Too_Many_Tools
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Too bad that brains don't come with a gun purchase.
Know your target before you pull that gun you love to hide behind.
If I were on the jury I would rule for the cops...pull a gun on a cop
and suffer the consequences.
TMT
Florida man killed in police mix-up
Reuters -
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The death of a man shot inside his home,
by a sheriff's deputy who went to the wrong apartment looking for a
criminal suspect, has sparked protests this week over police
procedures in the central Florida city of Leesburg.
Andrew "Drew" Scott, 26, a pizza delivery driver, was shot dead at
1:30 a.m. on Sunday when deputies knocked on his apartment door
without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers. Scott
opened his door holding a gun, according to Lake County Sheriff
spokesman Lieutenant John Herrell.
The Lake County Sheriff has no policy requiring deputies to announce
themselves, Herrell told Reuters.
Prominent Orlando lawyer Mark Nejame, who has been hired by Scott's
family, told Reuters on Friday that lack of policy puts gun-owning
homeowners like Scott in a life-threatening dilemma.
"If they go to the door and it's a criminal, fine. But if it turns out
in the game of Russian roulette that it's a law enforcement officer,
you're dead," Nejame said.
Nejame said Scott acted reasonably and legally in arming himself while
trying to determine who was banging on his door in the middle of the
night.
Brian Evey, manager of a pizza store where Scott worked in Leesburg,
45 miles northwest of Orlando, scheduled a candlelight vigil for
Saturday night in front of Scott's apartment complex, and marched with
several dozen protesters earlier in the week in front of the sheriff's
office.
"This could happen to anybody. We do not want this to happen again,"
Evey said.
Kyan Ware, a former prosecutor and lawyer for the Florida Civil Rights
Association which is conducting its own investigation, on Friday
called the shooting "a tapestry of ineptitude" in which poorly trained
deputies operating with little information "acted on a hunch that was
wrong, that was miscalculated and ultimately resulted in an innocent
person's death."
At the time of the shooting, several deputies were looking for
Jonathon Brown, 31, who was involved in a beating 37 minutes earlier
in a different neighborhood and fled the scene on a motorcycle,
according to Brown's arrest affidavit. Deputies found Brown's
motorcycle, still hot, parked directly in front of Scott's apartment
although he was later located in an adjacent apartment building,
Herrell said.
"When the person came to the door, the door was flung open and the
occupant in that apartment pointed a gun at the deputy's face ... At
that point, the deputy took the action he took, obviously he was in
fear for his life, and at that point he shot Mr. Scott," Herrell said.
Herrell said he did not know why deputies chose not to identify
themselves as they knocked on Scott's door, but that decision was
within the deputies' discretion.
Ware said the deputy who shot Scott had witnessed two other Lake
County deputies shoot a suspect four days earlier, and should have
been placed on desk duty to recover from the trauma.
Evey said he hopes to get more people involved in further protests
until the sheriff's department makes changes to shore up public
safety.
"This guy lit up every room that he was in. He was amazing. We want
the whole country to know who this guy is," Evey said of Scott.
(Editing by David Adams and Mohammad Zargham)