Chief pulls license of Marine

I think this guy should be happy that he only lost his license, didn't kill an unarmed bystander and was found NG.
A mob is outside his apartment, he's on the second floor, he's been drinking, he yells for them to shut up, he calls the police sometime during this and they're slow to respond, a bottle comes through a window, he gets a shotgun and fires into the crowd.
He used deadly force in a situation where his life or the lives of his family were not in imminent danger. Had someone come through the door, it would have been different.

How quickly we forget....Boston PD fired a "less that lethal weapon" into a crown that killed Victoria Snelgrove.
 
JonJ said:
I think this guy should be happy that he only lost his license, didn't kill an unarmed bystander and was found NG.
A mob is outside his apartment, he's on the second floor, he's been drinking, he yells for them to shut up, he calls the police sometime during this and they're slow to respond, a bottle comes through a window, he gets a shotgun and fires into the crowd.
He used deadly force in a situation where his life or the lives of his family were not in imminent danger. Had someone come through the door, it would have been different.

How quickly we forget....Boston PD fired a "less that lethal weapon" into a crown that killed Victoria Snelgrove.
Click to expand...

Not that I disagree with you Jon, however, this wasn't the first time it's happened to them. The bar/restaurant has been a thorn in the neighborhoods side for a long time. Nothing is ever done when complaints come in. I read (I forget where) that the nighttime Sup's son works details there (he's also a LEO) and a few have speculated that's why nothing is done. I don't know about that, but ya gotta wonder why nothing is or was done when numerous people complained. The parking lot for the funeral home is constantly littered, it's pee'd in (not that all that is caused by the bar customers, but most is) and the lot is used for bar go'ers, even when there's a wake. When I said earlier they've endured a lot, I meant it. FWIW.
 
JonJ said:
I think this guy should be happy that he only lost his license, didn't kill an unarmed bystander and was found NG.
A mob is outside his apartment, he's on the second floor, he's been drinking, he yells for them to shut up, he calls the police sometime during this and they're slow to respond, a bottle comes through a window, he gets a shotgun and fires into the crowd.
He used deadly force in a situation where his life or the lives of his family were not in imminent danger. Had someone come through the door, it would have been different.

How quickly we forget....Boston PD fired a "less that lethal weapon" into a crown that killed Victoria Snelgrove.
Click to expand...

Wow, late on this one but here's my two bits. He was found not guilty. If he was not guilty there can be no rational reason why he should lose any Constitutional rights - regardless of some a**h*** cheifs opinion. He is guilty of nothing therefore the court decided he was just.

Having said that, I don't think what he did was the best response. However, what if more people did this? What if more people fought fire with fire? Would these hoods be so quick as to assualt peoples homes? His castle was attacked and received injuries from it. At what point do we say enough is enough and these punks can't hide behind liberal interpretations of our God given rights?

These criminals know that law abiding folks can't fight back without retribution from the Gov. That's why they can continue their criminal activity.
 
"Such "irresponsible behavior" clearly demonstrates Cotnoir is not suitable to hold the gun permit, Romero said."

"I was found innocent," Cotnoir said. "My life is supposed to go back to the way it was."


I love this.....not suitable and found not guilty.....but still he is a Marine and can be sent to war to defend this idiotic chief and his right to take an innocent man's constitutionally gauranteed gun rights.....doesn't make sense.

If you are under my bedroom window you are trapassing on my land. I suppose the gang would need to be raping his wife and carving him up and skinning his children before he has the right to defend himself and his family with a firearm.

30 Minutes or so for police to arrive if derelection of duty. I guess in this case the LPD just wanted to take a victim's statement afte the crime was committed. This is precisely why citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.

If more people defened themselves as this Marine did punks would think twice before disrespecting people and their property.

The chief is looking for his 15 minutes...another coward chief caving to the gangs and criminalizing honest, hardworking citizens. It's spreading from Boston....
 
I will limit myself to one observation, which I think folks should take into account: in our criminal legal system, "not guilty" does NOT mean "innocent." That being the case, the analysis goes back to what JonJ observed.
 
All covered in previous threads... I'm in agreement with JonJ and RKG... I wish they were there in the earlier posts... [wink]
 
Jim said:
But didn't they throw bottles and what not through his window? Or am I misremembering this story or confusing it with another one? Sorry, it's been a while since I read this thread. I could have sworn that they had done something, thrown stuff and broke his window or something like that.

If that's the case - and the cops still hadn't come - I think he was in a situation where he was flat out scared that a large mob of people would force their way into his home.

As I say, I might be misremembering the details of this though.
Click to expand...

Jim, when you were younger, were you ever with a group of people outside a club, or a ball game, or someplace else after having a few drinks and there was that guy in the group - usually a friend-of-a-friend - that would do something really stupid and uncool? You know, like mouthing off to a bunch of guys in a car, or flicking a cigarette in the direction of another group, or throwing a bottle at somebody that flipped him the bird (usually at a distance because a direct confrontation was too much for this type of passive aggressive drunk)? Well that's what happened. The shooter himself had been drinking too and yelled down at the group to shutup. Then the uncool drunk guy tossed a bottle up at the shooter's window (not particularly life-threatening) and the bozo fired into the crowd.

How would you feel about this if you, your sister, brother, daughter, or son was in the group that he fired at? This was hardly a raging LA-riot-style mob.

EDIT: Oh yeah. As JonJ posted earlier, this was exactly what happened when Victoria Snelgrove got killed behind Fenway. I know this because I was there, within about 50 feet of her when it happened.
 
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I just went back and re-read the thread and the linked articles. One article didn't mention an injury, one said he cut his hand.

What he did was stupid, and if someone in the mob had sustained any kind of serious injury, you can bet that the antis would've been screaming for a ban on deadly pump shotguns. Like they're doing now for "military style assault weapons".

I wasn't there so I don't know how dangerous the situation was. It's impossible to tell from a written article because a relatively benign situation can be spun as a deadly melee, whereas a deadly melee can be portrayed as a minor dust-up.

One article also said that the shooter had been drinking. Who knows how much, if at all, the alcohol clouded his judgment. As stupid as his actions were, once he was acquitted, he should've been allowed to keep his LTC/FID.
 
EddieCoyle said:
One article also said that the shooter had been drinking. Who knows how much, if at all, the alcohol clouded his judgment. As stupid as his actions were, once he was acquitted, he should've been allowed to keep his LTC/FID.
Click to expand...

I guess that's where my position lies. I'm hesitant to pass judgment since I wasn't there, so I suppose I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, mostly due to the court outcome, and supporting his actions as justified.

However, reading what I have at face value, I would have taken a completely different route.

I believe if my weapon finger goes on the trigger, it's because I am in the position where I must kill somebody to protect myself/family. I don't believe in warning shots to scare people away. That's what police, alarms, and my voice is for.
 
Martlet said:
I believe if my weapon finger goes on the trigger, it's because I am in the position where I must kill somebody to protect myself/family. I don't believe in warning shots to scare people away. That's what police, alarms, and my voice is for.
Click to expand...

I agree. I don't believe the shooter was at the point where his life, or the lives of his family members were in imminent danger. He screwed up both by firing a warning shot, and firing that shot close enough to the crowd where someone was injured.

What would've been cool was if someone threw a bottle and he shot it out of the air like a clay pigeon.
 
Jim said:
BTW he had called the cops right? Wasn't there some kind of lag between the time he called them and the time he arrived? Like more than a half hour or something?
Click to expand...

exactly...so if the cops showed up in a reasonable amount of time this wouldn't be an issue as it may never have happened. Why isn't the chief explaining what the hell took the cops so long to arrive after the call. They should be a tad bit more responsive than that.
 
From what i read, the man was injured by a broken bottle that came through his window and put a "gash" in his hand that required stiches later. Life threatening? no, but possible after 2 calls and more then 30 minutes of this going on, the fact that his wife and children where in the home and from what I understand, the group was moving closer to his home and stilll throwing things.

His "warning shot" riccoched into the leg of one of the agressors. (not much real injury sustained.

Now... I personally would say that if they were clibing into the window, kicking in the door or whatever, that a shot would be justified. But from all that I have learned on here... you don't fire, unless you intend on hitting your target.
 
To start I personally think he did what he thought he need to to keep his family safe. There are porblems as we have all pointed out.
1) Warning shot ? We all know that in itself is not kosher in civillian life.
2) It may have been possible to diffuse the situation (but I wasn't there) by moving away from the windows. Possibly calming things down.
3) If he thought they were going to get in, the best place for that shot would have been the hallway. INSIDE his residence.

Should he loose his licence ? I think that should be arguable in court, but we all know that's not happening in this state.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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Shame he didnt have a few of these handy.
you can buy in packages of 6 at any hobby/prank/joke shops for like 3 bucks.
stink.jpg

these little glass ampules contain 1-2 ml of a substance that resembles the smell of diahrhea coming to a boil in the crotch of a rotten corpse..
We used to throw these in the halls and classrooms in high school to make them send us home early as the area would be uninhabitable for a good 36 hours.
a couple of these would disperse anyone with a functioning olfactory system,no matter how many drinks they may have had..
hmm,i wonder if i can get a leather carry puch for a couple of these :P
 
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During the shooting trial this summer, Cotnoir testified that he fired the shot into the pavement in front of the crowd after someone threw a glass bottle through his bedroom window and police would not respond to his noise complaints, he said. He had made numerous noise complaints to police during seven years of dealing with after-hours crowds from nearby Punto Final nightclub and Melissa's Restaurant.
Click to expand...
If he was in fear for the safety of his family and himself, why did he fire into the pavement. Why didn't he target someone? He used deadly force when he pointed the barrel out the window. He obviously did not have a target. He endangered every innocent person in that crowd.
Who teaches and trains in warning shots?

Go back to the thread where the Maine hunter shot the teenager. I recall some posts that were "If it were my kid that that happened to, I'd do this and I'd do that".
Think for a minute how you would feel had one of your children been in that crowd or it's proximity when he fired. Or if had been your child injured.

Think of the threads where someone has posted "I remember when we were kids camping in the woods and we'd be drinking and plinking stuff". Or someone posts about shooting and drinking and the posts that follow, "Of course the drinking will come after the shooting". Maybe he would had done different had he not been drinking that night.

I don't know what the police response time was but I know that in an emergency situation when you need help, anytime period can seem like an eternity. He did what he thought was right at the time but I believe he used poor judgment. Does it deserve a lifetime ban of firearm ownership? Hell no, it doesn't. How many repeat drunk drivers get their drivers licenses back? Almost all of them.

We as gun owners have to be responsible. We also have to follow the law or we lose the "privilege" that seems to be granted to us by the government.

Massachusetts is not a shall issue state. We all know that. The Chiefs have too much power and we have to live with that. As long as we the people allow the government to have this power, we are at their will and pleasure. The only way it will change will be though the ballot box, legislation, the courts, civil disobedience or armed conflict.
 
+1 on what Jon said.

In addition, the police are NOT obligated to respond . . . ever!!

Short personal story: I hired two guys to paint my house ~30 years ago. They were advanced money, didn't do the work and I took them to court, got a judgment against them. In the meantime they started harassing us. Calls at 2-3AM, A&B on myself inside a Thayer Pharmacy that one worked in (and the pharmacist told me "he couldn't do anything about it"), another A&B on me when I parked in the square and one of them (same jerk) threw rocks at me and my car from the other side of the street, etc. The police were well aware of the situation. One day as I was working on my car in the garage, they drove up and parked at the end of my driveway, revving their engine and other methods of harassment for >30 minutes. I went in the house, asked my Wife to call the police and armed myself in case they came into the garage. The police told my Wife that "they may not be able to respond as they were all tied up" (unbeknownst to me there had been a murder that day). They never showed up and never followed up. That's life.
 
These are notes I made when watching his testimony as
it appeared on Court TV.
GC


court tv news, august 02, 2006

"Banfield and Ford , Courtside"



i was absolutely sober.

house was shot at before in 2004 similar disturbance.

two holes in house. called police, crowd incident. fight
amongst crowd. was a third hole in third floor eave.

bullets extracted by detective taylor.

he thought the soft lead round would stop at a cinder block
wall after bouncing on the ground.

alcohol intake was opening and taking a portion of a can
of coors light.

had nothing to drink at dinner.

called police later on when noise in parking lot, loud music.

he told police he was being attacked in his house. people
were throwing bottles and rocks at his house.

was shotgun in a container. asked him if he had kids.

container under bed. pump shotgun had a scope on it.

had barrel of gun out the window, and the people were not
leaving the parking lot.

2am on a saturday night, this happened.

12 gauge lead ball. gun was cammo'd. do you understand that
you would have no way of where ball would have went?

any evidence that people were attempting to get in your house?
didn't know, because he couldn't see the first floor of the
house.

he anticipated ricochet, but thought it would hit the wall.
he did not shoot straight up because it might have hit
somewhere up in Methuen.

lissette cumba, 15 year old , was hit by ricochet.
She was with older sister. couldn't leave. she admits she
should have got out of there a lot sooner.

civil action is up to her mother.

Punto Final Nightclub.

John Dawley was prosecutor.

there were some uniformed marines/service people in the court
room.

he aimed at the ground away from the crowd. he did not intend
to hit anyone.

"a fathers reaction to a threat to his family" is how Cotnoir
put it to court tv.
 
If he was in fear for the safety of his family and himself, why did he fire into the pavement. Why didn't he target someone? He used deadly force when he pointed the barrel out the window. He obviously did not have a target. He endangered every innocent person in that crowd.
Who teaches and trains in warning shots?
Click to expand...
+1

A textbook example of why warning shots are a bad idea.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Although I don't agree that his "warning shot" was a good idea, I still feel for the kid.... Kid hell, he's a Marine.

The Lawrence PD would not respond to calls for this particular establishment because one of the LEO's on duty was the son of a shift supervisor. If they did show up at all, it was always 30 minutes or more after the call was made. Cotnoir and his family had put up with the BS from this bar/restaurant for 7 years. 7 years! Jumpin Jiminey! How many of YOU could and would last THAT long??? His propery had been damaged MANY times before, and it couldn't be something he could let slide as his family's business was in the same building (a funeral home). He and his family had been threatened before by patrons of the joint, as well as people being harassed that were coming to the funeral home to a wake. And this went on just about every bloody weekend. You guys know I defend the police and I always thank them for the job they do, but in THIS case, the chief let the bloody bar run amuck and the innocent people that lived around it were the ones that suffered. The jury could see he had reached his breaking point and since he wasn't getting any help from the PD, what was he supposed to do?

I'm ashamed to admit I was born in Lawrence. It's a FAR cry from the city I grew up in.
 
...what was he supposed to do?---Lynne
Click to expand...

Lynne, he shot a teenage child didn't he?



I would guess that in the seven years his family and business had problems with both the bar and the lack of a "proper" police response that he might have:
1) Engaged a laywer to put pressure on the bar
2) Engaged a laywer to put pressure to the police
3) If one and two failed I think I'd move my business and family. I don't see shooting a kid as a option. (delete the last line if he didn't shoot a child)


Respectfully,

jkelly
 
jkelly said:
Lynne, he shot a teenage child didn't he?
Click to expand...

No, he didn't shoot a teenage child. He never pointed the gun at them. She and another individual were slightly injured when the shot richoed from hitting the pavement. There's a big difference between what you wrote and what actually happened.

Just as respectfully,
Lynne
 
She and another individual were slightly injured when the shot richoed from hitting the pavement. There's a big difference between what you wrote and what actually happened.---lynn
Click to expand...

Yes I can see the big difference, he pulled the trigger on a firearm and as a result TWO people were shot. That is very big difference indeed.

Just to be clear, I'm saying he pulled the trigger on a firearm and he's responsible for what the projectiles do. You don't lose that responsibility on your projectiles hit something.


With even more respect,

jkelly
 
Keeping in mind that a jury has found this man not guilty could those of you that think that the Chief was justified in taking away his license please explain by what legitimate authority one human being has to disable another human being's natural right?
 
We don't have any "Natural Rights" in MA!! [rolleyes]

Well, not unless you consider it a "natural right" to:

- pay taxes until you die and then have that taxed too by the state!
- be told what you can do, when and where! Anything else is illegal!!
- be ignored when the public votes for tax rollbacks, the right to vote on an issue, etc.
- have bills totally re-written "in the back room" with only a handful of hand-picked people "in the know", then rammed down the legislators throats with threats by leadership if they didn't all vote for it in "lock step" with no debate.

[puke2]
 
It is not about "legitimate authority" but about power, and the question of who has the power has already been answered.
 
LenS said:
We don't have any "Natural Rights" in MA!! [rolleyes]

Well, not unless you consider it a "natural right" to:

- pay taxes until you die and then have that taxed too by the state!
- be told what you can do, when and where! Anything else is illegal!!
- be ignored when the public votes for tax rollbacks, the right to vote on an issue, etc.
- have bills totally re-written "in the back room" with only a handful of hand-picked people "in the know", then rammed down the legislators throats with threats by leadership if they didn't all vote for it in "lock step" with no debate.

[puke2]
Click to expand...

[angry] Right.
 
Unfortunately it seems in this day and age that someone needs to be already in the act of beating you with no end in sight, before you can take any action to save your own skin or that of your loved ones.
 

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