OT Who do you side with?, Campus Police Offer Shoots Intoxicated.. Options

[seanery]

Slain student's family to sue for $100 million
Michael McKinney, a 21-year-old Ball State student, was shot and killed by a campus police officer who was responding to a burglary call.
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The family of slain Ball State student Michael McKinney will file a $100 million civil rights lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the university and the officer who shot and killed him.

The 21-year-old McKinney was unarmed when first-year Ball State police officer Robert Duplain shot him four times Nov. 8. The 24-year-old Duplain responded to a burglary call at 3:30 a.m. that day and found McKinney banging on the back door of a residence.

Police say McKinney was asked to stop and that he lunged at the officer which resulted in the shooting.

McKinney was later found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.34, more than four times the legal standard for drunken driving. The student's family has maintained he was knocking at the door of the wrong house when Duplain shot him.

The incident caused outrage throughout the school's campus in Muncie and resulted in the university changing its police training policy in December.

The family's attorney is Geoffrey Fieger, a nationally known lawyer who successfully defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian on three murder charges for assisted suicide. He also won a $25 million lawsuit against the Jenny Jones Show in connection with the death of one of the show's guests. Fieger, whose office is based in Southfield, Mich., also was the Democratic Party nominee for governor in 1998.

"The facts in this case are egregious," Fieger said in a release issued today. "Not only was the defendant Duplain poorly trained and inexperienced, but he used lethal force in gunning down an unarmed man who had not threatened anyone in any way."

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I know there are more facts than you folks know, but what are your thoughts?

[seanery]

Since I started this I should comment.

The officer did what he did to ensure his own safety, which I assume all of us would probably have done in his situation. I hope I'm never in his shoes. The family needs to move on with their lives and understand that their boy fucked up. People, nowadays especially, are always looking for something or someone to blame. There are consenquences to everything we do in life, some are positive some are negative. It's up to us to take the consenquences or not do those things that bring about negative consenquences.

I'll get off my soapbox in a second here.
My next door neighbor was totally drunk last year and ended up wrecking his uninsured truck into 10-15 parked cars on his way home from the bar. He passed out and played bumper cars with them until he hit one straight on enough to stop his car. He got out after he came too and tried to walk away. The police showed up minutes later and arrested him, he was bloody and it was obvious he was driving the truck. He went to court several times and finally ended last month. He got 2 days in jail and a year of probation. IMHO, that is too easy. BUT, his attorney says that no one saw him driving so they are going to appeal and he thinks they will win. DUMBASS! (he's drunk every day) He doesn't understand what I'm saying when I tell him that he needs to take responsibility for what he's done. He will have to declare bankruptcy because he is being sued by about half of the cars' owners since he didn't have insurance.

Anyway, it's all the same thing in my opinion, people do things and don't think about what could happen and something does and they want to blame someone else.

Go Officer Go! Good Luck buddy!