Other people said he seemed agitated and nervous when their dogs were walking about by him. I imagine if a dog just charged at you and was barking/howling while its owner was staring at someone's ass, you'd be on edge for a bit as well.
No shit! I agree. I read the first half of the first graf of the story angry at Solnit, for singling out this guy and scare-quoting his occupation. Then I got to the bit about the dog jumping up on Nieto and the simpering excuse-making this guy made about that and I instantly got angry at the guy instead. What an asshole!
That lasted a couple minutes. But "poorly managed, barking dog jumps up on someone" happens millions of times a day, and those dogs owners are not complicit in murders.
As reported elsewhere, Solnit's story leaves out Nieto's mental illness, which is apparently severe: he appears to have been schizophrenic. We don't know what Nieto's reaction was to the dog. He could have terrified, or he could have been outraged.
A previous version of this comment suggested that Nieto had tased someone else at the park; he had not. I misread something; the taser incident I read about was unrelated to the park.
You are entitled to that perspective. You might be right. But Solnit is not entitled to make that decision for all of her readers by withholding that detail.
I am going to gently push back on you, though, because you're making it sound as if Nieto had a completely unrelated historical diagnosis that is being used here as a smokescreen. Here are some details salient, I personally think, to this case:
* Nieto had been prescribed two antipsychotics. He had not been taking them at the time the police confronted him.
* Just three weeks prior to this shooting, Nieto had tased the ex-husband of a friend while they were putting their kid in a car. The victim removed the taser darts, and Nieto tased him again. The victim managed to get into the car and drive away as Nieto screamed and threatened him.
* The second of Nieto's two antipsychotics was prescribed two years prior, when he was placed on psychiatric lockdown after trying to set his parents house on fire.
There is mental illness of the kind that many of us suffer and manage, with varying kinds of assistance. And then there is uncontrolled, ongoing, and violent psychosis.
Nobody is arguing that Nieto's mental illness is a good reason for him to have been killed. But the notion that the police, dispatched to confront a subject reported in a 911 call to have been carrying a pistol, faced someone who did indeed refuse to show their hands and then did indeed draw a weapon is corroborated by Nieto's history.
This is not a gentle pushback, you're seeking to blame the victim without quoting any sources. Your inference that the story is "corroborated by Nieto's history" is pure speculation and does not explain the contradictory statements given by the police officers. If you've left something out here then I apologise but this story disgusted me, as does your comment.
I misread an article summarizing the DA report. He had, three weeks earlier, repeatedly tased someone as they were putting their kid in a car. He had not tased people at the park.
I don't think people should be allowed to arbitrarily carry tasers around, either, by the way. Certainly I don't think it's OK for bar bounces to have them. Dozens of people die every year when the police tase them. Tasers are not safe.
I don't have good statistics, but late last year I went through the Guardian's police shooting database and bucketed all the killings in a spreadsheet, and I was startled to see how many people were killed by tasers. Tasers are dangerous.
I see that Taser combined with drugs or alcohol can increase risk of heart arrhythmia. That seems to be responsible for most of the deaths. Police Officers would encounter those folks more often than the general population.
