A Fort Wayne police officer with a history of traffic offenses has pleaded guilty to an infraction after his vehicle fatally injured a pedestrian who was in a crosswalk.
The officer was previously disciplined 4 times for other driving offenses, but killing someone - well - $35.50 oughta cover it.
After the crash, Hartup issued a statement saying that as he was completing a turn at an intersection, “I struck a pedestrian. I immediately stopped my vehicle, grabbed my radio, and started aid to the pedestrian, and called dispatch to send medics.”
It gets a little harder to hate the driver when you find out that they did everything after the crash right. Guy still deserves jail time for fucking up driving again so badly that he ended someone's life about it, but I'm not about to call for violence against him. Stopping and calling for help immediately is exactly what you should do if you hit a person.
$35.50 is an absolute insult to the victim, though. I hope it's hard to cope with taking a life knowing that you've only paid the equivalent of a tank of gas for it.
Seems like something the prosecution's lawyer would have an easy time proving by subpoenaing the officer's dash cam footage. If anything, when the victim's family takes the officer to court, they'll subpoena it then. If the camera supports the officer's testimony, you'll never see it, because it won't be used as evidence against him, and no one will bother posting a boring video that just supports a cop's claims
Isn't the fine for the traffic violation? The compensation from a civil lawsuit will follow I presume.
This makes sense in my opinion. Violating traffic rules should result in the same fine regardless of whether you hit someone or not (like drunk driving isn't more OK just because you got lucky and didn't happen to hit anyone). But if you do hit someone, expect to compensate all costs and damages to that person or family on top of the fine (that goes to the state).
That said, I wish traffic violations would be fined much more harshly. Also if you didn't hit anyone during your reckless behaviour.
Yep! I’ve noticed my life is worth considerably less than a parked vehicle. So this sadly doesn’t surprise me. They might paint more lines though!!! So that’s neat. Right? Count the bodies like sheep.
I think the fact he was a cop doesn't have much to do with it.
This country just really doesn't seem to care if someones shitty, aggressive, dangerous driving kills someone (unless they are under the influence then throw the book at them!).
In America if you're a civilian and you run over somebody by accident and kill them you can still be charged with negligent homicide and spend several years in prison for it.
Unfortunately those kinds of simple, logical rules for some reason don't seem to apply to the cops that kill far more people on average than any other group in America.
Murder is defined in Indiana as either the intentional killing of another person without justification, or causing the death of someone while committing or attempting to commit a violent felony, regardless of intent to kill (the felony murder rule).
Definitions matter.
I'm not arguing the horrible nature of the event or careless disregard on the account of the perpetrator, but incorrect statements like this are how we've ended up in a situation where people throw around terms like "fascist" and "communist" for anything they don't like, and as a result, many people have no idea what those words actually mean.
This cop had a history of pulling shit like this. He's a murderer, and people being willing to make excuses for it and treating the police as some sort of civic religion is how we got here.