Police circulate picture of wrong man after Dallas shooting.

[Normchacho]

Nuvendil said:

Normchacho said:

When they posted that picture, he had already spoken to a police officer and had handed over his gun.

They also called him a suspect, not a person of interest. There is a very big difference and he wouldn't have even been a person of interest had the police communicated properly.

The long and short of it is that they fucked up and put an innocent civilian in very real danger.

Information doesn't travel instanty.  This all went down in less than a day.  And the odds he would have been killed were pretty darn slim, irregardless of all the vitriol online (if death threats online came to fruition frequently, TotalBiscuit would be dead long ago :P).  The officer or employee who posted that only knew that multiple witnesses at the protest saw him there with a weapon of the type used *in the shooting*.  It was a snap decision to ask the public for information.  You can't require cops or anyone to act on knowledge you have NOW with the benefit of hindsight.  This is, frankly, a PERFECT example of the kinds of minor hiccups that will happen from time to time for which the Police should not be tar and feathered.  5 cops died in the line of duty protecting people - both civilians and fellow cops - and the first thing, the VERY first thing people try to do is show how, despite that sacrifice and resolving this in under a day the police are reckless and incompetent.  

Are you seriously suggesting that people who want police held accountable don't value their service and sacrifice?

What happened the other day was awful. Truly and horrifically awful and I for one barely slept at all last night because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

But them posting that picture was not a minor hicup. It was a huge, easily avoidable fuck up that could have ended disasterously. As I said in my reply to pokoko, just giving a description of the man in question out over the radio would have solved this in a minute. Even if that somehow didn't, using the term "person of interest" instead of "suspect" would have painted the scenario in a totally different light.