Law enforcement officials on Monday released grainy footage of the shooting of Usaama Rahim, the terrorist suspect who authorities said was planning to attack anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller and police officers.
The video released on Monday showed, according to authorities, Rahim walking in a CVS parking lot toward a bus stop when he’s surrounded by five or six FBI and Boston Police. The officers seem to take a step back and then Rahim is shot. The video (a frame of which is pictured above), taken by a Burger King surveillance camera, shows Rahim falling to the ground. It’s not clear from the video that Rahim was wiellding a knife but officials said they recovered a knife from the scene of the shooting.
According to The New York Times earlier in June, FBI and Boston police confronted Rahim outside the CVS after they heard him in a phone call talking about beheading police officers. Rahim, when he was confronted, pulled out a knife. Police officers told him to drop the knife and he said “drop yours,” according to an affidavit of the shooting. Rahim moved toward the officers and was shot.
At the press conference where law enforcement officials shared the video, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said that the video was released to prevent rumor or inaccurate information spreading.
“It becomes easier than ever for rumor, speculation and inaccurate information to fill the vacuum if reliable facts aren’t put out rapidly,” Conley said. “For this reason we have agreed some video evidence earlier, when it can illuminate the facts. And when doing so won’t compromise the integrity of the investigation.”
Conley stressed that the video was simply “one piece of evidence among many” and the investigation is still “very active.”
I don’t care if he was armed with a flame thrower. Again at close range and having the decided “fire power” advantage, rather than knee-capping or winging someone, they shoot to kill though, in this case, the officers were really not in any physical danger.
Not that I’d give anyone involved in acts like this credit for a surplus of brains, but…
Congratulations, guys. You just handed the mic to possibly the one person whose shrieking harpiness made her a caricature. Worse: you gave her credibility.
Pam will be watching this like a horny teen watches porn.
Unlike a horny teen, though, La Geller will have personal staying power.
Cops shoot to kill and do, leaving no live witness then have the same old justification that everyone is supposed to swallow whole.
If you listen to the cops version of things, they are always right and always justified, yet incidence after incidence and video after video, that notion is patently horseshit.
The cops getting the benefit of doubt is a thing of the past and they are doing this to themselves.
This dead guy sounds like a dude on a bad mission but the cops story sounds like typical designed to be justifiable and unprosecutable horseshit. Doubt is what is justified.