What was supposed to be a part of the routine procedure in response to a medical alert ended with an innocent man shot to death by NYPD officers. A 68-year-old Marine veteran Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. was at his home when he accidentally activated his medical alert device, causing his service provider to place a call to White Plains Department of Public Safety, sending an ambulance, police patrol and firefighters as part of the emergency alert procedure.
When cops arrived at Chamberlain’s door, he refused to let them in, saying he was alright and that he needed no help. The police insisted on coming in and refused to leave, making Chamberlain panic and call his provider asking for help, saying the police were planning to kill him.
The alert system recorded the call, and the next hour of police taunting and even throwing racial slur at Chamberlain behind the closed door was caught on tape. They finally broke in, charged at him with tasers and two gun shots were heard. His niece found a horrifying sight – her uncle dying on the floor, two shot wounds on his chest.
The police claim Chamberlain reached for the knife on the table and one of the officers shot him in self defense, but the tape with the recorded conversation might be the key evidence in this case of brutal overstepping of police authority.
What is wrong with the damn cops? Every day we hear about another terrible senseless killing of an innocent person. Why are these cops not trained? Who in the heck do they think they are? It makes me sick..feel like puking!
Sad thing is, they are trained.
Kenneth Chamberlain Sr was at home and has a right to act in self defense of his life.
He expressed before he died the cops were there to kill him, and he died from them an hour later.
The police were not hiding from him the fact that they had it out for him the cops made it known to him they were there to kill him by taunting and harassing him.
How would you feel if cops surrounded your home and their packing guns and making it known to you they are there to kill you? would you believe your life’s in danger?
Even if Kenneth Chamberlain Sr did grab a knife when the cops broke in the taunting and threats those cops made justify self defense on the part of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.
So it falls to the police to prove in a criminal court of law the killing was justified on their part, police have the burden of proof so when are you cops gonna stop preaching justification and prove it in a criminal court room?
Waiting,,,,,,,,waiting,,,,,,,,waiting,,,,,,,waiting,,,,,,oh,,,,that’s right we live in a fascist country so cops don’t stand trial in a criminal court room anymore!
I agree entirely. I am currently using the (non-biased) articles on this site to write an essay for a project, and I will be using your view/argument on this story in my essay.
When’s enough enough? What is it going to take for us to see there is a really big problem here. This long past coincidence, I think all these cops are influenced by there bosses and fellow officers that this is the excepted code of conduct. That people who don’t have the “us against them” mentality aren’t “team players” and don’t last long in the department. If this weren’t the case, we would have many officers stepping forward to call these bullies out. However it seems these whistle blowing heroes do not exist, if they do they exist, they must be silenced or discredited as I am yet to hear about them. I hear all the time by the DA’s, there will always be a few bad apples that slip by. Insinuating that it’s simple statistics, that you can’t catch every corrupt cop, some will get through, however if that were the case the instances in which corrupt officers are caught would be from other officers. I haven’t ever heard of a cop, arresting another cop or coming forward with damning evidence. This is because there aren’t any, with all the police brutality and corruption, we should have thousands if these whistle blowers, yet we have none. What we do have is people getting arrested for documenting police activities, police and DA steering away from public over site and all police departments being self-regulated. A cop in charge of disciplining another cop. That has never worked in the past and just leads to less transparency and more corruption. If I am wrong and the law enforcement heads don’t encourage this sick mentality and actually care about civilian rights, then they really need to pull the blinders of and fix their departments. It’s really clear to me this isn’t the case, because it is too wide spread and the other officers never try to help the investigation, or ever speak out against the officer in question, in fact they seem to everything in their power to make excuses of why killing an unarmed civilian is justified, because the officer was in fear for their life. Um, that officer signed up for that job, if they’re worried about the chance of dying on the job, probably should pick a different career. As a society we need to hold these individuals to a higher standard. Yes, if you pursue a job that has that much authority over others, you should be prepared to conduct yourself in a dignified manner! I would go far enough to say that these individuals we give this much power too, should be voted into their position by the people, after all the people are the ones the individual swears an oath too, not his fellow officers. Anyone who can stand idly by and watch a defenseless person be beat to death or unarmed person shot in the back, without coming forward or voicing his opinion is a coward and doesn’t deserve the power they’ve been given, you are no better then the cop whose doing the beating.