Prosecutor Blames Cop For Stopping Drug Dealer Who Pulled Gun Before Being Shot

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Prosecutor Blames Cop For Stopping Drug Dealer Who Pulled Gun Before Being Shot - Blue Lives Matter


Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner backed allegations that officers should never have made contact with Cortez Shepherd.

St. Louis, MO – St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner backed a city alderwoman’s declaration that St. Louis police are to blame for a deadly encounter with an armed drug dealer on Thursday.

The gunman, 28-year-old Cortez Shepherd, was fatally shot by police as he attempted to pull a gun out of his pocket during a fight with the officers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

St. Louis Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green claimed that the interaction between the four-time felon and police “never should have happened,” in the first place, because Gardner has vowed not to prosecute marijuana possession offenses under 100 grams, according to her Twitter post later that day.

“And she’s right,” Green quipped. “Our police also need to be instructed to abide by these rules.”

The alderwoman further declared that the officers’ efforts to keep such offenders off the streets “is a waste of police resources.”

Gardner retweeted Green’s message approximately an hour later and expressed her approval for the alderwoman’s accusations against the officers.

“Exactly,” the circuit attorney tweeted.

The St. Louis Police Officer’s Association (POA) released a scathing statement late Thursday night, blasting Gardner for helping to perpetuate anti-police rhetoric.

“In what has become an all too familiar refrain, the anti-police faction began spinning false narratives that a helpless weed possessor was murdered for no reason,” the POA said.

What actually took place was much different, the group noted.

The altercation occurred in the 3900-block of Garfield Avenue at approximately 12:50 a.m., St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The area, known as “Hayden’s rectangle,” is fraught with “heavy” drug activity, and has been the target of increased crime-reduction efforts, Chief Hayden explained.

Officers patrolling the area spotted a car parked with a group of people standing around it, and went over to investigate the suspected drug activity.

A seven-year-old child was in the backseat of the suspect’s vehicle at the time.

During the course of their interaction with Shepherd, police seized crack/cocaine, bars of Xanax, and marijuana, according to the POA.

The St. Louis Police Department also posted photos of the illegal contraband found at the scene.

“When police attempted to effectuate an arrest, the suspect initiated a struggle,” the POA explained. “Police’s attempt to use a Taser to subdue the suspect was unsuccessful.”

Police said that the convicted felon then attempted to pull out a revolver he had hidden in his pocket.

“Officers were required to use deadly force to neutralize the immediate threat to their lives,” the POA said.

Shepherd was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The seven-year-old child was not physically harmed during the incident, and managed to run to her mother, who was nearby, Chief Hayden said.

The officers sustained minor injuries during the brawl, according to the POA.

Police recovered the suspect’s fully-loaded revolver at the scene.

According to the POA, Shepherd had four prior felony conviction and had recently been released from a nine-year prison stint.

“Shockingly, however, the elected prosecutor Kim Gardner tweeted an ominous threat to police,” the POA noted. “She agreed with notorious cop hater Alderwoman Megan Green that the ‘interaction’ with the armed drug dealer dealing drugs in a car with a 7 year old girl ‘never should have happened.’”

“What is stunning is that the assistant circuit attorney who prosecuted the cases against this suspect from 2009 to 2011 was none other than Assistant Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner,” the group pointed out, adding that she is “intimately familiar with the suspect’s career in crime.”

The POA urged Gardner to recuse herself and her entire office from having any involvement in the investigation into the incident.

“Pre-judging an officer involved shooting and twitter threatening these brave officers is horribly unethical,” the POA declared. “This blatant dereliction of duty and unethical threat by this ‘prosecutor’ is nothing short of alarming.”

The group also called out Chief Hayden, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, and St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards for standing silent “while Gardner abdicates her duty, promotes a false narrative regarding this incident and publicly threatens officers.”

“Their silence is deafening,” the FOP said.

Krewson raved about how much she supports police during a luncheon on Tuesday.

“By Thursday, she was standing idly by while her police officers were lied about and threatened for doing their job,” the POA railed.

The group accused city leaders of promoting “the systematic demoralizing” of the St. Louis police force.

“We will not stand idly by and let them continue to dismantle the safety and security of our City and its people,” the POA concluded.
 
I think the police from this wonderful city should just take a step back and focus solely on speeding tickets. Don't worry about responding to calls, and forget those suspicious vehicles and anything else that looks out of sorts. No worries. Heck don't even carry a gun or a tazer. See a dude smoking a bone? Don't arrest 'em, ask if you can take a hit. When the residents call to complain to the police department, just forward the calls to alderwoman and the circuit attorney.

I would not want to be an officer in any city today. That is a lose lose job/situation.
 
maybe the police should just refuse to patrol the areas around the alderwoman's and attorney's residences and make it know to the drug dealers that those are "safe" zones?
 
When one of these thug beauties, who were just turning their lives around, break into Gardner or Green's house and Gardner or Green call for help, the response from police should be, "Sorry, we have better things to do with our time."
 
Why would you even bother in that dump ?
The ones close to retirement sit it out playing cards in the station and the younger ones move on elsewhere.
Just let them go feral.
 
Don’t patrol there. Stay back in HQ drink some coffee and have a good time at the taxpayers expense. After a few weeks they will be begging for the police.

No. They won't. It has to get big-time worse before you elect a Giulliani-type to fix it all. Look at NYC. What did it take? 15? 20 years? How long was Ed "Howmydoin???" Koch mayor????

For the most part, people don't think understand broken-window theory. It takes them being completely generationally fed up before they'll do something. :(

Rollins is doing a great job of turning Boston into 1972 again.
 
According to Liberals it was RACISM that took all the black crack dealers off the streets in the 90's and made them felons, ruining black families..
 
Prosecutor Blames Cop For Stopping Drug Dealer Who Pulled Gun Before Being Shot - Blue Lives Matter


Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner backed allegations that officers should never have made contact with Cortez Shepherd.
----------
The altercation occurred in the 3900-block of Garfield Avenue at approximately 12:50 a.m., St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The area, known as “Hayden’s rectangle,” is fraught with “heavy” drug activity, and has been the target of increased crime-reduction efforts, Chief Hayden explained.

Officers patrolling the area spotted a car parked with a group of people standing around it, and went over to investigate the suspected drug activity.

Maybe the guy was a total D-bag and Darwin Award nominee, but standing around a car doesn't sound like probable cause to me. If that is all they had, the Circuit Attorney has a point.

Even if your neighborhood has gone to hell, standing around a car is not illegal nor is it alone - absent additional suspicious activity - probable cause for either a detention or a search. A police officer is free to walk up to anyone in a public place and attempt to strike up a conversation. Had the recently departed simply said "I choose not to have a conversation with you," he might still be here.

But what I'm really dying to know is, did the Chief name the area after himself or did the drug dealers name it after him as a token of respect?
 
Maybe the guy was a total D-bag and Darwin Award nominee, but standing around a car doesn't sound like probable cause to me. If that is all they had, the Circuit Attorney has a point.

Even if your neighborhood has gone to hell, standing around a car is not illegal nor is it alone - absent additional suspicious activity - probable cause for either a detention or a search.
Probable cause is not required for a Terry Stop.

But what I'm really dying to know is, did the Chief name the area after himself or did the drug dealers name it after him as a token of respect?
You can't buy press like that, LOL.

They say there's no such thing as "bad publicity".
(A.k.a., "Every knock a boost").
-- Howie Carr​
 
Probable cause is not required for a Terry Stop.

I understand that judicial precedent says all they need is "articulable suspicion," a very vague, nebulous and undefined - undefinable - term.

My copy of the Constitution prohibits unwarranted and unreasonable searches and seizures. If you aren't free to leave, you've been seized.

The two concepts are fundamentally in conflict to the point they are almost mutually exclusive. If one is true, the other must be a lie. One is in the Constitution, the other is not.

Inventing out of thin air and entirely new category of custody not bound by the constraints of the Constitution is morally corrupt.

What does it say? What did you do? Both cops and judges should be good at this because reduced to its essence, that is their job description.
 
My copy of the Constitution prohibits unwarranted and unreasonable searches and seizures. If you aren't free to leave, you've been seized.

The two concepts are fundamentally in conflict to the point they are almost mutually exclusive. If one is true, the other must be a lie. One is in the Constitution, the other is not.

Inventing out of thin air and entirely new category of custody not bound by the constraints of the Constitution is morally corrupt.
Should the police have torn off to court and obtained a warrant before arresting Jack Ruby?
 
Should the police have torn off to court and obtained a warrant before arresting Jack Ruby?

The term probable cause has a definable word. Something having a likelihood greater than 50% can be defined as probable. Anything less must be defined as possible but cannot by definition be characterized as probable - at least not without lying.

When a cop on patrol drives by a C-store and sees someone in front of the counter holding a gun, no he doesn't need to get to a judge first. My issue is watering down the requirement to something that has zero real meaning. Just because I'm standing around talking to a bunch of people that by itself doesn't establish any probable cause. Nor does it if I do that even in a neighborhood that has a higher than average crime rate. It has to be something that I am doing that establishes probable cause.
 
I understand that judicial precedent says all they need is "articulable suspicion," a very vague, nebulous and undefined - undefinable - term.
The standard is "reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts".

The term probable cause has a definable word. Something having a likelihood greater than 50% can be defined as probable. Anything less must be defined as possible but cannot by definition be characterized as probable - at least not without lying.
Not even courts believe that.
The probable-cause standard is incapable of precise definition or quantification in to percentages because it deals with probabilities and depends on the totality of the circumstances. We have stated, however, that the substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt, and that the belief of guilt must be particularized with respect to the person to be searched or seized. Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003)​
 
so the politicians are attacking the BOR and law abiding citizens and are advocating to let criminals go free.

Why do these people still have their jobs?
 
The standard is "reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts".


Not even courts believe that.
The probable-cause standard is incapable of precise definition or quantification in to percentages because it deals with probabilities and depends on the totality of the circumstances. We have stated, however, that the substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt, and that the belief of guilt must be particularized with respect to the person to be searched or seized. Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003)​

Which is exactly what I am saying, thank you. A bunch of people standing around a car having a conversation is not sufficient cause for any investigative detention. Feel free to walk up and invite yourself into the conversation but don't get butthurt if you're told it's by invitation only. Based on the article which included the Union's official response, nothing suggests any PC existed.
 
Which is exactly what I am saying, thank you. A bunch of people standing around a car having a conversation is not sufficient cause for any investigative detention. Feel free to walk up and invite yourself into the conversation but don't get butthurt if you're told it's by invitation only. Based on the article which included the Union's official response, nothing suggests any PC existed.
Officer.Com: St. Louis Cop Kills Man in Struggle for Gun
...
Officers in uniform were patrolling the stretch in a two-man patrol car, when they noticed a car parked on Garfield with several people around it. The officers went up to the car and talked to the driver.

“They noticed the occupant had marijuana on his lap,” Hayden said.

The officers asked him to get out of the car, but he refused, police said. The officers opened the car door and “removed” him from the car to arrest him, police said.

As police searched the man, one of the officers, 24 years old, alerted his partner that the man had a gun in his pocket. “A struggle then began as the suspect attempted to retrieve the firearm from his pocket,” police said in a written summary.

The other officer, 28 years old, pulled his Taser and used it on the man. But the man kept struggling, police said. The older officer then pulled his department-issued handgun and fired one shot, hitting the man in the chest.​
 
Discourse between police and prosecutors is a good thing as innocent people being railroaded is less common, as that requires cooperation from both. I see this as a good thing despite it taking an armed career criminal being killed to spark it.
 


It is my understanding that pulling someone over for a minor traffic violation is very easy. You will touch a line, fail to signal, drive too close to the person in front of you, speed, etc. If the SCOTUS rules in favor of Glover, it means they will have to follow the person for a few minutes longer now till they go 1 mph over the speed limit downhill.
 
It is my understanding that pulling someone over for a minor traffic violation is very easy. You will touch a line, fail to signal, drive too close to the person in front of you, speed, etc. If the SCOTUS rules in favor of Glover, it means they will have to follow the person for a few minutes longer now till they go 1 mph over the speed limit downhill.
Nowadays pretextual traffic stops aren't nearly as much fun as they used to be.
 
So basically, a bunch of LE REMFs in some places are prolly jerking off over this, so they can turn the next switch on their ALPR rigs- "alert if owner/operator has suspended/revoked DL" and initiate a stop on that ping alone?

-Mike
 
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