Chief "Katherine Best?" Go away, Nathalie. Journalism is clearly a bridge too far for you. Write fluff content for shoppers or something.

Perhaps years of exposure to pool water has affected Ryan's reasoning abilities.

Kudos to CARMEN Best.

Drive Alex Jones into bankruptcy. Take his show & grifter businesses as a condition of the settlement. He's fomenting Stochastic Terror. He's a cancer.

The teens were contributory fuckwits to be tearing around at 95 mph, but wasn't this other officer even more of a fuckwit to be following them at those speeds? Given that they obviously didn't have adequate control of their vehicle and fucking killed somebody with it.

Wow that is surprising and most excellent that those cops involved in that incident got canned. Video was pretty clear there that attempting to stand in front of a car that was backing up in an attempt to escape (backing up at like half a mile per hour) was hardly credible 'mortal danger', and for sure the second cop who kept squeezing off rounds was not in anything like mortal danger.

@8

I was thinking along those lines, but the graphic accompanying the linked article says the teens were fleeing a gas station where shots were fired so maybe pursuit seemed necessary.

Gripe @1, overreaction much?

Raindrop @4, I could see an "@3 - Fixed. Thanks!" comment. Comments like @1 don't warrant any gratitude.

Pence sees the protesters in the costumes and exclaims, "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

RE: Quiet quakes
There was one here around 2003 that released enough infrasound one night to make people and pets fairly nauseous. I remember it well.

@12

The fact is that I was saying that there might be justification for hot pursuit of people suspected of committing a violent crime who might reasonably be suspected of committing another violent crime. It is certainly not a fact that I was suggesting that all felony suspects are or should be pursued in a high speed chase.

If cops are able to assess accurate risk to the public from not collaring the suspect immediately, versus the risk of dangerous driving, well okay, and I'm sorry the outcome was so bad.

If they're not doing a risk assessment and instead are tasked with doing "all felonies must be chased at any speed", that would be pretty unwise.

@15

Yes, agree.

Fraud is also a felony--for example bilking an elderly person of their savings. A hot pursuit might be legal to apprehend a felon but see you would agree that it's worth putting lives at great risk through a capture-at-all-costs car chase.

Alex Jones will probably be fine. It's incredibly hard to win a defamation lawsuit in the US. You have to prove the defendant made a deliberately false statement of fact and that the specific false statement is defamatory on its own. Something like, "That particular Newton parent had been convicted of child endangerment."

Even the "crisis actor" accusation will probably be considered rhetoric becasue it is so absurd. Have there ever been actual crisis actors?

Despite the fact that this won't bankrupt Alex Jones, having such stringent defamation laws is actually a good thing, especially if one's state has a SLAP statute. It prevents the 1% and giant corporations from shutting down criticism. I think the current standard dates from a case when a civil rights organization published an ad attacking the Birmingham police department. They were sued because they got some minor fact wrong (something along the lines of saying there was a police "chief" instead of a police "commissioner".) The Supreme Court ruled that it wasn't defamation because the specific factual mistake wasn't defamatory.

As soon as I saw that video for the first time last year, my first thought was, "Ruh-roh, those dudes are in trouble." Then I thought, "Well, they would be with Dallas PD anyway." Good call by the new Chief.

Um...isn’t 15miles from downtown outside of Seattle?

Ugh the actual article says “15 minutes” not 15 miles whereas this one says “15 miles”...