Missouri Cop Who Pointed Gun At Photojournalist Was In Fear For His Life

By Carlos Miller
PINAC
Aug. 25, 2014

It didn’t take long for police in Missouri to justify one of their officers pointing a gun at a photojournalist and threatening to kill him, then telling him to “go fuck yourself” when asked for his name and badge number during the protests in Ferguson, an incident seen by thousands of people around the world who were watching the drama unfold on their computer screens through live stream.

St. Ann police officer Ray Albers was in fear for his life, his police chief, Aaron Jimenez, told the Huffington Post.

“He saw three to four suspects with bandanas on, and saw one of them raise a gun towards him,” Jimenez said. “That made him draw his weapon up to the crowd, and he was scanning and moving that weapon back and forth, trying to assess the scene. … Him seeing the gun in the crowd, he had every right to protect himself in fear of danger until he assessed the scene.”

Bottles of urine were being thrown at the officer, Jimenez said. In a YouTube video that captured the terrifying confrontation between protesters and Albers, people can be heard screaming “Don’t throw anything!”

If it were even remotely true that Albers spotted a raised gun pointed at him, he would not only have opened fire, he would have yelled out “gun!” and several other officers would also have opened fire.

And they would not have stopped firing until the suspects lay dead in front of them.

Instead, Albers was whisked away by fellow officers after telling a live streamer to go fuck himself.

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