A mentally ill person claiming police brutality and then committing suicide really ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if the allegations are true, it's pretty clear that there's more to the story than just that as people don't generally commit suicide in response to that.

It's definitely within the realm of possibility that it happened, but let's actually give some opportunity for an actual investigation before we get out the torches. It's amazing how ungrateful some of you people can be. You make it sound like the police are routinely beating the crap out of random people, when there's no reason to believe that's the case.

Agree with hedwards here. Facts matter.

Those Twitter posts do not paint the picture of a stable person. Sorry he felt the need to end things. As i heard on the radio recently, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Ungrateful for what?

Police do routinely beat the crap out of people and kill them too. You'd have to be a complete moron to think otherwise, or just completely naive and lacking in experience.

So given the demographic with the highest rates of suicide is older Caucasian males, you believe that? I'd posit that by the time people get to "older", they have enough life experience to make a sound, logical and rational decision to end their life. The notion that suicide is permanent solution to a temporary problem is a fallacy. For some, it is the only permanent solution to permanent problems!

Facts definitely matter. Agreed that those tweets don't paint a picture of a stable person at the time, however that reaction could easily come from trauma. Mental illness is an assumption, as is the majority of speculation about this tragedy.

Anything someone says once they get the label "mentally ill" is dismissed easily, regardless of the validity of that label.

"Police also claim that Murdock was placed in a squad car where he began banging his head on the metal cage separator causing himself damage. Police say they took Murdock from the vehicle and he continued fighting with them, there was enough damage that they called for medical assistance, and Murdock was taken to the hospital for treatment." http://techaeris.com/2016/01/01/ian-murdock-did-have-an-altercation-with-police-before-his-death/

This should easily be backed up by medical and police records and all conspiracy theories can vanish. Alternatively, given the evidence presented thus far, there's certainly a few things that have people questioning the narrative.

(I wouldn't like to be @jackstormwriter as half of the internet underworld are doing detective work and looking in his direction after his exchange with Ian)

No, they don't. Not anywhere in the developed world is that a matter of routine. It's certainly not something that's taught at police academy and the people who report being beaten are rarely as innocent as you'd like me to believe.

And yes, you ought to be grateful for what they do. You don't seriously think that people are going to commit fewer crimes without enforcement, do you? Talk about naive.
That's certainly consistent with his tweets. Bottom line here is that there's a lot of paranoia and not any particular reason to believe that this is anything other than a mentally ill man having some sort of psychotic episode.

I agree, perhaps if police stopped protecting people for one entire day they'd realize the value of service being offered by them, if they make it through the day alive that is. And those people also need to realize that they are human and in some cases mistakes can happen.

A lot of that comes down to people being given unfair expectations of the police. Tamir Rice is a good example of a completely justified police shooting. We had one similar to that a few blocks from here last year. I watched the video and the officer barely had time to unholster his weapon and shoot. A few seconds more "wait and see" time and he probably would have been stabbed.

But, because in the case here the deceased was white, there was no public outcry. The police didn't have to do with the racist BLM protesters and I'm not even sure if anybody figured out why the guy went nuts. But, unlike with the BLM bullshit, the cop wasn't tried and convicted in the court of public opinion before the investigation was completed.

People in general just don't properly appreciate how much less time there is for careful consideration than there is after the fact. I've personally been in situations where the law would have allowed for lethal force, I had to make the decision in the spur of the moment whether or not to go through with it. I hope the decision not to kill them was the correct decision, but I'll always be partially responsible for everything they do good or bad following that.

First Aaron Swartz in 2013, then Ian Murdock...

Why it had to be this way? Two brilliant minds in the world of computing driven to suicide... It's too sad.

Sad News _ Rest In Peace .. Ian

I'll just leave this from another board here since I totally aggree with it and it's no use rephrasing it:

Prisoners in Abu Ghraib were beaten and sodomized by American soldiers too.
Also, tortures are legal in United States.

Wut? 'Murica is torturing? Next thing you tell me is it is constantly at war, this is preposterous! ;D

Citation desperately needed. Torture is not legal in the US and the soldiers that were beating and torturing convicts at Abu Ghraib were court martialed for their roles in it. The only real failure is that it didn't go far enough up the chain of command.

I seriously wonder where some of you people get your facts from.

In vsr's case, it's pretty simple to figure out where they come from. The state-sponsored troll mills.

Never heard of the guy (getting into Linux is still on my to-do list), but my thoughts are with his family. Dealing with the death of a loved one is the hardest thing in the world, especially if it turns out to have been a suicide (which I firmly believe is always preventable, no matter how bad things might look). Whatever happened, or why, I wish them the strength and courage they need to get through this sad time.