Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shooting

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Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shooting

Postby blehblah » Mon Jul 23, 2018 2:30 pm

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-flor ... SKBN1KB0T8

A man will not be charged after fatally shooting another man in front of his girlfriend and son at a Florida convenience store during an argument over a handicapped parking spot, because of the state’s Stand Your Ground law, according to authorities.

The case, which has sparked growing criticism on social media, will instead be sent to the state attorney’s office for further review, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri during a news conference on Friday.

Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, established in 2005, grants residents the right to use force if they reasonably believe they are at risk of great harm or death.

On Thursday shortly after 3 p.m., Michael Drejka, 47, got into a shouting match with a woman named Britany Jacobs who sat inside a car parked at a handicapped spot outside of a small food store in Clearwater, Florida, a city less than 30 miles from Tampa, Gualtieri said. Drejka frequently visited the store and was angry over her use of the parking spot without a legal permit, Gualtieri said.

Surveillance video showed Drejka moments later being approached by Markeis McGlockton, Jacob’s 28-year-old boyfriend, who was inside of the store shopping with their son, Markeis McGlockton Jr., 5.

“McGlockton approached Drejka - he didn’t waste anytime getting to him - and then he pushed him,” Gualtieri said, adding that there was no verbal exchange between the two men. “And he pushed him with great force. This was a violent push.”


The video can be found in this article: https://globalnews.ca/news/4345444/flor ... round-law/

Right... so, a guy is saying who-knows-what at a woman in a car because the guy is unhappy about the car she is in being parked in a spot reserved for disabled folks. I'm sure the guy is being very brave, manly, even, in the course of that discussion. He could have taken a picture of the car, or called whatever equates to bylaw officers in Florida (they probably carry machine guns, for everyone's safety and comfort, while writing parking tickets) but he decided to have a discussion with the woman in the car.

The woman's boyfriend walks out of the store, just as the woman (his girlfriend) is stepping out of the car, and gives the shooter a pretty solid shove.

At this point, I have to say, if someone were getting in my wife's face, I'd likely not immediately go to, "I need to push this guy to the ground as hard as I can," but, the thought would certainly be there. Make a note, people - don't mess with Mrs. Blehblah.

As the shooter is on the ground, he pulls his very legal concealed handgun out. Naturally, the soon-to-be-shot guy backs off, as one tends to do when having a firearm pointed at oneself. It could have ended there. It should not have got to there, but there it was. Feeling threatened, or maybe horny, or itchy, or something, the discussion-prone guy on the ground shoots the man in the chest. The shot guy runs into the store, where his five year-old is. The guy dies soon after.

As you can see from the articles, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri figures, "seems legit".

I wonder what would have happened had the girlfriend stepped out of the car, and felt threatened; threatened enough to qualify for "stand your ground", because threat is in the eye of the beholder. She pulls a gun and shoots the man who is accosting her. Alternatively, what if the boyfriend had walked out of the store, observed a man accosting his girlfriend, and pulled a gun? Is that standing his ground?

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/regi ... ence-store

Drejka responded by taking out a pistol and shooting McGlockton in the chest. McGlockton ran back into the store where his five-year-old son was standing at the front door, watching the entire incident happen right before his eyes. McGlockton fell to the ground inside of the store and he was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

[...]

Drejka is a legal concealed weapons permit holder and will not be charged because of Florida's Stand Your Ground law, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

The store owner tells ABC Action News that Drejka has a history of assaulting people in the very parking lot the shooting took place. A man who frequents the store told ABC Action News he had a run-in with the man who opened fire just one month ago.

Rich Kelly says the man picked a fight with him over a parking spot, using racial slurs, and even threatening to kill him. Now, a month later, a similar case, ending with a father killed in front of his 5-year-old son.


What the fuck, Florida? This is murder, or at least manslaughter.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:32 pm

Don't park in handicapped spaces if you are not meant to be parking in them. The store owner said he had mentioned this to the guy in the past and that he wouldn't listen.

I wouldn't shoot a guy who shoved me then stood there, it looked to me like the shooter paused for a moment before pulling the trigger but I'm not the person carrying a gun around and poking my nose into things that are an issue for law enforcement. But, again, see the first sentence in this post. Don't act like an entitled idiot and you won't have to worry about how people react to your selfish behavior.

I wonder if the guy a month before who had an issue over a parking spot was also parked in the handicapped space? He sure didn't mention calling the cops on someone who threatened to murder him over a parking spot. If I were a store owner I'd call the cops on someone who has a history of assaulting my customers. I bet he wishes he would've now. I'm not trying to defend the shooter's behavior, I'm saying if he was a constant problem then why wasn't he dealt with?
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Anglerphobe » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:37 pm

Guns can make a murder of a little scuffle like this so easily. A stupid argument resulted in a death because someone felt the need to bring a gun to a convenience store. This isn't to say that the man coming over and pushing someone to the ground wasn't being a reckless dickhead, but that would have been nothing more than bruises and scrapes and dented pride if the other guy didn't need a deadly weapon on him to buy eggs. What a waste.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Absentia » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:34 pm

Textbook voluntary manslaughter everywhere else, no charge in Florida.

And in case anyone wants to know without having to watch the video: Yes, the shooter is white and the victim is black.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Krashlia » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:17 pm

The law could be fixed. Yes, the guy who parked in handicapped parking was probably not handicapped and being a jerk, no matter what color.

But, I think most of us can agree that, unless he was being assaulted, shooting someone for parking on handicapped parking when they shouldn't have is waaaaaaay extreme.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:42 am

blehblah wrote:I wonder what would have happened had the girlfriend stepped out of the car, and felt threatened; threatened enough to qualify for "stand your ground", because threat is in the eye of the beholder. She pulls a gun and shoots the man who is accosting her. Alternatively, what if the boyfriend had walked out of the store, observed a man accosting his girlfriend, and pulled a gun? Is that standing his ground?


Probably. Unless...

Absentia wrote:Textbook voluntary manslaughter everywhere else, no charge in Florida.

And in case anyone wants to know without having to watch the video: Yes, the shooter is white and the victim is black.


Lol, read this literally as I was loading the video to check that exact thing.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:00 am

I popped over to NR for their take, and they didn't disappoint. David French argues that the sheriff misinterpreted the law:

Incredibly, the Pinellas County sheriff, Bob Gualtieri, is refusing to charge Drejka, citing Florida’s stand-your-ground” law. At a news conference, Gualtieri said, “The law in the state of Florida today is that people have a right to stand their ground and have a right to defend themselves when they believe that they are in harm.” This is an inexcusably bad misstatement of the law. Drejka should be charged, and law-abiding Florida gun owners should demand accountability.

First, let’s deal with the applicable statute. The stand-your-ground law most assuredly does not grant citizens the right to use deadly force whenever they believe they are “in harm” (whatever that means). Here’s what Chapter 776 of the 2108 Florida statute, “Justifiable Use of Force,” says:
(1) A person is justified in using or threatening to use force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. A person who uses or threatens to use force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such force.

(2) A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.


Note that the statutes contemplates two very different circumstances, one where a person is authorized to use “force, except deadly force” and the other where “deadly force” is authorized. So, no, not every punch, kick, push, shove, or fear of “harm” grants a person the right to pull his gun and shoot. It just grants him the right to punch or push back. That’s it. It would be utterly absurd if every physical altercation immediately granted the victim a license to kill. That’s not the law.


https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/ ... -outraged/
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:19 pm

So, as with the murder of Trayvon Martin, we see that the law is not the problem, the problem is idiots misinterpreting the law. Except that "cop misinterprets law in horrifying way" is not news, so we get the media blaming the law rather than the cop.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Jul 24, 2018 10:46 pm

Judging from the apparent reaction to that article (it's the second most popular on the site, one of the most shared, and even the commenters almost all agree with the central point), this might have legs on the right as well as the left thanks to that surveillance video. Shooting an unarmed person who's several feet away and backing up doesn't seem to have played well, and perhaps unsurprisingly, members of a party quite in love with the John Wayne tough-guy image seem quite split on the question of whether it's even wrong to shove a guy who's hassling your woman.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby sunglasses » Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:54 pm

I want to send this Sheriff some bugs. Who is with me?!
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby iMURDAu » Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:11 pm

You're going to send bugs to Florida ?Think this through.

You can't send bugs there to die like that, they'll get eaten by larger bugs. What happened to glitter? Why not just draw genitalia on squad cars with honey? It'll eat the paint and attract bugs and they'll look like a bunch of dicks, pussies, and boobs. That's three facets of fun. The paint, bugs, and crudely obscene imagery ya pervs.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby sunglasses » Thu Jul 26, 2018 10:27 am

I love your mind.
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby iMURDAu » Fri Jul 27, 2018 3:08 pm

Image
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jul 30, 2018 2:35 pm

Holy shit, the goddamn NRA rebuked the sheriff.

In explaining why he didn’t arrest the shooter, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters on July 20 that his hands were tied because the stand-your-ground law “created a standard, that is a largely subjective standard” for the use of deadly force by a shooter.

Gualtieri also suggested his office could be civilly liable simply for arresting the shooter, and he stressed how Florida lawmakers last year changed the 2005 law concerning immunity from prosecution.

But on each of those three counts — immunity, civil liability and subjectivity — experts say Gualtieri is just wrong.

“Nothing in either the 2005 law or the 2017 law prohibits a Sheriff from making an arrest in a case where a person claims self-defense if there is probable cause that the use of force was unlawful,” said Marion Hammer, Tallahassee’s NRA lobbyist who helped shepherd "stand your ground" through the GOP-led Florida Legislature.

“Nothing in the law says a person can sue the Sheriff for making an arrest when there is probable cause,” Hammer added in an emailed statement to POLITICO.


https://www.politico.com/states/florida ... ims-534054
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Re: Florida stand your ground is the gift that keeps on shoo

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 2:17 am

The shooter has been arrested and charged with manslaughter.

https://www.tampabay.com/florida-parkin ... nslaughter
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