Pittsburgh police save the town!

M

MeekAndMild

New member
NOT! :D

PITTSBURGH -- Police closed off most of the Golden Triangle and blocked highway exits to Downtown while they investigated reports of an armed man atop a building on Wednesday afternoon.
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http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/8188403/detail.html

Here is the catch. The guy was shooting pigeons with a pellet gun.

This leads to a lot of questions, some rhetorical and some practical.

Who would be looking at the top of a building, so closely as to see what rooftop dwellers are doing? Is there a peeping tom law in that city? What right to privacy does a citizen of Pittsburgh have?

What probable cause would police have to storm a rooftop in the absence of evidence that shots were fired? Was the search illegal?

If, heaven forbid, the bird flu gets to the US, will cities see the wisdom of not harassing citizens who are trying to thin down the pigeon population or will they wait until we have a half million dead?
 
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What pissed me off was a report of "a high powered rifle"

hours later, hours in traffic, many people on lunch not returning to work due to sniper threats, many many man-hours of tax payer paid police time--it turns to be a pellet gun.


And as for looking at roof tops, I can say that from a high office window, sometimes the easiest thing to see is other high locations-offices and roofs. Wouldnt look to deeply there.


and uh, Pittsburgh, my hometown, has an "h" at the end :-)
 
well, I have worked in the commercial HVAC business for the last several years, where do we work? Rooftops, as do roofers, electricians, sign companies, filter services, telco workers, muzak and other sattelite based I.T. guys. You would be surprised how many "roof rangers" are on the job on any given day.:D
 
Pigeons need to be shot anyway. They're filfthy and there's too many of them. And, around here, that's now also the case with Canada geese.
 
In a way, that is hilarious, because I've often thought how nice it would be to be the super of a building so that you could get roof access, and nail the stupid pigeons and grackles around here that crap on everything. What you need is the right height building. One that is low enough to be able to shoot them from the roof of, but high enough to not be seen from the ground, and also it would be imperative that it be the highest building in the vicinity so that no one could look down from another building and see you. Sounds crazy, but man I hate those damned birds, esp. the grackles. This guy was dumb enough to not be shooting from the tallest building around, sounds like.

He might have been lauded as a hero in Orlando:

http://www.local6.com/news/8182571/detail.html
 
If you can't see the reason to close off the streets b/c a man was seen on the top of a building with a rifle, you're not going to listen to reason.

Pigeons suck. But allowing people to openly shoot at them in a public place where many people are around is just rediculous.
 
If you can't see the reason to close off the streets b/c a man was seen on the top of a building with a rifle, you're not going to listen to reason.
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I don't see the reason to close the streets based only on the fact that someone is on the roof with a rifle. In this situation, the guy was being unsafe, but just the presence of a weapon is not justification to shut down the area. Does anybody know if anyone knew he was shooting before the police got to him?
 
I don't see the reason to close the streets based only on the fact that someone is on the roof with a rifle.
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I do. I'd be much happier with a false alarm than taking one in the chest, then bleeding out while watching people around me dropping like flies in a real sniper situation. I applaud the police for their efforts.

How long ago was it that the guy climbed the clock tower near a college and started picking people off? Do you think that situation could have ended better if the cops knew he was there before anyone died? I definitly do.
 
How long ago was it that the guy climbed the clock tower near a college and started picking people off?
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How long ago was it that the guy went into the mall and started shooting people? Should we shut down the mall every time someone walks in carrying openly? The fact remains that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a rifle in a high place.



Ignoring the fact that he was shooting pigeons, what did this guy do that makes his actions different from open carry?
 
How long ago was it that the guy climbed the clock tower near a college and started picking people off?
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I believe it was 36 years ago, the year of my birth.

SideBar: This doesn't deserve its own thread, but some of y'all are gonna love this. Today for the first time ever, I saw a "DemocraticUnderground.com" Bumper sticker on the car in front of me at a light. It was in OK but had Tenn. plates - I about died laughing, wondering if she was one of the rabidly anti-gun women on there.
 
I will re-ask the question what probable cause would police have to storm the roof of a private building in the absence of evidence that rifle shots were fired? Was their search illegal?

Ignoring the fact that he was shooting pigeons, what did this guy do that makes his actions different from open carry?
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The fact he was on private property and carrying a pellet rifle?
 
I have been in a very similar situation. Many years ago someone called the police on me because I was shooting a pellet rifle off my back porch roof. I was of course living right smack in the middle of downtown Atlanta at the time. I was trying to pick off squirells because I was sick of them dropping nuts on my car. On a hot summer afternoon I'd go out there and pick a few off. It was a cheap pellet gun but from a distance it probably looked more threatening. The fact that I put a scope on it probably didn't help! At the time there was no law against using air rifles in the city limits. Most cities have always had ordinances against discharging "regular" firearms but now many have added and air rifle/pistol statue.

When the cop showed up (just one) he said he had heard about someone shooting around there. At that time I had locked the gun up in my trunk, I had gotten tired of shooting that day. I confessed and said I had been using a pellet gun. He said that I really shouldn't be doing that and even thought that it technically wasn't illegal it still wasn't very safe. He also said shooting wildlife is essentially hunting and that I probably didn't have a license for that. He said just cut it out and left.

I guess it depends on where you live and the potential threat. I'm sure that day would have played out differently for me had I been in my front yard shooting twoards the street.
 
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