Colorado Farmer Gets Four-Year Prison Term for Being Shot by a Cop

It’s not enough that Calhan, Colorado resident David Goss was shot in the stomach by a trespasser last June after he had order the intruder to leave. Because that trespasser wore a government-issued costume, Goss will spend the next four years in a government cage — half the sentence that had been demanded by the vindictive prosecutor. Goss, who was tasered and shot three times in the abdomen at close range, was convicted of second-degree assault, menacing, disarming an officer, attempting to disarm an officer, and obstructing justice

Shulz claimed that Goss had “attacked” him and tried to grab his gun. He initially claimed that he shot Goss with a Taser after he sensed the farmer “advancing” on him from behind. He later enhanced the story by claiming that Goss — despite being hit with a Taser strike — ended up on top of him, beating him with his own radio and threatening to kill him. At that point, according to Shulz, he shot the farmer in self-defense.

In addition to being internally inconsistent, Shulz’s composite account of the incident is rebutted my eyewitness testimony. Confronted about his inconsistencies on the witness stand, Shulz — a paragon of self-pity who was reduced to blubbering at several points during the trial — insisted that “the situation was chaotic …. So if I don’t remember something that’s normal and typical.”

In a sense, he’s correct: Since cops are trained and expected to lie, self-serving perjury of this kind is entirely normal and typical.

Defense attorney Geoffrey Heim produced photographs of Deputy Shulz after the incident showing that there was dust on the left leg of his trousers, but none on his back. Prosecutor Tanya Karimi insisted that Shulz was “mistaken” about how he had landed on the ground, and that he was on his side when the struggle took place. However, Shulz himself claimed that Goss was kneeling on his chest at the time of the shooting.

Shulz also threatened several eyewitnesses on the scene.

At the sentencing hearing, a tearful Shulz continued to wallow in his bottomless sense of victimhood.

“You caused me more pain than you can imagine,” simpered Shulz, addressing the farmer he had attempted to murder. “I have no pity for you even though I know that I should.”

Shulz’s petulant lachrymosity was matched by the arrogant sanctimony of Presiding Judge William Bain, who said that the “message” delivered by caging an innocent farmer for the “crime” of being assaulted by a uniformed tax-feeder was that “if you get in a fight with a cop you’re going to go to prison.”

On the other hand, cops who simply murder a citizen after breaking into his home can expect … nothing, except, perhaps, their next scheduled raise.

Kenneth Chamberlain, a 68-year-old retired Marine from White Plains, New York, was murdered by police in his own home last November 16 after his medic alert pendant accidentally went off.

When the EMTs responded, the police tagged along. For over an hour, the police demanded that Chamberlain open his door. He told them to leave. That was a lawful order the police are required to obey. Rather than doing so, they busted down the door, tasered the elderly man, and gunned him down. One of the officers used a derogatory ethnic slur to refer to the elderly Marine, who was black.

No criminal charges have been filed against any of the cops who murdered Chamberlain.

Apparently, police can invade our property and kill us without cause — or have us sent to prison if we survive.

UPDATE:

A source who followed the case very closely informs me that Shulz fired four shots, only one of which hit Goss. One of them was directed at the vehicle carrying Goss’s wife, who tried to intervene after her husband was tasered. Two others were fired blindly as Goss — who was much smaller than the assailant — wrestled with Shulz, redirecting his aim.

UPDATE II:

An LRC reader asks why Deputy Shulz had invaded Goss’s property, a matter I had neglected to mention. The deputy was responding to a call from several people who had mistakenly trespassed on Goss’s property. The farmer, who had suffered a series of thefts and received no help from the local “authorities,” displayed a certain asperity in ordering the uninvited visitors to leave, and he was similarly inhospitable to the deputy when he showed up.

 

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11:44 am on May 4, 2012