Never Ascribe To Testosterone…
By Mitch Berg
…what can be better explained by experience.
When you’re a Second Amendment activist in a liberal city, you get used to the usual slurs; self-defense activists are anger-prone, compensating for something, or awash in testosterone. The writer of this bit, a leftyblogger named “CharlieQ” from “Across the Great Divide”, has ironically subtitled his blog “Can we disagree and still build a decent world?” – but then partially answers his own question with the title of the post, “Be Sure to Check the Testosterone Levels”, regarding last weekend’s shooting of an off-duty cop by a citizen with a concealed carry permit.
Of course, if you’ve been through any concealed carry training, you know that “testosterone” – as shorthand for “excessive emotion” – is the last thing you want involved. Which is difficult to accomplish, given that self-defense situations tend to be rife with stress, emotion and adrenaline. Hence, the need for training before one gets ones’ permit; for those few that had any illusions about how easy self-defense shooting is, they are quickly disabused.
Those are the facts.
“Facts” are few and far between in Mr. Q’s piece:
There’s more than one way to view the accounts about the shooting of an undercover Robbinsdale cop by a motorist. But one view certainly prevails over here.
The link is right back to my piece from the other day – and he’s right, to the extent that I have reason to believe Mr. Treptow, the alleged shooter, is probably in a fairly decent legal position right now.
Now, I’m not sure if Mr. Q got the “information” for his piece from the initially-terrible major-media coverage (which spun Mr. Treptow as a villain, up until he was released without being arraigned or charged), or if he’s got a jones for leaving facts out of stories, but suffice to say that it’s a good thing that only 93 people a day are getting their “news” from him:
A supposedly menacing cop didn’t shoot back at someone who nailed him with three shots. And he’s the bad guy?
It’s hard to know exactly how to answer this question, because – with all due respect to “CharlieQ” – it’s a staggeringly dumb one, one I can assume is driven by a complete, if not willful, ignorance of the law.
Mr. Q omitted the fact that the cop pointed a gun at Mrs. Treptow.
Now, as I’ve noted over and over again, there are four elements to a “self-defense” case. I keep repeating these, because so many people (regardless of their politics) are completely unaware of them, and they really are abolutely important:
-
You can’t be a willing participant in the scuffle.
-
You must reasonably fear death or great bodily harm.
-
You must make a reasonable effort – and “reasonable” in his case always means “a jury will buy it” – to disengage from the incident.
-
Lethal force must be reasonable under the circumstances.
The law doesn’t say “you have to let yourself or your family get shot”. If someone points a gun at you, that is a reasonable indication someone wants to kill you, for any jury outside of San Francisco.
Was Mr. Treptow a “willing participant”? Did he try reasonably hard to get away from the cop, given that he was in a big clunky SUV with his family (keep your “Dukes of Hazzard” fantasies to yourself)? Was lethal force reasonably justified? We don’t know for sure, but even if the victim weren’t a policeman, it’d very unlikely the County Attorney would have released Treptow without charging him, much less exacting bail from him if Treptow wasn’t looking pretty good on all those counts.
I mean, think about it.
Unfortunately, with his next comment, Mr. Q shows that “thought” isn’t his long suit:
Note to Hamas: Want America on your side? Start issuing conceal and carry permits.
I try to stay civil. I don’t throw words like “stupidest thing I’ve ever read in my life” around lightly.
So I won’t. I’ll just ask Mr. Q how on earth he equates citizens with no criminal records, who’ve passed background checks and taken training classes, with people who blow up buses full of civilians?
Presumably witnesses will surface to sort out what happened, since neither party seems all that reliable.
Given that Mr. Q’s knowledge of the law is so very, very sketchy, I’ll reserve my own judgement about “reliability”.
Especially after reading this bit…:
Ask yourself how many times you’ve felt threatened by aggressive driving and you fantasized about having a gun. And, of course, you did absolutely nothing to provoke the other driver. Oh, and you’re not on a freeway going 70 mph. You’re on a boulevard next to a shopping center. And your wife and kids are in the car.
Probably found a way not to come to blows, right?
Yes, but then nobody’s ever pointed a gun at me or my family, either. I’d suspect Mr. Q could say the same.
Do you see the pathology at work, here? Mr. Q is holding Mr. Treptow – and all law-abiding civilians – to an absurd standard; to him, there is apparently no threshold of criminal behavior that’ll justify a civilian defending himself against an aggressor.
So either the undercover cop was on meth or Mr. Ex-Security Guard isn’t quite telling the whole story.
But it’s not “either/or”, because there’s a third option, one that is much more likely, given that Mr. Treptow was released without being charged after shooting an undercover cop: he did the right thing.
But for sure, there was plenty of stupidity and testosterone at 99th and Woodward that day.
We’ll wait and see what the final findings are, here.
And we’ll see what Mr. Q has to say then.
I’m guessing “silence”.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I have never “felt threatened by aggressive driving”. I’ve been irritated by it, but I’ve been irritated by my kids and my dog too. I can honestly say that I have never “fantasized about having a gun” in any circumstance. I guess I lose some wingnut points, but so be it.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Me, I’m pretty constantly irked by aggressive or idiotic driving, and on a very few occasions — the worst: a fellow first tailgating, then passing me to slow down in front of me, then dropping back to tailgate again — definitely threatened.
Not hard to handle, in practice; I just got off the Interstate while he was doing his slowing-down-in-front of me thing — when I got on the exit ramp, he kicked in the third stage and blasted away; I let the staties handle it. (I had his license plate and knew the direction he was going in.)
Don’t know — or much care — what happened to the moron, although I kind of hope he had a close and personal encounter with a telephone pole, mean guy that I am.
As to Mr. Q, what a maroon — there’s at least three explanations as to how the cop could have been both the bad guy and didn’t shoot back. Are any or all of them true? I dunno — but they’re hardly difficult to work out.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:10 am
This is a part I find revealing:
“Ask yourself how many times you’ve felt threatened by aggressive driving and you fantasized about having a gun.”
These are irresponsible inclinations he observes in himself, and projects onto all other law abiding citizens. And so he fears them, and because he fears them, he certainly cannot entrust them with the power contained in a gun.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Recall that when Conceal & Carry was first passed, many of the anti-2nd amendment rights folks said they won’t go to Twins games or the State Fair now as there will be shootouts there.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:32 am
A couple points.
Mr. Q, sees (without acknowledging) the brutality of his own soul and projects it upon others. He cannot imagine someone who does not submit to their emotions and does not have the vile and repulsive emotions that he does. Admittedly we all have deep and animalistic urges, but few of us are slaves to the emotions that Q betrays himself to be.
A little logic, would the police release someone who shot a fellow policeman if they felt they had a SHRED of evidence or suspicion that said shooter was in the wrong?
June 13th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Anyone who ever produces for public consumption a phrase like “note to Hamas” has already made a jumping jackass out of himself. There’s no gravity or power to a clown who leaves words like that for people to read.
Except for the participants, no one knows exactly what happened out there that day. Not yet. But for an I-can’t imagine-ever-defending myself marshmallow, this guy has some pretty interesting tough-guy visions. Why doesn’t he envision himself turning the other cheek to someone tailgating him, or leading a protest or a sit-in? Nope – he envisions himself with a gun, presumably blasting his nemesis to smithereens. So before he gets too Ghandi on us, he’s got to chill.
And a day may come when this guy can’t drive away from an aggressor, or maybe he’s walking his “partner” home and running isn’t an honorable option, God forbid. When he has to actually deal with a real situation, he’ll grow up and change his world-view. They always do, every single time.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:49 am
“…how many times you’ve felt threatened by aggressive driving and you fantasized about having a gun.”
A gun? Never.
Wished my Subaru was an M1 Abrams? Yup!
June 13th, 2007 at 8:53 am
When he has to actually deal with a real situation, he’ll grow up and change his world-view. They always do, every single time.
Alas, that’s simply not true. I could point to examples, if you’d like; we had a couple real bad ones that came out during the MnStf Gun Wars.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:01 am
OK, joelr, agreed. My occasional use of hyperbole is equalled only by my unreasonable optimism, sometimes.
And we don’t need this milquetoast packing, anyway, from the sound of it. I wouldn’t send this shmoe packing with a sandwich.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:28 am
The only time I was ever in that situation the guy sped off as soon as I pulled out the cell phone. I dialed 9-1-1 and reported him to the local county sheriff handle the situation from there.
LL
June 13th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Charlie Q = Charlie Quimby
He posted a semi-snark post (disguised as reason) regarding one of my Anti-Strib posts… and I think one of Sequel’s
THEN… when we responded to him in his Comment section, in a response-post of our own, and our Comment section he said he didn’t want to engage in blog-to-blog communication.
THEN… he wanted to engage in a joint-blog venture and started asking about my real name.
This guy also wrote a piece (or an editorial) with some other guy in the Strib… what does that tell you?
😉
June 13th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Quimby post:
http://baddablogger.blogspot.com/2006/11/anti-strib-charlie-quimby-makes-point.html
Quimby:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22charlie+quimby%22%2Bminnesota
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22charlie+quimby%22
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22charlie+quimby%22%2Banti
…interesting read. 😉
June 13th, 2007 at 11:27 am
“what does that tell you?”
Charlie Q’s got issues?
June 13th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
JoelR-
You mean this mnstf http://www.mnstf.org/ ?
Back in the 70’s it was run by people who had lived their entire adult lives within five miles of the UM campus. Everyone other than themselves in that area was packing — unless you count souvenir katana’s and replica orc axes.
June 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Joel, I know many of the same folks you know in mnstf, and denial of reality has never been a difficulty with them.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Terry: yup. You have to dig through the Natter archives to get to some of the stuff — and some of the rest of it was documented in real-time on Livejournal — but yup.
I’d summarize, but I’m not entirely sure I could be fair to Larry Sanderson — who once tried to generate a bogus 911 call to get me jumped by the MPD, because he thought it would be “funny” — to Angry David Schroth, or Laura Jean Fish, other than to say that it seemed to me that the three of them (and a few others) had some major problems with reality.
Then again, it was kind of a perfect storm: when we had carry reform in Minnesota, we not only had an unsually high percentage of hysterical ninnies in the local fan group, but we had a very visible proponent of reform who had been carrying (legally, complete with a permit) to various MnStf events for, literally, years… and who was known to have a, err, strong force of will and little patience for fools (particularly bullies who would abuse authority that they never should have had to take out their personal pique against him on his nephew).
That would be, err, me.
That said, there’s a lot of good folks in MnStf, too, of various political and other philosophies, in addition to the rude, impertinent ninnies.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
rude, impertinent ninnies
MnStf? That bunch? As an example of the above, search through Google Groups for “Dan Goodman.”
June 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Errgh . . . If I can only pull this thread . . . a little closer to . . . a discussion of Twin Cities wargaming and D&D emporiums . . . almost got it . . .
June 13th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
D&D emporiums? People still do that?
June 13th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Got it!
June 13th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Wargaming?! I’m home!
June 13th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Squad Leader? Third Reich? Tobruk? Russian Campaign?
Jeez. It’s been years and years.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Friggin nerds.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
In my case, Kermit, you’re committing definition of character. Which is neither crime nor tort, more’s the pity.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Uh, wait… mustn’t reveal… gaming hobby…
…yes, Kermit.
😉
June 13th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Yeah well, I already had the the Italian pegged. Crossing the Rubicon, yet again…
June 13th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Ever play WoW, watch how your dual-wield hits are going & think “Jeez. They must be calculating this on 3 die 6”?
June 13th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
PanzerGrup . . .
June 13th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Chainmail, if that isn’t scary enough (the inspiration for D&D). And wasn’t it PanzerGruppe Guderien, although I far preferred Panzer Blitz which was the first small squad board game of any consequence.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Thanks for the feedback, guys. This thread shows why I’m not a big fan of blog-to-blog “conversation.” But since I’m not quoted accurately, I’d like to correct a few things.
“Mr. Q omitted the fact that the cop pointed a gun at Mrs. Treptow.”
From my post: “A totally innocent guy is endangered by extremely aggressive driving, feels threatened and shoots someone who is pointing a gun at his wife.”
True, I did not report this as a “fact” because the accounts of the incident varied.
Here’s a fact I did not put in the piece. I have three close family members in law enforcement. Because I know what they do and how they behave on the job, I tend to project their professionalism onto other cops. That means I am willing to give the undercover cop at least the same presumption of innocence I give the shooter until all the facts are in.
I thought Mitch’s piece jumped rather enthusiastically behind the shooter based on the fact that he had a permit and he wasn’t held in jail. My Hammas comment was a joke. You don’t have to think it was funny. But it was aimed at an attitude that might give a pass to conceal & carry permit holders no matter who they shoot.
It’s entirely possible the cop did pull his gun, and if so, he should get whatever discipline is coming. I don’t think road rage incidents like this are entirely onesided, and that was the point my 97 regular readers are capable of getting.
As for the rest, project away. Your comments are pretty entertaining to people who actually know me.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
P.S.
The testosterone comment applies to both men. Both of whom were trained.
June 14th, 2007 at 7:32 am
I thought Mitch’s piece jumped rather enthusiastically behind the shooter based on the fact that he had a permit and he wasn’t held in jail.
Well, you’re half right. The fact that the Anoka County Attorney’s office didn’t charge him with anything shows me that Treptow’s probably got a good case.
I know a guy (who actually lives a mile or so from the intersection where this shooting happened) who fired a warning shot at a burglar who’d broken into his house. The Anoka County prosecutor went after…the homeowner with everything they had.
All by way of saying that if any element of Treptow’s self-defense claim were squishy, or if Treptow endangered innocent bystanders in any way, it’s highly unlikely he’d have gotten out of jail after shooting a cop without some kind of charge; attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, assault, reckless endangerment, illegal discharge, littering the street with cartridge cases, somethign
But there was nothing!
My Hammas comment was a joke. You don’t have to think it was funny.
By your leave.
But it was aimed at an attitude that might give a pass to conceal & carry permit holders no matter who they shoot.
No such pass is given. I don’t know a single CCW/MPPA proponent who took the side of the the guy who shot the Nye’s bouncer a couple of years ago, for example – because he broke the law and made us all look bad.
From what I know so far, Treptow’s case does not make us all look bad. Not at all.
It’s entirely possible the cop did pull his gun, and if so, he should get whatever discipline is coming. I don’t think road rage incidents like this are entirely onesided
But Charlie, sometimes they are! Not every provocation is intentional! Not every provocation deserves an aggressive response!
Remember (or learn for the first time), one of the four elements of a self-defense case is you can NOT be a willing parcipant in the altercation; when one is carrying a permitted gun, it’s your absolute responsibility to stay cool. If you don’t – if you get involved in a scuffle, fight or road rage incident as a participant in any way – it kills your claim of self-defense. End of story.
And had there been any evidence that Treptow, with his family in his car and his permit training in his head telling him “don’t get involved in fights while you’re armed” had actually participated in the road rage incident at all, even if there were any doubt, I really, really doubt he’d have not been charged with something before he left jail.
But he wasn’t. And that is rare.
As for the rest, project away. Your comments are pretty entertaining to people who actually know me.
I’d imagine so. But when one blogs, one runs the risk of having the rest of the world intrude.
You could wave off intruders, if you’d like. Or learn a bit. It’s up to you.
Enjoy!
June 14th, 2007 at 7:47 am
… I’d like to correct a few things.
“Mr. Q omitted the fact that the cop pointed a gun at Mrs. Treptow.”
From my post: “A totally innocent guy is endangered by extremely aggressive driving, feels threatened and shoots someone who is pointing a gun at his wife.”
True, I did not report this as a “fact” because the accounts of the incident varied.
Accounts of every “incident” “vary.” So what? When one of your cop relatives busts somebody with, say, a few rocks on him, would you report it as a fact that they guy had some rocks on him, or would you not report it as a “fact” because the perp said, “Hey, man, I don’t know where those came from — they’re not mine; you must have flaked me!”
Do remember that, in this case, (apparently rather unfortunately for Office Friendly) there were ample uninvolved witnesses and — think on this for a moment — Coon Rapids PD interviewed them before they kicked Treptow loose . . . no bail, no bond, not even a suspension of his carry permit (see Minn. State. 624.714; the sheriff could have done that in five minutes), and no charges.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, properly prepared tastes great with a nice plum sauce, live pate looks and tastes like duck pate . . . but perhaps when you go to a restaurant you want to run some DNA tests before you decide that it’s a fact that it’s a duck.
As to your relatives, I’ll give them and you the benefit of the doubt that they are professional, and follow the rules in letter and spirit, on big and small things: that they don’t tin themselves out of speeding tickets, don’t park in No Parking spaces when they’re going in to get coffee, don’t run license plates of cars with bumper stickers that they personally don’t like in the hope that they’ll find an unpaid parking ticket, etc.
But, assuming — just for the heck of it; I’m not claiming that it’s so — would they admit any or all of that to you, and, if they did, would you admit it here?
Or would you give them the “benefit of the doubt”?
Just curious.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Hillarious!
Quimby now says (words to the effect of), “Let’s wait before we judge”.
Isn’t that precisely what Mitch (and many of us) said?!?!?!
lol
Someone needs to go back and read (with good faith) your posts, Mitch… and it isn’t you. 😉
June 14th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Don’t get down on Mr. Q. We’re lucky to have him here. I, for one, would appreciate his expertise in answering this question: What, exactly, was the cop supposed to be doing when he got shot? What was proper police procedure for this type of incident in these circumstances?
From the news accounts, the cop is 27 years old, been licensed 4 years, works in Robbinsdale, and he’s already an undercover detective. I assume that means he works narcotics – drug dealers would never trust a guy who looks as old as, say, JoelR, and the young cop lacks seniority for any other duty. The news said he was on-duty in Coon Rapids, presumably investigating drug dealers, worming his way inside the organization. Let’s give the officer the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s doing his undercover job when he observes the civilian commit what the news accounts call a minor traffic offense.
What’s the Police Manual for Undercover Operations say the cop is supposed to do?
Pursue the civilian, yell at him, wave a badge? For what, to stop the civilian? And then what, write him a ticket? Do undercover cops carry around badges and ticket books – seems like that would be a bit of a give-away to the druggies you’re investigating. Is a pursuit and stop really the smart thing for an undercover cop to do? Aren’t you taking the chance of blowing your cover and jeapordizing the entire drug investigation, if somebody from the drug cartel sees you and recognizes you as The New Guy in the organization?
Sure, if the civilian had been committing a violent felony, any officer would be expected to intervene, even undercover. But all accounts said it was a minor thing that set off this incident and it went on for blocks. The cop did not break off, he participated. So ask your family members and tell us, Q, what’s the undercover cop suppos to do in that situation?
I strongly suspect the right answer is: break off pursuit, get his license number, call it in, go back to work undercover.
If that’s so, then this cop completely disregarded his training and proper police procedures to become embroiled in the incident, might even have escalated it with his own driving conduct. Given those assumptions, is it reasonable to suspect he also might have ignored his training and proper police procedure prohibiting brandishing his weapon?
I’m willing to give the undercover officer the benefit of the doubt. But you have to describe a set of circumstances and reasons that allow his actions to make sense. Show me how he followed proper police procedure and I’ll back him all the way.
Until you do, the evidence that the civilian acted properly – and therefore that the cop acted improperly – seems pretty weighty.
.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Nate,
If you don’t mind giving the guy traffic, check out his other posts… I’m not sure we’re really lucky to have Quimby (although, we’d be lucky to exchange him for, uh… you know, that guy). He’s a dime a dozen out there.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Good point, Badda. It doesn’t have to be Q, could be anybody. All I want is for one of these cop-apologists to explain it to me in small words. Tell me how the news accounts and witness statements can be reconciled with your assumption that the cop was acting properly, rationally, reasonably, and therefore the civilian shooter must have been in a road rage, testosterone high, blah, blah, blah, take away all the guns. Make the cop’s story make sense to me.
[silence]
I’m still waiting.
[crickets]
Waiting.
. . . .
June 14th, 2007 at 11:34 am
What’s more, Nate… have the local news outlets said anything about this since? Now, let’s reverse the situation… or at least change it slightly.
If the guy wasn’t yet off the hook, do you think the news would slow down on this guy? Hell no! They’d be running Charlie Quimby stories at the 5 and 10 news!
I believe we should make sure to keep up on this story. Like Mitch said (a couple of times), we do need the full story… however, those of us who served (for our sins) in the news and journalism world have our Spider-Sense tingling.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Okay, since you asked nicely.
I think the cop behaved stupidly, at minimum. I don’t think my post defended his behavior,called it rational or makes me a cop apologist. It questioned whether we had the full story yet. I can’t explain his actions; I’m just waiting for an official report that does — bad or good.
I mention my relations with law enforcement people to explain why I am slower to judge than some of you here. As for would I mention their hypothetical transgressions here, Nate, the answer is probably not unless they were otherwise public. The same would go for any of yours I knew about, too.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
As for would I mention [my relatives who are police officers] hypothetical transgressions here, Nate, the answer is probably not unless they were otherwise public. The same would go for any of yours I knew about, too.
Perfectly reasonable, because, as you know, Nate, too, is a public employee who is, as part of his job, given the power to arrest, to use force of all sorts, including, in his job, deadly —
Waitaminute. But he’s not.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
(Quimby’s e-mailed me twice about this now.)
Quimby, your post was supposed to be about waiting for the full story? MITCH’S post was about that.
He mentioned it in the third ‘graph.
Do you read the blog? About as much as you apparently read Anti-Strib when you commented on us, too.
I see a pattern forming… I mean fully formed.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I am a concealed carry permit holder, 2nd amendment defender, and not exactly a lefty. But I am a regular reader of CharlieQ’s blog and find it in general to be a useful and thoughtful commentary on current events. I don’t always agree with him (or anybody else for that matter), but I think Charlie is generally fair in his analyses to the point of tedium. The way he and his post on this topic are being depicted here is somewhat unfair and based, I believe, on selective misreading and misinterpreting of what he actually intended to convey.
Character references aside, I would like to quibble a bit with the depiction of the concealed carry training and its relevance in high stress situations. I took the class to get my permit almost 4 years ago. It was a couple hours of talking about the law and the definitions of self-defense (reiterated nicely in this post, BTW) and another segment of being able to hit a human sized target from 15 feet away or something. I would say the training was valuable, but it was far from rigorous, nor is it imprinted on my brain for use when I’m running on adrenaline and instinct. There were people in my class who barely had the cool-headedness to get through the class, and I wondered how they would actually respond in a perceived self-defense situation. For that matter, I wonder how I would respond!
The point of all this blather is that I would not be a bit surprised to learn that a permit holder slipped through the cracks being unfit to handle the responsibility of carrying a weapon. I also would not be surprised if a police officer with a clean record cracks under pressure and misbehaves with his weapon. As it seems both CQ and the author of this blog are saying, there are still a lot of questions to answer. I don’t know (or care) what really happened, but I’m enjoying the debate.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Agreed. Mitch said, “We don’t exactly know what happened .” And then like I did, he gave an interpretation. If that’s how things work out, I’ll be sure to acknowledge if he’s right when we HAVE the full story.
I do read the blog; I don’t just google it. And because I read it, I sometimes get the impression we could actually discuss a few things. My mistake, apparently.
June 15th, 2007 at 9:20 am
You misrepresented what was posted here. (Much like with your misrepresentation of what was posted at Anti-Strib.)
THAT was your mistake.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
OK. A couple points, Mitch, which I’ve posted at my blog, too.
1. I did go back and read your initial post again, and I believe I drew an unfair inference about your position. So I do owe you an apology. You were far more conditional in your post that my offhand reference to it implied.
Here’s how it happened. I had read a number of far less responsible speculations about the case and linked to yours because it was the best recap of the speculation, and it also included some comments representative of what was being said in other places. I didn’t name you in my post because I wasn’t referring specifically to you. But in linking to your posts, I created an unfair implication you yourself had judged the case. As some of your later commenters pointed out, your post was conditional, and presumably my readers who followed the link would see that. However, it was sloppy — and wrong — on my part to link to your post to represent a less reasoned attitude, and it led us off into an unpleasant runaround, so I do apologize for starting it.
2. My law enforcement relative I was with today basically said something doesn’t add up and they’d want more specific details about the case. It goes against all police training to approach the car from the passenger side, for example. So was the officer pointing a gun at the passenger, or simply getting out of his car or being menacing in some way and the rest about pointing his gun was made up after the fact?
“Undercover” cops, especially in burgs like Robbinsdale, are likely doing drug buys in plain clothes and unmarked cars, not burrowing into the Salvadoran cartel, so attempting to pull over or warn an aggressive driver wouldn’t “blow his cover.”
If you or I get into an altercation on the roads, we might get in trouble with the law, but we probably wouldn’t lose our jobs and our careers. This cop is exposed to those consequences, so why we act as alleged over what had to be a relatively trivial matter.
Those are some of the things that don’t add up. That being said, there are dumb people in all lines of work.
3. The post was not about you. It did not even mention you. Asking the rhetorical question about road incidents leading to violence was to simply illustrate for most people, even the thought of shooting some over a traffic dispute was remote.
4. Releasing Treptow meant nothing. They had a cop in the hospital and conflicting reports, so they weren’t prepared to charge him. That does not that he’s innocent or guilty. It means they’re working on the case. Cops don’t get to change the law just because a cop was shot.
As for not yanking his permit, neither I nor my relatives (who don’t work in Minnesota) can comment on what that means under the law, and you know more than we do about it. But presumably, he’s not a risk to shoot someone else tomorrow, and his permit is connected to his livelihood. The cops are supposed to be making a case, not punishing Treptow.