Officer Mark Wagner’s trial – What kind of crazy county do we live in? Let me see if I got this right. I read that office Mark Wagner, right here in Dane County, is being tried for second-degree reckless endangerment against, yes, you guessed it, a known, violent drug dealer / felon that Wagner was tasked with apprehending.
I think endangering the bad guy’s life is part of the job!! He’s not going to just lay down his arms and give up.
Special Agent Wagner was ordered to go out and grab a bad guy, except this was an exceptionally bad guy – a real violent guy – so the officers involved decided to use their trucks to pin the bad guy’s vehicle in and then take him down. But wait! It gets better.
While Wagner fired his gun in self-defense – he didn’t hit the felon. The bad guy tried to drive away, smashing his car back and forth into the agents’ trucks – which endangered the agents’ lives. The felon was using his car as a weapon. Wagner thought he was going for a gun (bearing in mind that this criminal has a history of violence and gun carrying. All this, under the law, is an attack on the agents no different than if he pulled out a gun and started shooting.)
Agent Wagner thought he was shot at due to a loud noise similar to a gun, probably resulting from a hit on the agent’s shield, but who cares. The bad guy was trying to escape and Wagner reasonably believed he was being shot at. That’s reason enough in my book to act. But wait again, it gets even better! Agent Wagner’s bullet (or round) never hit the bad guy.
It was a fragment of a round from another agent that hit the bad guy. So, hmm, agent Wagner fired his gun but never hit the guy, the bad guy tried to escape and was a known, violent criminal who was wanted on a warrant.
But our D.A. is prosecuting the cop.
So the agent who never even hit the felon is on trial. This is the f-ed up world we live in. A DA who who wants to score points is prosecuting a police officer doing his job.
The real treat was hearing about how the felon was emotional on the stand, apparently almost crying at the threat to his life! Oh, crocodile tears. This is a guy who deals with drug dealers and other violent criminals and is violent himself. How upside down does this world have to get?
