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Friend of mine is an AC-130 IP. He posted this picture with Fortson with this caption. “Your true friends will correct the narratives in rooms you’re not present in. He was a good kid that served HONORABLY.”

He was a really good dude who was loved by all and the AFSOC community is justifiably upset. Being a cop is not easy, daily life or death decisions, and as in this case you will be judged for the rest of your life by the choices you make. That being said, training and leadership set the tone and this department is floundering at best. As mentioned above this is the same department that mag dumped a police cruiser with a handcuffed person in the back because a freaking Acorn fell and hit the roof. This community has crime but nothing like other areas of the country. In the history of Okaloosa County the department has lost five officers to gunfire, four of those were domestic violence situations, the last one happened 2.5 years ago. Everything about this call is odd and to some degree the officer was led down a very bad path. HE certainly had poor training and I beleive in most other areas of the country domestic calls get two officers. They won't say who called, but the lady who meets the cop MUST be investigated. She guides the officer to Fortson's apartment then says she heard "something that sounded like domestic violence TWO WEEKS AGO." That is NOT exigent circumstances, there is no warrant, there is only hearsay, no probable cause, but the cop starts pounding away and ordering the door to be opened...a complete fail. Roger has zero duty to open that door and to be clear the courts have ruled that repeated official commands to open a door without a warrant probable cause invoke the 4th amendment. As far as punishment, Roger did not deserve to die, but he was one of the few that stepped forward and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, I would hope all of us would honor his service and allow for the officer to enjoy the protections offered by that document. He deserves due process and if he is found guilty he should be held accountable, but should not be purposely thrown into the general population for "extra" justice. Rest easy Roger and thank you for your service.

While emotionally this might temporarily feel good, this also isn’t the answer. Prison shouldn’t be where we send people hoping that they’ll be harmed by other prisoners. I don’t blame you for saying it as I’m sure I’ve done the same in the past, it’s just that if we’re going to live in a better society then prisons also need to be decently safe for the prisoners. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they get video games, delicious meals, brand new gym equipment, etc.

I trust the worst gas station sushi more than I do Ben Crump. But that being said, from the looks of the video, that officer was most definitely in the wrong IMO (of course I’ve never been a LEO). And after a fair trial/if the jury agrees, I hope he goes to prison for a very long time. RIP to the fellow airman and condolences to his family. As much as I disdain corrupt and bad law enforcement, I do not envy the job of LEOs. I can’t even imagine the stress they’re under, but this situation most definitely can’t be the way of doing things. Personal liberty and freedom needs to be real and not just a cliche.

Flying is the fun part but that’s also a small part of it. For example, if you want to fly fighters, you’ll fly for an hour or two but the brief, debrief, and planning for that is probably 10x that much. Heavy pilots aren’t as intense on that stuff (still do it though) but they have other things to deal with way beyond just blasting off. Same with helos, bombers, you name it. Having said that, it’s way better than having a real job. And if you’re looking at the Guard, why not keep the medical job and be a pilot? Quite literally why the ANG exists is scenarios like that.

Well said, except for this part

Yeah. It's a fine line. If you're a cop, you have to go into basically almost every situation having a plan to kill/neautralize the person/persons you're dealing with because it happens. It happens rarely but almost on a daily basis over the whole of the US. On the flip side, you have a duty to not execute people without showing hostile intent. One way to do that is to not put yourself in those situations like this guy did. He was rightfully not standing in the doorway to catch a round through the door but why the urgency to get right up on the situation? It's monday morning qb'ng but its warranted if you are carrying a gun for the govt and are expected to uphold the constitution and all that jazz. There was no call of a gun, no actual violence observed and you don't even know if you're at the right place. Take a breath and get some distance. Race will get brought up in this of course, it had zero bearing and any person standing there in this poor kids shoes, whether white, black, brown, purple haired, or 90 years old would have been aerated by this officer. I would imagine he feels horrible and wishes he could do it over again but he's alive and breathing while the kid died at his feet.

Jail. It drives me crazy that we put cops in jail for shitty situations like the George Floyd case, but cases like this slip by, especially if there isn't a race angle to sensationalize.

20-25 days out of the month I loathe every second of my job. The other 5-10 days I'm sitting in the cockpit either flying to some place you've never heard of and am expected to just make it work or in a low level formation at the end of which I'm getting off a bunch of dudes cursing up a storm as we're stop to stop eating up leads wake like it's your favorite cousin. Those are the days I love my job. Flying is a drug and we're all a bunch of addicts.

The flying never got old. It was like sex. The other stuff certainly did. Go for it, you won't regret it.

Life in prison - no excuse for that level of fuck up.

Third lesson, install a camera. They are dirt cheap.

It’s insane how 4 minutes after the cop pulls into the parking lot on a seemingly pretty routine call, he’s shot SrA Fortson. What a horrible situation.

Yup. That was insane. You are allowed to have a gun in your house. I hope that cop spends a long time in prison. He baited that kid to a horrific death.

Straight to jail. No warrant nor exigent circumstance. What the fuck. The Sheriff's explanation of 'not hiding' wasn't shown on the video. He was out of view until the very end. Anybody can shout whatever they want outside your door. Don't open that shit.

The drastic rise in no-knock warrants (or apparently warrantless door busting in this case) is appalling. Also, a great reason to up-armor your front door. Shocking how easy it is to kick in a front door and it is relatively easy to significantly bolster most front doors. That would likely give the homeowner a minute to assess the situation a bit better. Problem is, with police acting like criminals and criminals acting like police, what would be the right thing do to? You have no idea if the guy kicking in your door is a gang-banger thug looking to rape your wife and kids or only an ATF agent looking for an excuse to discharge his duty pistol. Either way, there's a solid chance you die.

I love flying as well. I never looked at military flying as a job, it was more of an adventure (probably the gayest thing I've ever said). I hated the non flying part. I did not excell at that portion of the USAF. I even liked flying for the Regionals. I miss it. Flying that is.

What is happening on BO. Positive posts about the AF. Wow, I don’t even know what to say. The now banker who was scared off after posting he got an AD slot might be a pilot now if he posted a few years later.

Everything becomes just a job, not everything is as cool as flying. I spent lots of time not flying in the military and nearly 100% of the time I did not enjoy those duties. However, the flying I got to do was so fun/rewarding that it offset the mundane non-flying tasks for most of my career. Eventually the sting of those non-flying duties, paired with being gone (TDYs/Deployments), ever changing tactics/systems, it no longer offset it for me. This is when I knew it was time to retire. Do I wish I could still go hop in the jet and fly a High Aspect BFM ride, you betcha...do I miss all the other BS, not a chance. I would 100% say go for it, I can't imagine you'd ever regret it.

I'm getting ready to retire after 21 years and change AD; the flying never got old for me, loved every minute of it and would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Like Four Fans said, it's all about perspective. Anyone can find a reason to be unhappy in any location or career field, likewise you can almost always find the good in most situations. Best of luck to you.

Lots of rumors on this one, with no real solid evidence. It's going to suck for this girl if it turns out to be false, because her name has already been drug through the mud. Like the accused rapists that turned out to be innocent and just a victim of a scorned chick, it's really hard to unring that bell.

Hopefully, he thrown into Gen Pop in a Florida prison where his life expectancy as a former cop is very slim.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wwii-pilot-from-idaho-accounted-for-80-years-after-his-p-38-lightning-was-shot-down/ 🍺

I think the pilots hired today are going to be furloughed. I don't think it's going to be a 12-year furlough like the last ones during the bankruptcies and mergers, but still. That said, it is 100% better to be furloughed than not hired at all. Any airline. If you are furloughed you can do anything you want, non-flying and the airline will eventually bring you back and retrain you. Staying current is irrelevant. Then once you are recurrent you can go get hired wherever you want to apply to, and you are a much more desirable candidate. Not being hired at all means you have to stay current *and* compete with the backlog of aspiring airline pilots when the interviews start again. Remember these people are fools. They were convinced air travel would *never* recover from COVID-19, then they started talking about "winning" the pandemic recovery. Then they furloughed (at AA). Then they announced the biggest hiring wave in airline history. Now they are all cutting hiring projections, if not outright halting it. These clowns just blow with the wind, and so do our careers.

It's run and designed by lawyers. That's why. Currently skimming a book titled "Bodyguard of lies" about the deception program during WWII to conceal the allies true plans for invading Europe. Book touches on how many people within the German war machine were intent on a coup and looked to gain allied assurances that they'd be treated favorably after the war. In the end, the US merely used them to validate and provide cover for the intelligence provided by ULTRA. The US resolved that the "outcome of the war would be determined by force of arms," not negotiation. Last time we "won" a war is when we decided that we weren't going to negotiate the outcome with the people who started it. Seems to have worked well for us. Doesn't seem like a strategy developed by someone who's primary field was studying laws.

Y'all are the sorriest bunch of pessimists I’ve ever seen, seriously. “Damn, the federal government and our foreign policy are so bad I just spent 20+ years working in the DoD and personally conducting American foreign policy.” 🤦‍♂️ Freaking sack up. Don’t be doomer Gen Z kids who think everything is inexorably fucked and they are to blame (bonus, everyone gets to fill in the they with whomever they want!). Be a good person and family member, be a good officer / pilot/ Commander / etc., be a good citizen and vote, run for office, etc. If something is broken try to fix it. You won’t always succeed but you should still try. It’s not all hopeless, everyone in charge isn’t just a moron in dire need of your brilliant counsel, but if you really think you can do it better then do it better. Talk is cheap, action isn’t, but it’s well worth the cost. I was taught all this shit as a child, were you guys not? America is already great, we’re not going anywhere fast, and yes we have our flaws but modern western liberal democratic capitalism is the worst system…except all the other ones. 🇺🇸

No more lectures. I’m retired from that shitty hobby. I’m an MQ-9 pilot, never been an ROTC instructor, so I consider myself well qualified to say I’m “conducting foreign policy.” Many AFSCs can say the same whether you believe it or not. Again, I’ll say this and leave it to this. Many of y’all are sadly negative on the United States, a country I and I assume most of you have dedicated my life to serving in uniform. I tell the same thing to my zoomer daughter who’s a bit of a doomer leftist: temper your criticism with a dose of reality. America has its flaws but overall I still find us to be the good guys the vast majority of the time. If you believe otherwise, honestly it’s better if you are retired or choose to move on from uniformed service ASAP. TYFYS in both meanings of the phrase.