Deputies responding to a disturbance call at a Florida apartment complex burst into the wrong unit and fatally shot a Black U.S. Air Force airman who was home alone when they saw he was armed with a gun, an attorney for the man’s family said Wednesday.
Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, who was based at the Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, was in his off-base apartment in Fort Walton Beach when the shooting happened on May 3.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a statement that Fortson was on a Facetime call with a woman at the time of the encounter.
I remember many years ago, the AF was charging airmen when some were splitting their tongues. The least they could do is charge these local PD with felonies. Obviously isn’t going to happen.
What is crazy is the woman he was video chatting with said he heard a knock, asked who was there. No answer. Then a louder knock a couple of minutes later which is when he got his gun and they burst in. It sounds like it was unannounced.
I hope we get the video for this but Florida is trying to kill all of its open information policies, so we may never get to see it.
I really hope the cops are charged and convicted on at least manslaughter. Florida is pro-gun but also pro-cop. If the video shows them as being unannounced, I could see people actually being concerned because it could happen to any gunowner at that point, racial bias aside.
Like, cutting their tongues down the middle to make a forked tongue?
yes AKA tongue bifurcation.
This sounds like a very Florida Man activity.
Oh hey that’s me! I’ve had mine split since 2017. I’m a sideshow performer and can hold lit torches with mine. AMA 🐍
Now I have even more questions. How many people did this before it became a problem? How did this get started and why did people participate in it? Was this an issue in other branches? Is it a case of “we have to wear uniforms so we’re going to do something rebellious to stand out?”
It doesn’t have anything to do with the military. It’s a body mod along the same line as tattoos, piercings, suspension, scarification, subdermal implants, and so on. It likely happens that some military personnel had it done but that’s very much not where it came from.
Yeah, I get that it’s a popular body mod. I had a friend in that community and I learned a lot about it and it seems cool. I’m just confused because the body modders I met weren’t exactly the sort of folks I’d see joining the military, especially the Air Force.
It was a small group of people circa 2003. They added to the Dress and Appearance AFI as ‘mutilation’ and specifically called it tongue splitting.
All kinds of people go into the military for various reasons. Many to get out of some way of life back home regardless of how they feel about the military and US policies you know? They can get college paid for, cut ties with whatever or whoever, get a place to live, get meals taken care of, get money in their pocket and maybe learn a trade. Obviously, there’s a lot of cons there too but some people see it as their best way ‘out’ of something.
Back then OIF/OEF was just kicking off and everyone was all ‘Never Forget’ so the AF had so many people they actually started taking volunteers for people to leave early and then started forcing people out (called Force Reduction), which is crazy with the shear amount of deployments going on but the AF also had too many NCOs as well. So yeah. Shit show as usual.
Yes I’m also very curious about the meaning of this line.
(IANAL) So, technically speaking, signing up for the military means the government literally owns you. Self harm and body modification (even as mild as forgetting sunblock and getting sunburned, unapproved cosmetic surgeries) can be punished, on the grounds of damaging government/military property, making a soldier non-combat-ready.