1 yr. ago • 98%

Colorado Cop Who Left Handcuffed Woman on Train Tracks Says It was an Accident

www.theroot.com Colorado Cop Who Left Handcuffed Woman on Train Tracks Says It was an Accident

The officer claims she didn't realize a whole train was coming when she left a woman handcuffed in a parked police car.

65 comments

Like when one ACCIDENTALLY leaves their wallet at home, or ACCIDENTALLY forgets to turn the porch light on, or ACCIDENTALLY beats their wife unconscious. Y'know, things we all have in common with cops, right??

95
- Do you think she did it on purpose with the intention of getting her patrol car hit by train?
  
  2
  
  I just want to stop and appreciate that we can all take it as a given she wants to kill a human being but have to think twice about her wanting to destroy the car.
  
  9
In her testimony, Steinke claims that she didn’t realize the car was sitting on the tracks until it was too late.

This is definitely someone I would trust with a gun.

50
- It's America. They trust baaically anybody with basically any gun.
  
  The Ulvade shooter was a teenager, with a history of sending death and rape threats, who earned the nickname "school shooter" after abusing a dead cat.
  
  He bought two semi-automatic rifles from a company that markets to young, internet connected edgelords, posted pictures of them to social media, then used them to mutilate a room full of children beyond recognition.
  
  The pro-gun crowd rushed to blame the police but the reality is that police and hypothetical "good guns" can only react to shootings, meaning its always going to be too late for someone.
  
  Which is why braver police at Sandy Hook were too late to save anyone, despite being on the scene and breaching within minutes.
  
  It's a pattern repeated over and over again. Look up the history of a mass shooter 3 months after their act, when their history is known, and its usually the same story; a parade of red flags, often far-right and radicalised online and deeply damaged and not shy about it.
  
  People capable of these acts are not just normal people (and legal gun owners) who wake up broken one day and decide to see if murdering children and minorities fixes it. People could already tell they were dangerous.
  
  But if you ask those pro-gun cultists what they'd have changed, it's never the guns.
  
  They're genuinely more upset by the idea of waiting 6 months for a gun -- something routine in the rest of the world -- than they are by children dying terrified and screaming on their classroom floor.
  
  After blaming video games and rap music didn't work, they've finally opted for "mental health" and while it sounds reasonable on the surface, it's no less bullshit.
  
  It's not at all reasonable to insist that America fixes the mental health problems of every man, woman and child in America, for free, no matter how deeply violent, curing them to a degree far beyond the most cutting edge medical treatments available, with no relapses ever, in less time and with less effort to the patient than buying a gun and doing a murder suicide.
  
  All so it's safer to indiscrimately sell the public guns.
  
  I hope Lemmy communities don't give give them space. They're propaganda spreading, self-absorbed scum.
  
  (P.S: Sorry for hitting you with this rant but I know I'm going to have to copy and paste bits of it 100 times on Lenmy, so I may as well get it all out now)
  
  19
  
  Those same people also tend to oppose using public money to pay for mental health treatment, or really any programs to improve the lives of people with mental health issues or other problems that can lead to breakdowns. Best they can think of is prison, which is very expensive for the government, but that’s always fine for some reason.
  
  6
  
  There's people who actually believe that literally everyone should have a gun at all times. I expect to see actual deification of guns by the end of the decade.
  
  4
  
  Don’t be sorry. Your frustration is 100% reasonable.
  
  4
  
  That's a lot of words to just suggest a change that wouldn't even of prevented the tragedy your making an example of.
  
  -7
- I wouldn't trust her even with desk duty and safety scissors.
  
  5
I can't conceive of being a police officer, "accidentally" parking someone on a train track, by some miracle not getting them killed, and then thinking to myself that I should continue to be a police officer.

40
- I can't help but think of Adachi in Persona 4 going "I only became a cop so I could carry a gun. You'd be surprised how many police officers are the same way."
  
  Except you don't need to be a cop to carry a gun in the US...
  
  12
  
  Easier to get away with illegal activities though
  
  6
- He's gotta get paid.
  
  In the USA your identity, finances, and insurance are tied to your job.
  
  He's likely got financial obligations and is stuck in that job. Police are paid pretty well. They have to be to convince any same person to take that shit job.
  
  If you offered all cops a job with the same wage and benefits I bet over half would take it.
  
  5
  
  I doubt over half would take it. Some like the idea of helping communities whereas the motivation of others is simply being in a position of power. It's not hard to think which way the abusive ones would lean.
  
  7
  
  I probably wouldn't like to be policed by the half that stick around.
  
  5
If her excuse was “i didnt know i parked my car on the tracks”, she needs to have her drivers license confiscated. Someone with such little awareness of their surroundings has no business operating heavy machinery (car), let alone the responsibilities of her job.

36
- How could someone get out of a car and walk away without noticing railroad tracks?
  
  12
  
  They couldn't. ACAB.
  
  3
  
  She would not have even have had to leave the car. The railroad crossing signs are very obviously visible. And unless she had the most amazing shocks ever, she probably felt the very bumpy tracks when she went over them.
  
  2
she didn’t realise a whole train was coming.

So just a carriage or two would have been fine.

34
- Well surely one of those mine cart things being operated by a monkey in red velvet would've been ok.
  
  13
Colorado cop who left man shackled to table in the path of an industrial laser beam says it was an accident. Officer Goldfinger claims he didn't realize the machine was on.

32
Steinke faces a felony charge for criminal attempt to commit manslaughter...

How can you have “attempted” manslaughter? I thought one of the defining characteristics of manslaughter is that there isn’t a deliberate intent to kill.

31
- It’s probably specific to the jurisdiction. For instance, some states consider assault and battery to be two different things, whereas other states call them assault and aggravated assault instead. So in those states you’d be charged with aggravated assault instead of being charged with battery. But they both mean the same thing in the end.
  
  10
  
  Specifically, in some states 3rd degree murder is manslaughter and vice versa.
  
  3
- A clumsy name for a law against almost killing someone by negligence.
  
  1
I'm surprised the woman even survived.

18
- I really don't think they were expecting her to.
  
  29
  
  Aww c'mon now, it was just a little whoopsie-doodle! We all make mistakes! Surely, it's not fair to hold those who enforce the violence of the state upon the rest of us to the same standard we hold regular people to!
  
  10
We're sowwy.

16
There are an insane number of factors making it impossible for this to be anything other than an intentional murder attempt.

14
- Such as..?
  
  0
  
  Trains are very loud, very bright, train tracks are very bumpy, with signs everywhere. Have you ever not noticed any of these things, even separately?
  
  2
aww. she said it was an accident. better let her go now. Would wanna have cops be accountable now would we.

Wouldn't*

10
This Snidely Whiplash mf

9
- Yeah, did she have a mustache that she twirled?
  
  3
This calls for the harshest possible punishment! I think two weeks of administrative leave should do it.

8
Officer Whiplash reporting for duty!

6
Was the fucking railroad crossing sign not a clue that there may have been train tracks?

4
And police unions will defend the cop. Unions are not our friend no matter how much some folks on here will want to claim otherwise. Unions make it difficult to reprimand and fire incompetent employees.

-29
- Police Unions are not our friends. I don't remember my local pipe-fitter's union trying to shield a plumber who killed someone for not playing simon-says correctly.
  
  Police have been used for unionbusting for as long as there have been unions and police. Except police unions of course.
  
  Many of the aspects of the modern workplace that make them look better than sweatshops of old, and which most people take for granted, are present only because unions literally fought for those things in the past.
  
  If you work at a job in modern America, you are benefiting from union pressure on business. Edit - Here's five of those things.
  
  23
  
  Police union aka criminal gang.
  
  3
  
  Just because you don't understand that unions - ALL unions - shield incompetent workers doesn't mean it isn't the reality. That clueless pipe fitter you hired to do some work and then fucked up your pipes or charged your 2x as much as the job should have cost is just one of the many issues with incompetent union workers who can't be fired.
  
  -8
- Hope you enjoy losing your weekends and sick time. Because those will be the first things to go if unions are eliminated. They're what made them possible in the first place.
  
  14
- Corrupt, unaccountable Police Unions, propped up by the rich and powerful, don't get to claim and sully the entire unionisation movement. Obviously.
  
  10
  
  Many of them don't even call themselves unions, it's like they know better. PBA is one example used widely, but I believe there are many others.
  
  4
- NOT. THE. SAME.
  
  9
  
  Your union does the exact same thing as police unions. Keep incompetent employees on the job. It just so happens that the stakes tend to be a lot higher with cops.
  
  -10
- Damn, you were doing so well in the first half... Well, first sentence.
  
  2

You've viewed 65 comments.