Via Radley Balko, making his facepalm of the day, the story from  WKMG in Orlando where police claimed that they were forced to shoot Rogelio Cortes who was attempting to ram the police with his white van.

After seeing this video, prosecutors dropped attempted murder charges against Cortez, when the video clearly showed Sgt. Rhonda Huckelbery, the driver of the blue pickup behind the van, pushing the van forward into the other officers.  It’s worth going to the WKMG website for their video, which includes statements by Huckelbery.

Of course, dropping the attempted murder charges doesn’t exactly make up for the cops shooting Cortez in the abdomen and arm, and curiously doesn’t explain why he remains charged with “attempting to flee or elude police,” given that the only forward momentum demonstrated was at Huckelbery’s insistence.

But then, Huckelbery wasn’t exactly neutral on the subject of Cortez’s capture and shooting:

OPD Sgt. Rhonda Huckelbery . . suspected that men in the van stole her husband’s credit cards the day before and used them to buy nearly $1,000 in electronics.

And if that doesn’t deserve a few good bullets in the gut, then what does?

Once again, without the kismet of having a video available of what transpired, there is no way in the world that Cortez could have challenged the OPD story about his attempting to flee and ram the cops, who, fearing for their lives, had no choice but to put a few bullets into him.  There isn’t a judge alive who wouldn’t have believed the cops.  But for video.