© Free Thought Project
New details are emerging about the tragic shooting of Justine Damond, an Australian yoga teacher and spiritual healer, by Officer Mohamed Noor. The Free Thought Project has learned that Noor had a history of complaints against him, neither he nor his partner chose to activate their body cameras before the shooting, and the audio from the radio dispatch has been released capturing Damond's final moments on earth.
Officer Noor, who was sitting in the passenger seat of his patrol car at the time, opened fire through the driver's side door hitting Damond at least once in the abdomen. Noor and his partner were responding to her 911 call about a possible sexual assault.
Police have yet to release any reason for Noor, who joined the force in 2015, to have opened fire as Damond was unarmed.
Witnesses told The Star Tribune that Damond, wearing pajamas, was speaking to officer Matthew Harrity, 25, through the driver-side window of the police cruiser when Noor, sitting in the passenger's seat, shot Damond through the driver-side door.
Noor's partner was allegedly "stunned" when Noor opened fire, KARE11 reported through a source.
Conveniently, for the officers involved in the shooting, it was revealed on Monday that
neither of them had activated their body cameras. The dashcam, we are told, was not recording any video footage either. Since 2016, Minneapolis has
required all officers to wear and activate body cameras "at all times when they could reasonably anticipate that they may become involved in a situation for which activation is appropriate," as noted by HuffPo.
But these officers conveniently managed to turn off both of their body cameras and the dashcam before entering the alleyway in response to Damond's call about an alleged sexual assault taking place behind her home.
While police have been shamefully tight-lipped on the killing of an innocent unarmed mother, they did release audio of the conversation between the officers and dispatch immediately following Noor's shots.
In the audio, one officer can be heard saying he sees a 'female screaming behind a building' after the shots were fired."Shots fired ... we have one down," an officer is heard calmly telling dispatch after Noor had shot Damond to death behind her home.
The conversation continues as Damond bleeds out in one of the safest neighborhoods in town — killed by those who are ostensibly sworn to protect.
Attorney Thomas Plunkett said in a statement that Noor "takes these events very seriously."
"He joined the police force to serve the community and to protect the people he serves," Plunkett said. "Officer Noor is a caring person with a family he loves, and he empathizes with the loss others are experiencing."
However, it has since come to light that Noor had multiple complaints against him prior to killing Damond. One of the complaints is still open.The open federal investigation into Noor stems from a former social worker from Minneapolis who says Noor and other officers violated her constitutional rights in March by ordering her detention at a hospital
after she called 911 to report a drug crime and other issues.Damond had also called 911 to report a crime, she was not fortunate enough, however, to file a complaint against Noor.
"We lost the dearest of people and are desperate for information," Damond's fiancé, Don Damond,
said Monday, according to the Star Tribune, in his first public comments. "Piecing together Justine's last moments before the homicide would provide small comfort as we grieve this tragedy."
Sadly, it appears that this small comfort may be a long way away.
Comment: This tragic incident has sparked
anger and outrage in Australia over the culture of gun violence in the US and the problems of police brutality:
"To most Australians, the recent surge in police shootings across the US was obviously concerning but at the same time a remote issue, far from Australia's shores," the front-page story reads. "That view has changed now with the fatal shooting by police of Sydney woman Justine Ruszczyk Damond in the suburb of Fulton, Minneapolis."
The story has struck a chord in Australia partly because it feeds "into Australians' long-held fears about America's notorious culture of gun violence," according to the Associated Press.
Ruszczyk's killing has led to numerous TV news reports and newspaper articles recounting the tragically high number of people killed by American police.
"Justine Ruszczyk's mistake was to greet police as you or I would in her native city of Sydney, after she'd reported what sounded like someone being sexually assaulted in the alley behind her Minneapolis home late on a Saturday night," reads a report in The Australian.
While The Sydney Morning Herald said: "The tragic shooting death of Justine Damond will bring home for many Australians a disturbing phenomenon they had only observed from afar and may have even thought was on the decline: the extraordinary rate of people killed during encounters with police in the United States."
The Australian Prime Minister has now
chimed in on this growing scandal, calling the incident inexplicable (he must not be paying attention to US police behavior) and demanding answers over why Justine Damond was shot and killed. Meanwhile, the cops are now attempting to cover their behinds by
claiming that the unarmed woman in her pajamas "ambushed" the officers and that due to "fearing for his life" the officer shot her. It has also come to light that the officer had his pistol in his lap cocked and loaded. He must be quite scared whenever anybody comes up to his car and knocks on the window to get their attention. As this story makes abundantly clear, it's becoming safer to not call the cops for help than to call for help and end up getting murdered by trigger-happy cops who face no repercussions for murdering innocent people who did nothing but what they've been taught to do when they need police assistance.
For more on this tragic story, see:
Comment: This tragic incident has sparked anger and outrage in Australia over the culture of gun violence in the US and the problems of police brutality: The Australian Prime Minister has now chimed in on this growing scandal, calling the incident inexplicable (he must not be paying attention to US police behavior) and demanding answers over why Justine Damond was shot and killed. Meanwhile, the cops are now attempting to cover their behinds by claiming that the unarmed woman in her pajamas "ambushed" the officers and that due to "fearing for his life" the officer shot her. It has also come to light that the officer had his pistol in his lap cocked and loaded. He must be quite scared whenever anybody comes up to his car and knocks on the window to get their attention. As this story makes abundantly clear, it's becoming safer to not call the cops for help than to call for help and end up getting murdered by trigger-happy cops who face no repercussions for murdering innocent people who did nothing but what they've been taught to do when they need police assistance.
For more on this tragic story, see: