There seems to be a lot of this 'argumentum ad-criminal past' shit going on by police apologists - a common excuse when cops are caught on camera acting like thugs.
This is a legit argument, not apologetics or a fallacy. It is (often deliberately) misunderstood by police haters though. Nobody is saying that a prior record makes them fair game to be shot by police even if they didn't do anything threatening. Not at all. But it does tell us something about the person's nature and also about their motivations. Alton had extra reason not to want to be detained by police because them finding a gun on him meant he was going back to prison.
Accoridng to Heavy, Alton's criminal record was significant:
He was also a registered sex offender with a lengthy criminal record that included weapons offenses, confrontations with police officers (including one in which he was accused of wrestling with a police officer, during which a gun fell from his waistband), property crimes, and domestic violence and other batteries (see all of the court records above).
[..]
One incident stands out in the lengthy file; it involved a wrestling match with an officer that involved a gun. In 2009, the affidavit of probable cause contends that a police officer tried to pat down Sterling when Sterling resisted arrest, and the officer ended up “wrestling with the defendant on the ground” at which time a “black semi auto gun fell from his waistband.” The officer grabbed the back of Sterling’s shirt during the incident, and he was able to arrest him without further incident.
[..]In another probable cause affidavit, an officer, Corporal Paul Lockett, wrote that he was dispatched to a report of suspects trespassing at a home, where they had kicked in the front door and threatened the victim and her husband with a gun. In a probable cause affidavit accusing Sterling of burglary, the victim said that her door was kicked in and suspects presented several guns and made verbal threats.
In a sheriff’s affidavit on another date, Sterling was accused of breaking into a woman’s apartment by making a hole in the wall, and then trying to sell her goldfish for $20.
Note all these when you hear all the stories about how great a guy he was. He has prior weapons offenses and also a history of fighting with police. That makes it more likely that police genuinely felt threatened by this armed 300 lb individual.
More generally, there is a significant correlation between lengthy rap sheet and being shot by police. That is because thugs are much more likely to pose a danger to police resulting in a shooting.
Whatever he did, whenever he did it, he is now no longer a criminal.
True. He is dead now.
When he got out of jail he became a citizen again, free to have the same civil rights as everybody else.
Not quite right. Many crimes carry restrictions beyond incarceration, to wit felonies and sex crimes. Also, he seems to have been on probation at the time. So he did not have the same rights as everybody else. Most notably, he was not allowed to have a gun, and police catching him with one meant he was going back to prison.
Many of us have been arrested before (myself included) and some of us may have even spent more than just a single night in jail for a single brush I'm sure. But even if you've fucked-up and broken the law many times, the police are to treat you as any other citizen. THAT is also the law. We all hope to be treated that way should somehow get to that point.
But if the guy is a career criminal, armed with an illegal gun to boot, he is not going to behave as a regular citizen. Also, the police already suspected he was armed because of the 911 call.
Should he have had that gun? Fuck no, and it does reflects badly on his character no doubt. But the way this incident escalated, and the way the cops handled a minor disturbance in progress, put a lot of lives at risk. They turned a bootlegging into a deadly exchange of firearms that could have killed innocent by-standers - not cool. I'd rather the bootlegging continue if this how we're going to solve it.
Police were not called because of bootlegging. To turn this into an instance about bootlegging is as deceptive as saying Trayvon Martin was killed because he had Skittles or that Michael Brown was shot because he was walking in the middle of the street. No, police were called because Alton allegedly threatened somebody (who complained about him selling the discs) with his illegal gun. How were police supposed to handle it?
We might be better off as a society if we ticket people over arresting them for these kind of incidents.
You do not ticket people for
aggravated assault.
Whether you think they are right or wrong, people understandably freak-out when they get put in hand-cuffs over something small that is going to get them a brief stay in a hellhole called jail.
No, it was not something small and he was facing more than a brief stay at jail. He was going back to prison. Hence the freak-out.
You can say whatever you want about the those getting arrested but I understand from experience how awful it can be. Emotions come to the surface that are not normally present, and sometime in the course of those emotions, police interpret any reaction as necessarily violent - to the point they respond with a gross misuse of force that ought to be reserved for only the most violent of people.
I fully agree that in the US police are too quick to arrest people for even minor offenses. But this is definitely not one of such cases. He possessed an illegal firearm, allegedly threatened somebody with it and was already on probation for similar offenses.
