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!
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Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On May 20 2024 12:36 BlackJack wrote: I don't think police are infallible and I think there are issues with their militarization and their inability to hold each other accountable. But it's lost in the fog when you make ridiculous hyperbolic posts, such as implying that the police are allowed to execute people for not complying with them.
On May 21 2024 05:44 BlackJack wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:36 KwarK wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:31 BlackJack wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:13 KwarK wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:03 BlackJack wrote: [quote]
We've both seen the video. It is pretty obvious he was surrendering. When someone flings open a door with a gun in their hand and advances toward them, the 1.5 second decision they have to make might not be made as well as you or I watching the replay back from the safety of our homes. We both agree that, in hindsight, they probably wish they could take this one back. Or at least that's my opinion. You might think the police enjoy killing people if they can get away with it.
It's just fundamentally inaccurate to frame this as police shooting someone with a holstered gun (a detail you completely made up) or police shooting an unarmed person because he might have dropped the gun 0.1 seconds earlier.
You’re doing this weird thing where you’re acting like I’m describing that video as containing a holstered gun, even though I’m not using those words and am in fact using different words. The holstered gun was a separate thing I was describing. I didn’t have a video of one of those to hand.
Philando Castile had a gun in the car and reported it proactively in an attempt to defuse any conflict resulting from it if that helps at all. Not held, not drawn.
But the holstered comment wasn’t a reference to any specific event and so demanding that I provide the specific event isn’t getting anywhere and really isn’t any kind of gotcha. I gave the examples of police shootings that I had to hand and did not present them as anything other than what they are. You keep harping on this one point as if it’s intrinsic to what I was saying when it’s not even involved at this point. If I’m not arguing holstered in those examples then why are you?
I asked you if you were citing a specific example of officers shooting someone with a holstered firearm and you replied with the link the Ryan Whitaker:
On May 20 2024 11:24 KwarK wrote:
On May 20 2024 08:55 BlackJack wrote:Are you citing a specific example of the police executing someone with a holstered firearm for answering the door and not losing their job?
When I ask for the example of someone with a holstered firearm getting shot and you reply simply with a hyperlink it implies that that's the example I was asking for.
A more clear response would be "no, I don't have that specific example but here is another case where police shoot someone answering the door with a gun in their hand."
The cop that shot Philando Castile was also criminally prosecuted.
But not convicted.
In retrospect they probably feel silly assembling a jury and going to court to determine the culpability of someone that, in your summation, was "allowed" do what he did in the first place.
Glad we have arrived at the conclusion that police in the US are indeed allowed to execute people for complying with them.
I'm glad we arrived at that conclusion that being "allowed" to do something is where you are criminally prosecuted for doing it and risk going to prison. I guess we're all "allowed" to shoot people. Another instance of Kwark subverting the English language to make his argument.
But he wasn't convicted. If he was acquitted he was allowed to do what he did no?
And please, get technical about how an acquittal isn't an approval of his actions, the end result is still the same. US police get away with executing civilians.
The officer that shot and killed Walter Scott for not complying is in the middle of a 20 year prison sentence. If police are allowed to do this when why is he in prison for it? He is one of probably hundreds convicted of something he is supposedly "allowed" to do.
Finding some cases where the cop was acquitted and trying to extrapolate it is as "police are allowed to execute people for not complying" is disingenuous at best. Execution is obviously also not the right word to describe an anxious cop that shot somebody because they were scared. This should go double for Kwark because I've seen him lecture other people that "words have meanings" and it's important to use the correct words but that's suddenly thrown out the window when it comes to him.
I agree that 'execute' is the wrong word. If you change 'execute people' to 'intentionally kill civilians' it's technically more correct given the examples, but certainly not much better.
In either case I do think 'allowed' is the correct word, though. It is not true that they are unanimously allowed without fear of reprisal, but it is true that they have been allowed to intentionally kill civilians in the past, and we can expect they will be allowed in the future. Every time? Not likely, but we're not dealing with a binary application of the word.
If your definition of "allowed" is whether there are examples of people getting off for doing it then basically every crime is "allowed." You're permitted to do anything so as long you get acquitted. It's a nice catch-all but in general I don't think cops want to put their lives in the hands of a jury so they're probably not carrying around the idea that they have a license to kill anymore than the pizza guy thinks he is allowed to spit in your pizza.
On May 20 2024 12:36 BlackJack wrote: I don't think police are infallible and I think there are issues with their militarization and their inability to hold each other accountable. But it's lost in the fog when you make ridiculous hyperbolic posts, such as implying that the police are allowed to execute people for not complying with them.
On May 21 2024 05:44 BlackJack wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:36 KwarK wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:31 BlackJack wrote:
On May 21 2024 05:13 KwarK wrote: [quote] You’re doing this weird thing where you’re acting like I’m describing that video as containing a holstered gun, even though I’m not using those words and am in fact using different words. The holstered gun was a separate thing I was describing. I didn’t have a video of one of those to hand.
Philando Castile had a gun in the car and reported it proactively in an attempt to defuse any conflict resulting from it if that helps at all. Not held, not drawn.
But the holstered comment wasn’t a reference to any specific event and so demanding that I provide the specific event isn’t getting anywhere and really isn’t any kind of gotcha. I gave the examples of police shootings that I had to hand and did not present them as anything other than what they are. You keep harping on this one point as if it’s intrinsic to what I was saying when it’s not even involved at this point. If I’m not arguing holstered in those examples then why are you?
I asked you if you were citing a specific example of officers shooting someone with a holstered firearm and you replied with the link the Ryan Whitaker:
When I ask for the example of someone with a holstered firearm getting shot and you reply simply with a hyperlink it implies that that's the example I was asking for.
A more clear response would be "no, I don't have that specific example but here is another case where police shoot someone answering the door with a gun in their hand."
The cop that shot Philando Castile was also criminally prosecuted.
But not convicted.
In retrospect they probably feel silly assembling a jury and going to court to determine the culpability of someone that, in your summation, was "allowed" do what he did in the first place.
Glad we have arrived at the conclusion that police in the US are indeed allowed to execute people for complying with them.
I'm glad we arrived at that conclusion that being "allowed" to do something is where you are criminally prosecuted for doing it and risk going to prison. I guess we're all "allowed" to shoot people. Another instance of Kwark subverting the English language to make his argument.
But he wasn't convicted. If he was acquitted he was allowed to do what he did no?
And please, get technical about how an acquittal isn't an approval of his actions, the end result is still the same. US police get away with executing civilians.
The officer that shot and killed Walter Scott for not complying is in the middle of a 20 year prison sentence. If police are allowed to do this when why is he in prison for it? He is one of probably hundreds convicted of something he is supposedly "allowed" to do.
Finding some cases where the cop was acquitted and trying to extrapolate it is as "police are allowed to execute people for not complying" is disingenuous at best. Execution is obviously also not the right word to describe an anxious cop that shot somebody because they were scared. This should go double for Kwark because I've seen him lecture other people that "words have meanings" and it's important to use the correct words but that's suddenly thrown out the window when it comes to him.
I agree that 'execute' is the wrong word. If you change 'execute people' to 'intentionally kill civilians' it's technically more correct given the examples, but certainly not much better.
In either case I do think 'allowed' is the correct word, though. It is not true that they are unanimously allowed without fear of reprisal, but it is true that they have been allowed to intentionally kill civilians in the past, and we can expect they will be allowed in the future. Every time? Not likely, but we're not dealing with a binary application of the word.
If your definition of "allowed" is whether there are examples of people getting off for doing it then basically every crime is "allowed." You're permitted to do anything so as long you get acquitted. It's a nice catch-all but in general I don't think cops want to put their lives in the hands of a jury so they're probably not carrying around the idea that they have a license to kill anymore than the pizza guy thinks he is allowed to spit in your pizza.
As pointed out before, the pizza guy loses his job if he’s caught doing it. Dominos have a zero tolerance policy on that stuff in a way that police departments don’t when it comes to executions.
In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
On May 21 2024 09:15 KwarK wrote: As pointed out before, the pizza guy loses his job if he’s caught doing it. Dominos have a zero tolerance policy on that stuff in a way that police departments don’t when it comes to executions.
It's easy for Dominos to have a zero tolerance policy on spitting on pizzas, because there is never a situation where a dominos driver needs to spit on a pizza. The same cannot be said about police officers and killing civilians. Executing, yes, but executing is the wrong word.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Cops kill around 1000 people per year in the US, or around 33 per 10,000,000. The per capita number is comparable to places like Colombia and Mexico, and is about 10 times higher than EU average. The absolute number is similar to the total number of law enforcement related deaths, including death penalty executions, to that in the entirety of China or India, despite their significantly higher populations and supposedly 'draconic' laws. So clearly, there is a problem, but also it's not as if they are just going around shooting people for sport -- we're still talking about what, around 1 in 500 cops being involved in a fatal incident per year, which probably translates to about 1 in 30 cops or so being involved in a killing throughout their entire career on average. Not a great statistic by any means, but hardly a 'Judge Dredd' kind of situation, either.
What was a big surprise to me while looking for these numbers, is that I realized the US actually has a relatively low number of cops per capita. I expected that it'd be on the higher end of OECD, given that cops in US supposedly enjoy high salaries and a good benefits package while having a low barrier of entry, but in reality amongst developed countries only the Nordics and Japan have fewer cops per capita than the US does, and not by much. Majority of Europe has nearly twice as many law enforcement workers as the US does per capita, despite police work requiring far more rigorous education and training there than it does in the US. And despite the relatively small number of cops employed, the US spends disproportionately large amount of money on law enforcement than other OECD countries do, although that was less of a surprise. Seems to be a general theme with the US services, similar to how there are excessive amounts of money spent on healthcare or education without really providing superior results. As a percentage of GDP, US expense on police is nearly twice that that of, say, Germany, and this is before even considering the vastly oversized spending on 'corrections facilities.'
edit: EU countries also seem to have a significantly higher number of law-enforcement adjacent roles, ie various social workers and mental health professionals specializing in homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and so on.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
So, summarizing, your position is that yes, the police system is fucked up, and so is the medical system, and maybe the licensing system for skydive centers? I think almost everyone in this thread (except maybe oBlade) will agree with that. Because the argument seemed to come from you appearing to defend the police system.
It's not necessary to bring up a random person and put words in their mouth as a cheap rhetorical device. If anything, I would be the first to say we need more police, better trained police, supported by honest politicians and judged by honest metrics, and a criminal justice system that permanently keeps dangerous criminals and their organizations off the streets, so police and citizens alike can have a realistic assessment of the danger when they go outside, without feeling the constant threat of being in a war zone, and not jump to defcon 5 every time some retarded Karen phones 911 to report their neighbor watched a horror movie or a man broke into his own house.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
Yeah, that seems accurate. Appreciate the work looking into medical cases! You're right, we do largely agree.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
This is a great post and a good summary of how this situation is complicated. I really like the way you listed various professions and how they all lead to lots of death each year. I think assessing ethics of a situation requires first describing the dynamics in extremely basic ways the way you did. Big fan of this post.
How we deal with people who kill while working is difficult to get right. Here are a couple things I think need to be assessed when determining punishment for a worker who kills someone.
1: Malicious intent
2: Adherence to standard safety protocols. In the case of police, if a policeman fails to utilize methods to avoid violence, then violence ends up leading to someone dying, guilt should fall on the cop. This is of course complex and hard to nail down. But in general, there should be a "reasonable" component when assessing a video or whatever. If the cop did not have a great deal of reason to assume their life was in danger, they ought to be punished for killing someone.
3: Other job-specific considerations that boil down to how well they were doing their job at the time of death
4: The condition of the worker at the time of killing. As an example, I believe when a doctor accidentally kills someone after working 16 hours straight, the guilt should fall on the owners of the hospital. Excluding unique situations where a surgery is 16 hours long by design and things like that. Point being, a worker that is over worked killing someone is a situation created by the employer, not the employee.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
So, summarizing, your position is that yes, the police system is fucked up, and so is the medical system, and maybe the licensing system for skydive centers? I think almost everyone in this thread (except maybe oBlade) will agree with that. Because the argument seemed to come from you appearing to defend the police system.
My main point was largely summed up in the last paragraph of the post you quoted. There's a discussion to be had but it's pointless to even have that discussion if we can't agree whether or not the police in the US are allowed to go around carrying out extrajudicial executions legally.
I also think people don't have a great perception of policing in the US because most likely the only things that penetrates their news feed are the most egregious examples of police misconduct and errors out of the millions of interactions the police have with the public. Kind of similar to how it only penetrates the right-wing news feed when an illegal immigrant kills someone but they don't hear about the other millions that are just trying to live a better life.
On May 21 2024 09:22 Fleetfeet wrote: In a strict sense the police are allowed to kill civilians anyways. The hypothetical of a school shooter being interrupted and shot is literally the police being allowed to kill civilians. The question isn't "Are the police allowed to kill civilians" because they are. The question involves the frequency and circumstances regarding cases where civilians are killed by the police.
The examples provided have been examples of the police being allowed to kill civilians in situations where they were retrospectively not justified to do so. Against Kwark's point, I'm sure we could find examples of delivery drivers spitting in pizza and being allowed to do so, but I expect we wouldn't find as clear documentation given the level of human suffering between them.
I mean, as I said earlier, there are a great number of professions where you can maim/injury/kill someone and you don't automatically lose your job and go to prison. Not everyone that drives professionally and causes a traffic accident that harms or kills someone goes straight to jail without passing Go.
There are countless examples that can be given. Medical errors cause thousands of deaths every year and these can be horrifically painful. Far worse than having your pizza spit on, I can assure. But we don't send nurses or doctors or surgeons to prison.
A few weeks ago there was A story in California of a skydiving center that has been responsible for 28 deaths in the last 40 years. Imagine being responsible for 28 humans going splat on the ground and you still get to keep running your business. Talk about a license to kill.
In fact I would suspect that police officers are the most likely of any profession to go to prison for a mistake they've made while performing their job and they are also the ones that have to make split second decisions with adrenaline pumping through them. Pull the trigger 1 second too early and you might go to prison. Pull the trigger 1 second too late and you might be dead. It's not exactly the same stakes when you decide whether or not to spit in someone's pizza.
Medical professionals and skydiving require consent forms from the people potentially hurt. Traffic related accidents are called accidents for a reason. All of these things also have various forms of liability insurance and training/licensing required to do them, and if those systems appeared to be failing (as might be the case in your linked skydiving example) then criticism of them seems like it's worth listening to, and not just to be brushed aside.
I don't see a problem with police being held to at least an equivalent level of scrutiny to medical professionals considering they have equivalent control over other people's lives. The major difference is that in a medical profession, people or their guardians have to consent to risky medical treatments. Apparently people with guns don't get to consent to shit and are shot for answering a late-night mystery door knock with a gun in hand. The police decided for them how serious the situation was and were apparently prepared to respond with deadly force. The equivalent in a medical situation would be someone coming in with a boil they wanted lanced and the medical team deciding for them that they were a lesser human, and donating one of their vital organs to someone else. That shit doesn't happen.
I don't see it as them being held to an equal level of scrutiny as medical professionals. I also don't think they've had anywhere near as thorough training, and are given a near-impossible job considering gun culture and anti-police culture in the US. That said, it does seem that the police in the US are allowed to kill civilians more often than other countries, and that does seem like an issue.
Eh... the equivalent in a medical field would be consenting to receive a mild sedative so you can receive an MRI and then the nurse pulls out a paralytic medication because the names sound similar. So then you slowly suffocate while fully awake because your diaphragm is paralyzed and your lungs can't expand. A literal lethal injection. That shit does happen. When it did happen the initial response of the licensing board was to rule it an accident and determine no action was required. It wasn't until the story caught steam in the press that they reversed that decision and revoked her license.
After the initial incident the TN BON reviewed Vaught's case and deemed it an accident requiring no further action. However, In September 2019, the Tennessee Department of Health's Board of Nursing reversed their decision, charging Vaught with three infractions: unprofessional conduct, abandoning or neglecting a patient who required care, and failing to maintain an accurate patient record.
Think about that. Killing someone in one of the most horrific ways possible and they were fully prepared to dole out a slap on the wrist and allow her to continue working. It's a pretty nonchalant response. "It was an accident. No big deal. Nothing to see here." That should tell us something. Due to patient privacy laws you're typically not going to hear about this type of stuff in the same way the media will cover every police fuck up.
Or what about Christopher Duntsch. He was a neurosurgeon that was so incompetent he injured 33 of the 38 patients he operated on. Nicking an artery on a risky procedure on accident is one thing, this guy was slicing people's vocal cords, cutting arteries, cutting up their larynx, trachea etc. because he was so incompetent he thought they were tumors or something. They said of one of his patients that it looked like he was trying to decapitate them. He went on doing this for a while as hospitals preferred to just let him resign and go somewhere else as opposed to dealing with firing him or reporting him to the medical board. Apparently maiming and killing people is not enough to even bother to report someone to the medical board. But I guess eventually, 33 maimings later, the system "worked."
So I don't really accept your distinction that people consent to risky procedures. Nobody consents to the nurse giving them the wrong medication, or the pharmacist filling the wrong pills, or the surgeon carving them up like a slab of meat. Shit like this happens and it happens a lot. There are hundreds of millions of prescriptions filled in the United States, even if pharmacists are 99.999% accurate they are still giving a lot of wrong prescriptions. It's a fact of life that the world is a dangerous place and people die while at work and they kill people while doing their work.
I suspect we largely agree. There are legitimate issues to talk about with US policing, and maybe there are legitimate issues to talk about with that skydiving center on another day. I just think it's a disservice to make these silly arguments like the police are allowed to execute people or compare them to a pizza delivery guy spitting in your food. Sure i'd rather get a spat-on pizza than shot by the police for answering my door with a gun in my hand. I'd also rather get a spat-on pizza than be given a lethal injection by a nurse making a mistake. I wouldn't consent to any of the above.
So, summarizing, your position is that yes, the police system is fucked up, and so is the medical system, and maybe the licensing system for skydive centers? I think almost everyone in this thread (except maybe oBlade) will agree with that. Because the argument seemed to come from you appearing to defend the police system.
My main point was largely summed up in the last paragraph of the post you quoted. There's a discussion to be had but it's pointless to even have that discussion if we can't agree whether or not the police in the US are allowed to go around carrying out extrajudicial executions legally.
I also think people don't have a great perception of policing in the US because most likely the only things that penetrates their news feed are the most egregious examples of police misconduct and errors out of the millions of interactions the police have with the public. Kind of similar to how it only penetrates the right-wing news feed when an illegal immigrant kills someone but they don't hear about the other millions that are just trying to live a better life.
To add to this, people also don’t understand what requirements need to be met before someone is hired as a cop and given a gun. And people don’t realize how much these requirements vary across states and even within states. Same with salary.
I will once again briefly make my usual declaration regarding police and teachers: until we require more education and compensate them accordingly, problems relating to staffing will not be solved.
By the way, I also think Fleetfeet is right that the police in the US have a near-impossible job. That's also often lost in the US vs western europe comparisons of police states. Sure US cops kill X-fold more people than Europe cops. They also probably get shot at X-fold more times, encounter people with guns X-fold more times, die in the line of duty X-fold more times, and encounter people that suicide by cop X-fold more times (that's where you charge at police with a weapon while shouting "shoot me!")
For example, does anyone have a good opinion on how police should handle this situation where someone is running away from police with a gun?
In the video a 17-year-old armed with an AR-15 rifle is running away from police. The officers chase him on foot and he turns the gun and shoots an officer, hitting her in the ear, before she returns fire and kills him. If his aim was just a few inches better it would have been game over for her. If she shot him in the back while he was running she would be condemned. What's the idea here? That officers should just risk being shot in the head and they just need to hope they miss? Just pray to Darwin or the god of their choice that the guy has bad aim?
The last time a police video came up in this thread with a teenage minor getting shot, Kwark took the position that if he were the cop under no circumstance would he kill a chlid, even going as far to say his widow would be proud. That previous time the kid was 13 and this kid was 17 so I don't know what Kwark's cutoff for "child" is. But either way I think this is batshit insane. To literally allow yourself to be murdered so as to not harm someone that would murder you? I might jump in front of a train for a loved one, but I'm not doing it for a stranger that would kill me, even if they are underage.
Easy answer is: If the perp has started to run, then don't chase them. Let them get away and follow at a safe distance. I'm sure they could have easily found that person with cams and other methods. Chasing someone with a weapon puts yourself in needless danger. After the Chicago incident, they forbid cops from chasing people on foot. For this exact reason. Could it endanger other lives? Possibly.
First, I'm glad the officer did not fire until fired upon. I do not think a police officer's life should be valued more highly than any random civilian's, so without context like "He shot and killed 4 people 30s before footage started" I would not agree with the officer's choice, had they shot the person in the back. As it is, I do agree with their choice to return fire, given that the person had ample opportunity to surrender. I do wish their messaging and directive was clearer ("Drop the gun or you will be shot", not 'Let me see your hands' and 'You're gonna get tazed).
Second, I'm disappointed that no non-lethal methods were deployed.
Third, and contradictory to the first two, this does seem like an impossible situation. If they deploy nonlethal options and fail, miss, or succeed, the person they're attempting to pacify still has an AR15 and will have an opportunity to return fire for anything short of clean tazer contact. The fact that both sides have lethal weapons means there's no clean conclusion unless one side surrenders.
I feel like Kwark is right in suggesting police officers 'volunteer' themselves into these situations, but in this case it's extremely hard to make that judgement without more information. If the kid was just smoking pot and the police pursued and escalated to the point of exchanging gunfire, they obviously should have 'surrendered' and not pursued.
On May 22 2024 09:33 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Easy answer is: If the perp has started to run, then don't chase them. Let them get away and follow at a safe distance. I'm sure they could have easily found that person with cams and other methods. Chasing someone with a weapon puts yourself in needless danger. After the Chicago incident, they forbid cops from chasing people on foot. For this exact reason. Could it endanger other lives? Possibly.
This is what I consider one of those progressive ideas that’s short-sighted. There’s a guy with an AR-15 on the run from the police in your neighborhood. Too dangerous for the police to deal with so might as well let him go. Hopefully the residents keep their door locked as he looks for someone to carjack for an escape vehicle or a house to hide in.
Even if they use cameras and track him down later, then what? They are right back where they started and have to subdue someone with an AR-15.
Also what message are you sending to the criminals? Better to run from the police cause they won’t chase after you. Even better, make sure you have a gun because then it will be really too dangerous for them to chase after you. Do you think this might backfire in some way?
On May 22 2024 09:36 Fleetfeet wrote: My thoughts are as follows:
First, I'm glad the officer did not fire until fired upon. I do not think a police officer's life should be valued more highly than any random civilian's, so without context like "He shot and killed 4 people 30s before footage started" I would not agree with the officer's choice, had they shot the person in the back. As it is, I do agree with their choice to return fire, given that the person had ample opportunity to surrender. I do wish their messaging and directive was clearer ("Drop the gun or you will be shot", not 'Let me see your hands' and 'You're gonna get tazed).
Second, I'm disappointed that no non-lethal methods were deployed.
Third, and contradictory to the first two, this does seem like an impossible situation. If they deploy nonlethal options and fail, miss, or succeed, the person they're attempting to pacify still has an AR15 and will have an opportunity to return fire for anything short of clean tazer contact. The fact that both sides have lethal weapons means there's no clean conclusion unless one side surrenders.
I feel like Kwark is right in suggesting police officers 'volunteer' themselves into these situations, but in this case it's extremely hard to make that judgement without more information. If the kid was just smoking pot and the police pursued and escalated to the point of exchanging gunfire, they obviously should have 'surrendered' and not pursued.
According to the video description he was recently release from juvenile hall and had his ankle bracelet cut off the day before. They got a call about possible gang members with guns. They chased a car he was in and it struck another vehicle by the time he was caught. Even if he was just smoking pot isn’t it safe to conclude that by the time he caught up with them he had already committed several crimes more serious the smoking pot?
Also just to be clear, you want the cops to shout “drop the gun or you will be shot” but you don’t think they should be allowed to shoot? So you want police to lie?
On May 22 2024 09:33 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Easy answer is: If the perp has started to run, then don't chase them. Let them get away and follow at a safe distance. I'm sure they could have easily found that person with cams and other methods. Chasing someone with a weapon puts yourself in needless danger. After the Chicago incident, they forbid cops from chasing people on foot. For this exact reason. Could it endanger other lives? Possibly.
This is what I consider one of those progressive ideas that’s short-sighted. There’s a guy with an AR-15 on the run from the police in your neighborhood. Too dangerous for the police to deal with so might as well let him go. Hopefully the residents keep their door locked as he looks for someone to carjack for an escape vehicle or a house to hide in.
Even if they use cameras and track him down later, then what? They are right back where they started and have to subdue someone with an AR-15.
Also what message are you sending to the criminals? Better to run from the police cause they won’t chase after you. Even better, make sure you have a gun because then it will be really too dangerous for them to chase after you. Do you think this might backfire in some way?
I think his point was that with non immediate threats you can pick the time and place of your intervention. A classic example here is also a common one, someone fleeing in a car with their child in it. Sure, you can intentionally force them to crash. And sure, you can riddle the car with bullets. But you can also wait. It’s only a high speed pursuit because of the pursuers, tracking them with a helicopter or traffic cams or cell towers is going to be way safer.
My feeling is that police in the US are trained to expect and demand instant compliance and to escalate when that compliance is not immediately received. There are some situations that require a hail of gunfire to end them immediately, but many more that do not.
Even in your case of the person with the AR-15 they may be less dangerous with it at home than they were in a public place. Nearby people could be cleared, the house could be besieged etc. Most people don’t want to die and will surrender themselves facing no better options. The time constraints that force lethal force may be, to an extent, self imposed.
On May 22 2024 09:33 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Easy answer is: If the perp has started to run, then don't chase them. Let them get away and follow at a safe distance. I'm sure they could have easily found that person with cams and other methods. Chasing someone with a weapon puts yourself in needless danger. After the Chicago incident, they forbid cops from chasing people on foot. For this exact reason. Could it endanger other lives? Possibly.
This is what I consider one of those progressive ideas that’s short-sighted. There’s a guy with an AR-15 on the run from the police in your neighborhood. Too dangerous for the police to deal with so might as well let him go. Hopefully the residents keep their door locked as he looks for someone to carjack for an escape vehicle or a house to hide in.
Even if they use cameras and track him down later, then what? They are right back where they started and have to subdue someone with an AR-15.
Also what message are you sending to the criminals? Better to run from the police cause they won’t chase after you. Even better, make sure you have a gun because then it will be really too dangerous for them to chase after you. Do you think this might backfire in some way?
I think his point was that with non immediate threats you can pick the time and place of your intervention. A classic example here is also a common one, someone fleeing in a car with their child in it. Sure, you can intentionally force them to crash. And sure, you can riddle the car with bullets. But you can also wait. It’s only a high speed pursuit because of the pursuers, tracking them with a helicopter or traffic cams or cell towers is going to be way safer.
My feeling is that police in the US are trained to expect and demand instant compliance and to escalate when that compliance is not immediately received. There are some situations that require a hail of gunfire to end them immediately, but many more that do not.
Even in your case of the person with the AR-15 they may be less dangerous with it at home than they were in a public place. Nearby people could be cleared, the house could be besieged etc. Most people don’t want to die and will surrender themselves facing no better options. The time constraints that force lethal force may be, to an extent, self imposed.
All of this is what I was saying. I don't have the energy to get into a pissing match over semantics or technicalities with BJ, so I'm thankful to you Kwark for answering this concisely.
EPT
