As Cop Dies From Shooting, The Debate Over Excessive Force Continues
New York police Officer Randolph Holder was responding to a call of shots fired with his partner on October 21, 2015, when he became the fourth cop to die from a shooting in a span of 10 months.
In the details of a published account of his funeral service written by The Daily Beast, the incident that led to the shooting is also described.
“As has been widely reported, the two cops had raced toward the scene and encountered someone whose bicycle had been commandeered by a fleeing gunman. The cops set off in pursuit and came upon a suspect who fit the description 20 blocks uptown. The suspect suddenly jettisoned the bike, drew a .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol, and fired.”
More recently on Friday, November 6, 2015, the Inquisitr reported that Daniel Ellis, a Richmond, Kentucky, cop died from a shooting which took place on the previous Wednesday while in search of a suspect, leaving behind a family and potentially, a promotion that would have taken him out of the line of fire.
Over the past few years, there has been a public debate from cases where cops have opened fire on unarmed people as well as what many consider to be retaliation against officers from reports such as the case of Daniel Ellis.
In one another case, Pennsylvanian police officer Lisa Mearkle was recently acquitted for the shooting death of unarmed 59-year-old David Kassik, who she originally tased and when she fearing he was reaching for a weapon, as reported by Daily Mail.
The reason leading to why she was acquitted is reportedly due to the claim that cops fear their lives, always at risk as more reports of cops who die from shootings continue to circulate. This has encouraged citizens to provide more support behind police officers.
Such is the case with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has been targeted by cops as a hate group, with the aid of opinionated media where cops have even created social movements such as #BlueLivesMatter, going outside the circle of debate to turn the tide against those movements.
Celebrities, such as director Quentin Tarantino, have publicly supported such movements in an attempt to refocus the reason behind the nationwide aggression against cops, while still distancing themselves from actual criminals who violently target police officers.
Despite such efforts, officers have pushed even further, in this case, demanding a boycott of the director’s movies.
It could be said that the source of these inflamed arguments originated around a report, as covered by CNN, from the shooting deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in December of 2014, which is said to be motivated by the deaths of unarmed black men, at the hands of aggressive officers.
Much like the boycott against Tarantino, this has caused law enforcement to even push back against New York mayor Bill De Blasio, saying that his liberal agenda to support civil movements has really only encouraged criminals to claim “open season” on cops.
Prior to the recent death of Daniel Ellis, Albuquerque cop Daniel Webster was shot on October 21 by Davon Lymon, but did not die from the shooting until October 29, as detailed in another report by CNN after a routine traffic stop.
As the focus has stayed on cop shooting deaths, the narrative has been consistent on aggression against officers until the recent reports of the Fox Lake officer’s staged suicide, which was previously reported to be blamed on a cop killer. That officer was Joe Gliniewicz who was found to have embezzled large sums of money from a local youth program, prompting a investigation.
The debate continues, this time using the shooting death of the Fox Lake cop to point to largely overlooked corruption in the police department as the example of where civil rights activists say the problems originate from. As of this writing, investigators are looking into the officer’s family to see see if they are somehow involved in the scandal, as reported by New York Times.
[Featured Image By Spencer Platt / Getty Images]
