Monday, April 19, 2010

Shooting in Indianapolis...

So this guy and his girlfriend are helping their buddy, another guy, move into an apartment down around the 1500 block of Pennsylvania when up walks Sumdood and asks for change for a fiver.

This guy tells Sumdood that there's change in the apartment, so they tramp upstairs, whereupon Sumdood whips out his gat and announces that this is, in fact, a good place for a stickup. This guy responds by pulling out his own heater and airing Sumdood out rather comprehensively:
Someone said there was change in the 3rd floor apartment and Hampton followed the group inside. Once there, he pulled a gun and directed everyone into a back room, police said. While being ushered to the back at gunpoint, Blevins pulled out his gun, turned and fired at Hampton, striking him at least four times.
Nice shootin', Tex.

After Sumdood's innards had reached room temperature, more interesting data came to light: Apparently Sumdood was wired up with a transponder like a migrating Harp Seal.
Hampton was wearing an ankle bracelet brace for an unrelated invasion of privacy and violation of a protective order arrest on April 5.
Obviously Sumdood got lost between his Boy Scout troop meeting and choir practice, and just needed change for a five spot to make a phone call to Father Flanagan to get directions to the Boy's Home where he was volunteering as a mentor...

Seeing as how this occupied only a few column inches on p. A-16 of the local cat box liner, I would have missed it were it not for a post by Shermlock Shomes.

Now, had Sumdood smoked this guy, his girlfriend, and the other guy, on what page do you think that story would have wound up, hmmm?

36 comments:

Mike in KY said...

Beautiful. I just realized how much I miss Kim's Dept. of Righteous Shootings.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Ah, a nice Dog Bites Man story. Soon it will be on Page D-23 and then out of the paper entirely. Just like the "Homeowner finds mouse trap full, disposes of carcass in the trash" stories.

What the headline SHOULD have been was "Local Man Saves City Money" vis "Cops: Fatal shooting of robbery suspect was self-defense"

The country will need a bit more attitude change before that, tho.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

God forbid we embarass the local gendarmerie for falling down on the (monitoring) job. Nothing to see here, move along.

Tam said...

Those bracelets aren't there for monitoring, they're there to make their wearers feel bad (generally an exercise in futility), and because Something Must Be Done about crime. They're almost purely symbolic, as best I can tell, much like restraining orders, which are merely written hexes placed on Bad People to show that we sure hope they stop doing bad stuff.

Anonymous said...

If he commits one more Armed Robbery, the prosecutor is going to revoke his bond, and that's real trouble.

Why Ice Dawg chose to pick on urban pioneers I cannot fathom. Usually ID and RR know that those types be packing and look for softer food.

Shootin' Buddy

OA said...

"Now, had Sumdood smoked this guy, his girlfriend, and the other guy, on what page do you think that story would have wound up, hmmm?"

Depends. Were he named Juankeithus, you probably wouldn't have read about it at all.

Tam said...

"Were he named Juankeithus, you probably wouldn't have read about it at all."

Elucidate, please.

alath said...

In my field, we're starting to look at a problem called "publication bias." This arises from the fact that health science journals won't print studies with nonsignificant results. So if 10 studies are done that find no significant difference between the new medicine and the old one, and 1 study finds a small benefit to the new medicine, it's the one that will be published. Net result: "scientific consensus" that the new medicine is better.

Same kind of thing going on obviously with the news media's coverage of shootings. Justified self defense shootings get buried on the back page. Murders get splashed on the front page when they happen, again when the bad guy gets caught, again during the trial, again when he's convicted, and yet again if he's executed or paroled. Net reusult: "everyone knows" that there is an epidemic of murders with firearms, and that justified self defense shootings only exist in the fevered imaginings of Wayne LaPierre.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Tam, remind me to tell you a story about a monitoring bracelet in an inappropriate venue sometime :)

WV: trialite. What Sumdood got.

BobG said...

I imagine word has already gotten out not to mess with the new guy on the block.

OA said...

"Elucidate, please."



I've known people in both the print and broadcast media over the years. I've been told that if a black person is suspected (or caught in the act) of a crime (especially against a white) and fits into the gangbanger/career criminal with a ghetto name stereotype they often either won't report it or will sanitize it (no name, description or mugshot, depending). Apparently they don't want to "stir anything up", and of course, only when whites commit crimes against blacks is it racially motivated (even if a black is yelling "how you like that, you white bitch, you're ruined now" whilst punching her in the head and rapping her. it was of course sanitized...no description of the suspect at all, only a location).

Tam said...

I am unaware of Sumdood's race. Further, I am sufficiently uninterested in Sumdood's race, and the race of his intended victims, that I have not bothered to check.
I will note, however, that multiple murders are of sufficient interest to the local cat box liner that they cover them in ghoulish, front page detail without regard for the race of the shooter or shootees. Stack up enough innocent corpses with a heater, and you get front page billing in the Star, irrespective of the melanin content of perpetrator or victim. All that matters is the presence of multiple dead people and a gun in the wrong hands. If the story involves a gun in the right hands keeping several people from getting iced, well, off to page sixteen it goes...

Ed Foster said...

The same Father Flanigan who said "If you don't get to them before their 13th birthday, you never will"?

Essentially, if you don't establish some kind of socialised grounding before the hormones hit, you're stuck with a sociopath who will never be anything but a mindless predator.

The People's Republic of China has offered to take all our violent criminals off our hands for ten grand each per year.

They will allow American supervision of diet and discioline, and keep them out in the Gobi or Taklamakan and off our hands until they die of old age or are too old to be a threat.

So why not clean the streets and save some money at the same time?

staghounds said...

That's change he could believe in!

Tam is right about the bracelets. All they do is memorialize the fact that the bracelet left a particular area at a particular time. At some future time, the record will in theory be looked at and used as the basis of a stern lecture if it does show absence and the defendant cannot come up with an excuse the judge accepts.


(Prosecutors don't get to revoke bails, only judges can do that.)

Anonymous said...

"Prosecutors don't get to revoke bails, only judges can do that."

Oh, really? Then you obviously should not bother filing them, right?

Blaming poor, innocent judges, the temerity of prosecutors these days.

Shootin' Buddy

Noah D said...

up walks Sumdood and asks for change for a fiver. This guy tells Sumdood that there's change in the apartment, so they tramp upstairs

No, no, NO!

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

That bothered me, too, Noah. If you are really gonna be nice and help out the guy that needs change you say, "there is change in the apartment, wait right here and I'll go fetch it."

That's what I would do. If I was nice. I usually say, "POUND SAND DOWN A RATHOLE, SCAM ARTIST!"

TJP said...

This is why I go out unshaven, and wearing a food-stained t-shirt under an undersized cammie jacket so my love handles stick out. People don't mess with me because they figure, "I bet that guy has really bad B.O."

No seriously, I'm just ugly, so people step aside. Sometimes it hurts my feelings when the kids start crying, though.

Also: Nice shooting, but I'd take the nice JTB approach.

Tam said...

Truth.

Avoidance is the best ploy.

"Sorry, buddy, can't help you."

"Let me send someone to get it."

"Wait here, I'll be back."

Any one of these three responses might have saved them some serious hassle.

Anonymous said...

"In my field, we're starting to look at a problem called "publication bias."

A common problemin ALL Fields of research.

For some reason "No noticeable result, nothing found as a result of testing o hypothesis" and all the myriad variations are not generally considered publicatin worthy.

Now _most_ of these null results are justifiably deep sixed, some are stupid questions that got stupid answers, some are just bad science, however it would be nice to see more of the:

We had a cool hypothesis, did real science based on honest data and theory, and as a consequence have proved that either our experiment was a crock ( and other clever people should tell us where we went off the rails) or the hypothesis was untenable or the theory is unsupportable as stated and we need a new one.

OA said...

"I am unaware of Sumdood's race. Further, I am sufficiently uninterested in Sumdood's race, and the race of his intended victims, that I have not bothered to check."

Yeah, he could be green with orange polka dots and I don't think it would matter because damn it all, he's got a freaking gun.

Old NFO said...

Good on the shooter for protecting the others, bad on him for letting the perp upstairs with them... Bad SA at best...

Anonymous said...

My girlfriend was supposed to be there helping her friend move, in which case the guy who protected his friends would not have been there to replace her as moving help. I'd hate to think what would have happened then. Though maybe someone would have thought twice about taking this guy back into the apartment to make change....

Anonymous said...

Must I be the one to state the obvious?

OBVIOUSLY, this would not have happened if the apartment complex had been posted.

Sarah said...

I think that the bracelet would have been far more effective had somebody clamped it down around the bad guy's neck.

(This is why I'll never run for political office. None of you would ever vote for me.)

George said...

Regarding the race issue--some years ago, two doods attempted to rob a local strip-mall liquor store, which was four doors North of a local gun store. One of the gun sales folks walked in on it-to get a soda, and engaged both doods,bringing them both to room temp, as they had weapons pointed at the clerk. The police didn't even mention possible charges, cut and dried. The very next day relatives of the doods were out front, protesting the 'race murders'. The general attitude amongst the spectators was 'I didn't know ARMED ROBBERS were a race?'

Anonymous said...

I saw on the news tonight that Sumdood's relative said that he was going there to buy drugs and he wants the police to investigate.
We do not all live in the same reality.

Matt G said...

Why did he have to get shot?

After all, he was "just" mugging them.

Noah D said...

From this morning's update of the Indy Fishwrapper Online:

"The Marion County Community Corrections Department lost track of Hampton on Friday when the battery on his ankle bracelet died."

jimbob86 said...

Sumdood? Unpossible.

One of his minions? Surely.

If it had been been the _actual_ Sumdood, he'd have teleported away and transmorgified hisself into some other guise at the first sign of trouble.

Really? Sumdood, Criminal Mastermind, killed by a mere mortal? Riiiihhhhgt.

Summdood shot a young man on a corner in North Omaha just last...

Hartley said...

George, I remember that incident well - I know the mall, the stores and the good-guy shooter. The shooter was smart and refused to disclose his ID to the media (including his face) so they were left with insinuations instead of the more common "white guy kills poor downtrodden minority fellows" headlines. They did one of those "hidden interviewee" interviews and he acquitted himself well, which meant it didn't get much airplay.

That protest didn't last long - even members of their own "racial community" were giving them trouble for drawing attention to the crime and bringing unwanted abuse on their community.

This was more than 10 years ago, incidentally - nothing new under the sun.

Anonymous said...

This is the robber (10 convictions in 15 years):

http://www.in.gov/apps/indcorrection/ofs/ofs?previous_page=1&detail=994779

This and the new WTHR video confirm what I wrote earlier.

I am amazed that Hampton selected Blevins. A white adult male in Indiana is not exactly a wise selection as the word in the 'hood is that white males are likely armed. Perhaps Hampton was intoxicated at the time of his attack.

Shootin' Buddy

Tam said...

What a way to celebrate his "earliest possible release date"...

Lynx217 said...

oddly, this makes me miss ohio so much. out here in philthadelphia, everyone's just killing everyone and kids are trying to take over downtown. sigh...

TJP said...

Anonymous said...
"I saw on the news tonight that Sumdood's relative said that he was going there to buy drugs and he wants the police to investigate.
We do not all live in the same reality."


I'm grasping for your point, here. Are you saying that because the defender violated some minor and ineffective contraband rule, he can no longer justly defend his own life?

Keads said...

Keads said...

@Tam +2
@OldNFO +2
@New Jovian +2

SA is paramount. Verbal skills and avoidance is always the the way to go. Although I live south of the Sweetened Iced tea line, I have a confluence of laws that dictate the use of deadly force. I would much rather not put myself in the situation if I could avoid it. It really sucks to have a lawyer on speed dial "just in case".

I have a "duty to retreat" and a really weird sorta modified Castle Doctrine Law for the house.

I live on a major east to west road for the county and the majority of the people that show up knocking on the door at times are the ones you do not open the door for. The thing that makes that better is the honking full window storm door that is pretty much impervious to physical force. Sad I had to spend the money on it!

I will not get sucked into the race thing, I agree that the color content of a potential predator has little to do with me dealing with a situation. I would rather avoid it.