contained law enforcement types as well as others had a person step into his classroom and aim a stage gun that fired blanks at him and pull the trigger. He fell to the floor. The shooter instantly left.
The presenter then got up and told the class to write down what they had seen. They reported that a tall/short thin/fat bald man with a thick head of hair had shot/stabbed him depending on who you wanted to believe.
Some people were pretty good and others were absolutely wrong in just about every respect.
You can’t trust witness.
That being said one of the things cops don’t like is that they sometimes have to deal with people that want a cop to kill them like the pilot that wanted the US air force to shoot him down I think it was last month.
If this guy slashed his wrists, he most likely would have been happy to cut a cop or at least act like it to get them to stop him with a bullet.
There still is no fast, safe, and effective way to render a berserk human inert. The fast and effective ways are extremely fatal and at best safe for the user. Not the person rendered inert.
You people don’t live here. Suicide by Cop seems to be happening a LOT in the last 4 years.
Especially in the Portland area.
I happen to live here, and they don’t tell you about the past cases:
Man sitting in truck, shot to death – Suicide
Man catches fire after accident and tries to scramble for help WHILE ON FIRE- Cops shoot dead–Suicide.
Woman trying to get away from cop, while at traffic stop – Suicide.
These are only the surface. And the public continues to say “If they hadn’t tried to ” insert ANY reason “they would not have been killed.”
Don’t resist here in Portland. It will get you killed.
#10
Just to ‘beat a dead horse’. … If the suspect had “died” from cutting his wrists, how could he have charged the policeman – ya know, being dead and all.
Damn zombies, they just don’t know when to die.
Cops should be charged for excessive force… cause EVERYONE knows you can outrun a zombie.
I pledge allegiance to the POLICE of the United States of America, and to the Republican POLICE STATE for which it stands: one Nation under COPS, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for only COPS.
Obviously this examiner works for the COPS and not for the citizen he clear could give a crap for.
#10, Ah Yea,
Cutting the wrists is not a very efficient method of suicide. If he was still standing it is quite probable his veins were not deeply cut and were shutting down; a defensive mechanism. Most wrist cutters live long enough to be treated at a hospital.
If his wrists were cut deeply enough, he would very soon pass out from the blood loss.
A bullet to the chest is usually very traumatic and kills more than it injures. The lungs, liver, heart, spleen, and kidneys all bleed easily and usually traumatically. Often the shock of the bullet on the organs will be enough to kill a person.
It looks like Fusion and Rick didn’t comprehend my comment.
First, I didn’t say he charged the officers. That was Deowll.
Second, reread my post. Try to comprehend. It deals with how the reporter knew he died from a bullet wound. Where did he get this information? Answer that in light of #11’s comments.
‘Twas lead poisoning what killed the dude.
My wife and her sister witnessed a suicide by cop several years ago while eating at an IHOP. The guy had a knife in his hand, called 911 to report that someone (himself) was waving a knife outside the IHOP. He waited till the cops came, charged them with the knife, and was killed.
On investigation, it turned out he was a fireman that had allegedly molested a child, and preferred death to jail.
#16, Ah Yea,
When someone gets shot in the chest, they seldom live to tell about it. If someone cuts their wrists and is still standing, they just ain’t a gunna die from that.
You do the math.
Stranger suicides have been known to occur. When Salvador Allende realized that the coup d’etat against his government in Chile had succeeded, he reportedly shot himself 37 times in the back.
How is Suicide By Cop—a common problem in the lexicon of cops—not worth labeling as suicide? It’s not like they called the COD the slashes to his wrists.
Where were these neighbors who had the point blank view of the subject? I seem to remember a “get those people out of harms way” attitude in police training. “I was right across the street and I didn’t see any knife,” is often the source of “Some neighbors said the man never had a knife…” reportage.
How is it that the blog editor here failed to tie this story to the Major Headline subject matter in the original report? Suicide By Cop was the whole POINT to the original item, conveniently left out of the headline here to get folks riled up.
“Haw, haw. Made you look!” is the underlying principle for these blog entries. How is that not hypocritical?
Maybe a better point for the original item would have been how EASY suicide by cop can sometimes be.
As a practical matter, a knife is only a deadly weapon within a radius of several feet. Unless a cop is caught by surprise at close range and can’t back up, the use of deadly force against someone with a knife is hard to justify. I think too many cops just react badly when a suspect fails to immediately freeze on command. If the man was deaf, that certainly would have sealed his fate.
In the end, though, at least it’s fortunate this time that the cop didn’t kill someone who desperately wanted to live.
Police were called to a local establishment when it was reported that a person was laying on the ground in a threatening manner.
“..yes, we could all see the blood, it was everywhere…looked like he had been bleeding for hours….he sure looked dead to us…”
“..and finally arrive. They yelled at him and told him to drop the knife – he refused and they tasered him. They then told him to roll over on to his stomach – he refused, so they walked up and shot him in the chest…”
“…dumb bastard deserved to die – no one has the right to refuse a lawful order from a police officer..”
Seems the editors decided to use a story from a different reporter. This true version of actual event will never be known by the public.
I guess I’m just woundering, does anyone know if the heroes were wearing their Gap jeans when they offed this guy?
nunyac
Clearly we dont know all the details, but once again, the fact remains that the Cops in America are all to ready to use deadly force for little or no reason. Bullies in School and now Bullies in Life. Criminals with a Badge. They should have offered the guy a cookie?
I guess the coroner is saying he died of suicide because if you “allegedly” point a knife at an officer then you are committing suicide because they will “SHOOT YOU DEAD”!!!.
I am just assuming ofcourse.
Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/thecrypticone
I didn’t realized that the coroner has the say as to whether it is a suicide or not. I thought he simply stated the cause of death.
He died from loss of blood caused from the serrations on the forearms, but not the motives for doing it.
Perhaps I am wrong though.
#23, cafe,
All nice quotes, but I don’t see any link to their source.
#28, sorry…here you go.
dvorak.org/blog/2009/06/06/cops-shoot-and-kills-man-coroner-rules-it-a-suicide/#comments
#29 might have been too cryptic.
#23 was just teasing an earlier poster about who killed the guy 1st…the knife or the gun.
Post Script
The statement – “..This true version of actual event will never be known by the public..”
Is valid because;
It probably has happened sometime, somewhere in the past and if not, it will undoubtedly happen sometime, somewhere in the future.
And of course, because it’s been cited with a link reference (#29) :))