Police Shoot Fire Chief over Tickets in Court

Now there’s some law and order for you:

JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn’t hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

It was anger over traffic tickets that brought Payne [the Jericho fire chief] to city hall last week, said his lawyer, Randy Fishman. After Payne failed to get a traffic ticket dismissed on Aug. 27, police gave Payne or his son another ticket that day. Payne, 39, returned to court to vent his anger to Judge Tonya Alexander, Fishman said.

It’s unclear exactly what happened next, but Martin said an argument between Payne and the seven police officers who attended the hearing apparently escalated to a scuffle, ending when an officer shot Payne from behind.

Steve Verdon sums up:

The police shot an unarmed man from behind when in scuffle with 6 other police officers.

No charges will be brought against the police officer from the local prosecutor.

Nobody knows where the money from the various speeding tickets went.

The police were writing tickets outside their jurisdiction.

City Hall is shut down.

Anyone doubt that the cops saw this as their own private racket and were using the tickets to line their own pockets? And what is up with the police officers in Jericho? Are they all totally out of shape morons that couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag? Six of them are scuffling with one man and they can’t subdue him and the seventh feels he has the justification to shoot the “perp”?

Eat your heart out Henry Louis Gates Jr.