US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3172

On April 22 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:


It's pretty disingenuous to chalk up the difference in gun deaths between the U.S. and Poland to police officers using warning shots.

On April 22 2021 00:07 dp wrote:


Silly word games. "Parentless, orphaned, underage youth, who regularly attends church, does community service and is loved by friends and family... was shot after committing assault and battery and was in the process of committing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon." I understand humanizing everyone involved. We should not be detached from things like this. But it is not the important aspect. Is there no scenario where the harm that an attacker is capable of warrants a deadly response from police?

"We had the means to stop him, but it was more humane to let him run out of bullets on victims." That sounds a little cringe right? So I imagine you have some set limit in your head. How many victims should be allowed to be harmed before a perpetrator can be harmed to stop them?

On April 22 2021 01:29 KwarK wrote:

It’s not silly word games. Branding people criminals and thus okay for the police to execute presumes that they are criminals (generally they’re suspects, they haven’t been convicted) and that the punishment for being a criminal is execution. If we’re going to use this language then we should talk about what we mean by it. When someone defends a police shooting by calling the victim a criminal we should talk about what they mean exactly, what it means to be a criminal, who decides who is a criminal, how we want society to treat criminals, and so forth.

There’s absolutely hypothetical scenarios in which deadly force is required. An active shooter with hostages, for example. But most suspects do not require immediate execution, even if they are not immediately compliant with police instructions. Many are killed while retreating in scenarios where they could be apprehended later. Many are intoxicated and acting irrationally but would be compliant if given time to come down. Some are intellectually impaired and are shot for holding toy fire trucks. Some are just deaf and literally can’t hear the commands of the officers. Some don’t speak English and don’t know exactly what they’re being told to do.

Police in the US are trained in “killology”. They’re made to watch videos of other police officers getting killed during routine duties. They’re told that they’re an occupying force here to subdue a hostile population. They’re told that every day American citizens want to kill them and that the priority is getting home alive by any means necessary and specifically by killing them first. They’re trained in obtaining immediate and total compliance through the rapid escalation of force and that half measures are how you get yourself killed.

In this context we really do need to evaluate under which circumstances the police should shoot and why US police seem to shoot citizens so much more frequently than police in other countries, even those with comparable gun ownership like Germany. There are absolutely scenarios in which shooting a suspect is the lesser of two evils, but there aren’t anywhere near as many as there are shootings.

And, to be blunt, I believe in the current environment a suspect would be wholly justified in killing a police officer in self defence. If they had confidence that they could peacefully surrender and have their constitutional right to a trial honoured then killing an officer is murder. But if they believe the officer intends to kill them, whether or not they surrender, then the officer is acting outside of their legal scope and planning to murder a citizen and that citizen can, and should, defend themselves, regardless of whether they’ve previously committed a crime. The social contract has been so thoroughly broken by the police that any obligation to place your life in their hands has, through their own actions, been negated.

On April 22 2021 02:11 dp wrote:


No. Using past criminal activity to excuse police misconduct in an unrelated situation is definitely an issue. Media has seemed all too willing to do so in the past. Pointing out that someone is in the middle of a crime when something like this happens is not a presumption, it's a description. Everyone is using language to color their argument, which is fine, but let's not ignore it. Like when you just used the word 'victim' to describe the girl that was shot. That is deliberate, and inaccurate. Same as any descriptions that say "police officer murdered" in relation to this incident. It's creating a narrative for a purpose.

You admit that there are scenarios that require deadly force, but narrow it into a small box. Exactly how many victims is the right amount before lethal force is justified? If she had stabbed the first girl, and was in the process of going to stab the second, would that have been enough? A third? I completely agree there are numerous instances of trigger happy cops defaulting to shooting at the smallest sign of danger. There are definitely issues that need work. Is it possible to talk specifically about this instance though?

Your last paragraph is one of those things that remind me that people live in bubbles that stats can't really penetrate. There was a recent poll that had respondents that believed they were more likely to be killed by police than by criminals. That is simply insane. The narrative has gone so far that it is damaging itself.

On April 22 2021 02:22 KwarK wrote:

I’m explicitly talking about hypotheticals and you’re not reading my posts. Read my post before responding.

On April 22 2021 02:52 FlaShFTW wrote:

Yeah, so we should just let her have stabbed the pink lady first, and then done something about that right?

This is the idiotic take. This is a justified shooting that occurred because one person was half a second from swinging at someone with a knife and had the potential to do irreparable harm to another individual, in which the police has a split second decision to make with regards to how he should proceed. This is well within his training and his rights as an officer to have done what he did, and we can argue hypotheticals, but where the alternative is that the pink lady is dead and THEN the police shoots, now you have one extra person dead or maimed as a result of this. Your position is an entirely idealistic approach for how every situation should turn out, and you clearly do not understand the risks and duties of a police officer to understand what they put on the line when they go out on duty and have to deal with a violent situation like this. You expect them to be robots when in reality, they are just like you or I, but the difference is when they walk out of their door, their job puts them in harms way and they may never see their family again, or have to decide if another person gets to go home to see their family in a violent situation. Fuck off with this take, and come back maybe when you acknowledge the job that a police officer actually does.

On April 22 2021 02:52 FlaShFTW wrote:

Yeah, so we should just let her have stabbed the pink lady first, and then done something about that right?

This is the idiotic take. This is a justified shooting that occurred because one person was half a second from swinging at someone with a knife and had the potential to do irreparable harm to another individual, in which the police has a split second decision to make with regards to how he should proceed. This is well within his training and his rights as an officer to have done what he did, and we can argue hypotheticals, but where the alternative is that the pink lady is dead and THEN the police shoots, now you have one extra person dead or maimed as a result of this. Your position is an entirely idealistic approach for how every situation should turn out, and you clearly do not understand the risks and duties of a police officer to understand what they put on the line when they go out on duty and have to deal with a violent situation like this. You expect them to be robots when in reality, they are just like you or I, but the difference is when they walk out of their door, their job puts them in harms way and they may never see their family again, or have to decide if another person gets to go home to see their family in a violent situation. Fuck off with this take, and come back maybe when you acknowledge the job that a police officer actually does.

On April 22 2021 02:52 FlaShFTW wrote:

Yeah, so we should just let her have stabbed the pink lady first, and then done something about that right?

This is the idiotic take. This is a justified shooting that occurred because one person was half a second from swinging at someone with a knife and had the potential to do irreparable harm to another individual, in which the police has a split second decision to make with regards to how he should proceed. This is well within his training and his rights as an officer to have done what he did, and we can argue hypotheticals, but where the alternative is that the pink lady is dead and THEN the police shoots, now you have one extra person dead or maimed as a result of this. Your position is an entirely idealistic approach for how every situation should turn out, and you clearly do not understand the risks and duties of a police officer to understand what they put on the line when they go out on duty and have to deal with a violent situation like this. You expect them to be robots when in reality, they are just like you or I, but the difference is when they walk out of their door, their job puts them in harms way and they may never see their family again, or have to decide if another person gets to go home to see their family in a violent situation. Fuck off with this take, and come back maybe when you acknowledge the job that a police officer actually does.

On April 22 2021 00:19 farvacola wrote:

That's a fine take and I think it has merit, especially with reference to the habits and practices of police in the US in general. That said, it does run up against the competing value many place on empowering police to intervene before a perp is able to take the first step of harming someone, which is not a view that can be ruled out as a matter of conscience or priorities. The issue with that take is that police intervention tends to be incredibly inconsistent (and subject to the biases we've been discussing), with women seeking help in domestic violence situations being routinely told that there's nothing police can do unless and until some material act of violence occurs, and even then, there are all sorts of horror stories involving police turning a blind eye to horrific acts of spousal and child abuse.

No matter how the close calls are parsed, the need for dramatic, systemic reform is clear.

The bodycam footage released so far can be found here, it starts at around 1:05. Be warned, the footage shows a woman being gunned down.
+ Show Spoiler +

On April 22 2021 00:56 Simberto wrote:


This is a very important point. We don't need to armchair solve the situation from a distance. We have never been in that situation, and we are not trained in any way regarding how to handle it (at least i am not)

But there are trained professionals who are capable of dealing with these situations without killing people. The US police should learn from them. Because clearly it can be done. The police in almost any other country is capable of that. Private security is also generally capable of it, because they don't have the same protections as the police do.

The US police is pretty much the only professional organisation whose job it is to deal with these situations which somehow cannot figure out how to not kill people all the time.