i’ve been following the story of the Treptow case – where a legal permit-holder shot an undercover cop who was allegedly behaving very aggressively, and finally allegedly pulled a gun on the man’s wife – since the beginning.
Joel Rosenberg’s been following it even more closely. Unaccountably, I missed his analysis of the release – the almost-complete release – of the relevant 911 transcripts, which he posted last Friday (actual transcripts here).
Joel’s analysis (with some emphases added by me):
Some other items of interest, and/or comment:
- Officer Friendly — see p. 6 — either didn’t notice or didn’t think to mention that there were two kids in the car.
- He identifies a “white male” and a “white female.” [Remember this: the office notes no children. It’ll be important later.] That’s not redacted.
- Any identification of Officer Friendly’s race, age, size and demeanor is redacted.
- One caller— see p. 4 — says he saw Officer Friendly pull a gun. What’s not clear from the transcript is how long between that and when the officer got shot.
- That’s kind of important. If you believe Officer Friendly’s story, he drew in response to Treptow pulling a gun on him — I guess he’d claim that retreat was neither practical nor safe. Surely, if that was the case, he would likely immediately have shot the fellow who he thought was trying to kill him — after all, if you believe him, he didn’t draw the gun to further intimidate a guy…. A second or so gap in that narrative, and Officer Friendly’s story becomes less plausible, even without the other witnesses. His explanation — given that — then becomes that he didn’t shoot because he was afraid of hitting the kids that he didn’t see, the wife that he did, or that he froze under stress, and that he just left that out while he was talking on tape on 911. Not impossible, but likely a hard sell.
- Occam’s Razor is a guide, and just a guide, but you have to assume a lot less complexity to read it as Officer Friendly drew his gun to intimidate Treptow, and didn’t switch gears into a killing mode quickly enough when Treptow, thinking that he and his wife were about to be shot — not being able to read Officer Friendy’s mind, but just see his unambiguous actions — drew and fired in self-defense.)
- Same caller heard “arguing before.”
- Officer Friendly, under stress, doesn’t have the plate number of Treptow’s Rendezvous SUV. That’s understandable; he’s just been shot. But, more significantly, he doesn’t refer to a previous 911 call in which he called in the plate number on this supposedly road-raging driver. Could it be because he never made that call?
Why was all mention of the officer’s demeanor redacted? I’m smelling a Police union lawyer involved. Understandable, of course, but curious.
I’ll continue to follow this.
One update — you’re getting this before it’s going out on my blog: there are, according to John Tonding, the Communications Manager at Anoka County 911*, no additional 911 calls on this matter; the call that Officer Friendly should have made — if his story were true — was never made.
It is, of course, possible that that was Officer Friendly’s only lapse in judgment on that day. It also is possible that it was not.
(Andrew, by the way, has been doing the legwork on this; he gets to be Archie Goodwin and I get to be Nero Wolfe, a role for which I am, alas, physically far too suited.)
___________
* Orthogonally, for our reporter friends at Minnie Mon: this is what’s called “sourcing”. Somebody attempting to verify or dispute what I’m saying could simply call up Mr. Tonding; more likely, since I’ve sourced this, it would be more sensible to assume that I’m being accurate.
While I don’t normally flog my blog here, since you’ve been following the transcripts story, you might find this interesting.
Where’s Quimby?
Thanks for asking. He’s waiting to see if charges are filed.
Meanwhile, good enterprising work on pulling the records, joelr.
Thanks, charlieq — but the praise should go to Andrew; he did the work, I just asked him to, and then wrote about it.