This Is the Most Honest Analysis of the Shooting Covered by Nine Police Body-Cams

There is a proverb which has been of old, 

And many men have likewise been so bold, 

To the discredit of the Taylor’s Trade,Nine Taylors go to make up a man, they said.

          But for their credit I’ll unriddle it t’ye:

A draper once fell into povertie, Nine Tayors joyn’d their purses together then, 

To set him up, and make him a man again. Captain William Hickes Grammatical Drolleries, 1671

Cousin Bill might have been thinking of all cutting and pasting and rewinding and sewing sentiments about the recent Paul O'Neal shooting in Chicago.

It seems that nine Body/Dash Cams have been offered up to the lawyers and the activists and each and every one of us to come to the final public judgment of the Police officers involved.

I watched the videos.  They remind me of the shootings that I have been in the middle of on 79th Street over the last twenty years. Everything happens in a blink and the adrenaline pumps furiously. Circa 1999: Who fired the shots?  Some GD from near the parking lot entrance on Sangamon, across from Leo High School.  Describe him.  He was a GD emptying a 9mm as fast as he could.   How was he dressed?  Something like this? 

Yeah, that's him.

The police no longer investigate a shooting - good or bad - because that has been coopeted, to use that swell socially and politically correct Marxist appellation so vocally hugged on NPR and aped on CBS, NBC and ABC, by the activists and the lawyers and the hungry media.  The activists and the lawyers dole out the portions of "facts' to media players according to their willful suspension of disbelief and accountability.

No matter that the prosecution of police officers in the Philadelphia Freddie Grey case have been universally found not guilt of murder.  The attorney for the O'Neal Family punctuates each clause and sub paragraph with shouts of " Murder Most Foul" just to make sure that rage is all the rage.

I read everything.  I talk to my neighbors and many of them are current or retired police officers of very long service.  Some neighbors think the one thing and others the other. The police neighbors are identical in their assessments.  Body/Dash Cams, or not, the police officers will come out of the situation in any manner - well.

This morning I read the best assessment of what has happened, in Second City Cop.  This is valuable.

We've been seeing a bit of criticism in the comment sections, ripping coppers for "Monday morning quarterbacking" and "you weren't there..." and everything in between. This isn't 1970 any more. This isn't the 80's or the 90's. This isn't even the 00's when personal cell phone cameras were just coming into widespread usage. This is 2016, and in-car cameras along with body-worn cameras are fast becoming the norm along with every single person on the street with a digital photo studio at their fingertips.
Policing is under a harsh spotlight and police work, especial hands-on police work, isn't pretty. But a even-handed, unemotional critique of the actions captured on video can be a benefit. It can educate the public, media and our critics. If the only voice being heard is the voice of the assholes shutting down reasoned discourse, then we are going to be backed into a corner that there is no coming out from. Some here feel we're already at that point. Reasonable men and women can disagree as to how far gone it is. And sometimes that involves taking a look inward.
That being said, we have a series of posts to address the videos over the next few days. And the first one is to rebut some of the more outrageous "sanctification" promulgated by the media and the protestors. We want to take you back in time to 03 August, to the Naperville Sun newspaper:
Five vehicles were stolen during the early-morning hours of July 26 in Naperville, while four were taken around 3 a.m. July 28 in Bolingbrook, authorities in both communities confirmed. Additionally, more than 30 vehicles were burglarized that same morning in Naperville.
A suspect in the Bolingbrook thefts, 18-year-old Paul O'Neal, of Chicago, was fatally shot by police around 7:30 p.m. July 28 behind a house in the 7300 block of South Merrill Avenue in Chicago.
Bolingbrook police Lt. Carter Larry on Wednesday said O'Neal was "clearly seen on video" at a service station where six suspects regrouped following the thefts in that village.
This is the "hero" of the media and "community" narrative - a car thief and a credit card thief. Does anyone know what his record looks like? And why is it all of these "heroes" seem to have social media pages with them holding guns?
And the early onset arthritis - we forgot about that.
Then there's the family, weeping, saying "He had goals." Um, what goals? Stealing a Bugatti maybe? Ferrari? How about a Lamborghini? Unfortunately, he'll always be remembered as only achieving a Jaguar. How sad.
Here's the thing - all of this, every single bit of it, could have been avoided if he didn't take something that didn't belong to him. Blame is on the parent(s), family, whomever - someone didn't install a moral compass on this thief and in the process, set him on the road to destruction, taking who knows how many others with him.
And there were plenty of opportunities to stop him - his first arrest, his second, the judge(s) who gave him how many additional chances, the parent who didn't better monitor his associations, maybe a clergy person, a social worker, the list is endless. But the cops are going to take the final hit because all of these other misses led to:

• Theft of Auto

• PSMV

• Aggravated Assault (with the auto)

• Aggravated Battery (with the same auto)

If he had survived, how many felonies is that right there? All committed in the span of sixteen hours? Let's not lose sight of that, even though the media and story-tellers already have. He began, continued and ended with bad decisions he made, all on his own.
More tomorrow.

Naperville and Bolingbrook police are investigating a possible link between two incidents of multiple vehicle thefts that occurred within two days of one another, and in which one suspect was later shot to death by Chicago police.

Nine cameras come nowhere near the Truth.  However, the people with the loudmouths, the bullhorns, the talking-points and the final solutions are not interested in anything but outcomes.

Nine tailors  have their work cut out for them