Tough Morning, Chief?

I said a prayer, and I hope you will as well. Austin Police Chief Acevedo must have been having a rough morning early this morning.

First there was an officer-involved shooting. One of his men had to* chase down a fleeing suspect and ended up shooting the dude DRT when he went for the officer's gun. Nelson Lender and his racist-hate-mongering finger pointing act swung into action immediately because the decedent was dark brown.

Then there was an officer-involved shooting. One of his men responded to drunk guy wandering around WalMart and the dude shot the cop in the neck, fatally wounding him. The murderer was caught on film and then caught, tackled, and disarmed by some heroic soon-to-be-ex WalMart employees. Nelson Lender probably just can't find a microphone to talk about this incident. Or something.

And all this before the first pot of coffee. Yikes.

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*Yes, he did too have to chase the sweet innocent choir boy down. We still don't know why the traffic stop was initiated, but we do know that somebody in the car bolted. The sworn duty of a policeman is to enforce the law, right? That's his job - somebody is breaking the law and an officer MUST go after him. Yes, that is the way. No, you can't just let them run off. That's how you have dead hostages, guns tossed into drainage culverts, drugs ditched, and stolen cars turning into more stolen cars. A cop HAS TO give chase. That's his JOB. The report is that the cop tackled the fleeing suspect and his taser failed to deploy so there was another chase and another fight. Reaching for the gun of a uniformed policeman during a fight you initiated is the same thing as shooting your own silly brains out, as far as the cop being right or wrong goes.

You wouldn't know it from the kneejerk reaction in public defense of the dead by Nelson Lender, but the APD actually has a record of shooting people to death much less than other cities the size of Austin.