Cop fired and denied severance for not shooting suicidal man holding an unloaded gun
When the safe, 'correct' choice for a cop is to kill, the system is broken. "Stephen Mader, a former police officer in Weirton, W.Va, was fired without severance because he decided not to shoot Ronald D. "R.J." Williams Jr, who had threatened to kill himself and was holding a gun that turned out to be unloaded. Mader, a Marine Corps veteran, says that he assessed the situation and decided that Williams was not a threat to him or others, so the officer used his "stay calm voice" and tried to defuse the situation: when Williams said, "Just shoot me," he replied, "I'm not going to shoot you brother." Then two other cops showed up and shot the man dead. His gun was unloaded. One month, the Weirton police department fired Mader, after telling him that he'd "put two other officers in danger." Because he was a probationary, "at-will" employee of the police force, he was denied any severance or pension."
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