The Law Enforcement Officer Thread

I have to admit that is a pretty clever ruse. I can also understand why they convicted him namely based on intent.

I am interested in knowing how such a case would run.

It would be rather interesting to see how that panned out in the court room.

They'd suspected him of two previous murders but lacked suitable evidence to prove it. This happens often enough; prosecutors are gunshy about taking cases to court unless they feel they have an ironclad case. Due to the Double Jeopardy rule, once you're declared innocent, you can never again be prosecuted for the same crime.

If a prosecutor tries, fails, and then finds more conclusive evidence later, he's just sorta f*cked. This is part of the Presumption of Innocence nature of our courts; it's to keep a prosecutor with a grudge from just re-trying to same person over and over, trying to keep rolling the dice until they land a conviction.

Catching him in the act attacking the dummy was the clincher they needed, allowing a formal arrest.

edited 23rd Sep '17 5:38:23 PM by TobiasDrake

Also notably: They didn't convict him of murder. They convicted him of attempted murder. He tried to murder a person, and only failed because he accidentally attacked an inanimate object instead.

Which does bring to mind this exchange:

edited 23rd Sep '17 5:48:58 PM by AFP

The most interesting bit is precisely that, obtaining a(n attempted) murder conviction for damaging a mannequin. That would require proof that the perp didn't notice the inanimate nature of the mannequin before the attack; not an overly high treshold or overly implausible but still worth noting.

Interpol admitted Palestine. Israel is against it since it's not an independent state.

75 votes were yes. 24 no and 34 didn't choose to vote.

Septimus: I think it may have some relation to how they use fancy animal decoys to trap poachers. Though the ones they tend to use for that are increasingly robotic or even a type of drone.

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/video/melbourne-police-taser-person-seen-015350831.html

Taser incident in Melbourne.

LVPD noticed that the suspect wired $100,000 to the Philippines or around P5,095,500 a few days before the shooting started. They're now seeking the woman, who's actually Filipino-Australian to see if she knows about the money.

I am guessing you are referring to the Mass Shooting in Las Vegas?

Yep. Sorry that I wasn't able to mention that. I just saw that headline now the local news in Manila.

Gotcha. This whole case is ugly already.

More news from the local media. Seems that the money wired to Manila was most likely as a form of life insurance payment to be placed under Marilou Daney, the gunman's girlfriend.

They really need to make up their minds on whether the Palestinians are foreign nationals or Israeli citizens. But that's a discussion for another thread.

Good, they need to be investigating her. This has been bothering me since the shooting occurred. The complete lack of motive is one thing, but did anyone actually see Paddock firing the weapons? The accounts I've heard suggest that police got up there and he was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was firing from very high up. So far as I know, nobody actually saw him shooting.

That's been bugging me from the beginning. Stephen Paddock's our guy because he was found dead in the room with the guns. That is the scenario as I understand it, but that doesn't add up to me. How do we know he's not another victim?

Presumably because they determined that he was the one who bought those guns, and checked into the hotel room. They also found a stockpile of weaponry at his home.

edited 4th Oct '17 2:26:27 PM by Eschaton

It was reported elsewhere that he had the place wired with cameras so he could monitor the halls and killed himself when he saw SWAT coming in force. One site I recall mentioned from the photos they'd seen that he had a spare rifle w/ bipod mounted and aimed at the door, presumably in case he felt he could kill a few police before they killed him but I suppose things didn't turn out that way.

Cameras means he used a computer and there might be additional evidence on there that they aren't discussing at the moment. LVPD had an as-of-yet unidentified leaker in their ranks who's been spreading bits of crime scene evidence across the internet and it hasn't been revealed if they've been dealt with.

IIRC the multiple shooter angle was part of the 4chan garbage that vomited forth before the shooting was over with.

Paddock's girl told police that he provided the ticket to go to Manila and have a reunion with her family and have some money aside for a house. She was worried that he was gonna break up with her and didn't see any suggestions that he was going to shoot up the Strip.

Though analysts believe that she was sent away so that she can't call the LVPD.

He shot a security guard through the door before the SWAT team ever made it up there and it was at most minutes after he started shooting before SWAT was up the stairs and into the room.

Okay, that's pretty thorough. Consider my objection withdrawn. This is totally the guy.

I understand where you are coming from personally. I thought there might be more suspects initially until they revealed what happened by the time they got to him.

So far the initial reports suggest his shooting position was found by accident by the guard he wounded and helped them zero in on his location. The SWAT were thankfully quick on the scene. The War on Terror and Mass Shooting events in the past have at least had the benefit of improving emergency response times in general.

Wonder if the multiple shooter angle persisted for a bit in part because it's really scary that one person could kill so many people so easily.

I got handed a pic of his corpse in situ. Not linking it because standards, but it looks like he shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. There's what could be a chest hit, but there's probably an even money at least chance that it's just splatter.

It's just more chan-variety conspiratorial thinking.

edited 4th Oct '17 7:33:17 PM by Krieger22

I didn't even know it was an angle. I just thought of it because it seemed weird before we knew more.