Father Reports Truck Stolen by Son to Teach Him a Lesson – Cops Respond by Shooting Him Dead

Tyler Comstock, 19, of Boone, Iowa wanted his father James buy him a pack of cigarettes and his father refused, so he took his father’s truck without permission. James reported his truck stolen by his son from a worksite that he and Tyler had been working on, hoping to teach him a lesson. Now he is planning his son’s funeral as an Ames, Iowa officer responding to the call shot Tyler dead.

“He took off with my truck. I call the police, and they kill him,” James Comstock told The Des Moines Register on Tuesday. “It was over a damn pack of cigarettes. I wouldn’t buy him none.”

“And I lose my son for that,” Comstock added.

Ames Police officer Adam McPherson has been with the Ames Police Department for more than eight years and was the one that responded to call. This was the first time McPherson has drawn and fired his weapon in an incident.

Comstock had apparently driven into the heart of Iowa State University.

According to KCRG.com:

The incident began at 10:17 a.m. Monday when Ames police received a report of a stolen vehicle from a man who said his son had become upset and taken his pickup truck and trailer, according to a news release. McPherson responded, according to (Ames police Cmdr. Geoff) Huff, and located the truck at Grand Avenue and South 4th Street.

McPherson reportedly followed the vehicle initially before activating his emergency lights. But, instead of pulling over, Comstock is accused of speeding up and continuing west to Beach Avenue. Comstock, at one point, is accused of stopping the vehicle and reversing, pushing the trailer into the police car and partially onto its hood, according to police.

Comstock then sped away again, police reported, running a red light and becoming unhitched from the trailer. McPherson continued to follow the truck around Union Drive and eventually north on Morrill Road – against one-way traffic in the bike and pedestrian lanes, according to police.

Witnesses told police that people were jumping out of the way of the truck, which then jumped the curb onto a grassy area north of the university’s Campanile. McPherson unsuccessfully tried to ram the vehicle to get it to stop, police reported.

Apparently Comstock had no concerns for pedestrians who were jumping out of the way of the truck.

Tyler Comstock

The officer, according to police, gave multiple verbal warnings to Tyler to turn off the vehicle, but the 19 year old would not comply. Instead, he revved the engine, though the truck did not move as officers were approaching. Dashcam footage below does not show us whether the truck was or was not moving, but does show the danger that Comstock posed to other people and property prior to being rammed. It certainly was moving seconds after it was rammed just before shots were fired.

McPherson then fired seven rounds into the truck “to stop the ongoing threat to the public and the officers,” according to police.

While Tyler was not armed with a gun, it seems clear from the witnesses and the officer’s account that he was endangering the lives of others with the vehicle, prior to stopping. I admit that I don’t understand why he was shot when the vehicle was stopped and no longer endangering anyone though. I suppose it is possible that he would not have heard verbal commands. However, watch and listen to the dashcam footage below and see if you fail to hear any verbal commands. I certainly didn’t hear any. In fact, just seconds after the police cruiser rams the truck, seven shots can be distinctly heard being fired without any verbal commands being given.

Dash cam footage:

Comstock was taken to Mary Greeley Medical Center and was pronounced dead.

Tyler’s mother went to Facebook writing, “My baby boy is gone after Ames police shot him this morning after a chase! Please take a moment to honor him today, I will never forgive myself for not doing more for him as his mother!”

She went on to write, “Please be patient while the dci investigates and hopefully we will know all the facts soon.”

“Maybe officer didn’t hear dispatcher like perhaps my son didn’t hear their commands over a revving engine,” she later added. “Please tell me this is not real!!!! By the way, did they tell him to turn off the truck or get out of the vehicle? I’ve heard both from them, any witnesses wanna clarify this for me?”

God knows my heart goes out to parents losing their son. However, it seems to me there was a problem as soon as the young man took the truck without permission. Second, his own actions demonstrate that he was not concerned with the safety of others or simply pulling over and dealing with the police officer in a mature manner. The father is obviously rethinking his actions as well.

Officer McPherson was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident on Thursday, and the investigation has been closed.

While I’m not convinced the officer was right in firing the shots, the reality is that it all could have been avoided had Tyler Comstock not engaged in reckless behavior, endangering himself and others.

This is most definitely a tragedy that a young man lost his life when he could have simply pulled over and dealt with the officer. This is what I was taught to do when I was growing up, and it is what I teach my own kids to do. While I realize there are many bad law enforcement officers, I do not think they represent the majority of those in law enforcement. I was taught to respect their authority, which is an expounding of the principle of the Fifth Commandment.

Here’s edited audio of Ames police dispatch. I add that there is a section in the audio that is disturbing where the officer is told to “back it off” and yet continues in pursuit.

What do you think?

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Father Reports Truck Stolen by Son to Teach Him a Lesson – Cops Respond by Shooting Him Dead

The Century-Long Challenge to Respond to Fukushima

More than two years after an earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc on a Japanese power plant, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is one of the most serious threats to public health in the Asia-Pacific, and the worst case of nuclear contamination the world has ever seen. Radiation continues to leak from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi site into groundwater, threatening to contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. The cleanup will require an unprecedented global effort.

Initially, the leaked radioactive materials consisted of cesium-137 and 134, and to a lesser degree iodine-131. Of these, the real long-term threat comes from cesium-137, which is easily absorbed into bodily tissue—and its half-life of 30 years means it will be a threat for decades to come. Recent measurements indicate that escaping water also has increasing levels of strontium-90, a far more dangerous radioactive material than cesium. Strontium-90 mimics calcium and is readily absorbed into the bones of humans and animals.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) recently announced that it lacks the expertise to effectively control the flow of radiation into groundwater and seawater and is seeking help from the Japanese government. TEPCO has proposed setting up a subterranean barrier around the plant by freezing the ground, thereby preventing radioactive water from eventually leaking into the ocean—an approach that has never before been attempted in a case of massive radiation leakage. TEPCO has also proposed erecting additional walls now that the existing wall has been overwhelmed by the approximately 400 tons per day of water flowing into the power plant.

But even if these proposals were to succeed, they would not constitute a long-term solution.

A New Space Race

Solving the Fukushima Daiichi crisis needs to be considered a challenge akin to putting a person on the moon in the 1960s. This complex technological feat will require focused attention and the concentration of tremendous resources over decades. But this time the effort must be international, as the situation potentially puts the health of hundreds of millions at risk. The long-term solution to this crisis deserves at least as much attention from government and industry as do nuclear proliferation, terrorism, the economy, and crime.

To solve the Fukushima Daiichi problem will require enlisting the best and the brightest to come up with a long-term plan to be implemented over the next century. Experts from around the world need to contribute their insights and ideas. They should come from diverse fields—engineering, biology, demographics, agriculture, philosophy, history, art, urban design, and more. They will need to work together at multiple levels to develop a comprehensive assessment of how to rebuild communities, resettle people, control the leakage of radiation, dispose safely of the contaminated water and soil, and contain the radiation. They will also need to find ways to completely dismantle the damaged reactor, although that challenge may require technologies not available until decades from now.

Such a plan will require the development of unprecedented technologies, such as robots that can function in highly radioactive environments. This project might capture the imagination of innovators in the robotics world and give a civilian application to existing military technology. Improved robot technology would prevent the tragic scenes of old people and others volunteering to enter into the reactors at the risk of their own wellbeing.

The Fukushima disaster is a crisis for all of humanity, but it is a crisis that can serve as an opportunity to construct global networks for unprecedented collaboration. Groups or teams aided by sophisticated computer technology can start to break down into workable pieces the immense problems resulting from the ongoing spillage. Then experts can come back with the best recommendations and a concrete plan for action. The effort can draw on the precedents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it must go far further.

In his book Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Michael Nielsen describes principles of networked science that can be applied on an unprecedented scale. The breakthroughs that come from this effort can also be used for other long-term programs such as the cleanup of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the global response to climate change. The collaborative research regarding Fukushima should take place on a very large scale, larger than the sequencing of the human genome or the maintenance of the Large Hadron Collider.

Finally, there is an opportunity to entirely reinvent the field of public diplomacy in response to this crisis. Public diplomacy can move from a somewhat ambiguous effort by national governments to repackage their messaging to a serious forum for debate and action on international issues. As public diplomacy matures through the experience of Fukushima, we can devise new strategies for bringing together hundreds of thousands of people around the world to respond to mutual threats. Taking a clue from networked science, public diplomacy could serve as a platform for serious, long-term international collaboration on critical topics such as poverty, renewable energy, and pollution control.

Similarly, this crisis could serve as the impetus to make social networking do what it was supposed to do: help people combine their expertise to solve common problems. Social media could be used not as a means of exchanging photographs of lattes and overfed cats, but rather as an effective means of assessing the accuracy of information, exchanging opinions between experts, forming a general consensus, and enabling civil society to participate directly in governance. With the introduction into the social media platform of adequate peer review—such as that advocated by the Peer-to-Peer Foundation (P2P)—social media can play a central role in addressing the Fukushima crisis and responding to it. As a leader in the P2P movement, Michel Bauwens, suggests in an email, “peers are already converging in their use of knowledge around the world, even in manufacturing at the level of computers, cars, and heavy equipment.”

Here we may find the answer to the Fukushima conundrum: open the problem up to the whole world.

Peer-to-Peer Science

Making Fukushima a global project that seriously engages both experts and common citizens in the millions, or tens of millions, could give some hope to the world after two and a half years of lies, half-truths, and concerted efforts to avoid responsibility on the part of the Japanese government and international institutions. If concerned citizens in all countries were to pore through the data and offer their suggestions online, there could be a new level of transparency in the decision-making process and a flourishing of invaluable insights.

There is no reason why detailed information on radiation emissions and the state of the reactors should not be publicly available in enough detail to satisfy the curiosity of a trained nuclear engineer. If the question of what to do next comes down to the consensus of millions of concerned citizens engaged in trying to solve the problem, we will have a strong alternative to the secrecy that has dominated so far. Could our cooperation on the solution to Fukushima be an imperative to move beyond the existing barriers to our collective intelligence posed by national borders, corporate ownership, and intellectual property concerns?

A project to classify stars throughout the university has demonstrated that if tasks are carefully broken up, it is possible for laypeople to play a critical role in solving technical problems. In the case of Galaxy Zoo, anyone who is interested can qualify to go online and classify different kinds of stars situated in distant galaxies and enter the information into a database. It’s all part of a massive effort to expand our knowledge of the universe, which has been immensely successful and demonstrated that there are aspects of scientific analysis that does not require a Ph.D. In the case of Fukushima, if an ordinary person examines satellite photographs online every day, he or she can become more adept than a professor in identifying unusual flows carrying radioactive materials. There is a massive amount of information that requires analysis related to Fukushima, and at present most of it goes virtually unanalyzed.

An effective response to Fukushima needs to accommodate both general and specific perspectives. It will initially require a careful and sophisticated setting of priorities. We can then set up convergence groups that, aided by advanced computation and careful efforts at multidisciplinary integration, could respond to crises and challenges with great effectiveness. Convergence groups can also serve as a bridge between the expert and the layperson, encouraging a critical continuing education about science and society.

Responding to Fukushima is as much about educating ordinary people about science as it is about gathering together highly paid experts. It is useless for experts to come up with novel solutions if they cannot implement them. But implementation can only come about if the population as a whole has a deeper understanding of the issues. Large-scale networked science efforts that are inclusive will make sure that no segments of society are left out.

If the familiar players (NGOs, central governments, corporations, and financial institutions) are unable to address the unprecedented crises facing humanity, we must find ways to build social networks, not only as a means to come up with innovative concepts, but also to promote and implement the resulting solutions. That process includes pressuring institutions to act. We need to use true innovation to pave the way to an effective application of science and technology to the needs of civil society. There is no better place to start than the Internet and no better topic than the long-term response to the Fukushima disaster.

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The Century-Long Challenge to Respond to Fukushima