You briefly discussed Rigoberto Alpizar- the unarmed airplane passenger who was shot to death a little over a week ago. I think your conclusion that it had to happen and wasn't a result of a power trip is a little premature.

Alpizar was reported by government officials to have been shouting as he ran up the aisle that he had a bomb. Yet I have been unable to find any report from a non-government source of a single non-government witness who heard any such thing. (If anyone can provide such a source, I'd be very interested in seeing it.) On the other hand, there have been at least seven reports from witnesses that Alpizar did not make the alleged bomb threat.

Beyond that, let's consider how the rest of the passengers on the plane were dealt with. If there was a bomb threat, shouldn't the passengers be evacuated immediately if the law enforcement officers were acting for the safety of the passengers as has been claimed? In fact, that was not what happened. Instead, other passengers were held on the plane at gunpoint and several minutes later wereh marched off the plane, hands over their heads.

Given these rather odd circumstances, I think the jury's still out on what went on and whether or not it had to happen. Unfortunately, not too many members of the media seem interested in doing their jobs.

Believe it or not, I felt guilty after recording the show about this very topic. I should have said something like, "Well, if the events happened the way they were reported, then the shooting was probably justified."
I have been meaning to do a little research on this, so thank you for doing it for me. I'm not surprised that there are conflicting stories, and I wouldn't be surprised that our government was (once again) lying to us.

I am having trouble logically determining why the Air Marshalls would have behaved that way if the bomb threat hadn't been real. In other words, let's work backwards. What event would have led the Air Marshalls to have held people on the plane at gunpoint, AND have gotten this man shot? I'm having trouble coming up with a scenario.

I remember toruing the FBI building when I was a child in the 1970's, on a family vacation. I recall the agent who was talking to us about the FBI's policies regarding using their weapons. He said in most instances they SHOOT TO DISABLE (getting the person to stop what they are doing without necessarily killing them). I'm wondering why this is seemingly no longer the policy of ANY law enforcement agencies in this country?

We also have to remember what the air marshals are asked to do - make split decisions about the life and death of all passengers on the plane, including a suspected bomber.

If a person is a suspected threat because of his erratic behavior, the marshals don't exactly have time to reason with the suspect. While it would be nice to think that they could shoot to disable, bombs are not like the ones you see on Loony Tunes. They don't have long fuses that can be snuffed out by a wily cat. All it takes is a flipped switch and hundreds or thousands of people die instantly. I'm guessing that the marshals are trained to use deadly force to stop any action that may result in a detonation. This isn't like standard police work where they can wait until they are fired upon first. The downside risk is too great. The marshals are also aware of past practices where bombers travel in groups to ensure "success". While terrifying, holding the remaining passengers at gunpoint is understandable.

I'm not defending the policies of the current administration, and I'm not defending the press' apparent lack of interest in this story. We just need to remember that the air marshals were not making calculated, politically motivated policy decisions when they decided to pull the trigger. They were probably doing exactly what they should have done - used extreme force to save the lives of as many people as possible.

If, in hindsight we find that there was no claim of a bomb, I wouldn't be surprised. His actions raised an alarm, some other passenger possibly used the b-word, and in the confusion the marshals acted with deadly force. Unfortunately we’ll probably never know the whole truth. Let’s try to remember that while one side may want us to believe that there’s a terrorist under every rock, there are those who would have us believe that every person in authority is corrupt. Neither view is healthy.

Well, there are a few inconsistencies here, so I can't agree fully with what you are saying. If there was a bomb scare, then Kirsten's point is valid. Why were the people not IMMEDIATELY allowed to leave the aircraft? That suggests to me, that in fact the bomb thing was bunk.
It's unfortunately too easy to make the argument that it's OK to use deadly force because the Marshall's don't have time to think. Maybe I'm weird, but I hold law enforcement to a higher standard.

OK, so if the guy DID have a bomb, where was it? On his person or on the aircraft? How would killing the man have solved either? If he were WEARING the bomb, it might have set it off. Keeping him alive to be questioned might have actually allowed law enforcement to find out where the bomb actually WAS, to be removed or diffused.
When approached logically, this situation seems to fall outside the realm of good reasoning.

Last weekend I was at a street fair in my town that extended for several blocks crossing a fairly major intersection in the area. In order to allow traffic to use it, they did not block off that street as they had the other streets, and instead we had to wait for the light to change before we could cross. There was a guy standing at an electrical box at the corner where I was waiting to cross. He had something that looked like one of those game show buzzers in his hand- a metal cylinder with a button at the end of it connected to the box by a cable. Someone asked him if he was using it to control when the light changes. He replied, "No, I'm going to blow up the street fair." Now by the had-to-make-a-split-second-decision logic, had I had my gun on me, I would have been justified had I shot the guy dead there on the spot. But if I had shot the cop controlling the traffic light based on his flippant remark, would I be getting paid during an investigation of my conduct, or would I more likely be in jail? I agree with Rich that the standards ought to be higher for law enforcement's behavior, but from what I can tell they aren't even on par with what Joe Watercooler is held to. And I think that allowing lower standards to be applied to law enforcement and other government officials is a very dangerous tack to take.

Beyond that, they only would have had to make a split second decision if Alpizar had actually made a threat. Running off a plane is not a threat. Reaching into a bag is not a threat. Those behaviors might make us uneasy, particularly in the climate that pervades American airports today, but we don't/shouldn't just go around shooting everyone who makes us uneasy. Yelling that he had a bomb would have been a threat, but again, if he ran up the plane aisle yelling that he had a bomb, why have seven non-government witnesses stated that he did not do this and no non-government witnesses have corroborated the official story? How is it possible to run up the aisle of a plane yelling that you have a bomb and nobody by law enforcement hear it?

That said, I agree that it doesn't make sense that a couple of air marshals suddenly started feeling trippy with power and decided to kill a guy for no reason. Not that everything always makes sense, but it seems a reasonable starting point to try to make sense of the situation. I am not a big fan of speculation, but I do think that government needs to take some heat over this until a coherent story- preferable a true one, though I have my doubts as to how we'd ever be confident that it was- comes out. And unfortunately, I've seen no evidence that the media is doing that. Until/unless a Seymour Hersch type latches onto this, I don't see any other way of that happening except for people to speculate sufficiently that the media or special interest groups or whomever are goaded into pressuring government officials for information.

My suspicion is that some sort of error was made- perhaps mishearing a remark or something like that- which kicked of the tragic chain of events. Perhaps the marshals were a little bit on edge/jumpy already given that there had been shoe bomber alert preceding the shooting and acted too hastily resulting in the death of an innocent man. Once they realized this, perhaps officials circled the wagons to protect their people rather than own up to the truth. This could account for why the official story does not jive with the consistent denials of the official story from other passengers. It would also be consistent with agents' prompting of passengers with regard to the b-word. An attempt at intimidation or obfuscation could explain why the other passengers were kept on board, harassed, threatened, etc... rather than immediately being evacuated.

Where might powertripping play into this? I haven't seen the textbook, but I think that would be a possible candidate. Given the air of unquestionable government authority and lack of accountability that seems to be gripping this country, it does not seem unreasonable to me to wonder if those writing the textbooks are less worried about public safety and more worried about protecting their own. Unfortunately, that reverses the appropriate relationship between government and the citizenry by elevating government interest above citizen interest when the system was actually meant to make government agents public servants beholden to the people.

To answer the question about why they shot to kill rather than to disable, this article confirms John's suspicion. I think it's fair to shoot-to-kill when there is an actual serious threat, but in this case the claim that there was such a threat does not seem to be holding up.

Well said. I agree.

Points taken. I think the whole thing is a tragedy. You're right -- the whole thing probably went wrong when the airline safety textbook was being conceived.

The only point I still have trouble with is the scenario you posed. While we have protected speech in this country, we still must be careful not to incite panic or encourage dangerous reactions (you know… the old yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre argument). If the cop controlling traffic made the remark in a way that was convincing, or convincingly threatening, and someone armed and hired to protect the street fair heard him, I'd expect that person to 1) warn the guy to drop the device and 2) fire on him if he didn't comply. Based on all other factors not mentioned in your description of events (tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, and context) I'm sure no one took him all that seriously. There’s a reason the b-word is banned from speech in an airport terminal and not in a street fair. Context kills. I also think it is fair to shoot-to-kill when there is an actual serious threat, but I'm trying to withhold judgment. Despite what some would have us believe, assessing a serious threat is not a perfect science.

I think now that all is said and done, our blog page is about 8 feet longer.