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Suspected Cop Killer Murdered in Jail Cell After Arrest

By Jeralyn, Section Misconduct
Posted on Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 02:08:35 PM EST
Tags: Ronnie White (all tags)
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This is an outrage. Ronnie White, arrested for running down a police officer in a parking lot, was arrested and put in isolation. Only guards and supervisors had access to him.

Twelve hours later he was found dead in his cell, strangled with two broken bones in his neck. The Medical Examiner has ruled it a homicide.

Vigilante justice is no justice at all.

The Justice Department, FBI and Maryland state authorities are now investigating.

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    Suspected Cop Killer Murdered in Jail Cell After Arrest | 5 comments (5 topical)

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    This is outrageous.... (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by Maria Garcia on Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 02:17:37 PM EST
    .....someone walked in there and strangled him. Why? This isn't even vigilante justice. The man was in custody.

    The short answer, sad to say, (none / 0) (#2)
    by scribe on Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 02:36:57 PM EST
    to "Why?" is

    "Because he allegedly hit a cop."

    IF you want to see the mindset, go back and watch "L.A. Confidential" again.

    Parent

    or, if LA Confidential (none / 0) (#3)
    by camellia on Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 04:53:20 PM EST
    doesn't do it, take a look at the crime in  Prince George's County, Maryland, and how it is dealt with.  This county is a DC exurb, and has major problems going back a long way.   I don't believe that anyone in the WashPost circulation area was surprised by this development.  Horrible but unfortunately predictable, given some of the things that have gone on during the past twenty years.

    death penalty (none / 0) (#4)
    by diogenes on Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 10:21:24 PM EST
    Recently Maryland suspended the use of the death penalty by not revising lethal injection techniques.  Might there be a connection with the absence of an effective death penalty for cop killers and either White's choice to cold-bloodedly kill a policeman in a parking lot or the guards' belief that they needed to take revenge via vigilante justice to send a message to other prospective cop-killers?

    No. There is no connection (5.00 / 1) (#5)
    by Xeno on Wed Jul 02, 2008 at 01:53:49 AM EST
    between the death penalty rules in this state and this murder. Prince George's County has a death penalty for those who fall afoul of the wrong cop on the wrong day.

    The cold, hard fact of the matter is that this is how things are done in Prince George's County, Maryland. The PG County Police have a long, well-documented history of killing Black men (and women), pretty much with impunity. The Washington Post did a massive expose of that department's long history of killing and assaulting suspects. Only rarely have any of the killer cops (as opposed to alleged "cop killers") ever been brought to justice.

    A recent cases illustrates the state of affairs in my home county quite well. An innocent, law-abiding man named Prince Jones was stalked and killed by an undercover PG cop. Jones was pursued, wrongly as it turned out, across state lines (and across the Potomac River) by a cop who mistakenly ID'd him as a drug dealer. The cop ended up shooting a college student with no criminal record down on a Virginia cul-de-sac. Naturally, the cop was cleared of all wrongdoing, then took early retirement due to the stress of killing the wrong man.

    The Prince Jones case is typical of the behavior of cops over there. They also have a habit of coercing confessions out of suspects, which may explain why White was fingered as the driver of the stolen vehicle by another suspect. (Many here have noted that the charging documents give no other evidence of his involvement in the crime.) The reason the Feds immediately took control of the investigation is because the PG Police spent years under Federal investigation for their rampant abuses of power.

    Parent

    Suspected Cop Killer Murdered in Jail Cell After Arrest | 5 comments (5 topical)

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