Do you have a few million more?
To fear a random man you’ve stopped for his seat belt is irrational. To shoot him out of your irrational fear is criminal. Irrational people shouldn’t possess guns/badges.
What percentage of people do you think watching that video would interpret something as suspicious in the victim’s behavior? It’s probably in the tens of percentages, right? And anyone who thinks his actions were suspicious, with any similarities to the sort of reactions people have when they choose to fight cops rather than comply, are unreasonable and insane?
That’s not a reasonable interpretation of anything I said, and you know it.
I’m saying that sudden, unexpected movements are inherently threatening in a situation like that, and that if the victim were to have done them in a non-sudden, non-unexpected sort of way, this probably wouldn’t have happened. If he said “my license is in my car” and then slowly reached in, it’s extremely unlikely the cop reacts that way.
And to say “oh, well we’re all living in a police state if we have to do that” - give me a fucking break. Cops keep up to date on all the police shootings and shit that happen everywhere. They probably have a personal experience or one from a friend in which a routine stop turned into a life or death situation. They’re nervous and suspicious every time they have to do something like this. Throw them a little fucking bone and do your best not to make the situation worse. I don’t know what twisted fucking world you all live in where “try to make sure a cop knows you’re not meaning him any harm” turns into “well you’re just a police state slave then!”
My post doesn’t refer to a diagnostic term. I’m asking him if he’s seriously saying, in good faith, that he believes that I’m not merely below average in intelligence, but significantly enough below that to justify such an insult.
No need for a perfect world; how about almost any other other western country?
God, you’re a moron.
He’s saying that your posts and “critical” analysis look like they’re posted by someone who is sub-normal IQ. Conclusions about your actual IQ aren’t necessary.
That’s why it’s an insult.
Why is the sound question so hard to answer?
You also made a whole bunch of stupid claims - e.g., the guy freezes for a couple seconds, most men carry their wallet in their pocket when driving, we’re all idiots… and now that my use of “moron” is diagnostic?
- There is no diagnostic label of “moron”. I’m not texting you from the 50s.
- Lay people use the term moron all the time.
Should I give up now? I feel like maybe I should.
He does no such thing.
And that’s threatening?
He was getting his wallet on purpose because the cop asked for his ID.
It was neither quick nor sudden, and while unusual, it wasn’t some kind of black swan outlier. And again: the person who saw this and shot him is paid and trained to deal with situations like this and make accurate judgments when placed in those situations. It’s a big understatement to say he repeatedly failed at this.
Please, please, please tell me you’re not a cop. Please.
And what would it have looked like if the guy listened to what the cop said and then followed his instructions? Exactly like this because that’s what was really happening. That’s the fucking problem. That’s not a defense of the cop. It’s an indictment of his reckless stupidity and failure to make the kinds of life-and-death judgments he is specifically empowered to make. And based on this post it sounds like there is almost nothing that wouldn’t justify a cop shooting an unarmed person. Moving fast and ignoring instructions is obviously bad, but standing still and then follow a cop’s instructions is also suspicious. :rolleye: This is some really frightening stupid, SenorBeef.
You demand a few million cops getting shot at routine stops in order to justify an officer being on alert and suspicious of sudden unexpected movement?
You’re asking for a greater number of incidents than there are police officers in the United States in order for police to feel as though routine stops can be dangerous. Even if only a fraction of these millions of incidents you’re demanding were fatal, are you essentially saying that you have to have several hundred thousand dead cops before they can be nervous during traffic stops?
Fine. Have a statistically significant amount more?
It’s relevant because a random seat belt stop is a goddamned safety stop. This isn’t a criminal, nor a violent one. He’s a human being. A person you’re trying to help be more safe. Stopping him and shooting him out of crazed fear is frigging mind-boggling.
Situation?!?!? There’s no fucking situation, unless you call “talking to someon” a “situation”. If every encounter with people has you on that kind of edge, you can’t be a cop.
There would have been a gun in the guy’s hand. That’s the difference.
If a guy reaches unto a bag during a traffic stop, a cop is right to be concerned. If something shiny comes out, the cop should be on red fucking alert. But he can’t use deadly force until he’s convinced his life is at risk, which means he needs to see a gun being pointed at him, pretty much. And really, it’s a pretty low bar - - doesn’t have to be a real gun, or even a fake gun, just something that a reasonable person could assume is a gun. And “pointed” has a pretty broad interpretation at that point, with most everyone willing to give the cop much benefit of doubt.
But you can’t shoot a guy based on a hypothetical. Hand in a bag is not yet a deadly threat. Maybe in Falujia c. 2004, but not here.
The only way anything here would appear sudden is if you did not listen to the cop’s command immediately preceding the reaction.
As for the idea that the standard we should be accepting is for the people in such a situation to take control through measured, deliberate, carefully planned and articulated behavioral sequences… fuck that. That is simply not workable.
Most people respond to official detention with a spike in their anxiety level - often dramatically so. It is not remotely reasonable to set the standard that these people, with no training and typically no experience, must have the wherewithal to think, plan and do everything with an eye towards anticipating what the range of potential responses from the cop might be to each one. And, when they fail to do so, their death is somehow justifiable.
We have to expect that the person with the training and experience will be the one in control, rather than treating cops like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.
It’s not undocumented, nor is it esoteric. Plenty of people write advice for interacting with the police, including the aforementioned ACLU. They’re all very fucking common sense. I would never do what the guy in the video did. And that’s not bragging. I’m just able to realize the situation is one in which the officer sees me as a potential threat and wants to keep control of the situation. And so I act in accordance with that, not giving him any reason to think that I’m a threat nor that he has lost control of the situation.
One can call an argument stupid without resorting to specifically opening a post by stating “you are a moron” if you have any intent to actually have a dialogue with someone. It’s almost certainly hyperbole - it’s more viscerally satisfying to say “you’re a moron” than “I disagree with you”, but it’s poisonous to discourse.
You’re right that I exaggerated the amount of hesitation.
Yes. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been exposed to someone who made an “oh shit” fight or flight response to something, but it generally looks like a freeze up followed by decisive action.
It was certainly faster than is prudent to do when you’re being detained by a police officer. Cops are human beings. They are not evil automatons, somehow both assigned both perfect control and malice simultaneously. Help the fucking guy out by avoiding doing things that look like a threat.
That said, yes, the cop was unjustified to shoot. I think at that point he was justified to pull his gun and make the guy get away from the vehicle, but without further evidence of a threat, shooting was malfeasance. My argument in this thread is not to mostly support the cop, but rather to attack the attitude that blame is entirely binary and the victim could not possibly have done anything to agitate the situation.
I’ve actually been in some situations where there was a real threat and I’m actually extremely calm and rational and not prone to panic. I wouldn’t have shot that guy, nor would I have been justified in doing so. But his behavior definitely would’ve set off alarm bells. I would’ve been more cautious.
Again, reaching into the car was not what the officer was expecting. He should’ve communicated this before he took that action. You make it sound like some impossible predicament he couldn’t solve, but it wasn’t, at all. He could’ve chose to communicate and/or move more slowly and deliberately and either one of those things would’ve kept the situation from escalating to that level.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
Point out which one says anything about the south or South Carolina. Fucking imbecile.
[/QUOTE]
The part where you are too stupid to read “southern” has already been pointed out. Now go back and see the mentions of whites, which was also mentioned, you asswipe.
Regards,
Shodan
Also, I don’t know how many times I have to say the cop’s actions were unjustified, unprofessional, and rightfully got him fired and it’s fine if it goes to court to see if he was criminally malfeasant.
Mostly, this thread was 4 pages of circle jerk arguing against a perfectly reasonable Smapti essentially repeating that the victim could never have any role whatsoever in the results of the event that victimized him.
And to a lesser extent, that some people were simply saying the cop wanted to murder black people and for some odd reason waited for today to do it.
I know that’s what you’re saying. What I’m saying is that this is not a good standard. The point at which the “fire until they stop moving” bell is rung, I would hope most of us agree but maybe we don’t, is the point at which it is actually reasonable to believe that the guy poses a threat to the safety of the officer’s life. You’re not saying, thus far, that the officer actually did make a reasonable call, although I think probably you’re a little on the fence about whether you think he did.
What you’re saying is that this could have been that situation; that there’s no way to say after the fact that it definitely wasn’t. I don’t want that. That’s backward. I want the officer to be held to the standard of making a reasonable read on the situation, not one that we can’t prove was implausible.
This isn’t related only to what you’re saying, but I’m going to take the opportunity to express how fucking sick I am of this lecture. It’s like a significant chunk of the population develops this weird autistic disorder where they forget that something being true doesn’t mean you have even a decent reason to say it, even though they would immediately remember it again if their wife said she thought about a dude from Game of Thrones while they were fucking. They forget anything exists other than technical logical accuracy, and once it turns on they convince themselves they’re fucking supergeniuses and have to talk down to everyone else about it.
We’re not children. It’s not that we can’t figure out, unless you point it out to us, that if it had been the guy’s number one priority at the time, he probably could have convinced the officer not to try to manslaughter him. You don’t have to sit us down on the edge of our beds while we wipe the tears away and explain to us that you know, there can be multiple causes of the same event. We get it. We’re just not giving you any Sherlock Holmes only-rational-man credit for pointing it out.
Congratulations, it is factually accurate to say he could have done something differently. The trouble is that god-damned nobody anywhere has ever said there was literally nothing he could have done – nobody ever says that during any of these “black and white” arguments – so pointing out that he could have done other things is fucking useless unless you’re saying this fact should have some sort of primacy in our analysis of what happened. We don’t walk around saying everything that’s factually accurate. Lots of things are true and yet we don’t say them. When we say things, we are ascribing importance to them.
The trouble here with the autistic robot “he could have handled the situation better” approach is that none of us wants to live in a fucking world where anybody has to handle the situation better than that guy did, because he didn’t do anything wrong. He was fine, that’s what we’re saying. Everybody act like that around the police, and don’t anybody pull any guns on anybody, and we suddenly live in a better world than this one. We are not objecting to your criticism of the erstwhile dead man’s perfectly normal behavior on the grounds that it is impossible that he could have acted differently. We are objecting because it is not important what defensive measures he could have taken to make it super super unlikely that a police officer would manslaughter him. Because fuck that approach, and fuck that world, and fuck anybody who wants to just accept that this is the way it is.
The quote in question couldn’t be more clear - “white Southerns of Columbia, SC.” That’s a very specific group of people. You can ask Zsofia, but my guess is that she wasn’t intending to take up the general white power defense you wanted her to. Fucking imbecile.
The blame is entirely binary. Perhaps there’s a slight possibility the man bears some blame for heightening the cop’s anxiety (though I don’t believe this is true, this at least is not out of the realm of reason). That doesn’t mean he bears any blame for the cop shooting him. The cop could have said “freeze and back away”. In fact, as soon as he said “get out of the car”, the man got out of the car!! He wasn’t shot until he was out of the car, and then the cop continued to shoot him when it was very, very clear he represented no threat, including with his arms up and falling backwards.
So the blame for the shooting is entirely on the cop. Every single iota.
Cops are generally pretty good the world over at telling the people they are all brave and shit. I half believe them too - after all it can be a really shitty job at times and some of them do it just to make a better world for everyone. Most people in the right circumstances are positive towards the police because of that, I think. Which is this strikes me as a whole lot of boo hoo;
Actual threats are part of the job and principally why the police are a force for good and its why we like them - they take those threats on when they appear for everybody. Note that the officer was shooting at imaginary threats, not real ones though. Dude did not have so much as a toy gun. Non existing things do not constitute threats, and they must not if law abiding citizens are to remain that way (and/or alive).