Thursday, April 19, 2007
District to Pay $1.2 Million in Hit and Run
The District, without admitting wrong doing, has agreed to pay $1.2 million to the family of two young children killed by a driver who ran a red light at 12th & Florida Avenue. The man had been involved in a drug transaction a few blocks down the street when police arrived and he subsequently sped off in his car hoping to elude police. After hitting the children the driver, Eric Palmer, jumped out of his car and fled on foot. He was apprehended nearby and later claimed that his brakes had failed. The accident took place September 11, 2004.
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20 comments:
I'm sorry over the loss of the children, but the police didn't kill those children, Eric Palmer did. Were the police found negligent? Seems like we're all now paying for the tragedy caused by Mr. Palmer.
Good to hear it. DC taxes aren't nearly high enough. I think we should give money to the guy that hit the children as well. I bet his car suffered damage; not to mention his emotional trauma when he hit them. Surly that is the cities burden as well.
from what i read, the drug transaction that this guy was fleeing from was in/next to the florida market.
again, we need to get rid of the drug crap going on in and around the market.
that means more than a paint of coat and a good sweeping.
As I recall, I think there was an issue about MPD not following their rules about high-speed chases when this incident occurred.
I'm not sure it is right, though the death of the children is definitely a tragedy.
Best,
Alan Kimber
Commissioner, ANC 6C05
I'm Anonymous 10:05 and actually Anonymous 10:07 said what I was wanting to say, I was just trying to be more diplamatic. But I actually agree with Anon.10:07 too.
I complained once about kids riding their motorized dirt bikes on the sidewalks only to be told by the police there was nothing they could do because it would be considered a "chase", something they weren't allowed to do.
There were originally witness statements saying he was being chased by the police at the time, but then these statements were later contradicted (the police initially chased him, but called it off very quickly, maybe three/four blocks earlier). The suspect maintained that the police were NOT chasing him at the time (this is where the failed brakes story came in). But this story says that they shouldn't have been chasing Palmer, and one officer did not halt when the order came.
The drug deal wasn't in the Market. It took place on Orleans, which though it is cleaned up considerably now (before anyone jumps in to tell me about crime there I'm not saying perfect, but safer than it was), has a long history of being notorious in its own right. I belive that many of the problems revolved around a couple of households on the street.
I've always wondered why nothing is done about the kids on the bikes (some look older than 18). It just adds to the lawlessnes...they run stops, they go the wrong way on one ways and not on the sidewalk, in the streets.
I asked at the last PSA meeting if the MPD did traffic stops and got some stock answer. It seems to me there's no traffic enforcement in our area at all and people just ignore the laws, leading to accidents and a lower quality of life. But how to prove that there's not enough enforcement? If I'm going to give the police a hard time at the meeting I want evidence to back it up.
As liberal as I am, this will seem a conservative statement; but I think we need to argue for the police in DC to have greater protection for doing their job to protect the public. In my opinion it seems that the laws here are geared so much to protecting individual liberties that the police have a difficult job enforcing issues of community improvement - and the community ends up paying the price and we have police with low morale.
i'm anonymous 10:09.
i stand corrected about the drug transaction. it was not in the florida market, it was a block and a half away from it.
the laws against police chases exist to protect pedestrians and other drivers from getting killed by high speed chases in residential areas. if your child got killed by a police cruiser in a high speed chase, you probably would think twice about the wisdom of officers tearing down the street at 60 mph as well. Additionally, the adrenalin rush caused during a chase impairs officers' decision when the suspect is finally stopped, studies have shown that this judgment impairment disproportionately leads to suspects getting shot. Unless you believe in throwing out our justice system and letting adrenalin-charged cops murder suspects in a judge/jury/executioner capacity, i think you should see there is a logical rationale behind eliminating high speed chases.
Drug dealers frequently sell drugs. If they didn't catch Palmer that night, they would have caught him the next night or a few days later. It certainly wasn't worth the lives of two children to chase him at that moment, as if he could never be caught again (a lot of dealers get arrested over and over and over...because frankly they're quite easy to catch/arrest...now if we want to talk about the courts and prison capacities (including rehabilitation), that's another discussion).
ps: why can't people choose other and use their initials or their first names? no one's going to figure out who "bob" is and it makes it easier to have a conversation than anon 10:18 (what if two people post within the same minute?).
great, so if a cop flashes his lights to pull me over for a traffic violation I can just gun the engine, barrel through a red light and around the corner, speeding through a densely populated residential neighborhood and the cop is just supposed to sit there and say let him go we don't want to aggravate the situation. Great im going to get me some fake tags a Hummer and go bananas this weekend! I'll give you a courtesy honk if I see you
Alan, I think you're fogetting about the adrenaline charged criminal suspect here. They tend to "run" whether being chased or not and I think waiting until the next day or the next or the next in the efforts to avoid a chase is unrealistic. Maybe if the cops had fired at the suspect the moment he began to flee, Eric Palmer would have never run over those kids to begin with. Just another view.
-bob-
It's stunning how many people propose the use of guns as a solution to the problems discussed in this blog. I believe Palmer should spend the rest of his life doing hard, hard labor with no chance of parole for what he's done but in response to -bob-'s comment, fleeing police is a crime but not one for which lethal force is appropriate. Not to mention the danger to passersby and other cars from the gunfire. Shoot at everyone who flees in a car and a lot more innocent people will be killed and the city will be bankrupt.
RE: cops having a lot of adrenaline in their systems after chases that's what family and friends who are cops tell me. I think it figures into a lot of beatings after chases, too.
bob writes great, so if a cop flashes his lights to pull me over for a traffic violation I can just gun the engine, barrel through a red light and around the corner, speeding through a densely populated residential neighborhood and the cop is just supposed to sit there and say let him go we don't want to aggravate the situation.
Depending on the circumstances, possibly yes, because letting you get away with a traffic violation, while bad, is not as bad as you or the cop killing someone. I know that "depending on the circumstances" sounds weaselly, and that it's a hard problem to solve for both those who set police chase policy and those officer in the field that have to make choices. But officers have policies that tell them not to return fire from a criminal in the midst of a bunch of bystanders; it doesn't seem that different to me for police to have policies that restrict when high-speed chases are applicable.
An acquaintance of mine lost her seven year old son when he was hit by someone fleeing a police chase -- it happens more often than you might think.
NOTE, however, that I'm not making a comment about this particular case/lawsuit; I don't know anything about it at all. I'm merely responding to the suggestion that no-chase policies are a bad thing. They are a bad thing; but they're also a good thing too.
"...fleeing police is a crime but not one for which lethal force is appropriate..."
Sounds great... until you remember that two innocent children died because the cops chose to spare the criminal (department policy or not).
"It's stunning how many people propose the use of guns as a solution to the problems discussed in this blog"
My guess is that people are sick and tired of the same tired old ineffective ideas getting continually re-hashed and re-tried only harder, while the law-abiding public suffers the consequences of government ineptitude. We know what happens when only the bad guys have guns, DC and VA Tech are poster children for that. It's time to give the good guys the advantage for a change.
Anon 5:21 (I agree, anonymous posting has to go) I see two problems with the first half of your reply: #1 is that you imply causation where there is none. I.e., you suggest that the kids were killed because the cops *didn't* shoot someone. At the time the Palmer fled he was a suspected drug dealer, not the murdering scum he is now. Should the police start going around shooting all suspected drug dealers to prevent crimes they'll commit in the future? You may support that but the constitution doesn't.
The second is the fact that you sidestepped my original argument that shooting all fleeing suspects would lead to a lot more innocents being killed. I have no doubt of that.
As for the larger gun argument the problem is that who is a good guy and who is a bad guy is mostly in the mind of the person with the gun. Let everyone in DC carry a gun and you'll just have death all around.
I think the lesson at Va. Tech is that there should be much more thorough checks on people buying guns as well as training requirements. The NRA-inspired laws (lack thereof) allowed a kid w/ clear mental problems buy weapons to slaughter innocents.
Imagine if we let college kids, all of whom have grown up on shoot-em-up video games and don't have fully developed decision-making skills carry guns. Every altercation would end in murder.
guns have been illegal in dc for a long time, and it's more than likely to remain that way.
and for good reason.
i do think that more speedbumps would be a small step in the right direction.
i was almost hit off florida by a guy talking on his cell phone, laughing so hard his eyes were shut.
he was going about 50 mph.
imagine an adrenaline spiked outlaw.
but guns?
nah.
that's just plain goofy.
cuz.. if you follow that argument, then you would also have to say that the bigger the gun, the better the deterrent/protection.
soo, M16s would be even more effective.
dc needs to work on prevention, NOT hillbilly or ghetto reactions.
it takes time, but it's worth it.
in the meantime, educate yourself and those around you to be extra careful.
slxlr
"I think the lesson at Va. Tech is that there should be much more thorough checks on people buying guns as well as training requirements."
Well, he was known stalker, but the victims and university decided to be 'nice' and declined to press charges - so the prohibitions on gun sales to criminals was bypassed...and he was identified as a loony, and they even did the paperwork to involuntarily commit him (the Post published it), but they decided to be 'nice' and let him enter the institution voluntarily, so the prohibition on the mentally ill was bypassed.
There were two perfect chances to weed this guy out, and they were missed because people wanted to be 'nice' to a criminal loon.
What did they get for being nice?
32 corpses.
Like I said, the same tired old ideas... the problem here is that liberal elitists are so convinced of their intellectual superiority, that they aren't even willing to look at the negative outcomes of their ideas and re-evaluate. The good people of society then suffer the consequences of that ineptitude.
Effective gun control really isn't that difficult. All you need to do is start one very straightforward premise/question:
If there's somebody you KNOW you can't trust with a gun, why are they allowed to walk the streets at all?
While I agree with many of the comments posted here on both sides to blame cops for chasing criminals is just plain silly. And to think that criminals are going to slow down and think the chase is over is equally silly. Criminals who are running away from the scene of a crime are going to behave in the same way no matter what cops do. Do you think they are going to slow down and suddenly obey the traffice laws because there isn't a blue flashing light behind them? You are giving them way too much credit. While I think that at times it doesn't make sense for cops to do high speed pursuits in very small residential streets where do you draw the line? At what point to you decide we either stop this pursuit or continue it? The answer is that it's clearly case-by-case. On the other hand officers should not be prosecuted for doing their job. I say that any wrong doing that happens in the course of a high speed pursuit etc. by the police should rest soley on the shoulders of the criminal they were pursuing. After all, they wouldn't have been driving fast if these dirt bags hadn't broken the law to begin with. Put a law on the books that places liability on them for anything that happnes in the course of a pursuit then you might make them think twice. I am sick of the blame the police first attitude of some people. If they need to use force to subdue a suspect after a chase there's probably good reason for it. Why was the person running? Give me a break. If you run from the police be prepared for the consequences. I don't think that random police violence is acceptable, but if some a-hole has led people on a chase he or she deserves what they get (I can hear civil liberty folks fuming already :) As for gun control, I legally own a gun in dc and went through the whole registration process and back ground check. Despite the fact that I have a high level clearance and I'm in the military I still had to have a two month background check. Now isn't the time for this debate, but those of us that obey the law should be able to defend ourselves. Make it harder to get one. More background checks, mental tests, mandatory training, gun locks, but those of us who obey the law shouldn't be denied that right. If you don't want one, don't get one. People who get guns illegally still won't be able to get them legally because of criminal records etc. I have family at VT and have I go there two or three times a year. That SOB would have gotten a gun legally or illegally no matter what. If another student there had been armed they might have been able to stop what happened. But again, not the time for this debate.
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