Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Another big weed bust in the city! That's like, 600 pounds in a month!
(Wonder what percentage that is of how much passes thru town?)

14 comments:

ppatin said...

Officer Tommy Sanders was indicted for manslaughter by the Baltimore City grand jury. Sanders shot and killed Edward Lamont Hunt in Northeast Baltimore this January.

ppatin said...

As far as I can tell from MD Judiciary Case Search, Edward Lamont Hunt was a piece of shit who couldn't be bothered to obey the law. This sucks for officer Sanders, and I hope that the SA's office ends up dismissing the case.

Unknown said...

Hunt might have been a pos but maybe it's also true that a police officer shouldn't be shooting unarmed people?

Just maybe?

also...don't we have better things to do with helicopters, the skilled pilots who operate them, and the fuel it takes to keep them on high, than pot??

ppatin said...

How did the officer know that Hunt was unarmed? Maybe Hunt tried to go for his gun? Sure it's possible that the police officer really did shoot the guy execution style, and if that's the case he should go to jail. However the fact that the grand jury indicted for manslaughter and not murder means the case is probably much murkier than that.

Most of Hunt's criminal record was relatively petty crap, but there was some assault & resisting arrest in there, as well as fleeing from the cops in car. It sounds to me like a police officer was put in a bad situation, had to make a split second decision, and ended up being unlucky.

ppatin said...

"also...don't we have better things to do with helicopters, the skilled pilots who operate them, and the fuel it takes to keep them on high, than pot??"

Doesn't our whole country have better things to worry about than pot? Booze is far more destructive than marijuana, and we learned the hard way how poorly alcohol prohibition worked. Why can't we get the same thing through our heads about weed?

Unknown said...

it's interesting to me that we take the grand jury's charges differently...

you say, well since they didn't indict him with murder, there must have been extenuating circumstances

I say, a grand jury indicted a cop with manslaughter of an unarmed citizen, holy crap, they must have a reason

it's also interesting that you raise the point of Hunt's criminal record being so minor...fleeing police is the most substantive charge there, but it's hardly objective, much less "resisting arrest." we aren't talking about a violent gun criminal or a rapist here, at least not as far as I can tell...

we'll see what happens next, I suppose

Blight for All said...

"How did the officer know that Hunt was unarmed? Maybe Hunt tried to go for his gun? Sure it's possible that the police officer really did shoot the guy execution style, and if that's the case he should go to jail. However the fact that the grand jury indicted for manslaughter and not murder means the case is probably much murkier than that."

The incident was at least partly caught on video. Hunt was being frisked, he ran, and the officer shot him in the back 3 times. 1st degree murder would have to show a premeditation to the killing, which there clearly is not, and the Grand Jury saw it that way. Sometimes prosecutors have to try the charge they can get, and not the one they want.

Hunt actually had 2 second degree assault charges in his case file.

ppatin said...

The Sun has a more detailed article up now, and apparently it's pretty rare for the SA's office to even take these sorts of cases to a grand jury. I wonder what's going on. Are they pandering to groups like the NAACP since they raised a stink, or is there something genuinely fishy about this shooting...

John Galt said...

Brooklyn cop-shooter caught.

Caederus said...

My sister used to have a boyfriend who cultivated his crop in a less than well maintained Baltimore cemetery.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Pp, Hunt was shot three times in the back! Your bias is showing

ppatin said...

Maybe the cop thought he was reaching for a knife or gun? The officer may have screwed up, but Hunt had a history of doing exactly the sort of stupid shit that would make a police officer feel threatened. Of course even I have to admit that it could very well have been a total fuck up on the officer's part.

burgersub said...

the articles all say that witnesses say he had already been frisked twice by the time he was shot, so the officer should have known he wasn't armed. i'm sure your excuse will be that baltimore city witnesses aren't credible, but apparently the state's attorney's office thinks that they were credible enough in this case.

Anonymous said...

Hunt had been pulled over already 20 minutes earlier for the same thing. Then this cop pulled him over again. The officer searched his car then searched him twice before the cop shot him in the back. No ED was not a piece of shit. He was like most people that have had a hard life and was trying to get it together. He was given a bad rap for stuff he had done in the past.