Montana Officer, Grant Morrison, Shoots and Kills His Second Unarmed Man. No Charges in Either Case
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10 January 2015
Without a doubt, being a police officer is often a dangerous career path. According to the New York Times, 50 police officers in the United States were shot and killed in 2014 while on duty.
While the number of citizens shot and killed by police in 2014, according to Reason, is 1,029, which is 20 times the number of police officers killed and the highest on record for our nation, any reasonable person will admit that the job of an officer can be dangerous and often thankless.
When an officer pulls over a car for a moving violation, they have no idea if the passengers in that car are going to be school teachers, Girl Scouts, or some dudes making a drug run. With that said, Grant Morrison, a police officer in Montana, clearly has an unacceptable and unreasonable level of fear when he pulls people over.
Two times, in the past two years, Morrison has pulled over unarmed, nonviolent citizens and, in a fit of fear, shot them both—the most recent resulting in a brutal and unnecessary death. Below the fold you will find the videos of those incidents and the nearly unbelievable news stories detailing how he's been cleared of wrongdoing in both shootings.
If what he did isn't wrong, we have a problem.
Tragically, as you will see below, Morrison shoots and kills 38-year-old Richard Ramirez after a rather routine traffic stop. On January 7, according to Yahoo News, Morrison was cleared of any wrongdoing because he "feared Ramirez had a gun." After shooting him three times at close range, Morrison continues to yell commands to Ramirez on what he wants Ramirez to do, as if his body wasn't just destroyed by three bullets. Ramirez dies soon thereafter.
The shooting happens at 1:39, but it's worth watching the entire video for context.
This, though, was not the first time Morrison shot and killed an unarmed, nonviolent person during a traffic stop. In 2013, Morrison shot and killed James Shaw after a routine traffic stop. Shaw, as you will have to carefully hear since the shooting is just out of the sight of the camera, is first hit with a taser then immediately shot and killed by Morrison. Morrison says he shot Shaw because he had a "crazed look on his face."