Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
No, I actually can't just as easily imagine a family member of mine trying to stab someone as I can imagine them being a victim of violence. If you can then that probably explains a lot of why you have the views that you do.
Borderline reportable post. Your argument here is literally “you just probably disagree because your family is criminals.” Ad hominem, useless, and embarrassing.
I mean is that not literally what he just said? His argument was you can just as easily imagine a family member as the stabber so you should want some leniency towards the stabber before shooting. I said I can't just as easily imagine that. This could be the entirety of why we disagree on the topic so it seems prudent to dwell on this difference.
He’s arguing both individuals are human beings and citizens with families, and neither has been convicted of anything, so assigning one’s wellbeing more value than the other by mentally humanizing one and not the other is not a responsible basis for policy-setting. The degree to which your or his or anyone else’s family resembles the people involved shouldn’t determine who gets to live.
It’s actually maybe useful to highlight this reasoning, though, for anyone wondering how racial bias can enter into these judgments. If you figure (mostly white) cops are employing a similar reasoning in deciding who they do and don’t shoot, it’s not hard to see how they wind up shooting black people much more frequently. It’s harder to imagine them as being a family member of yours, no? The phenomenon is a lot more complex than that but it’s a decent place to start in understanding the phenomenon.
Well then we are just going to have to agree to disagree then. I think this idea that simple math can solve this question is ridiculous As Kwark put it
On April 21 2021 15:00 KwarK wrote: Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
The idea that the correct outcome is the one in which "fewer members of the public get hurt" seems ridiculous to me. If 2 terrorists are holding 1 hostage at gun point I don't value the lives of the 2 terrorists more simply because 2 > 1. I don't value their well-being equally and it's absolutely crazy to me if you or others do.
But we’re not dealing with terrorists, we’re dealing with, generously, suspects. The entire basis for assigning their life less value is a cop deciding he thinks they’re suspicious. In most cases even if they had been tried by a jury of their peers and found guilty we might think the death penalty would be monstrous; here the only judicial procedure they’ve had is a cop looking at them and forming a judgment about whether to shoot them.
Kwark (I think rightly) criticized the argument but there’s a peculiar honesty to the “I can picture a family member in this role but not that role “ basis for moral judgments. If you’re forming judgments about police rules of engagement, not on any universalizable moral principle, but on whatever would maximize the wellbeing of yourself and your loved ones, you’d likely be pretty happy with the status quo (at least, if you’re white). I can be relatively confident my family and I will never find ourselves harassed by the police; much harder to say confidently I’ll never be attacked by some random assailant with a knife. If every cop thinks he’s Jack Bauer + Show Spoiler +
I think this is a relevant reference? I haven’t seen 24
I might be slightly safer because the benefit (slightly higher chances of shooting criminals before they can stab me) might affect me, and the cost (much higher chance of cops shooting civilians posing no real threat to anyone) almost certainly won’t.
It’d be nice if Blue Lives Matter folks would acknowledge this is the tradeoff they’re making. Sure, people are being murdered by cops without any due process, but those people aren’t me or my family! Much easier to trade freedom for security when it’s other people’s freedom you’re trading with.
I think it is universalizable moral principle to protect members of the public from an aggressor coming at them with a knife. I'd wager that this is standard rules of engagement for virtually every police department around the world. I think people that disagree with this should be willing to admit that if their loved one was in the position of the person about to be stabbed they would still think the police shouldn't shoot.
You wouldn't condemn a person to death for stabbing another in the heat of the moment if no cop was present. That's either second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter and they carry far lighter sentences than death. Why upgrade the punishment simply because a cop witnessed the event?
C'mon this is an absolutely ridiculous argument.
In what way do you find this ridiculous? I do not accept that people's lives have different value depending on how a cop was feeling that day. We have a system for delivering justice, we agreed as a society how to deal with criminals. We have a process for a reason and I think it is immoral to not give an individual an opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law when an individual is executed on the basis of a suspicion of about to commit a crime.
Because no court in the developed world would condemn anyone to be shot in the streets. If this is your standard then you believe 0% of police shootings are justified. Again, you're desperately attempting to frame a shooting to prevent bodily harm into an extrajudicial execution.
On April 21 2021 12:46 Husyelt wrote: [quote] Not going to watch if it's that graphic. But I saw someone on reddit mentioning that police officers have more leeway than soldiers in actual war zones, with the "rules of engagement." I wonder if that might be the culprit for the very high police / kill rate.
The actual video released by CPD is around 1 minute long and it involves + Show Spoiler +
the girl being shot four times in the back by the cop
A similar incident happened in 2018, and the Supreme Court weighed in on this. Because of their ruling, it appears that there won't be legal repercussions for the cop.
Kisela, a Tucson police officer, shot Hughes less than a minute after arriving, with other officers, at the scene where a woman had been reported to 911 as hacking a tree with a knife and acting erratically. When Kisela fired, Hughes was holding a large kitchen knife, had taken steps toward nearby woman (her roommate), and had refused to drop the knife after at least two commands to do so. Hughes matched the description given by the 911 caller. Her injuries were not life-threatening. All of the officers later said that they subjectively believed Hughes was a threat to her roommate. Hughes had a history of mental illness. Her roommate said that she did not feel endangered. Hughes sued Kisela, alleging excessive force, 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the officer, reversing the Ninth Circuit. Even assuming a Fourth Amendment violation occurred, which “is not at all evident,” Kisela was entitled to qualified immunity. Although the officers were in no apparent danger, Kisela believed Hughes was a threat to her roommate. Kisela had mere seconds to assess the potential danger and was separated from the women by a chain-link fence. This is "far from an obvious case" in which any competent officer would have known that shooting Hughes would violate the Fourth Amendment; the most analogous Ninth Circuit precedent favors Kisela. A reasonable officer is not required to foresee judicial decisions that do not yet exist in instances where the requirements of the Fourth Amendment are far from obvious.
I think that there has to be some sort of change. The rules of deadly force and qualified immunity let cops get away with things like this where they murder someone when there are nonlethal ways to defuse a situation, like in this case. The taser, when fired, will jolt someone for five seconds, which is more than enough time to run over to the girl who was just a couple of yards away and disarm her.
Have to say, I disagree with this assessment. You realize that tasers are not a surefire way to incapacitate someone right? Tasers are not a guarantee, and in this situation, the police sees a person brandishing a knife against someone literally less than a couple feet away. You want to incapacitate them to save the person being ran at with a knife.
If the cop uses the taser, and the taser isn't effective enough, and the girl in the pink suffers extreme bodily harm/permanent injury/ or even dies, guess the cop is still in the wrong. It's a lose-lose here. Regardless, you cannot qualify this as a cop murdering someone.
The cop is not in the wrong if one person harms another, the person doing the harming is in the wrong. They’re not out there to dispense justice, shooting people, even if they’re bad guys, is a failure. The justice system dispenses justice, the police are just there to get suspects into court rooms. You can’t try a dead body, every shot suspect is a citizen denied a chance to defend themselves in court. Extrajudicial execution by cops should be a last resort to avoid an even greater evil, not the first tool used when immediate compliance is not proffered.
So your goal is to just let the girl get injured or potential death here? The police is not the one to administer justice, but they certainly are there to PROTECT the people, even if you want to talk about how bad policing has been. In a vacuum, the police did not do anything wrong in this situation, and at worst will be removed from field duty for several months.
Potentially injured, yes. Shooting whoever seems potentially dangerous is an overly cautious way of protecting some of the public which reliably results in other members of the public dying. The girl not holding a knife didn’t deserve death, but nor did the girl holding the knife. Too often in policing the question is whether the right person got shot and not whether there was a requirement for anyone to get shot. Shooting people is seen as good policing.
Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
I imagine that member of the public about to get stabbed is my family member and it's an easy decision for me to prefer the police to gun down the stabber. I'd bet you're the only person here that would rather have harm come to you or your family than to have a criminal get shot.
That’s an idiotic take. You could just as easily imagine the other party is a family member. Both have family. There’s also a reason why justice isn’t decided by family members with a clear bias so your “if I was related to one of them I’d know what was just” is pretty dumb. I also don’t much care for your blanket definition of one of the people in the hypothetical as a criminal, especially given that they haven’t yet hurt anyone in the hypothetical nor been convicted of anything. That seems the kind of language designed to dehumanize and justify the use of force against them. If you’re going to shoot them then why not use more accurate language like “mother of two” or “citizen” or “active member of her church”.
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.
you’re aggressive language is embarrassing. your own experience or “knowledge” reeks of american exceptionalism.
you should strongly take your own advice, on all fronts.
Wait how is this American exceptionalism? I'm not even a supporter of the current system of policing but this case is not clear cut like the ACAB people in this thread at making it out to be because "hurr durr police bad" is not a good nor proper argument for incidents like this. There is no bright line rule, and Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
The overwhelming responses in this thread demonstrate the inability to think critically of this situation and are simply kneejerk "police bad" reactions. You all want to just throw the blame on the police force at every opportunity you get, and when a police officer isn't there to actually help, you turn the other way and cry out about "where are the police?" There is no winning here for the police, they are in a lose-lose situation no matter what with the rhetoric that I see right now.
On April 22 2021 06:11 ChristianS wrote: [quote] He’s arguing both individuals are human beings and citizens with families, and neither has been convicted of anything, so assigning one’s wellbeing more value than the other by mentally humanizing one and not the other is not a responsible basis for policy-setting. The degree to which your or his or anyone else’s family resembles the people involved shouldn’t determine who gets to live.
It’s actually maybe useful to highlight this reasoning, though, for anyone wondering how racial bias can enter into these judgments. If you figure (mostly white) cops are employing a similar reasoning in deciding who they do and don’t shoot, it’s not hard to see how they wind up shooting black people much more frequently. It’s harder to imagine them as being a family member of yours, no? The phenomenon is a lot more complex than that but it’s a decent place to start in understanding the phenomenon.
Well then we are just going to have to agree to disagree then. I think this idea that simple math can solve this question is ridiculous As Kwark put it
On April 21 2021 15:00 KwarK wrote: Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
The idea that the correct outcome is the one in which "fewer members of the public get hurt" seems ridiculous to me. If 2 terrorists are holding 1 hostage at gun point I don't value the lives of the 2 terrorists more simply because 2 > 1. I don't value their well-being equally and it's absolutely crazy to me if you or others do.
You’ve brought up terrorists and it’s not clear why. I was talking about a hypothetical in which two citizens are having a dispute and one of them is perceived to be a potential threat to the other but is not currently actively killing anyone. My argument is that the potential harm avoided to one citizen may not justify the much greater actual harm done to another.
You’re changing the hypothetical by making one of the citizens Bin Laden before you answer but that’s not really addressing the substance of the issue. The substance of the issue is that to outweigh the harm done to the citizen executed by police you need both a high likelihood of harm avoided and that the harm avoided is substantial. If harm avoided, weighted for probability of it actually happening, is considerably less than a human life then deadly force isn’t justified. This is more so when the potential threat isn’t to human life but to property. Very frequently the police use deadly force against a suspect who was attempting to deprive someone of property rather than kill anyone. The harm done to society by extrajudicial police executions is greater than by stolen TVs. Responding with “but what if the suspect was a terrorist” isn’t really addressing the issue.
The bold is an exceptional statement. I assume you can back up the 'very frequently' and explain what you mean by 'deprive property'.
'deprive property' obviously means theft. The very next sentence even mentions stolen TVs. Don't play dumb.
So there should be an abundance of examples of cops gunning down people running away with TV's then, correct? And since hyperbole is the only way to get points across in these kind of discussions, it becomes increasingly necessary to point out when it is obvious.
Considering 58% of police shootings took place after police responded to a nonviolent incident, yeah, I'm sure there are an abundance of examples out there.
So no examples to share? As you said, should be an abundance from what you believe, so it probably would have taken less time than to pull up a unrelated link. "Responding to a non-violent incident" literally means nothing, if you think this stuff through.
Botham Jean was shot while sitting on his couch in his own apartment by a police officer who claimed she thought he was a burglar.
She was there in her official capacity as an officer? Responding to a call? He was stealing a TV? I don't know why I need to make this clear but again, I know plenty of police interactions that have gone wrong, and are directly the fault of the police. You would very rarely find me on the side of the police in a questionable case. That is no way means I agree with statements like what you said. It also doesn't mean I will always fall on the side of those that are shot. The frequency and details are important to discussion though.
She specifically stated she thought he was a burglar. She claimed to have killed him in defence of property.
On April 21 2021 12:51 plasmidghost wrote: [quote] The actual video released by CPD is around 1 minute long and it involves + Show Spoiler +
the girl being shot four times in the back by the cop
A similar incident happened in 2018, and the Supreme Court weighed in on this. Because of their ruling, it appears that there won't be legal repercussions for the cop.
I think that there has to be some sort of change. The rules of deadly force and qualified immunity let cops get away with things like this where they murder someone when there are nonlethal ways to defuse a situation, like in this case. The taser, when fired, will jolt someone for five seconds, which is more than enough time to run over to the girl who was just a couple of yards away and disarm her.
Have to say, I disagree with this assessment. You realize that tasers are not a surefire way to incapacitate someone right? Tasers are not a guarantee, and in this situation, the police sees a person brandishing a knife against someone literally less than a couple feet away. You want to incapacitate them to save the person being ran at with a knife.
If the cop uses the taser, and the taser isn't effective enough, and the girl in the pink suffers extreme bodily harm/permanent injury/ or even dies, guess the cop is still in the wrong. It's a lose-lose here. Regardless, you cannot qualify this as a cop murdering someone.
The cop is not in the wrong if one person harms another, the person doing the harming is in the wrong. They’re not out there to dispense justice, shooting people, even if they’re bad guys, is a failure. The justice system dispenses justice, the police are just there to get suspects into court rooms. You can’t try a dead body, every shot suspect is a citizen denied a chance to defend themselves in court. Extrajudicial execution by cops should be a last resort to avoid an even greater evil, not the first tool used when immediate compliance is not proffered.
So your goal is to just let the girl get injured or potential death here? The police is not the one to administer justice, but they certainly are there to PROTECT the people, even if you want to talk about how bad policing has been. In a vacuum, the police did not do anything wrong in this situation, and at worst will be removed from field duty for several months.
Potentially injured, yes. Shooting whoever seems potentially dangerous is an overly cautious way of protecting some of the public which reliably results in other members of the public dying. The girl not holding a knife didn’t deserve death, but nor did the girl holding the knife. Too often in policing the question is whether the right person got shot and not whether there was a requirement for anyone to get shot. Shooting people is seen as good policing.
Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
I imagine that member of the public about to get stabbed is my family member and it's an easy decision for me to prefer the police to gun down the stabber. I'd bet you're the only person here that would rather have harm come to you or your family than to have a criminal get shot.
That’s an idiotic take. You could just as easily imagine the other party is a family member. Both have family. There’s also a reason why justice isn’t decided by family members with a clear bias so your “if I was related to one of them I’d know what was just” is pretty dumb. I also don’t much care for your blanket definition of one of the people in the hypothetical as a criminal, especially given that they haven’t yet hurt anyone in the hypothetical nor been convicted of anything. That seems the kind of language designed to dehumanize and justify the use of force against them. If you’re going to shoot them then why not use more accurate language like “mother of two” or “citizen” or “active member of her church”.
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.
you’re aggressive language is embarrassing. your own experience or “knowledge” reeks of american exceptionalism.
you should strongly take your own advice, on all fronts.
Wait how is this American exceptionalism? I'm not even a supporter of the current system of policing but this case is not clear cut like the ACAB people in this thread at making it out to be because "hurr durr police bad" is not a good nor proper argument for incidents like this. There is no bright line rule, and Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
You’ve still not read my argument. You’re being overemotional. I suggest you calm down and read my argument.
On April 21 2021 14:06 FlaShFTW wrote: [quote] Have to say, I disagree with this assessment. You realize that tasers are not a surefire way to incapacitate someone right? Tasers are not a guarantee, and in this situation, the police sees a person brandishing a knife against someone literally less than a couple feet away. You want to incapacitate them to save the person being ran at with a knife.
If the cop uses the taser, and the taser isn't effective enough, and the girl in the pink suffers extreme bodily harm/permanent injury/ or even dies, guess the cop is still in the wrong. It's a lose-lose here. Regardless, you cannot qualify this as a cop murdering someone.
The cop is not in the wrong if one person harms another, the person doing the harming is in the wrong. They’re not out there to dispense justice, shooting people, even if they’re bad guys, is a failure. The justice system dispenses justice, the police are just there to get suspects into court rooms. You can’t try a dead body, every shot suspect is a citizen denied a chance to defend themselves in court. Extrajudicial execution by cops should be a last resort to avoid an even greater evil, not the first tool used when immediate compliance is not proffered.
So your goal is to just let the girl get injured or potential death here? The police is not the one to administer justice, but they certainly are there to PROTECT the people, even if you want to talk about how bad policing has been. In a vacuum, the police did not do anything wrong in this situation, and at worst will be removed from field duty for several months.
Potentially injured, yes. Shooting whoever seems potentially dangerous is an overly cautious way of protecting some of the public which reliably results in other members of the public dying. The girl not holding a knife didn’t deserve death, but nor did the girl holding the knife. Too often in policing the question is whether the right person got shot and not whether there was a requirement for anyone to get shot. Shooting people is seen as good policing.
Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
I imagine that member of the public about to get stabbed is my family member and it's an easy decision for me to prefer the police to gun down the stabber. I'd bet you're the only person here that would rather have harm come to you or your family than to have a criminal get shot.
That’s an idiotic take. You could just as easily imagine the other party is a family member. Both have family. There’s also a reason why justice isn’t decided by family members with a clear bias so your “if I was related to one of them I’d know what was just” is pretty dumb. I also don’t much care for your blanket definition of one of the people in the hypothetical as a criminal, especially given that they haven’t yet hurt anyone in the hypothetical nor been convicted of anything. That seems the kind of language designed to dehumanize and justify the use of force against them. If you’re going to shoot them then why not use more accurate language like “mother of two” or “citizen” or “active member of her church”.
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.
you’re aggressive language is embarrassing. your own experience or “knowledge” reeks of american exceptionalism.
you should strongly take your own advice, on all fronts.
Wait how is this American exceptionalism? I'm not even a supporter of the current system of policing but this case is not clear cut like the ACAB people in this thread at making it out to be because "hurr durr police bad" is not a good nor proper argument for incidents like this. There is no bright line rule, and Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
You’ve still not read my argument. You’re being overemotional. I suggest you calm down and read my argument.
I'm not talking to you anymore bud. I was responding to someone else. Not everything is about you, as much as you'd like to think Kwark.
I mean is that not literally what he just said? His argument was you can just as easily imagine a family member as the stabber so you should want some leniency towards the stabber before shooting. I said I can't just as easily imagine that. This could be the entirety of why we disagree on the topic so it seems prudent to dwell on this difference.
He’s arguing both individuals are human beings and citizens with families, and neither has been convicted of anything, so assigning one’s wellbeing more value than the other by mentally humanizing one and not the other is not a responsible basis for policy-setting. The degree to which your or his or anyone else’s family resembles the people involved shouldn’t determine who gets to live.
It’s actually maybe useful to highlight this reasoning, though, for anyone wondering how racial bias can enter into these judgments. If you figure (mostly white) cops are employing a similar reasoning in deciding who they do and don’t shoot, it’s not hard to see how they wind up shooting black people much more frequently. It’s harder to imagine them as being a family member of yours, no? The phenomenon is a lot more complex than that but it’s a decent place to start in understanding the phenomenon.
Well then we are just going to have to agree to disagree then. I think this idea that simple math can solve this question is ridiculous As Kwark put it
On April 21 2021 15:00 KwarK wrote: Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
The idea that the correct outcome is the one in which "fewer members of the public get hurt" seems ridiculous to me. If 2 terrorists are holding 1 hostage at gun point I don't value the lives of the 2 terrorists more simply because 2 > 1. I don't value their well-being equally and it's absolutely crazy to me if you or others do.
You’ve brought up terrorists and it’s not clear why. I was talking about a hypothetical in which two citizens are having a dispute and one of them is perceived to be a potential threat to the other but is not currently actively killing anyone. My argument is that the potential harm avoided to one citizen may not justify the much greater actual harm done to another.
You’re changing the hypothetical by making one of the citizens Bin Laden before you answer but that’s not really addressing the substance of the issue. The substance of the issue is that to outweigh the harm done to the citizen executed by police you need both a high likelihood of harm avoided and that the harm avoided is substantial. If harm avoided, weighted for probability of it actually happening, is considerably less than a human life then deadly force isn’t justified. This is more so when the potential threat isn’t to human life but to property. Very frequently the police use deadly force against a suspect who was attempting to deprive someone of property rather than kill anyone. The harm done to society by extrajudicial police executions is greater than by stolen TVs. Responding with “but what if the suspect was a terrorist” isn’t really addressing the issue.
The bold is an exceptional statement. I assume you can back up the 'very frequently' and explain what you mean by 'deprive property'.
'deprive property' obviously means theft. The very next sentence even mentions stolen TVs. Don't play dumb.
So there should be an abundance of examples of cops gunning down people running away with TV's then, correct? And since hyperbole is the only way to get points across in these kind of discussions, it becomes increasingly necessary to point out when it is obvious.
So your argument is that a nonzero number of people being gunned down for property theft/damage is acceptable until it reaches a certain threshold at which point it becomes unacceptable?
My argument is literally spelled out exactly in my post. Too often people throw out random nonsense and it is just accepted as if it is reality. Words have meaning. They also have influence on people and how they react to the world. When you spread what charitably can be said is hyperbole, and what I would categorize as make believe, it should be called out. It's becoming so that as long as they target of this is acceptable, it is fine to do so. I think that will become a problem the longer it continues.
As someone who mere posts ago used the phrase "literally means nothing" like a hill giant swinging a club after being hit in the face with a color spray, it'd probably be best to not play pretend at being strict with semantics.
I explained what I meant after but it feels like this needs addressing as well. What was said is not some small semantical error. It is outright incorrect. The amount of cases that would even approach the description is so infinitesimal, that describing it in such a way is not a word use error but an argument against reality. That does not mean stuff like this hasn't happened, in some form that would make the description relevant. I don't see anyone else pushing back against these broad statements though.
On April 22 2021 08:12 FlaShFTW wrote: Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
On April 22 2021 08:15 FlaShFTW wrote: I'm not talking to you anymore bud. I was responding to someone else. Not everything is about you, as much as you'd like to think Kwark.
It's this kind of hysterical response that is why I keep telling you to calm down. You mischaracterize my argument over and over. I keep telling you that you're misread it and to reread it but you continue to do so, only to suddenly pretend that you're not talking about the argument I made.
You're not even able to keep track of your own arguments anymore, much less anyone else's.
On April 22 2021 08:12 FlaShFTW wrote: Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
On April 22 2021 08:15 FlaShFTW wrote: I'm not talking to you anymore bud. I was responding to someone else. Not everything is about you, as much as you'd like to think Kwark.
It's this kind of hysterical response that is why I keep telling you to calm down. You mischaracterize my argument over and over. I keep telling you that you're misread it and to reread it but you continue to do so, only to suddenly pretend that you're not talking about the argument I made.
You're not even able to keep track of your own arguments anymore, much less anyone else's.
???????????
I literally responded to someone else. What are you even talking about? Are you ok?
On April 22 2021 08:12 FlaShFTW wrote: Kwark's argument is merely trying to find any way to blame the police officer because of his own biased viewpoints.
On April 22 2021 08:15 FlaShFTW wrote: I'm not talking to you anymore bud. I was responding to someone else. Not everything is about you, as much as you'd like to think Kwark.
It's this kind of hysterical response that is why I keep telling you to calm down. You mischaracterize my argument over and over. I keep telling you that you're misread it and to reread it but you continue to do so, only to suddenly pretend that you're not talking about the argument I made.
You're not even able to keep track of your own arguments anymore, much less anyone else's.
???????????
I literally responded to someone else. What are you even talking about? Are you ok?
You keep referring to "KwarK's argument" without having properly read KwarK's argument. Whenever I tell you to read my argument you fail to do so. Now you're maintaining that when you talk about KwarK's argument you're not talking about my argument.
Have you had some kind of break from reality? I'm KwarK. It's my argument that you're talking about. You can't pretend that the argument you're disagreeing with is nothing to do with me and that I'm out of place for once again telling you that you either didn't read it or didn't understand it.
You’re literally bringing me up and trying to respond to an argument you claim I made while simultaneously claiming that I’m inserting myself into a situation in which you named me as a party. If you don’t want my participation then why did you include me?
Because no court in the developed world would condemn anyone to be shot in the streets. If this is your standard then you believe 0% of police shootings are justified. Again, you're desperately attempting to frame a shooting to prevent bodily harm into an extrajudicial execution.
Yes? Isn't this exactly what I've been saying? I thought I had stated it clearly. You haven't articulated why you think this is ridiculous, however.
On April 22 2021 06:11 ChristianS wrote: [quote] He’s arguing both individuals are human beings and citizens with families, and neither has been convicted of anything, so assigning one’s wellbeing more value than the other by mentally humanizing one and not the other is not a responsible basis for policy-setting. The degree to which your or his or anyone else’s family resembles the people involved shouldn’t determine who gets to live.
It’s actually maybe useful to highlight this reasoning, though, for anyone wondering how racial bias can enter into these judgments. If you figure (mostly white) cops are employing a similar reasoning in deciding who they do and don’t shoot, it’s not hard to see how they wind up shooting black people much more frequently. It’s harder to imagine them as being a family member of yours, no? The phenomenon is a lot more complex than that but it’s a decent place to start in understanding the phenomenon.
Well then we are just going to have to agree to disagree then. I think this idea that simple math can solve this question is ridiculous As Kwark put it
On April 21 2021 15:00 KwarK wrote: Imagine two scenarios. In one a member of the public threatens another with a knife. In the other a member of the public threatens another with a knife and is shot by the police. In which scenario do more members of the public get hurt?
The idea that the correct outcome is the one in which "fewer members of the public get hurt" seems ridiculous to me. If 2 terrorists are holding 1 hostage at gun point I don't value the lives of the 2 terrorists more simply because 2 > 1. I don't value their well-being equally and it's absolutely crazy to me if you or others do.
You’ve brought up terrorists and it’s not clear why. I was talking about a hypothetical in which two citizens are having a dispute and one of them is perceived to be a potential threat to the other but is not currently actively killing anyone. My argument is that the potential harm avoided to one citizen may not justify the much greater actual harm done to another.
You’re changing the hypothetical by making one of the citizens Bin Laden before you answer but that’s not really addressing the substance of the issue. The substance of the issue is that to outweigh the harm done to the citizen executed by police you need both a high likelihood of harm avoided and that the harm avoided is substantial. If harm avoided, weighted for probability of it actually happening, is considerably less than a human life then deadly force isn’t justified. This is more so when the potential threat isn’t to human life but to property. Very frequently the police use deadly force against a suspect who was attempting to deprive someone of property rather than kill anyone. The harm done to society by extrajudicial police executions is greater than by stolen TVs. Responding with “but what if the suspect was a terrorist” isn’t really addressing the issue.
The bold is an exceptional statement. I assume you can back up the 'very frequently' and explain what you mean by 'deprive property'.
'deprive property' obviously means theft. The very next sentence even mentions stolen TVs. Don't play dumb.
So there should be an abundance of examples of cops gunning down people running away with TV's then, correct? And since hyperbole is the only way to get points across in these kind of discussions, it becomes increasingly necessary to point out when it is obvious.
Considering 58% of police shootings took place after police responded to a nonviolent incident, yeah, I'm sure there are an abundance of examples out there.
So no examples to share? As you said, should be an abundance from what you believe, so it probably would have taken less time than to pull up a unrelated link. "Responding to a non-violent incident" literally means nothing, if you think this stuff through.
I'm not KwarK. It'd be best if you checked who you're replying to.
EDIT: Also, you get to decide what does and doesn't mean something now? You can just handwave away evidence because you feel like it doesn't mean anything? Wow, that's something!
EDIT 2: If you had clicked the link, you'd see how it breaks down "violent" and "non-violent". It's literally the first thing on the screen.
On April 22 2021 07:47 brian wrote: can you elaborate how you have come to this conclusion? to me it means cops killed people without reason. seems pertinent to the discussion.
I'll explain what I mean. Why the police responds somewhere doesn't mean anything in regards to what happens when they arrive. They can be called out for a noise complaint. In the course of them being there if they are then engaged in a gun fight, it is no longer 'a non-violent incident' but their initial reasoning for being there remains the same. So, ya, it means squat to me.
Fair enough. Here's a tid bit you might care about though: out of those 1,127 police killings in 2020, 105 of them involved a suspect who had a gun but was not threatening anyone with the weapon at the time the suspect was killed. That's 105 people who, according to what the police themselves was reported, was not threatening someone at the time they were shot and killed. This doesn't include people who are unarmed, carrying a knife or other weapon with no intention to harm, etc. That's about 1 in 11 people shot and killed by the police who were not a threat and didn't need to be shot and, again, that's without including other data categories. I personally think that ratio is too high.
On April 22 2021 08:25 BlackJack wrote: Here's a shooting where police could have obviously done more to deescalate before resorting to shooting. Happened a few minutes from where I live
As someone who mere posts ago used the phrase "literally means nothing" like a hill giant swinging a club after being hit in the face with a color spray, it'd probably be best to not play pretend at being strict with semantics.
Quote of the day right here.
I think this argument has traveled really far down the rabbit hole.
I'm pretty sure that basically everyone here agrees that U.S. policing is incredibly broken and it would probably be safe to say that we are all, to some degree, on the left on this issue. It seems like we've pushed each other to the extremes for the sake of an unreasonable argument rather than actually dealing with reality at this point.
Yes, this is the core of the issue. I do not think preventative killings are morally defensible and certainly not when the execution is performed by a poorly trained individual that belongs to a group of people famous for being poor at making consistent judgements.
By endorsing this argument you are necessarily saying that in the situation of Person A actively attacking and trying to kill Person B, Person A's life is automatically more ethically valuable.
If Person A is already committing multiple crimes by actively stabbing and killing someone, why is the most ethically correct decision to stand by and wait until they're done to arrest them, or to grossly endanger the lives of law enforcement officers by trying to physically restrain them?
You need to defend that stance before we can continue.
Well then we are just going to have to agree to disagree then. I think this idea that simple math can solve this question is ridiculous As Kwark put it
[quote]
The idea that the correct outcome is the one in which "fewer members of the public get hurt" seems ridiculous to me. If 2 terrorists are holding 1 hostage at gun point I don't value the lives of the 2 terrorists more simply because 2 > 1. I don't value their well-being equally and it's absolutely crazy to me if you or others do.
You’ve brought up terrorists and it’s not clear why. I was talking about a hypothetical in which two citizens are having a dispute and one of them is perceived to be a potential threat to the other but is not currently actively killing anyone. My argument is that the potential harm avoided to one citizen may not justify the much greater actual harm done to another.
You’re changing the hypothetical by making one of the citizens Bin Laden before you answer but that’s not really addressing the substance of the issue. The substance of the issue is that to outweigh the harm done to the citizen executed by police you need both a high likelihood of harm avoided and that the harm avoided is substantial. If harm avoided, weighted for probability of it actually happening, is considerably less than a human life then deadly force isn’t justified. This is more so when the potential threat isn’t to human life but to property. Very frequently the police use deadly force against a suspect who was attempting to deprive someone of property rather than kill anyone. The harm done to society by extrajudicial police executions is greater than by stolen TVs. Responding with “but what if the suspect was a terrorist” isn’t really addressing the issue.
The bold is an exceptional statement. I assume you can back up the 'very frequently' and explain what you mean by 'deprive property'.
'deprive property' obviously means theft. The very next sentence even mentions stolen TVs. Don't play dumb.
So there should be an abundance of examples of cops gunning down people running away with TV's then, correct? And since hyperbole is the only way to get points across in these kind of discussions, it becomes increasingly necessary to point out when it is obvious.
Considering 58% of police shootings took place after police responded to a nonviolent incident, yeah, I'm sure there are an abundance of examples out there.
So no examples to share? As you said, should be an abundance from what you believe, so it probably would have taken less time than to pull up a unrelated link. "Responding to a non-violent incident" literally means nothing, if you think this stuff through.
Botham Jean was shot while sitting on his couch in his own apartment by a police officer who claimed she thought he was a burglar.
She was there in her official capacity as an officer? Responding to a call? He was stealing a TV? I don't know why I need to make this clear but again, I know plenty of police interactions that have gone wrong, and are directly the fault of the police. You would very rarely find me on the side of the police in a questionable case. That is no way means I agree with statements like what you said. It also doesn't mean I will always fall on the side of those that are shot. The frequency and details are important to discussion though.
She specifically stated she thought he was a burglar. She claimed to have killed him in defence of property.
I get what you are saying and I agree with your points on that case especially. But it really isn't related to what you were stating. The Walter Scott shooting would be more in line with what I think would fall into that kind of flagrant action, even though not exactly matching your description. They happen. There is no denying that. And any that do should be prosecuted. It just doesn't help in my mind to exaggerate the frequency. We probably agree on a lot of things but stuff like that is a sticking point I don't really move from.
As someone who mere posts ago used the phrase "literally means nothing" like a hill giant swinging a club after being hit in the face with a color spray, it'd probably be best to not play pretend at being strict with semantics.
Quote of the day right here.
I think this argument has traveled really far down the rabbit hole.
I'm pretty sure that basically everyone here agrees that U.S. policing is incredibly broken and it would probably be safe to say that we are all, to some degree, on the left on this issue. It seems like we've pushed each other to the extremes for the sake of an unreasonable argument rather than actually dealing with reality at this point.
Yes, this is the core of the issue. I do not think preventative killings are morally defensible and certainly not when the execution is performed by a poorly trained individual that belongs to a group of people famous for being poor at making consistent judgements.
By endorsing this argument you are necessarily saying that in the situation of Person A actively attacking and trying to kill Person B, Person A's life is automatically more ethically valuable.
If Person A is already committing multiple crimes by actively stabbing and killing someone, why is the most ethically correct decision to stand by and wait until they're done to arrest them, or to grossly endanger the lives of law enforcement officers by trying to physically restrain them?
You need to defend that stance before we can continue.
It's a little unclear who you're referring to as "You" in the bolded section. In case I happen to be lumped in, let me just clarify that I do not think that police never have a good reason to draw their weapon and use deadly force. In some situations, the suspect is not going to deescalate and very well can and, at times, do seek out to harm the officer or other bystanders. I do, however, believe that the police officer should do everything they can to attempt to deescalate the situation before using deadly force. There are exceptions to this (EG: active school shooting) but in general, this is the approach that I think the police should take.
In a dark sense I wonder how much advertisement revenue YouTube has made from police shooting videos at this stage.
As per the video Blackjack posted earlier it’s the absolute antithesis of the one that precipitated the previous like of discussion.
How in the name of fuck does a chain of events go from jaywalking into being shot dead?
Edit - While not edifying whatsoever, reading the comments is quite educational as to many people’s attitude re the police, and no doubt are a big part of why they are as they are today.
On April 22 2021 08:25 BlackJack wrote: Here's a shooting where police could have obviously done more to deescalate before resorting to shooting. Happened a few minutes from where I live
The dude literally pulls out a knife when the cop tries to stop him, says 'touch me and see what's up', and then starts walking towards the police officer (while not being very far away).
And your gonna pin this on the officer?
I agree that cases like floyd should result in a conviction (I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't) but let's be reasonable...
On April 22 2021 08:25 BlackJack wrote: Here's a shooting where police could have obviously done more to deescalate before resorting to shooting. Happened a few minutes from where I live
The dude literally pulls out a knife when the cop tries to stop him, says 'touch me and see what's up', and then starts walking towards the police officer (while not being very far away).
And your gonna pin this on the officer?
I agree that cases like floyd should result in a conviction (I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't) but let's be reasonable...
A cop with a handgun, baton, possibly a taser, and who knows what else, shot a pocketknife wielder dead for fear. Makese sense. /s
On April 22 2021 08:25 BlackJack wrote: Here's a shooting where police could have obviously done more to deescalate before resorting to shooting. Happened a few minutes from where I live
The dude literally pulls out a knife when the cop tries to stop him, says 'touch me and see what's up', and then starts walking towards the police officer (while not being very far away).
And your gonna pin this on the officer?
I agree that cases like floyd should result in a conviction (I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't) but let's be reasonable...
EPT
