Here’s another incident dumped into a he bad cop thread.
This is the latest outrage incident involving police-this time, in Jacksonville FL. Quick synopsis of the story. Police witness a drug deal occur at a gas station with the suspect, 24 year old, Le’keian Woods, having a heavy looking object in his clothing. One officer that sees this says to the other officers “he has a firearm.” The vehicle the suspect is riding in leaves with the driver not wearing a seatbelt. Cops pull the vehicle over and woods flees from the vehicle and an officer pursues. After many orders to stop running, the officer deploys a taser that has no effect and fires another that has the desired effect. Woods goes down hard, smacking his face off of the pavement. Officer attempts to cuff him and woods resists.
Keep in mind, during this whole discussion that officers observed a heavy bulge in his clothing that they believed was a gun. Not able to get woods handcuffed, the officer punches woods in the face several times and he begins to give up. When he starts cuffing him, he starts resisting again. Then more officers arrive, with one delivering vicious knee strikes. It is a little unclear where these strikes are hitting-the head or the shoulders. Eventually, they are able to get him handcuffed.
Woods is charged with armed drug dealing and a few other charges. Meanwhile, back at the truck, the driver and another passenger completely cooperate, and miraculously, are unharmed. The driver tells the officer there is a gun in the car and the officer thanks him for letting them know that. It turns out, that before running, woods left his gun in the vehicle.
Bystander video shows officers struggling with woods and him being unable to stand after the incident. His mugshot shows his severely swollen face with his eyes swelled shut. The headlines and as always, ben crump, are outraged over the incident claiming that woods was beaten to a pulp over a seatbelt infraction. Mom says that she felt like Emmett Till’s mother watching the video.
The body cam footage shows a good bit more, including the chase, tasing, fight afterwards, and struggle to get him handcuffed.
My opinion of this beating. Completely justified.
First, the gang unit watched a drug deal go down and observed that woods had a firearm in his clothing. Officers are trained on characteristics of armed people. The way they walk, the way they protect or keep their hand wither near or on the weapon, a bulge in clothing, the appearance of something heavy in clothing pulling it down, and some other characteristics. I have been trained on this and have taught it to officers during defensive tactics training.
Second, according to scotus case, Graham v Connor-the standard that all police use of force is judged by, has several Graham factors. I am not going to get into all of them unless someone requests them, but I will touch on a few. Any police use of force is considered a seizure under the fourth amendment. The primary and most important one is that officers believed woods to be armed with a firearm. He ditched it, but the officers had no way of knowing that at the time of the incident. Next, woods was actively fleeing and resisting arrest the entire time and even after a good bit of force was used, he continued to resist until he was overpowered. Another factor is the number of officers vs number of offenders. In the end, there were multiple officers taking woods into custody, but initially, it was just one, which allows for a greater use of force. According to Graham, all use of force must be judged on the information officers have at the time of the incident and can never utilize 20/20 hindsight. What that means is that anyone that says “he didn’t even have the gun on him” are idiots that do not know anything about the rulings on police use of force. I am considered, or was(not sure if there is actually a time limit on this) a police use of force expert based upon my years of experience and training background. I have given multiple depositions for use in lawsuits regarding police use of force for my, and other departments that sought me out. I have testified in federal and circuit court about police use of force. The court of public opinion in the media and social media should not matter, unfortunately, it has been shown to have an increasingly higher effect on such cases, and lawyers like ben crump use that to their advantage. They create and magnify outrage to influence the public, influence prosecutors and politicians, and scare police departments and cities/counties about the size of a potential lawsuit if taken to a jury. ben crump, as much as I hate him, is very good at what he does and has become extremely wealthy and made the families of many shitbag criminals also wealthy.
Third, woods was charged with second degree murder in 2018 after he and an accomplice, Curtis, sold a man, king, drugs, and then tried to rob him. According to King, after he purchased the drugs, woods gave Curtis a signal and he then pulled out a handgun and began shooting at king, who returned fire, killing curtis. Woods was on parole for this crime at the time of this latest incident. I am having some difficulty(only this story pops up) finding exactly what he was convicted of or how much time he served-obviously, no more than five years. It is unknown if officers knew who woods was and if they did, if they were aware of his history.
The bottom line is that woods is obviously a criminal piece of shit as evidenced by his past criminal record and his continued life of crime. The outrage over this incident is pathetic and expected at this point any time race is viewed as a factor. In my opinion, race was not a factor for the police, who witnessed a crime involving an armed suspect, who flees and then fights with police. The outrage and demands for “justice” and social media response, as well as lawyers involvement is what is race based. Not one of them would care one but if woods were white. Videos at the end.
woods links and videos
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/...tcry-against-jacksonville-police/71030468007/
