Just How far can police officers go? America is set to be the next stage of a horrific chain of events if the police-led rampage keeps up. Police officers are now allowed to “convince” suspects into committing suicide, taking death by a cop to a whole new level.
SWAT was on the scene, and instead of trying to end the violence, they incited it. Given the circumstances, there is still no excuse for what went on during this encounter.
The puff of air whiffing past Michelle Schumacher’s head was just a warning shot.
“I looked at the wall and there was no hole,” she said, before turning back to her husband of 29 years. “He had a gun in his hands.”
Then came the final warning.
“If you don’t get the hell out of this house right now the next one is going into your head,” Marcus Schumacher thundered while clutching a pellet gun.
Michelle fled for her life, her kids followed and then two SWAT teams engaged in what turned into a 12-hour standoff in Fargo, North Dakota, on Feb. 10 that featured an unusual, if not unethical consideration by cops:
Tell the gunman to kill himself.
Fargo Police Lt. Bill Ahlfeldt had already given “the greenlight” for snipers to “engage the target with rounds to eliminate the threat,” he wrote in an after-action report. As his fellow officers were taking incoming fire from Schumacher’s rifles, Lt. Ahlfeldt and two fellow senior cops discussed using “negotiation tactics that would try to encourage Mr. Schumacher to stop the threat himself by committing suicide.”
The local prosecutor said SWAT never told Schumacher to kill himself, but police told The Daily Beast they would not take the suicide option off the table.
“Will it come up again? I can’t said if it will or won’t,” Dept. Chief Anderson said, unwilling to rule it out. “That’s the decision of the chief,” he said, referring to Fargo’s Police Chief Dave Todd.
“What’s important to remember is these decisions aren’t made in a vacuum…there’s no cookie cutter approach,” Anderson added.
Michelle doesn’t believe the powers when they say Schumacher wasn’t urged to kill himself.
“I have been promised his death certificate and I haven’t gotten it. And I haven’t seen the autopsy report,” she told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview.
Michelle’s husband never lost a bout as a senior Golden Gloves boxer, but he took many lifetimes worth of lumps outside the ring.
“He had so many hits to his head over the years,” Michelle said of her late husband’s countless concussions, which began in high school football and continued long after being honorably discharged in 1990 as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota National Guard.
Most of the head damage came from his work as a foreman installing cellphone towers around the country.
