A Police Officer Got Fired Because He Wouldn't Shoot A Guy In Possession Of An Unloaded Gun
Fox News – A West Virginia police officer who refused to shoot a man holding an unloaded gun was fired for not pulling the trigger, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Then-Weirton police officer Stephen Mader was let go after a May 6 incident in which he said he tried to talk Ronald D. “R.J.” Williams Jr. out of harming himself.
“I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and deescalate it,” Mader, an ex-Marine, told The Post-Gazette. “I knew it was suicide-by-cop.”
Mader said even though he didn’t know Williams Jr.’s gun was unloaded at the time, the man had the gun at his side and was not pointing it at the officer. He also knew that he had been called to the scene because of a domestic disturbance and Williams Jr. had only threatened to hurt himself.
“I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother,’” Mader said.
Eventually, two other officers arrived and one of them shot and killed Williams Jr., hitting him in the back of the head, just behind his right ear, The Post-Gazette reported.
The shooting was deemed justified, but Mader was terminated because he “failed to eliminate a threat.”
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more details on the story which are both interesting and kind of horrifying with how some police higher ups handled the process. And obviously it’s West Virginia so it’s sort of a “take it with a grain of salt” thing in terms of how likely something like this could happen with police in other areas. But jesus I genuinely don’t get how this could be the response to a guy risking his own life and no one else’s solely to show compassion. I get it’s one of those things like when a Target employee tackles a would-be shoplifter and gets fired that it’s a safer and wiser choice to let the shoplifter go or in this case put a bullet in the crazy dude’s head. But with all the divisive things that have happened in the country, maybe it’s not the best look to fire a dude under dubious circumstances because he read the situation correctly and wanted to err on the side of saving someone’s life. It seems to me like that should be something more applauded than punished with where we are in the world right now.
Also this is pretty grim but how awkward must the moment have been when Mader spent who knows how long anxiously reading and then trying to deescalate the situation only for these dudes to storm in and spray the dude’s brains all over the room. The darkest timeline for the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme to play.