No civil rights charges for DE cops who fatally shot paralyzed man – Open Thread

Filed in Delaware, Open Thread by on January 7, 2017

No civil rights charges for Delaware cops who fatally shot paralyzed man
Police corporals of the Wilmington Police Department who fatally shot an already-wounded, wheelchair-bound African-American man in September 2015 will not be charged with violating the man’s civil rights, federal prosecutors with the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware have announced.

On Friday, federal officials with the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, the FBI, and the US Justice Department’s civil rights division told the family of Jeremy McDole, the man killed by Wilmington police, that evidence does not indicate the officers willfully used excessive force in shooting McDole.

“The Justice Department announced today that there is insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against the Wilmington Police Department (WPD) Corporals involved in the fatal shooting of 28-year-old paraplegic Jeremy McDole on Sept. 23, 2015,” the US attorney’s office said in a release, according to the News Journal.

The encounter between police and McDole, 28, was caught on cellphone video by a witness, eliciting outrage in Wilmington and beyond. Police arrived on the scene after a 911 call claiming an African-American man in a wheelchair was suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In a lawsuit filed against the city of Wilmington, McDole’s family said that McDole was robbed of his wallet and then shot, and that the thief or an accomplice called police claiming a self-inflicted gunshot was to blame for McDole’s condition.

Three white police officers and one Hispanic officer — Senior Cpl. Joseph Dellose, Senior Cpl. Danny Silva, Cpl. Thomas Lynch and Cpl. James MacColl — approached McDole; one officer pointed a shotgun or rifle at him, yelling at McDole to “drop the gun” and to put his “hands up.” The video shows McDole rubbing his knees with both hands.

As McDole moved his hand toward his waist, Dellose shot him several times, as McDole fell sideways to the ground. Dellose had fired about two seconds after first calling on McDole to put his hands up.

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Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (8)

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  1. PO lice Bill of Rights?

    The one good thing that may result from this is that the victim’s sister is now (possibly) poised to use the family’s settlement money and get herself situated to help make a change in the system.

    I am only speaking from my impressions of her in news reports, but I somehow believe she’ll go get herself a law degree or other training and become a person of influence for good in our state, our city, our world.

    RIP Jeremy McDole. No Justice, No Peace.

  2. Paula says:

    If anyone here has one of the six ears of our senators and congresswoman, could you pass along this short read? Some useful advice for dealing with our next prez: https://medium.com/@nziehl/coping-with-chaos-in-the-white-house-697fa2ca3ddf#.2evi93d1n
    It begins: “I am speaking purely from decades of dealing with NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] and sharing strategies that were helpful for me in coping and predicting behavior.”
    I’m not being sarcastic — I think this could be incredibly useful.

  3. Jason330 says:

    Great read. Thanks for sharing it. I think a concerted effort to get it in front of our congressional delegation makes sense

  4. anonymous says:

    @Paula: That article is worth everybody’s time to read. The media, unfortunately, exists to amplify things and people like Donald Trump — calculated outrage, mostly. It’s a stenographic service — it reports mostly what people say rather than concentrating on what they’re actually doing.

  5. anonymous says:

    Since this is also the open thread, Andrew O’Hehir’s latest for Salon sums things up nicely:

    “Republicans fall over themselves to praise Assange, a man many of them literally argued should be executed without trial when he was releasing Iraq war secrets. Democrats grovel before the CIA, the agency that told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and maintained a network of secret torture facilities in an unknown number of countries.

    “Both sides have abandoned any semblance of principle and are just desperate for a story that confirms their understanding of the world. Well, here’s the story Donald Trump and Julian Assange told us about the world, although they couldn’t have done so if it weren’t already true: Democracy isn’t working.”

    http://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/send-in-the-clowns-donald-trump-julian-assange-and-the-enemies-of-liberal-democracy/

  6. ModernProgressive says:

    In a mere 12 days, a man who believes we that we should ban 1.6 million Muslims from immigrating to the United States is going to be our President. Just let that sink in for a moment: a country in part founded on religious freedom will have no more Muslims.

    He also wants to build a wall across the entire Mexico border but no wall across the Canadian border. Setting aside the obvious racist implications of this, it just comes across so patently stupid. If I were a Mexican seeking a better life in the United States, I would just go to Canada and then cross from Canada into the United States where there is no wall.

  7. Jason330 says:

    I don’t think fighting back with logic and reason is going to get anywhere. None of Trumps policies are grounded in logic or reason.

  8. bamboozer says:

    Believe the key is to attack Trump’s actions and not the truly bizarre and dangerous man himself, it worked in Italy to derail Berlusconi, it will work for Trump. As noted the Republicans are the ones to watch, Trump remains a carnival barker mixed with a sleazy salesman who sold your mom a clunker.