Florida deputy Jesse Hernandez screamed “shots fired,” and frantically fired his gun after an acorn fell onto the roof of his squad car, making him jump.
Headline is kind of funny, but I wanted to know what he shot at
In body cam footage shared across social media, the officer was seen jumping to the ground and shouted “shots fired” after the acorn strikes the roof of his car. He then turned and emptied every bullet from his gun, each aimed squarely at his squad car.
Funny again...
While Hernandez fired on the car, Marquis Jackson, who was accused of stealing his girlfriend’s car, was in the back of the police cruiser. Officers had searched, handcuffed and loaded the accused into the back of the police car and, despite being cuffed, it was Jackson that the officer thought was shooting at him.
Nope, he was trying to kill someone handcuffed in the back of his squad car and had already been searched for weapons.
Cop should at least be facing reckless endangerment, if not attempted murder.
If a random loud bang from an acorn falling nearby is enough to get someone to behave like this, they really should not be walking around with a gun. This is completely insane and unhinged behavior.
Obtaining a barber license means that you have completed a minimum of 1,250 hours of instruction in barbering education within a period of at least 9 months or completed 1,250 hours of training.
It takes 1,250 to 2,000 hours to be a cosmologist.
Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training, and in Finland, police education takes three years to complete.
Police in the USA get 750 hours.
I’m sorry, this is fucked up and I shouldn’t be laughing, but you really can’t make this shit up
What’s more, in his body cam footage you can clearly see the acorn fall into frame and strike the roof of his car. When asked if this was the sound he heard, Hernandez had this to tell investigators:
“I’m not gonna say no, because I mean that’s, but what I, [10 second pause in speaking] what I heard [3 second pause in speaking] sounded almost like [12 second pause in speaking] what I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof of the car, but there’s obviously an acorn hitting the roof of the car.”
Can we please stop pretending Twitter is a video hosting platform? It's not, the links never work. When you only include Twitter video in the article it's like not including the video at all.
Unpopular opinion: Cop pay and training is inadequate. If you want professional cops, you need to hire professional people and train them professionally.
The only people that apply to become officers are morons and the power hungry. People with integrity don't apply because the money is shit.
Any job that trades money for fraternity is a job that's garbage. And boy oh boy are cop houses frats.
Was the dude they had the in the back of the car hit? They just casually mention they had a guy in the back of the car and that's who they were shooting at but then just never bring him up again.
If US police is this incompetent, the only real solution is to take their guns away. It works in the UK.
And yes, there are more guns in general in the US, but that means that the police needs to be BETTER at deescalation than in the UK, not worse.
(Also: Obviously there are exceptions for specialized units in the UK, and the same would have to happen in the US, but your standard run-of-the-mill cop really doesn’t need more than pepper-spray and a stick.)
We as a society have really dropped the ball on the low IQ population among us. We need more options that don't include giving them guns. We can give them badges if they want - and whatever quasi military rank they prefer without giving them the means to kill us.
Florida Man has nothing on Florida Squirrel. This brave officer barely escaped a brazen assassination attempt by the infamous terrorists, Squirrels Anonymous!
Every story such as this contains at least one police lie. Even this one.
In his statement, Sheriff Aden said that the department was “limited in further response due to pending litigation.” Motherboard could not find court records related to the incident online and reached out to the Okaloosa County Courthouse, which confirmed it did not have any recent records related to either party. Motherboard reached out to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office for clarification but has not received a response.
From other accounts, he had arrested a suspect, handcuffed and searched them, and put them in the back of the squad car, and apparently thought that the suspect--the one they'd searched, cuffed, and locked in the car--was shooting at him. So, in his mind, he was returning fire.
I gotta ask - did he hit the guy in the car? Did he even his his car? Where did the bullets all end up? When you start shooting in public, you're supposed to be responsible for each on of those pieces of lead.
One commenter added some critical context to the story:
I actually just read about this, early today. I think two things were involved here, neither of which were mentioned in this article:
The officer served (2) tours overseas. Seeing the lasting affects a tour in Afghanistan has had on a relative, I believe this officer has undiagnosed PTSD which impacted his reaction here.
The officers had reason to believe Jackson owned/possessed a firearm with a suppressor. The sound of a suppressed 9mm isn’t terribly dissimilar from an acorn falling on sheet metal.
If we had proper care for the mentally ill and living on disability payments wasn’t so awful, people with severe PTSD (and likely sleep deprivation) wouldn’t be forced to have jobs.
So where exactly did he fire at? The site itself is crap and the way it's written it sounds almost made up. Not saying that it is, Florida police officer shooting at acorns sounds about right, but do we have a better source?