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United States42693 Posts
On April 23 2021 01:16 Stratos_speAr wrote:
In other words, this implies that the correct moral action would be to potentially let the victim die so that the attacker could be subdued and their life preserved at the expense of the victim's.
Yes, for a given value of potentially. If the suspect is firing a death laser at a baby then it’s a far simpler decision than if a child is brandishing a spoon at an adult, to give two extremes. I’m sure we can all agree that shooting in the first case makes more sense than in the latter.
If we’re agreed that the certainty of the act and the lethality of the act matter then there’s really no disagreement here. I don’t think anyone believes that the police should defuse any situation in which the victim may die by killing the suspect. Someone may potentially die from being shoved but nobody wants to see the police shooting a suspect in the back for approaching someone else. I also don’t think anyone wants to see the police stand by while a suspect finishes their victim off on the grounds that it may not be justified to intervene until the victim goes from grievously wounded to dead. Nobody is arguing for that.
What is being argued for is proportionality and I believe everyone basically agrees with that. We’re stuck in a loop where one side says “so you think they should kill people in this situation where it’s obviously not needed” and the other side says “so you think they shouldn’t kill people when it’s obviously necessary” but both sides basically agree on “sometimes, it depends on the situation”.
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On April 23 2021 01:36 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 01:16 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 01:12 JimmiC wrote:On April 23 2021 01:01 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 00:59 JimmiC wrote:On April 23 2021 00:53 Amumoman wrote:
How some of you are disturbed at how the officer in question handled the situation is a curious thing. As far as I am concerned, he saved the girl who was about to be stabbed.
I’m not even a fan of police in general; I think by and large they act way too much in the service of evil and wickedness by enforcing evil laws - but in this case, disturbing tragic frustrating as the death of the girl was, letting her stab the other girl would have been a worse outcome and so someone intervening was for the better. How do you know she will stab the girl? She shoved the other one, the act of stabbing another human is actually really hard for most. It takes a lot more than it does to even shoot someone because of how up close and personal it is and shooting another human is hard for most which is the reason for many of the training changes in the military post WW1. Explain how it is "actually really hard" to stab someone. It actually really isn't. The girl was physically attempting to do so. The video shows this plain as day. She was in the middle of swinging a knife at another girl that was recoiling on the hood of the car. At what point before the girl was actually stabbed would you say that it is acceptable to conclude that she was in the midst of trying to stab the victim? I thought this was common knowledge that if you are not a psychopath (which is really rare) that killing someone else is both really hard to do, and then very damaging if it is done. Hell they even put all those scenes in movies where bad asses walk right up to the gun or sword saying "your not going to kill me" or whatever else. https://time.com/3816212/brain-murder-morality/https://www.americanheritage.com/secret-soldiers-who-didnt-shootA book if you want to get in more detail. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0316040932/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=gs2&linkId=9f772caf2328655f4b41cfe6f8e9d103&creativeASIN=0316040932&tag=slate0d-20&creative=9325&camp=1789And then depending on whether or not you believe Marshal there is the "Men against Fire" book. Here is a little article the gets into the study and then the people who don't believe him and why. https://www.thewrap.com/black-mirror-fact-check-men-against-fire/ So you're talking about the psychological effects, which is all fine and dandy, but you are also implying that a police officer should be able to read someone's mind. Not even talking about the psychological implications and the idea of how easy or hard it is for one to stab another in any particular incident, the physical activity was actively happening and this is the only evidence that you can work off of in a scenario like this. That it was happening is irrefutably clear from the video. Do you dispute this? Because it seems to me that the many here are really, really reaching for a way to minimize what the attacker was doing and make the police officer culpable. What is not being acknowledged is that this necessarily implies that the correct course of action would have been for the officer to allow the girl to attack the victim before stopping her, which, from what we can physically see, had a very significant chance in resulting in the victim's serious harm or death. In other words, this implies that the correct moral action would be to potentially let the victim die so that the attacker could be subdued and their life preserved at the expense of the victim's. No I am not, I'm suggesting that he should do a risk analysis of the situation. When you see a 15 year old girl who has a knife and just chose to push someone and not stab them, why would you automatically assume that she will for sure stab the next person? I think the correct action would be to take non lethal steps to bring the person down and then if they failed move on to lethal. You have to remember when the officer discharges his gun he also putting more than the suspect at risk. I'm not even sure that him shooting his gun at the young girl was "safer" even if the young girl was going to try to stab the other young girl. I also think that this officer did as he was trained to do, which means to me this would not be one where he should be put in jail but rather a example of why the training is so flawed and needs to be changed dramatically.
I agree to this as a general principle, but in this case I think you are being far too forgiving of the attacker and far too presumptuous in how much time the cop had to make that risk assessment.
Yes, for a given value of potentially. If the suspect is firing a death laser at a baby then it’s a far simpler decision than if a child is brandishing a spoon at an adult, to give two extremes. I’m sure we can all agree that shooting in the first case makes more sense than in the latter.
If we’re agreed that the certainty of the act and the lethality of the act matter then there’s really no disagreement here. I don’t think anyone believes that the police should defuse any situation in which the victim may die by killing the suspect. Someone may potentially die from being shoved but nobody wants to see the police shooting a suspect in the back for approaching someone else. I also don’t think anyone wants to see the police stand by while a suspect finishes their victim off on the grounds that it may not be justified to intervene until the victim goes from grievously wounded to dead. Nobody is arguing for that.
What is being argued for is proportionality and I believe everyone basically agrees with that. We’re stuck in a loop where one side says “so you think they should kill people in this situation where it’s obviously not needed” and the other side says “so you think they shouldn’t kill people when it’s obviously necessary” but both sides basically agree on “sometimes, it depends on the situation”.
As you said, I think most of us agree on everything you said. The disagreement seems to be around this particular incident as noted above.
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On April 23 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 00:23 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 23:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 22 2021 16:12 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 09:07 Stratos_speAr wrote:
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. I'll bite. I do not think that cops should just stand by and let crimes happen and then arrest the person committing the crime. They should do everything in their power to de-escalate the situation and calm everything down so the crime doesn't happen in the first place. To clarify further, we are talking about interactions where no crime has happened but people are being aggressive, not a terrorist incident. In this context, I think giving an individual the power to terminate someone's life based on their feelings of perceived threat to be immoral. No one should be in the position of making the judgement of 'person's A life is more valuable than person B'. Yes, I accept that this means that occasionally it will get out of hand and someone might end up getting stabbed. We have a process for people that do these things. To your final point, if someone is in the middle of a stabbing, they would no longer be shot on a suspicion, they're actively committing a crime. The situation is markedly different. At this point the situation has escalated and I agree that law enforcement should be allowed to respond with a proportional response. Except that this is exactly what happened with the incident in question. The cop didn't shoot because of a "feeling". He shot because someone was actively attempting to stab and kill someone else. I don't mean to be obtuse but nobody did any stabbing, the suspect was executed before any stabbing occurred hence they were executed on the suspicion (you'd probably argue justified suspicion) that she was about to get stabby. I argue that it is immoral to give police the power of execution on situations like this. This argument necessarily concludes with the idea that police should be required to let a victim be harmed (possibly killed) before they act with deadly force to stop a perpetrator, which you said you did not agree with about a page ago. There was no wiggle room in that video. If the cop waits for any more time to let the incident develop then it is extremely likely that the attacker would've stabbed the victim. She was in the motion to stab her when she was shot.
This is correct. I do not think the police should have the right to execute people on the suspicion of about to commit a crime; they should do their absolute best to calm down the situation and non-lethally subdue the aggressor (if possible). Occasionally, the situation will get out of hand and someone will get hurt and potentially die... and hopefully, with enough training, the police should be successful the vast majority of the time and be able to defuse the situation and/or non-lethally subdue the attacker. Sometimes shit happens and people kill each other for no reason, just because a cop is present shouldn't carry an immediate death sentence for the potential perpetrator.
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On April 23 2021 02:40 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 00:23 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 23:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 22 2021 16:12 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 09:07 Stratos_speAr wrote:
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. I'll bite. I do not think that cops should just stand by and let crimes happen and then arrest the person committing the crime. They should do everything in their power to de-escalate the situation and calm everything down so the crime doesn't happen in the first place. To clarify further, we are talking about interactions where no crime has happened but people are being aggressive, not a terrorist incident. In this context, I think giving an individual the power to terminate someone's life based on their feelings of perceived threat to be immoral. No one should be in the position of making the judgement of 'person's A life is more valuable than person B'. Yes, I accept that this means that occasionally it will get out of hand and someone might end up getting stabbed. We have a process for people that do these things. To your final point, if someone is in the middle of a stabbing, they would no longer be shot on a suspicion, they're actively committing a crime. The situation is markedly different. At this point the situation has escalated and I agree that law enforcement should be allowed to respond with a proportional response. Except that this is exactly what happened with the incident in question. The cop didn't shoot because of a "feeling". He shot because someone was actively attempting to stab and kill someone else. I don't mean to be obtuse but nobody did any stabbing, the suspect was executed before any stabbing occurred hence they were executed on the suspicion (you'd probably argue justified suspicion) that she was about to get stabby. I argue that it is immoral to give police the power of execution on situations like this. This argument necessarily concludes with the idea that police should be required to let a victim be harmed (possibly killed) before they act with deadly force to stop a perpetrator, which you said you did not agree with about a page ago. There was no wiggle room in that video. If the cop waits for any more time to let the incident develop then it is extremely likely that the attacker would've stabbed the victim. She was in the motion to stab her when she was shot. This is correct. I do not think the police should have the right to execute people on the suspicion of about to commit a crime; they should do their absolute best to calm down the situation and non-lethally subdue the aggressor (if possible). Occasionally, the situation will get out of hand and someone will get hurt and potentially die... and hopefully, with enough training, the police should be successful the vast majority of the time and be able to defuse the situation and/or non-lethally subdue the attacker. Sometimes shit happens and people kill each other for no reason, just because a cop is present shouldn't carry an immediate death sentence for the potential perpetrator.
Aside from being far too optimistic about someone's ability to be "defused"...
Your argument is then tacitly admitting that you find the life of the attacker more ethically valuable than the life of the victim. Are you willing to admit to that?
Also, you aren't "about to commit a crime" if you are actively attempting to shoot/stab/otherwise kill someone. You have already committed several and are in the process of committing another.
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Northern Ireland25344 Posts
In that particular incident, absolutely specifically I’m unsure given the moving parts how there’s a non-lethal alternative without its own downsides.
In many others I’ve seen, people shot were clearly and unequivocally not a threat when they were shot, or a situation was terribly managed to a point where it needlessly escalated into a shooting incident.
There’s shooting people who are holding a knife and not being aggressive, which is patently unnecessary and frequently mismanaged.
If ever there’s a scenario where police should shoot to kill it’s when someone is in knifing range and lunging at someone, with a knife. Aside from officers or the public being in a live fire situation, which covers what areas you’d ever want cops going 007 mode.
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On April 23 2021 02:58 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 02:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 02:40 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 23 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 00:23 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 23:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 22 2021 16:12 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 09:07 Stratos_speAr wrote:
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. I'll bite. I do not think that cops should just stand by and let crimes happen and then arrest the person committing the crime. They should do everything in their power to de-escalate the situation and calm everything down so the crime doesn't happen in the first place. To clarify further, we are talking about interactions where no crime has happened but people are being aggressive, not a terrorist incident. In this context, I think giving an individual the power to terminate someone's life based on their feelings of perceived threat to be immoral. No one should be in the position of making the judgement of 'person's A life is more valuable than person B'. Yes, I accept that this means that occasionally it will get out of hand and someone might end up getting stabbed. We have a process for people that do these things. To your final point, if someone is in the middle of a stabbing, they would no longer be shot on a suspicion, they're actively committing a crime. The situation is markedly different. At this point the situation has escalated and I agree that law enforcement should be allowed to respond with a proportional response. Except that this is exactly what happened with the incident in question. The cop didn't shoot because of a "feeling". He shot because someone was actively attempting to stab and kill someone else. I don't mean to be obtuse but nobody did any stabbing, the suspect was executed before any stabbing occurred hence they were executed on the suspicion (you'd probably argue justified suspicion) that she was about to get stabby. I argue that it is immoral to give police the power of execution on situations like this. This argument necessarily concludes with the idea that police should be required to let a victim be harmed (possibly killed) before they act with deadly force to stop a perpetrator, which you said you did not agree with about a page ago. There was no wiggle room in that video. If the cop waits for any more time to let the incident develop then it is extremely likely that the attacker would've stabbed the victim. She was in the motion to stab her when she was shot. This is correct. I do not think the police should have the right to execute people on the suspicion of about to commit a crime; they should do their absolute best to calm down the situation and non-lethally subdue the aggressor (if possible). Occasionally, the situation will get out of hand and someone will get hurt and potentially die... and hopefully, with enough training, the police should be successful the vast majority of the time and be able to defuse the situation and/or non-lethally subdue the attacker. Sometimes shit happens and people kill each other for no reason, just because a cop is present shouldn't carry an immediate death sentence for the potential perpetrator. Aside from being far too optimistic about someone's ability to be "defused"... Your argument is then tacitly admitting that you find the life of the attacker more ethically valuable than the life of the victim. Are you willing to admit to that? Also, you aren't "about to commit a crime" if you are actively attempting to shoot/stab/otherwise kill someone. You have already committed several and are in the process of committing another. I think we agree on a lot, what we don't agree on is the ability for police to defuse situations rather than use deadly force. Where is your certainty on how difficult or near impossible it is? And why do you think so many other police are able to succeed where the US fails? (keep in mind I'm lumping in all the countries that have similar GDP's Democracies and so on so we are talking about a far larger amount of people, cops and so on).
I don't think it's nearly impossible, I just don't think it's always possible.
The presented situation where a person is actively attempting to kill another person with a knife is one of the few situations where I don't think it's reasonable to think that trying to defuse the situation is the preferred approach. I could (skeptically) entertain an argument for going taser first, but trying to defuse a situation like this goes to the point of effectively sacrificing the safety and/or life of the victim in an attempt to keep the attacker alive.
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House submitted and passed a bill to make DC a state. Probably has no chance in the Senate but it's worth keeping an eye on. I'm hoping they nuke the filibuster asap and make DC a state. Then it's only a matter of time for PR.
The U.S. House of Representatives has once again voted on a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., and enfranchise more than 712,000 Americans, a cause that enjoys unprecedented support but still faces an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate.
"This country was founded on the principles of no taxation without representation and consent of the governed. But D.C. residents are taxed without representation and cannot consent to the laws under which they as American citizens must live," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting delegate, on the House floor ahead of the vote.
Her statehood bill, H.R. 51, would reduce the size of the federal district and create a new state with the remaining territory with two U.S. senators and a representative, placing residents on equal footing with voters in other states. Statehood advocates contend the cause is also a fight for racial justice. If admitted, Washington, D.C., would be the first state with a plurality of Black residents.
House Democrats passed the bill last year in a historic vote, but the legislation never reached the GOP-led Senate.
Now, with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, the effort to make D.C. the 51st star on the nation's flag has more support than ever before — even though it is unclear whether the measure has the backing of all 50 Democratic senators, let alone 60 votes in all, for it to pass in the Senate.
It passed the House on Thursday 216-208 along party lines.
Source
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On April 23 2021 03:14 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 03:02 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 02:58 JimmiC wrote:On April 23 2021 02:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 02:40 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 23 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 00:23 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 23:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 22 2021 16:12 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 09:07 Stratos_speAr wrote:
[quote]
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.
[quote]
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. I'll bite. I do not think that cops should just stand by and let crimes happen and then arrest the person committing the crime. They should do everything in their power to de-escalate the situation and calm everything down so the crime doesn't happen in the first place. To clarify further, we are talking about interactions where no crime has happened but people are being aggressive, not a terrorist incident. In this context, I think giving an individual the power to terminate someone's life based on their feelings of perceived threat to be immoral. No one should be in the position of making the judgement of 'person's A life is more valuable than person B'. Yes, I accept that this means that occasionally it will get out of hand and someone might end up getting stabbed. We have a process for people that do these things. To your final point, if someone is in the middle of a stabbing, they would no longer be shot on a suspicion, they're actively committing a crime. The situation is markedly different. At this point the situation has escalated and I agree that law enforcement should be allowed to respond with a proportional response. Except that this is exactly what happened with the incident in question. The cop didn't shoot because of a "feeling". He shot because someone was actively attempting to stab and kill someone else. I don't mean to be obtuse but nobody did any stabbing, the suspect was executed before any stabbing occurred hence they were executed on the suspicion (you'd probably argue justified suspicion) that she was about to get stabby. I argue that it is immoral to give police the power of execution on situations like this. This argument necessarily concludes with the idea that police should be required to let a victim be harmed (possibly killed) before they act with deadly force to stop a perpetrator, which you said you did not agree with about a page ago. There was no wiggle room in that video. If the cop waits for any more time to let the incident develop then it is extremely likely that the attacker would've stabbed the victim. She was in the motion to stab her when she was shot. This is correct. I do not think the police should have the right to execute people on the suspicion of about to commit a crime; they should do their absolute best to calm down the situation and non-lethally subdue the aggressor (if possible). Occasionally, the situation will get out of hand and someone will get hurt and potentially die... and hopefully, with enough training, the police should be successful the vast majority of the time and be able to defuse the situation and/or non-lethally subdue the attacker. Sometimes shit happens and people kill each other for no reason, just because a cop is present shouldn't carry an immediate death sentence for the potential perpetrator. Aside from being far too optimistic about someone's ability to be "defused"... Your argument is then tacitly admitting that you find the life of the attacker more ethically valuable than the life of the victim. Are you willing to admit to that? Also, you aren't "about to commit a crime" if you are actively attempting to shoot/stab/otherwise kill someone. You have already committed several and are in the process of committing another. I think we agree on a lot, what we don't agree on is the ability for police to defuse situations rather than use deadly force. Where is your certainty on how difficult or near impossible it is? And why do you think so many other police are able to succeed where the US fails? (keep in mind I'm lumping in all the countries that have similar GDP's Democracies and so on so we are talking about a far larger amount of people, cops and so on). I don't think it's nearly impossible, I just don't think it's always possible. The presented situation where a person is actively attempting to kill another person with a knife is one of the few situations where I don't think it's reasonable to think that trying to defuse the situation is the preferred approach. I could (skeptically) entertain an argument for going taser first, but trying to defuse a situation like this goes to the point of effectively sacrificing the safety and/or life of the victim in an attempt to keep the attacker alive. You keep stating actively attempting to kill someone with a knife, this is not a fact so stop sating it like one. They are posturing like they may, they also just pushed someone they could have stabbed. Also, this is a young girl who has multiple people around her possibly aggressive to her. I'm not sure if the full story is out but originally it was that the girl with the knife called the police because she was dealing with multiple attackers. I'm not sure if that is the case, but what I am sure about is there is many many other options that are just as reasonable or more reasonable than "she was going to kill that other girl with her knife".
You're reaching really hard to try to acquit her of wrong-doing.
It doesn't matter if she was initially the victim in the altercation. Once she picks up a deadly weapon and attacks people, she becomes the attacker. She is clearly seen physically attacking multiple people.
If you don't think that pushing someone against a car and then actively lunging at them while swinging a knife-bearing arm at them (which is clearly shown in the video) is attempting to stab someone then that is an irreconsilable disagreement and we have nothing further to discuss. I think you're being completely and totally unreasonable.
EDIT: After finally finding the complete, unedited video, it even seems like the cop does give her time by yelling multiple times to "Get Down" after drawing his gun (probably not the most effective thing to yell, but he still gives her time). She didn't even attempt to acknowledge the cop or interact with him in any way; she went straight for attacking the two other girls in the altercation, and it seems clear that she is actively lunging to stab the girl in pink in the head/face/neck area right before she is shot.
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One thing that is missing here is that if a cop HAS to shoot at someone threatening someone else with a knife, he should at the very least aim to shoot one bullet in a non lethal area. You can absolutely disable someone with a gun without putting four bullets in his chest. I can guarantee that someone with a bullet is the leg, in the shoulder or in the arm is not a threat, knofe or not.
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United States42693 Posts
On April 23 2021 03:30 Biff The Understudy wrote:
One thing that is missing here is that if a cop HAS to shoot at someone threatening someone else with a knife, he should at the very least aim to shoot one bullet in a non lethal area. You can absolutely disable someone with a gun without putting four bullets in his chest. I can guarantee that someone with a bullet is the leg, in the shoulder or in the arm is not a threat, knofe or not.
I don’t think this is right. They can’t shoot for shit, aiming at centre mass is the safest way to not shoot someone else.
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On April 23 2021 03:33 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 03:30 Biff The Understudy wrote:
One thing that is missing here is that if a cop HAS to shoot at someone threatening someone else with a knife, he should at the very least aim to shoot one bullet in a non lethal area. You can absolutely disable someone with a gun without putting four bullets in his chest. I can guarantee that someone with a bullet is the leg, in the shoulder or in the arm is not a threat, knofe or not. I don’t think this is right. They can’t shoot for shit, aiming at centre mass is the safest way to not shoot someone else.
Was going to say the same thing.
Aside from cops not being good enough shots to pull this off (because their training sucks), it's actually really hard for even trained people to consistently do this.
A gun is such a dangerous weapon that cops shouldn't be pulling it out for non-lethal use. It should be a last resort and it should be used in the safest way possible to complete its intended effect of lethal force used on one individual.
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I wonder if it would make sense to just not have cops carry around guns at all. If dealing with an armed, aggressive suspect then send a team trained with guns. But for the majority of interactions there's no reason for the police to be carrying a lethal weapon.
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All this talk about the officer in question and law enforcement in general, here’s a crazy pitch:
People could be good parents and teach their offspring how they to operate sensibly and functionally the world; this includes not escalating a silly disagreement into running around agitated with a knife about to stab or posing an imminent threat of stabbing. Crazy I know but personal responsibility needs to make a comeback
(Obviously this does not rule out figuring out a way to have law enforcement using the least ammount of force required and doing everything reasonably within their power to de-escalate)
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On April 23 2021 03:25 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2021 03:14 JimmiC wrote:On April 23 2021 03:02 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 02:58 JimmiC wrote:On April 23 2021 02:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 02:40 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 23 2021 00:27 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 23 2021 00:23 EnDeR_ wrote:On April 22 2021 23:50 Stratos_speAr wrote:On April 22 2021 16:12 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
I'll bite.
I do not think that cops should just stand by and let crimes happen and then arrest the person committing the crime. They should do everything in their power to de-escalate the situation and calm everything down so the crime doesn't happen in the first place. To clarify further, we are talking about interactions where no crime has happened but people are being aggressive, not a terrorist incident.
In this context, I think giving an individual the power to terminate someone's life based on their feelings of perceived threat to be immoral. No one should be in the position of making the judgement of 'person's A life is more valuable than person B'. Yes, I accept that this means that occasionally it will get out of hand and someone might end up getting stabbed. We have a process for people that do these things.
To your final point, if someone is in the middle of a stabbing, they would no longer be shot on a suspicion, they're actively committing a crime. The situation is markedly different. At this point the situation has escalated and I agree that law enforcement should be allowed to respond with a proportional response.
Except that this is exactly what happened with the incident in question. The cop didn't shoot because of a "feeling". He shot because someone was actively attempting to stab and kill someone else. I don't mean to be obtuse but nobody did any stabbing, the suspect was executed before any stabbing occurred hence they were executed on the suspicion (you'd probably argue justified suspicion) that she was about to get stabby. I argue that it is immoral to give police the power of execution on situations like this. This argument necessarily concludes with the idea that police should be required to let a victim be harmed (possibly killed) before they act with deadly force to stop a perpetrator, which you said you did not agree with about a page ago. There was no wiggle room in that video. If the cop waits for any more time to let the incident develop then it is extremely likely that the attacker would've stabbed the victim. She was in the motion to stab her when she was shot. This is correct. I do not think the police should have the right to execute people on the suspicion of about to commit a crime; they should do their absolute best to calm down the situation and non-lethally subdue the aggressor (if possible). Occasionally, the situation will get out of hand and someone will get hurt and potentially die... and hopefully, with enough training, the police should be successful the vast majority of the time and be able to defuse the situation and/or non-lethally subdue the attacker. Sometimes shit happens and people kill each other for no reason, just because a cop is present shouldn't carry an immediate death sentence for the potential perpetrator. Aside from being far too optimistic about someone's ability to be "defused"... Your argument is then tacitly admitting that you find the life of the attacker more ethically valuable than the life of the victim. Are you willing to admit to that? Also, you aren't "about to commit a crime" if you are actively attempting to shoot/stab/otherwise kill someone. You have already committed several and are in the process of committing another. I think we agree on a lot, what we don't agree on is the ability for police to defuse situations rather than use deadly force. Where is your certainty on how difficult or near impossible it is? And why do you think so many other police are able to succeed where the US fails? (keep in mind I'm lumping in all the countries that have similar GDP's Democracies and so on so we are talking about a far larger amount of people, cops and so on). I don't think it's nearly impossible, I just don't think it's always possible. The presented situation where a person is actively attempting to kill another person with a knife is one of the few situations where I don't think it's reasonable to think that trying to defuse the situation is the preferred approach. I could (skeptically) entertain an argument for going taser first, but trying to defuse a situation like this goes to the point of effectively sacrificing the safety and/or life of the victim in an attempt to keep the attacker alive. You keep stating actively attempting to kill someone with a knife, this is not a fact so stop sating it like one. They are posturing like they may, they also just pushed someone they could have stabbed. Also, this is a young girl who has multiple people around her possibly aggressive to her. I'm not sure if the full story is out but originally it was that the girl with the knife called the police because she was dealing with multiple attackers. I'm not sure if that is the case, but what I am sure about is there is many many other options that are just as reasonable or more reasonable than "she was going to kill that other girl with her knife". You're reaching really hard to try to acquit her of wrong-doing. It doesn't matter if she was initially the victim in the altercation. Once she picks up a deadly weapon and attacks people, she becomes the attacker. She is clearly seen physically attacking multiple people. If you don't think that pushing someone against a car and then actively lunging at them while swinging a knife-bearing arm at them (which is clearly shown in the video) is attempting to stab someone then that is an irreconsilable disagreement and we have nothing further to discuss. I think you're being completely and totally unreasonable. EDIT: After finally finding the complete, unedited video, it even seems like the cop does give her time by yelling multiple times to "Get Down" after drawing his gun (probably not the most effective thing to yell, but he still gives her time). She didn't even attempt to acknowledge the cop or interact with him in any way; she went straight for attacking the two other girls in the altercation, and it seems clear that she is actively lunging to stab the girl in pink in the head/face/neck area right before she is shot.
Do you know why the police in other countries kill so much fewer people? They know how to handle situations like that without anyone getting hurt. It is perfectly possible, but it does require proper training.
The Utøya terrorist attacks in Norway 2011 is maybe one of the most obvious examples of a situation where shooting could be justified, but was it necessary? No, it wasn't. ABB have himself up voluntarily when the special forces approached him, and no shots were fired.
Far too many US police officers are just terrible at their jobs.
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United States42693 Posts
On April 23 2021 03:44 Amumoman wrote:
All this talk about the officer in question and law enforcement in general, here’s a crazy pitch:
People could be good parents and teach their offspring how they to operate sensibly and functionally the world; this includes not escalating a silly disagreement into running around agitated with a knife about to stab or posing an imminent threat of stabbing. Crazy I know but personal responsibility needs to make a comeback
(Obviously this does not rule out figuring out a way to have law enforcement using the least ammount of force required and doing everything reasonably within their power to de-escalate)
This brings absolutely nothing useful to the discussion unless you have a secret plan for universal retroactive good parenting implementation.
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It's funny how Kwark can make a claim like "police very frequently kill people for stealing" (paraphrasing), give one example that doesn't even really fit, and everyone will come to his defense to gaslight "dp" by saying he proved his point. Even JimmiC trying to argue that once a year in a country of 330 million people qualifies as "very frequently." Another guy earlier said black people have a 5% chance of getting shot for no reason from a routine traffic stop and absolutely nobody took issue with it. You can say anything you want here and people will not only let it slide but actively defend it if they identify you as being on the same side of the argument as them. Of course that's pretty inherent in internet arguing in general.
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