Support Your Local Police

2 police officers in St. Louis have been fired, and have had their peace officers licenses revoked after they did nothing to aid a gunshot victim because they found it inconvenient.

It should be noted here that the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no duty for police officers to protect you, (Castle Rock v. Gonzales) but officials in St. Louis and in Missouri have (IMHO correctly) decided that the officers behavior was beyond the pale:

Urayoan Alejandro Rodriguez-Rivera called St. Louis police at 6:13 p.m. on Sept. 10, 2023, to tell them he was going to kill himself. By the time two officers found him in Forest Park 13 minutes later, he had shot himself in the head and was clinging to life.

At first, the officers thought the 29-year-old was dead, body-camera footage shows. Then they discovered he was still breathing — barely.

“We need to take this [guy], then,” said Ty Warren, who according to authorities was referring to the need to take responsibility for the call and write reports about what happened.

“We ain’t taking this [mess],” his partner, Austin Fraser, replied, according to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. “Let’s cruise around and come back.”

Fraser and Warren didn’t try to give Rodriguez-Rivera any medical help, Assistant Attorney General David Hansen alleged in a disciplinary complaint. They didn’t tell dispatch that they had found him or that he needed an ambulance. They didn’t try to find the gun he had been shot with.

Instead, one minute after finding Rodriguez-Rivera, the officers left him, exiting the park and returning to their patrol vehicle as they laughed and joked around with each other, Warren’s body-cam footage shows. They returned minutes later, pretending to stumble upon Rodriguez-Rivera’s body for the first time as another officer called for an ambulance and took the lead on the call.

Within days, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department fired Fraser, and within weeks, Warren had also left the department. Fraser’s peace officer license was revoked earlier this month, after Warren’s had already been — meaning they can no longer work as law enforcement officers anywhere in the state, said Mike O’Connell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

The Missouri attorney general’s office accused the former officers of violating two statutes: gross misconduct and committing an act of “reckless disregard.”

Pre-George Floyd, I do not think that much would have happened to these officers.

Progress, I guess, but these guys should be in jail.