A Black Security Guard Was Killed By Police As He Tried To Stop A Shooting
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A black security guard was shot dead by a police officer as he held down a suspect in a shooting at the bar where he worked.
Jemel Roberson, 26, was working early Sunday at Manny’s Blue Room ― a bar in the predominantly black Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois ― when a patron who was part of a drunken group that had been kicked out returned with a gun at 4 a.m. and opened fire, according to the Chicago Sun-Times . Several people were shot.
Roberson, who was armed at the time, grabbed one of the men, held him down and waited for police, according to witnesses.
“He had somebody on the ground with his knee in back, with his gun in his back like, ‘Don’t move,’” Adam Harris told WGN-TV .
But witnesses said Roberson became the victim as soon as police arrived. A responding officer with the Midlothian Police Department immediately shot Roberson, who later died at a hospital.
H arris said the officer shot an innocent man and that people on the scene tried to warn police that Roberson was a security guard.
“Everybody was screaming out, ‘Security!’ He was a security guard ... and they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him,” Harris said.
Midlothian Police Chief Dan Delaney confirmed the shooting, telling reporters, “A Midlothian officer encountered a subject with a gun and was involved in an officer-involved shooting.” The department said the Illinois State Police Public Integrity Task Force would investigate the shooting in order to “ensure transparency and maintain public trust.”
Roberson was known as a musician at local churches who had dreams of becoming a police officer, people who knew him told ABC-7 and WGN-TV.
“How in the world does the security guard get shot by police?” asked Walter Turner, the pastor at New Spiritual Light Baptist Church, where Roberson played the organ. “A young man that was literally doing his job and now he’s gone.”
Calls to the Illinois State Police and Midlothian Police Department weren’t immediately returned. The Cook County Sheriff’s office is reportedly investigating the initial shooting.
From August 2016 to May of this year, at least 378 black Americans had been killed by police, and more than 3,357 people have been fatally shot by officers since 2015, HuffPost reported in May .
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Sad to say it but some people are not supposed to be officers. I post this type of stuff because there are people that comment as if this stuff doesnt happen to black people.
I cant remember the last time a national story of a white security officer killed by police came across my news feed. And there will be the run and jump on this thread to post the black and black crime stuff, sadly it is true but this is a different beast. this goes back to the shared commonality of a few white officers having less impulse control when it appears a black man is involved.
What this also does is strain and stress the positive relations that good white officers have in the community. Those good honest decent fair and patient white officers now have to rebuild the trust they have built up over a UNNECESSARY shooting like this.
As i have said before there are some who dont have to get it because they dont have to worry about it.
But i have to say i appreciate those who dont have to worry about it that can acknowledge it would be pretty shitty to know you can die at the hand of police officer while just doing you job.
hopefully a big hit lawsuit will result in better training and also allow good officers to push out racist acting / bad cops over this incident. in the end it is a sad day for all involved.
Mistakes happen but killing a Uniformed Security Guard is a big One. I just hope he loses his job, any Cop who mistakenly kills an innocent person should automatically lose their job. It's not the kind of mistake that's forgivable, it really is a one strike and you're out kind of mistake.
The cop who shot him needs to be charged with a minimum of negligent manslaughter. This is not just an oops mistake.
If it can be proven that it was more than a horrible mistake then he should be charged with whatever charge fits the crime. I'd just like to see all cops who shoot an innocent person automatically lose their job. Whether it was a mistake or a crime is something to be determined by an investigation and if it's a crime they should be charged but they should have lost their job as soon as it was clear the Victim was innocent of any wrongdoing.
i agree, whats worse is that many people dont know the true ins and out of the protections set in place to bog down a conclusion that is clear and present.
in many cases something that should be a no brainer for a chief and a simple administrative process is diluted in rules , law and policy which takes the effective sting and shock off this incident over the course of time.
And as you noticed from a few members they are already good at doing that type of deflecting.
If it was a deadly mistake then the charge is involuntary manslaughter, the same as a drunk driver killing someone. If he has a past of racist beliefs then the charge could go as high as 2nd-degree murder.
What you're talking about is the Law and Criminal penalties, what I'm talking about is Rule of Employment. We shouldn't have to Criminally Charge and Convict a Cop in order to Fire him. Everyone else in America works under the rule that if they make a big enough mistake at work they can and will be terminated so why the hell wouldn't a Cop have to face the same consequences. Killing an innocent person is not the type of mistake you want to see repeated so whether it's a crime or not shouldn't matter when deciding to fire the cop. Innocent person killed by cop = cop's employment terminated, PERIOD You're so concerned with getting vengeance you're failing to see that the biggest hurdle to getting rid of Bad Cops is the Idea that they must be Proven Guilty of a Crime to get fired and that means they must be Convicted first, this is not a good employment policy.
And there goes another good guy with a gun.
Ya know, just what I was thinking
It's looking more like a black man isn't allowed to be a "good guy with a gun"
The 2nd Amendment, like rights such as voting, only applies to conservative white males.
Robbins is a poor, all black suburb with a high crime rate. Most of the people in that bar at 4 .a.m. were lowlifes.
My point is that the security guard deserved to be a hero. But because the cop was likely scared as he entered that building and was trigger happy, the young hero is dead.
Also he was probably new to that area as well. Most clubs that need armed security usually have an understanding and know the police officers that patrol that area, not to mention the police who routinely patrol that area are well aware of the armed security guards in said clubs
Many armed security guards are moonlighting cops. How would this play if he shot and kill a fellow officer from a neighboring city?
If the cop was black......probably the same thing
Just think about this. The guy was licensed to carry, had on a security shirt, witnesses told the cops he was security and he had taken down a active shooter.....And what happens, he is shot dead by a cop. Unfuckingbelievable
He is a black guy with a gun, so apparently in the eyes of many cops he is automatically guilty until proven innocent. Blue Lives Matter members will demand that the cop in question cannot be judged until we know all of the fact, including which church he went to, but that doesn't and didn't apply to the security guard that he shot and killed when he was pulling the trigger on an innocent man.
I wonder what ever happened to the cop in a squad car who killed a woman in pajamas who came over to talk to him. It was another example of a cop doing something entirely uncalled for.
Evening Buzz....Her father is suing the arse off Noor and the City for $50 million. Noor is up on third degree murder and second degree manslaughter charges..as he should be. His trial starts in April...The thing we noticed is how the cops closed ranks and even started up a fund raiser for Noor to pay for his legal expenses..That has not gone down to well here..We take a dim view when one of our citizens is murdered in cold blood by one of those that are meant to "protect and serve"...And we don't give a stuff what colour he is...We watch with great interest....
Thanks for that info, shona1. Hope he's put away for a long time.
"The thing we noticed is how the cops closed ranks and even started up a fund raiser for Noor to pay for his legal expenses"
You do realize that's business as usual for almost every case of police shooting right? Why did you think it was going to be any different?
Morning...Because we thought your cops were better than that..but apparently not...and there is a thing called Human decency..seems to have lost its way over there is some aspects....which is rather sad...
I take it you don't have such issues "down under". Why is that?
We have a completely different attitude to cops and guns..We tend not to shoot first and then ask questions later...We shoot if we have to and that is very rare. The cops shot dead the Terrorist in Melbourne last week as he had a knife and killed one bystander and injured 2 others. We are not as trigger happy as over there and that includes our cops. Even I would have serious doubts now approaching one of your cops for help etc after seeing and hearing all that goes on. Here I would not and do not hesitate at all...regardless of colour.
Ya, I guess that all factors in. Are there any other elements to the American incident, that may have played a part?
Other than some people should not be in the Police force is about all...what other elements are there??
There are quite a few suggestive comments here. Take a look at post #8 below. Tell me what you think
Yes well aware of the race issues there...That problem is one you mob will have to sort out...Black kills white unarmed woman, white kills black security guard and there have been many other similar incidents....But at the end of the day murder is murder and I don't care what colour you are...and you would "hope" it is seen as such..And if not then there truly is something dreadfully wrong in that country.
Agreed.
Yes well aware of the race issues there.
The kind of issues that Australia dosen't have.
No race issues in Australia? You mean there are no race issues between the whites and the aboriginals?
I kind of wondering about that. I haven't heard anything from there. It's not a society with racial harmony?
Best to ask Shona1, but I taught Australian Law from 2006 to 2012, and took note of the discriminatory restrictions about aboriginal land ownership.
Evening. Yes there are race issues here, always have been always will be..But we don't go blatantly shooting people of any colour other than if it is extremely necessary...Yes a white cop shot a Somali dead last week..No one batted an eye lid about "colour", no one cares. The headlines don't scream white cop shoots black man...This Terrorist appeared to be in a hurry to meet Allah, so we obliged..Stab people and if you are white, green, purple or pink we will not hesitate to shoot...But there is a prevalence in the States to shoot people of any colour no matter if they are armed or not...even people with their arms up or approaching a cop car etc are shot dead...and that is dreadfully sad.
This discussion is just mental gymnastics from the protectors of racism on the right. The same people who claim that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, will read all the facts in this case and claim we don’t have all the facts. A uniformed security guard was murdered for being black. Patrons were quick to identify who was the good guy and who was the bad guy when the cops showed up, but it didn’t matter because there was a black guy with a gun. You conservatives are as predictable as the sunrise.
When I was armed security, we were trained in an active gun drawn restraint incident where you are essentially arresting the suspect, once you have them arrested, you put the gun away.
Doesn't matter White or Black.
In an active shooter incident the police are going to be responding/approaching the scene with drawn guns looking to stop a person with a gun....
Typical procedure when confronting a subject with a drawn gun pointing it at another is to order the gun down. If they don't comply then eliminate the threat.
Such scenes happen in less than a split second.
You DO NOT want to be the person involved pointing a gun at anyone.... Your chances of getting shot go up 75% in that scenario...
Identifying yourself is not going to work most of the time... The cops come in and secure the scene taking complete control and sorting it out later...
You are trained to NOT hold someone at gunpoint, take them down and handcuff them. If he was a licensed armed security office he had handcuffs, he should have used them.
If the cops arrived and he was handcuffing the suspect or sitting on a handcuffed suspect he would not have been shot.
That is they way I was trained, but I wasn't there I didn't see it, and a LOT of investigating needs to be done....
Sad that some don't need any investigation to condemn the police.
It was tragic and wrong, a horrible error, but when it comes down to it proper procedures for apprehending and controlling a suspect were not followed on the officers part and on the police's part shooting first without giving the officer time to respond in my opinion is down right criminal.
This is just from what is being reported at this point in time.
And in this type of situation NO media is going to know the truth and will not for at least 6 months..... (and that is if they are allowed to publish it)
Which means the poster and all commenters are speculating just like I am.... The biases are plainly evident.
security vs police-- so different policies and procedures. YOUR security directive could be different then his directive so YOUR two cents doesnt count then.
clearly it does.. so this two cents goes by the way side.
yes they are but they are also taught that means they have to ASSES the situation based on making determinations of the people they either see, hear or locate.
this is a bold face lie-- not complying does not contitute a threat. because permits to carry allow for citizens to display a legally maintained gun in public. which means that a security officer would not be needed to put his gun away until he has determined he can protect himself from the threat of the suspect who was SEEN using a gun. thus the police officer should have confirmed who was who which was easy to do based on the patrons suggestion.
And because they do, there is supposed to be the role of the responding officers to determine how to bring calm back from choas. This is done by taking in the real time information and using the obvious suggestions at the time. A grown man kneeling on another man proned to the ground with a gun in his back just might be a situation where ASKING why this is happening might be the first act of the assesment. MUch less making contact and assisting the person on top with such detainment.
and again pointing a gun at anyone is not a reason to suggest deadly use of force is the only response a police officer can take UNLESS that gun was pointed at that officer. this was not the case as ALREADY suggested by both parties.
WRONG again, this exactly what they always do. they respond to the scene to make sure they locate the actors that can assist them with real time. in this case , a simple observation and input by the crowd present made it clear the man on top security or not was NOT A THREAT TO THE OFFICER.
BULLSHIT-- you are now putting your own spin on this... the security guard just like an officer is not going to risk placing hand cuffs on a suspected gunman with out being able to have assistance by knowing the gun is secured first before attempting to cuff that suspect. plus it has / was not determined that the gun was not with in reach of the suspect and to risk changing the balance and placement of both himself or his weapon that is a risk not taking.
again the use of force statute for illinois doesnt not suggest having a gun out is the legal reason to shoot someone. again any person detained over a gun situation should not be cuffed until that officer or security officer DEEMS he has the proper support to do so safely. so this idea that A MAGIC CLOCK is running on how long a legal owned permit holder can hold a suspect at gun point DOES NOT EXIST. much less as has been the case in many GOOD POLICE officer situations where they kept a gun pointed at a suspect until help arrived.
this is not a hard situation to determine what happened. the investigation will be hardest in determining the statements vs the video evidence.
well its sadder to read a person like yourself assumes that this is not a situation where condemning the actions taking by this police officer is not considered reasonable when it is clearly stated that THE DEADLY USE OF FORCE was not warranted based on NON disputed facts already provided by the police chief.
make up your mind. how do you know proper procedure for apprehending and controlling a suspect weren't followed. This security officer has every right to make a determination on the WELL BEING OF HIS SAFETY. That means he can do what helps him feel the safest given factors that suggest kneeling on him with his gun drawn until assistance arrived was his best option. I mean i can sit here and think of several factors that would suggest any attempt to cuff a gun suspect with out back up could have a negative result.
any information that is currently in the news has come from the public release by the police dept. no one is making stuff up> i would agree that depending on how a witness was interviewed there comments would be different. But the basic aspect of this killing is not in question.
well this poster biases comes from a 20 year career in law enforcement here in st. paul and for the ramsey sheriffs office. So part of my reason for placing this story here is to remind people that bad and some racist cops take actions which ends in the death of citizens at a rate that is unacceptable. Sadly GOOD HONEST FAIR COPS dont get the benefit of the doubt when actions like this officers results in killing of a citizen that was on the job and identified by witnesses as such.
as noted above some place the RIGHT TO COMMENT about this is not based on the need for us to know about the policies or procedures of this officers dept. That is for the government and those tasked to use that as there guide to determine this officers fate. it is however fair to suggest that the failure of this officer occurred based on a his own rush to judgement.
So a lot of folks simply are tired of knowing that a shooting by a person who is supposed to react calm during chaos, look for the best result, based on the thousands of dollars spent on training and use common sense as a guide, failed to do so. And this is after we absolutely believe the comments of the witnesses, who provided enough reason for this officer to make a better judgement then the discharge of his duty weapon.
You are entitled to your belief just as anyone is.
And you can speculate to that belief just as anyone can....
What makes your speculation so incredible, is the twist involved to come to your conclusions based upon the evidence now in hand....
It is what it is. your bias is showing, a bias that cannot be logically defended given any real knowledge of the procedures involved....
So you reject any attempt to put this in reasonable terms, cause you have prejudged the cause and rationalized the intent without any basis in fact.
AND, that is a very sad statement of the current political atmosphere running through this country today....
Without any fact at all to back the claim, it is automatically an instance of race hatred....
That reflects on you my friend and not the police...
sadly you must have a short memory even with QUOTING your own words.
my comments to your posting is based on my work experience that you dont have. I dont have a problem with your two cents as a reply to this incident. what i do have is a problem with the specifics of your comments on Procedure you state which is not correct based on lacking the work experience, legally sworn experience and the judgement of "what you think " constitutes the correct arrest procedure based on an active shooter situation. Along with the fact that the suspect was identified as the shooter, which gives this security officer EVERY RIGHT TO DISPLAY AND USE HIS GUN UNTIL HE DETERMINED HE COULD CONTROL THE SUSPECT.
That means that this officers action will not be deemed by those who can use common sense to determine his death was NECESSARY, it wasn't. And we dont need facts produced by a report by the police to determine that much.
now you and i can back and forth about what policy or procedure this officer will be judged by or what statute this officer will try to suggest justifies his action as a government employee. But at the end of the day, as a person looking at the death of another citizen at the hands of the police.....this incident , his death and the reason his family will not have there father is directly due to officer incompetence.
As far as the political bullshit part of your comment....thats just it, Bullshit.
again citizens are getting tired of officers who cut corners and seem to appear to be less then qualified to be the ones to turn to in an emergency.
And i have a very low tolerance for a person who comments about how this security officers is supposed to act like he has control of a suspect, when a cop cant have enough self control to not fire his duty weapon as the first action necessary to control a legally permitted gun holder with a person prone under him.
Several of the responding officers told him to put down his weapon, BEFORE HE WAS SHOT.... in every article I've seen posted on the issue....
Except of course the one you posted..... (from huffpost by the way no bias there at all)
Hence;
ALL of this is your OWN PERSONAL OPINION.....
Which is irrelevant to the issue at hand.....
'nuf said.
and yet THIS SECURITY officer did not have a reason to put his gun away because the suspect was not contained. to assume a gun that is present allows for the officer to shoot is not the legal standard. also this officer was told by others around him that the person holding the gun was the security officer. and IN NO REPORTS has anyone stated this security officer pointed or raised his gun to the police. they ALL say he had the gun to the suspect back pointed down. the legal definition is the officer has to demonstrate this security gaurd created a threat to this officer, he did not.
ooh stop that shit....who cares where the news comes from when the basis for the story is the same. use of deadly for against a citizen who was in his legal rights to protect himself.
and absolutely it is. and yet it comes from my years doing the licensed job. and YOU?
and yet you respond. the point is that i dont mind that you have an opinion about this case but to comment as if you have the experience of knowing policy and procedure as an officer to pass judgement on a legally permitted citizen in a gun incident doesn't fly because your opinion is not based on that law enforcement experience.
I didn't say it "Allows" anyone to shoot did I.
I said, that I was trained as a security officer to not be the person holding a gun inside an active shooter incident when the swat team comes in....
Here, the uniforms secure the scene and cordon off the area the swat team does the entry....
Of course this in in the GPNW, not north central Illinois.... so policies could be decidedly different as to the type and measure of response.
Here, they wait for SWAT. And no you do not want to be on the other side of a swat entry holding a gun. And an active shooter incident is a mandatory SWAT response.
And I never said I had LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERIENCE I have Security Office Experience and yes that is a whole world of difference. All I know is what I was trained to do and how to respond to such a situation....
And that is my opinion. I guess we are trained differently here.
Thank you for your service, you are entitled to your opinion I am to mine, lets just leave it there. It's a tragic situation and the officer shouldn't have died My feeling is he should have had more training, it would have probably saved his life. The officer doing the entry..... I don't know how I feel about his actions and am not ready to call it murder, not yet at least.
Especially not a racist hater murder.
That is my basic issue you seem to want to call it a racist hate murder before all the facts are in....
Neither one of us were there so neither one of us knows for fact what transpired... And there is one thing we both know for fact, they will not release all the details until they have done a through investigation, if they release them at all.
Well your reading comprehension is lacking .
no where did i say this specific officer was a racist or a murder, you made that all up in your head.
one of the first things i did say is that THIS COPS ACTIONS does not help those who will and can assume he is either one of both of them.
and for shits sake man/woman---- you keep talking about the other officers and what they said......but DUH DUH DUH.....funny how none of them needed to shoot this security officer.
so do you get where i expressed that .....................common sense is the key this cop choose not to use and decided to shoot instead of determine the role of the proned out guy and the guy kneeling on him..
and that is your failure.... which goes back to the fact that your training is based on private property expectations not law. You may have training on HOW your boss / company wanted you to respond to situations on that property especially if the police are called.
but this incident was on public property and the laws , policy or procedure for this cop would be different then your private security rules.
but i know as a person with the same training and experience that this officers actions were not NEEDED.
and i dont need to wait for investigation to tell me that. because the fact is this security guard should be alive.
This is the only thing we are going to agree on, so lets leave it at that.
"I have no problem at all with the death penalty as long as it's carried out on the spot by the intended victim" (Neale Osborne)
Using the logic of a person respected by many of the members here, my question is: If the security guard, realizing that the Police Officer was going to shoot him, had shot and killed the PO, would Neale have agreed with that?
Buzz, you're confusing an attempted (or actual) murder with an accidental shooting. The two situations are not the same. There is no way that the police officer in this case would ever be charged with murder since it would be impossible to show intent. The most he could be charged with is Manslaughter.
In this case you seem to have a police officer who gave numerous instructions to the security officer to put the gun down. His tunnel vision was totally focused on the man with the gun (in an active shooter situation). When the instructions were not obeyed, he fired. On the other side, the security officer had his tunnel vision totally focused on keeping the real active shooter secured. Good chance that he never even heard the police officer or even saw him. That's what the investigation will determine.
What a lousy situation that was. What a waste.