Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Mother fighting idiot cops

Vogelzang - 4-2-2011 at 09:57

I saw some articles about this before which said it was drug related and then later found some articles about how the victim's mother said its all police propaganda from the idiots at the police department.


Mother of slain student camps out
By Matt Zapotosky

The mother of a University of Maryland student slain as part of a botched robbery earlier this month in College Park set up a lounge chair, pulled up a cooler and camped out in front of Prince George's County police headquarters Friday in an effort to get police to retract statements that her son's killing was drug related.

Karen DeSha has been in a protracted dispute with police over the nature of her son's killing, arguing that 22-year-old Justin DeSha-Overcash was no drug dealer, but a bright double major in physics and astronomy. She said she sat outside police headquarters from about 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and made some progress in forcing a meeting with police officials set for Monday.

"They were very, very good to me today," Karen DeSha said. "They were concerned I was going to spend the night."

Police have said DeSha-Overcash was shot during a struggle with a would-be robber inside his home on 38th Avenue on Jan. 11. They have said the robbery appeared to be drug-related, and the robber was heard asking for DeSha-Overcash specifically. Police and law enforcement sources have said investigators seized marijuana-laced lollipops from the home, as well as scales and a quantity of the drug sufficient to indicate someone was distributing it.

DeSha said she would not care if her son was using marijuana, but in her frequent visits to the home, she never saw or smelled any of the drug. She said she believes police need to investigate further, and until then, they need to retract statements about her son being involved in drug activity.

"I just want his honor back," Karen DeSha said. "It's not about anything else."


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/matt-zapotosky/...

Vogelzang - 4-2-2011 at 10:05

According to this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...
they assumed it was a drug-related robbery. I guess if you're robbed at your house and have some aspirin there, it could be considered to be drug-related, too, since the aspirin is in the house and has a relationship with other things in the same location. :P


[Edited on 4-2-2011 by Vogelzang]

psychokinetic - 4-2-2011 at 12:52

It makes great statistics and great news.
It makes for a great excuse to stop individual attention and just lump it in with the rest of the drug crap.

/sigh.

DDTea - 4-2-2011 at 19:57

Keep it up, MUUURDERLAND. 11 homicides in the first 11 Days of the year, they had something going!

Sedit - 4-2-2011 at 20:07

They found scales, drugs, and weed laced lollie pops for fuck sake, this woman needs to deal with the fact that it was more then likely drug related. All shes doing is drawing attention to the fact that her son was a drug dealer that got shot because he couldn't pay his bills. So much for honor.

Vogelzang - 5-2-2011 at 08:04

There's no proof it was because of drugs. Murder and drugs just happened to be in the same place at the same time.

Sedit - 5-2-2011 at 08:13

I don't care about proof, im not a court and I don't need to believe innocent until proven guilty, he had a large amount of drugs in the house, enough for them to conclude he was dealing, there was a fight overheard before the killing that stemmed from the fellow owing money, and he was subsequently murdered.

If I ignored facts such as these I would be blind. The mother is blinded by her loyalty to her son which I don't have and neither does the investigators here.

I have seen this type of story played out in my area enough times to draw a good conclusion on what happened. There are two likely senerios here, one, He has a mass of weed and someone wanted it... they entered his house in order to take it and he got killed in the process. Two he was getting the drugs on loan and failed to pay his bills which is the more likely of the two situations given the eye witness account that there was a scuffle over money.

Murder and drugs is not likely a coincidence in this case. I admit it happens but in this account it is to much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude it was all just coincidence... He just fucked up and he paid the price of doing business with shady people.

quicksilver - 8-2-2011 at 07:29



The use of the term "honor" is interesting in a sense. Suppose the individual DID have some agenda with drugs and got shot. Is it appropriate to kill a human being for something like that? Were he killed for owing several thousand dollars to someone; that is NOT going to get that money back. Only a low-functioning jackass would kill the source of revenue. But just for sake of discussion; let's say that's just what happened.

A guy goes and gets in debt for "off-track" betting & owes some money to someone - killing him makes no sense at all. Would that person's "honor" have anything to do with the fact that someone killed him for a debt? What's interesting is that (especially) in gambling, the idea of killing the debtor is fairly rare.

Or let's pull it up a notch and say someone is behind 5 months in his car payments......killing him would not only be butt-fuck stupid, it would not solve the debt issue. But the connotation that honor has anything to do with it is a strange choice of words.
So in essence, because there is a suspicion that a drug element was involved with this guy; it makes his death less significant.....(?)

It sounds like the REAL issue is that the mother in this case is concerned that due to the appearance of drugs as a possible factor, that the law enforcement folks are going to shelve this murder & (in effect) blow it off as another drug-related homicide. If that's the real bottom line then the problem goes a lot deeper than something called honor. It get's down to a "pick & choose" issue of what cases get followed up on and what don't.

Drugs being all about this guy's house indicate he was no stranger to getting high. All the mother's protests to the side, should that make his life less important? It MAY be that the family thinks so. - THAT is an issue that is separate from whatever the woman is calling honor. However being realistic, if you have just so many resources, where are you going to put your efforts? Should they be spread evenly or should the sleazy, thieving coke whore get the same efforts from cops as the fine upstanding member of the community?

The idea that human life has value only in-so-far as they are of a certain caliber in society or they maintain a certain lifestyle is a slippery slope. Is it that the cop doesn't see that some shit that would wipe a guy for a drug debt would eventually wipe nice citizen for accidentally stepping on his shoe?



[Edited on 8-2-2011 by quicksilver]

turd - 9-2-2011 at 11:46

Thank you quicksilver, you hit the nail on the head.

I just want to take the opportunity to add my own agenda: Legalize it already and sell it in head shops which pay taxes! Same with MDMA and shrooms. It's totally ridiculous that people kill each other over these drugs. While at it, decriminalize the rest. Jeeeeez!

Sedit - 9-2-2011 at 15:22

I agree with both of you but I still feel the mother is acting rash in her decision. Her little boy could do no wrong and shes acting on that notion avoiding the facts of the case. Cops follow drug induced murder leads all the time so I doubt that will deter them from following this case and in all honesty may push them more in an attempt for a big payoff of busting a murder and a drug dealer in the end.

But at the end of the day you cant go protesting the police station for publishing there findings. I feel for her and I understand that her judgement is cloudy because she just lost her child, I hope that she grieve and moves on else it will eat at her in the end and we would have two lives destroyed.

vulture - 9-2-2011 at 15:37

Quote:

But at the end of the day you cant go protesting the police station for publishing there findings.


I don't see how the hunch of a police officer (appeared to be) is the same as findings in a case. The police may well investigate this as being drug related and it may well be, but that shouldn't be publicly disseminated before it has been established beyond certain doubt.

Sedit - 9-2-2011 at 16:41

Thats true, but in a perfect world police wouldn't be stupid enough to talk to the media at all unless they truely need there help. To bad many police officers are in it for glory instead of assistance to others.

I wasn't there at the case and I dont know there evidence so all in all im going to say I feel its drug related and leave the rest up to them.

aliced25 - 9-2-2011 at 21:32

Quote: Originally posted by Sedit  
They found scales, drugs, and weed laced lollie pops for fuck sake, this woman needs to deal with the fact that it was more then likely drug related. All shes doing is drawing attention to the fact that her son was a drug dealer that got shot because he couldn't pay his bills. So much for honor.


And that is the way of life. Drugs being found colors every aspect of this person's death, regardless of whether he was killed as part of an SM Love Quadrangle, or even for a snuff film, the drugs make the homicide drug related. If he hadn't had the drugs he'd be dead still, but it wouldn't be drug related. If he hadn't been killed, he'd still be a druggie. Newspapers & Police aren't really interested in the truth, fact 1 + fact 2 = combination of fact 1 & 2. Deal with it.