Man….been a bad few weeks for law enforcement.
Pittsburgh police said a man wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them in Stanton Heights.
Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for Saturday’s shooting isn’t clear. Friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and that he feared President Barack Obama’s administration was poised to ban guns.
Kelly had been on the force for 14 years and the other two only two years each. Another officer, Tim Mcmamawany, was shot in the hand and a fifth, Brian Jones, broke his leg on a fence.
The gunman, Richard Poplawski, 23, was arrested after a four-hour standoff at a home along Fairfield Street.
Sciullo and Mayhle were responding to a domestic call and were shot in the head as they approached the door, police said.
Police said Poplawski was shooting from a window. They said the suspect shot more than 70 times, as police returned fire.
Kelly lived in the neighborhood and was off duty at the time, he came after hearing the shots.
~~~Channel 11 News learned Poplawski was training to become a U.S. Marine at one point, but sources said he was kicked out of boot camp. Officials said he was also kicked out of North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh.
Stephen Mayhle
— Was a two-year veteran officer
— Survived by wife Chandra and daughters Jennifer and BrooklynEric Kelly
— Was a 14-year veteran officer
— Survived by wife Marina and daughters Timyka, Autumn and JanelPaul Sciullo III
— Was a two-year veteran
— Survived by his parents and three siblings
My condolences to the families of these brave officers.
Meanwhile the left is doing their best to say hey! It’s all the right’s fault. The guy was obviously unstable, so any attempt to say this would not have happened if the right had not said they were worried about Obama taking their guns away is just plain ignorant.
Everyone would benefit if the right could just lower the temperature a bit.
I’m sorry, didn’t hear that kind of statement when this happened.
Should we play this tit for tat game?….JammieWearingFool tackles the fools playing that game:
At Balloon Juice, John Cole offers this subtle analysis, calling it Glenn Beck’s America. I suppose when those four cops were murdered in Oakland we should have called it what, Jesse Jackson’s America? Barack Obama’s America? Ron Dellums’ America?
Please, someone enlighten me.
Also piling on Glenn Beck is the very unstable John Amato, who also blames the NRA.
Again, we’ve had thousands of police officers murdered in the line of duty the past several decades, the overwhelming majority killed in urban areas. So I guess the kneejerk reaction to all of those homicides should be to blame it on failed liberal policies in cities controlled by Democrats, correct? Hey, if you want to play that game, let’s assign blame for every murder to the killer’s party affiliation and ideology, OK? You folks really want to go down that road?
By all means then, it’s game on.
The fact remains this guy was a nut and now three cops are dead. Our thoughts should be with the families of these officers.
See author page
I blame EVERYBODY else for EVERYTHING. As apparently do the other posters here. “Them” are at fault not “US”. As for police deaths in the USA, Curt I am sure that you are aware that a policeman is twice as likely to commit suicide than he is to be shot by someone with either left or right politics. But since you did bring up the left/riight percentage, and since most police who kill themselves are “right wing” maybe the total deaths of police who are killed by themselves or by others would be close to the same for both sides of the political spectrum. Here is a link to an organization that is trying to reduce the numbers of police killed, by suicide http://www.psf.org/index.htm
i am from pittsburgh, and i have heard reports of the guy using the phrase “zionist control”
so maybe this guy isn’t a right winger after all, maybe he is just a just a loser who got kicked out of highschool and the marines and shot and killed three cops in a domestic dispute.
also don’t forget the Virginia Tech shooter was a rabid bush hater
The man who murdered two people in my church in Knoxville – Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church – wrote a manifesto that explicitly spelled out the political nature of his crimes. At his trial he reinforced it and said he was “trying to kill all the liberals”. He said he wanted to wipe out “the people in Bernie Goldberg’s book.”
Of course, he was also deranged. But couldn’t you argue the 9/11 hijackers were similarly deranged? Could anybody be considered “rational” if they go on a shooting rampage? What is the line between a mental nutcase who uses an ideological excuse for his violence, and a genuine political extremist who uses violence because he believes it appropriate?
I think it’s fair to point out the fact that this guy had some deranged beliefs about Obama that were undoubtedly spurred on by right-wing rhetoric.
Here’s how it works: when right-wingers go off on these ridiculous tangents about how people want to take their guns and put them in concentration camps, the other side is allowed to point out violence perpetrated by those who believe these things. Get used to it.
The fact is that his country had Timothy McVeigh. We know about right-wing domestic terrorism and have every right to be cognizant of it. When the right cranks up the paranoia to 11 and something like this happens, connections will be rightly made.
That said, I believe the shootings in Oakland and the atrocious reaction by some there should have been pointed out in more detail also.
But we are on McVeigh’s turf here, and you on the right are going to have to come to terms with what your rhetoric does to the unstable.
Lovelle Mixon was not afraid of Obama’s gun ban when he killed 4 Oakland officers. He was a parolee who was banned from having guns! He had more than one. Come to Chicago, we have a total hand gun ban, but some how we still have hand gun murders…..
A nut is a nut regardless of the politics…
It just proves that people kill people not the weapon they use..
To blame anyone because of their politics is stupid… even Lee Harvey Oswald.. (which was BS).
All this does is give fuel to the anti-gun fire.. it’s stupid and doesn’t help.
We need to honor these men and make sure there families are taken care of..
But you can rest assured that the MSM will make a circus of this week and try to pound their agenda home..
Hey joe from chi,,, I may need you to check on my baby girl…
She is going to cullinary school there while her boyfriend goes to law school..
Drives me nuts.. at least I know she has a pistol in her apartment.. regardless of the “ban”…
I insisted and she is and excellent shot and very well trained..
Libs like Jason (above) are weeping with joy as this nut has been described as a “right winger”, concerned about Obama and the 2nd amendment. Nothing like a few good mass murders to encourage the left in its unending effort to disarm the American public. Although I am sure to be wasting my time, a nut is a nut is a nut, Jason. And because the media has represented this guy as a “right winger”, you immediately declare all conservative thought to be invalid. Looks as though you’ll be quite well suited to the “equality of slavery” de Tocqueville warned us of.
John Ryan, Curt did *not* bring up “the left-right percentage”. He noted the left is trying to blame the right for this event. (guess they’re giving the gun manufacturers a temporary reprieve…)
Curt’s response was to point out how absurd the rules would be, playing that game with past events by crazy people of the liberal/progressive bent. John Ryan, however, perpetuates the same “it’s the fault of the right”, along with Jason.
Begs the question…. just who’s propagating the hate speech here? Appears self-evident.
Curt is correct. This should be about the families of the slain officers. Not your political agenda.
guns don’t pick themselves up from a table or get out of a drawer and shoot by themselves. a gun ban is stupid becasue we all know that its the people with the guns that are killing people. next time someone is stabbed to death will we hear the cry of a knife ban, no we won’t. when someone nails someone in the head with a baseball bat are they gonna outlaw bats? you would ahve aot of pissed off ball players if you did.
the guy was nuts, thats all there is to it. you find nutcases in all segments of society and there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. some people are just unstable.
What kinda like the Islamic Terrorists who kill and maim? Of course you can blame someone for their politics as well as their actions. If certain screwball politics encourages violence then you should also tackle that as well.
I believe in freedom of speech but legally that has boundaries. I don’t want Islamic extremists encouraging young British muslims to go over to Afghanistan to fight against the Infidel. They shouldn’t be allowed. And I don’t want nutters like Harvey Oswald or Timothy McVeigh – organising either openly or not to assassinate people.
This goes beyond the usual right-left divide and goes into the extremists. No doubt there are extreme rightwingers and leftwingers and religious nuts who not only unhealthy views but they may encourage others to join them. I suggest most, hopefully all of us on this board – are moderate enough to believe in democracy and be appalled as such crimes irrespective of whether it is extreme left or extreme right.
@luva
I don’t know about baseball bats but I believe there are calls for certain knives to be banned after such knife attacks. Guns don’t kill people but neither do nukes and I don’t want them scattered around like candy either.
As IGNORANT WE ALL ARE, how do we make sense of these actions ??????????????????
I never said it was the fault of the right. I’m just saying it’s valid to point out the radical political leanings of people who commit mass murders. Motive counts, doesn’t? The Oakland guy was low-rent crook, but this Pittburgh guy had a far different motive.
I think we’ve learned in recent year that radical rhetoric can cause unstable people to commit atrocious acts. If we have somebody who has committed a senseless act of violence who buys into these theories, than those dispensing these theories should be questioned as to the ultimate effect of their rhetoric.
Here’s how it goes: if you say incendiary things and people who believe them to crazy things, YOU GET CALLED OUT. Then you can answer any way you wish, but get whiny about getting called you. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
@Jason:
The “Pittsburg guy” crazy nut, trapped animal(take your pick), was involved in a domestic dispute, a dangerous call for any and all of our officers. Bit premature to get carried away at this point and assign a motive based on comments made by whoever decides to comment to the press.
My son-in-law is a cop and these are the types of calls that make me wish he did something else.
@Jason:
Really?
Here’s what you said in #4:
Here’s something you need to know before you go off half-cocked spewing forth your drivel about whose fault it is.
This guy was involved with the the neo-Nazi group Stormfront.
Stormfront = Nazis = LEFTIST AUTHORITARIANISM
Yeah, thanks for playing.
Here’s how it works: when liberal loudmouths go off on these ridiculous tangents about how the guy who shot and killed some police officers was a right wing freak without the benefit of factual backing, the other side is allowed to point out the way that loudmouth has beclowned himself.
Get used to it.