[Moderating]
Telling other posters to fuck themselves is a violation of the board rules. Please avoid doing this in the future.
No warning issued.
[/Moderating]
You bring up the minor infraction, but you’d say speeding a few mph over the speed limit is a minor infraction, too, right? But cops get shot during traffic stops for speeding or broken tail lights. Not because the victim is worried about getting a speeding ticket, but because they’re already wanted by the law.
Except this was my reply:
“Nothing. He was 100% correct in what he did after the cop yelled to get out of the car.”
Reaching into the car was obviously what escalated it, since that’s when the cop started to draw his gun and take cover like he was in a gunfight.
Blame in this context is a silly semantics game. I’ve made it pretty clear what my positions are.
You guys are pathetic with your feigned claims that I called myself some sort of internet badass. I didn’t, at all.
Anyway, yes, I’m nervous when a cop pulls me over too. There’s always the thought in my mind that if he’s a terrible cop, and I make the wrong move, that he might attack me. I don’t know how this contradicts what I said.
My very deliberate action with the police - asking permission to open containers, declaring my moves ahead of time, turning the light on in my vehicle, keeping my hands in plain sight - is both to make the officer more comfortable, because it’s gotta be shitty when there’s that nagging fear in the back of your head at every stop, and I try to do what I can, and also because it’s the route that’s least likely to result in misinterpretation and having him attack me over a misunderstanding.
What I mean is that the cop is expecting him to pull a wallet out of his pants. Turning around and reaching into the vehicle instead makes the cop nervous. If he had declared his action instead, it would’ve given the cop a chance to intervene - to tell him not to, to tell him to wait until the cop was satisfied with his position, to tell him to do it slowly, to simply know it was coming in advance and not be surprised by it - it would’ve had a much lower chance of escalating the situation, because the cop would still feel like he’s in control, and there wouldn’t have been a threatening action.
In your view, would someone who A) asked the cop for permission to go into his car for the ID, and then did it slowly, b) who did it just like the guy in the video, or c) sprinted for his car and reached in as fast as he could and as suddenly as he could, all be equally blameless? Would their actions merit the exact same reaction from the officer in each case?
I’m repeating myself here, but using the phrase “victim blaming” in this context is meaningless, and doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation. Whatever “victim blaming” is, it is neither some binary that is either 100% present or 100% absent; nor some ultimate evil. You don’t get to win an argument just by demonstrating that some part of your opponent’s claim qualifies as “victim blaming”, and is therefore evil, and therefore you win and they lose.
I will repeat what I think is a key paragraph. Does this paragraph mean that I’m “victim blaming”?
If you can find suboptimal behavior in this situation then there is no situation in which a cop will be unable to identify suboptimal behavior.
The line has to be drawn someplace. And if it’s drawn here, that is such a low bar it’s laughable.
“Don’t reach into where a cop doesn’t expect you to reach” is actually pretty rudimentary. I always ask if it’s okay before reaching into my glove box or center console. I certainly wouldn’t go back in my car without asking if I felt like he was expecting me to reach into my pocket.
Is it because I’m some fucking internet tough guy superman? No, there’s nothing brag-worthy about that. It’s just good advice that a dozen organizations give out to make these incidents easier for both you and the police.
And I feel like I can add this disclaimer to the end of all my posts and it doesn’t matter, but here goes:
Even so, the cop is completely unjustified in shooting him. He may have been justified in escalating his guard a tier if he was surprised by the actions and felt they were suspicious. But you absolutely do not shoot someone until you are convinced that imminent harm will come if you do not. That is a SIGNIFICANT tier above the escalation justified by the behavior, even taking it in the most negative/suspicious way possible. In no way in this situation was the cop firing several shots not a horrible, negligent fuckup that deserves reprecussions.
Escalating it is not causing a shooting. The cop didn’t shoot him until he complied with the order to get out of his car.
It’s not clear to me. His “sub-optimal” action may or may not have ‘caused’ the cop to pull his gun, but it certainly didn’t cause the shooting. In fact, it’s not at all clear that anything the man did triggered the shooting, because he wasn’t shot until he complied with the order to leave his car.
Yep, the whole ‘hesitation’ argument is total BS.
Jones gets out of car. He sees cop car. Jones ‘hesitates’ because a cop car has pulled up behind him and cop gets out of his car. Cop tells him “Get your license”. Jones first thought was probably ‘what the heck did I do?’. His second thought may have been, where is my license? Oh, it’s in my car.
“Hesitated?” “Planning his move for his gun?” What horse shit.
They could, but good lord - this is a little creepy, unwieldy, and also patronizing toward the cops. And what happens if someone moves before the officer finishes giving the little speech? Is it OK for them to fire away at a civilian who hasn’t done anything wrong? Of course not. So in the best of all world this wouldn’t accomplish much of anything. At worst it’d justify screwing up. Like most mistakes by police, the main issue here is training and their approach. Police need to be prepared to any number of very unlikely outcomes, but they also shouldn’t just assume one of those is going down any time something unexpected happens.
He hesitated, but didn’t act too slowly, but definitely acted too quickly? Come the fuck on. This is all incorrect, but even if you can just barely construct a series of events where this description makes sense, it’s indistinguishable from a guy who is just following instructions from a police officer, which is exactly what people are told to do in situations like this - and they expect that if they follow a cop’s instructions in this situation, they won’t get arrested, much less shot. And again, it is a huge problem that he did what he was asked to do and we’re being told that is indistinguishable from what a cop killer would have done. That means they’re shitty instructions, doesn’t it?
I’ve acknowledged he bucked expectations. If there is a list of most common reactions to being asked by a cop for your ID, reaching into your pants is #1. What he did (for a driver near his car) is #2. It’s not the most common reaction, but neither is it all that unusual. And of course it’s not at all unusual for Jones, who may do this all the time. That should not be enough to make a cop fly off the handle. There’s no reason for the cop to do anything more than say something like “Step away from the car, what are you doing?” in a stern voice. (And if Jones had quickly stepped away from the car, he shouldn’t have been shot.) Not only that, people can also keep guns in their pants, so wouldn’t reaching into his pants have also been a potential warning sign? If you can interpret this as alarming, fight-or-flight-esque behavior, you can interpret almost anything under the sun that way. That’s the problem.
I’ve said that several times.
I said all of these things upthread, sometimes more than once. You seem to be drifting away from what I wrote. When I said you were slicing things thin, I was saying that even though you said you would never have reacted the way the shooter did, you said a bunch of things that suggest your reaction would have been awfully similar: you said if you had been in the cops’ place, Jones’ entirely sensible, at most mildly unusual response to your orders would have made you “extremely nervous” and Jones bears some of the responsibility for what happened, yada yada. I was saying you are saying the distinction between your hypothetical actions and the shooter sounds kind of slim even though you’re insisting you wouldn’t have blown it the way he did.
I think that’s a better explanation than some of the other ones you gave, and with that, I will drop the matter.
I was going to say this stuff is not “universally recommended,” and then I remembered that it actually might be since Jones is black. Nobody ever told me to do all of this nonsense if I get pulled over or stopped while driving - and you know what? Even if I get pulled over and don’t do that stuff, I will probably be fine because I’m a smallish white guy. So yeah. That’s how race and privilege factor into this. Hoo-fucking-ray.
And I don’t think Jones really “made choices” as such. He listened to the cop and almost immediately complied with the request. It’s not a reflex action or an automatic response, but he reacted with about as much thought as an average human being would in that situation. He was not dealing with an average or even close-to-average cop, so he got shot and barely escaped with his life.
My view is that the victim’s behavior didn’t play a role.
I think other people already dealt with this. Although even if they didn’t, I’d just shake my head.
“Cops are trained to react to threats appropriately.”
My goodness is this an odd blanket statement to make.
“But he definitely takes his actions too quickly.”
Please define “quickly”. (You may have a different definition. You also presumably have a different definition of “sudden” that means anything other than “unexpected”. How it could be unexpected that someone might have their wallet in their car, I don’t know. Evidently, you carry yours on your person at all times and NEVER ever put it elsewhere. Good on you, but that rule doesn’t apply to all. A cop should know that, even if you do not.
“And more importantly, he bucks expectations.”
Maybe it’d be better to ask you what your position was on the Ray Rice incident, and spare myself time.
“The cop expected him to put a hand in his pocket - going back into his car unannounced is what made him react that way.”
See prior response.
“Shooting someone is an absolute last resort.”
Again, according to you. With a decent percentage of people in the subset that are inept and ill-trained police, or police with behavioral or emotional or psychological disorders, this is inaccurate.
“The vast majority of cops wouldn’t shoot the guy in that situation…”
You don’t know this, even if the “vast majority of cops” declare it is so.
“… and I wouldn’t either.”
You don’t KNOW that; you may honestly believe it and you may be right, but you do not KNOW it.
“Unlike most people, I’ve actually faced a situation in which I had to make a decision like that, and I handled it gracefully…”
Hon, given the demonstration that you use a different dictionary, I dare say we don’t want to detour to examine what you mean by “handled it gracefully” (whatever the heck that means).
“… as the vast majority of cops would.”
I’ve never never met an omniscient person, so … again … problem.
“Is he then saying that the fact that the victim was black somehow affected his behavior?”
Whomever “he” is aside, the human behavior in question only has to do with race insofar as if you’re of African descent, your experiences in life in America will almost invariably be different than those of someone who is caucasian.
“Is it conceivable that he acted sub-optimally, and a different course of action might’ve got a different result?”
And if wishes were horses … Even if he did and a different course of action may have prevented that cop from shooting him, that does not mean he bears ANY responsibility for the actions taken by the police officer.
“Let’s say a totally innocent person is pulled over. But for some reason, they move very rapidly. The cop asks them for their proof of insurance, and they quickly reach into their glovebox with unnatural speed. The cop takes this to be a threatening action and pulls them out of the car.”
Rather obviously, there’s a lot missing from your scenario; if one takes it literally as-is, it would be stupid protocol on the part of the officer to do as you describe.
"So let’s say we have the same scenario, but for some reason the victim keeps their proof of insurance below the seat. So they quickly reach into an unexpected place, below the seat, and again the cop takes this to be a threat. Is the victim to blame here? They didn’t do anything wrong, they’re just doing what the cop asked.
Merely FEELING threatened is not a basis upon which to discharge a weapon. Actually BEING under imminent … not might be … threat of serious bodily injury or death must be the basis upon which one reacts.
Why are we even talking about hypotheticals instead of what IS?
“I’m not, in this post, arguing that the victim here did anything to justify the result.”
This is understood, by me.
“What I’m attacking is the very idea that one side must take all the blame…”
Didn’t you just talk about “childish semantics” about blame? Would you mind providing me with your definition of “blame”? I’m afraid, in this scenario, the cop indeed shoulders the “blame” and all the responsibility.
“This is a serious cognitive defect that prevents you from seeing the world as a complicated place.”
Wow. And how does this not occupy the same universe as calling someone a moron (see many posts back) being “satisfying to say” and “poisonous to discourse”?
Yeesh.
“They could, but good lord - this is a little creepy, unwieldy, and also patronizing toward the cops.”
Creepy. I disagree (and don’t care even if it is). Unwieldy? I disagree. As for patronizing, I don’t particularly care how cops in general might view it (again, anytime they want to do a better job of policing themselves, that’s fine with me). Unfortunately, these things need to be directed to the lowest common denominator. I’m sure a good number of them roll their eyes about MOST types of training and orientation.
It’s also worth noting that most police forces, as with most professions, don’t do a terribly good job of pre-screening and skills assessment … to include logic, critical thinking and problem-solving skills (with and without pressure) … nor psychological assessment or testing - let alone periodic re-evaluations.
“And what happens if someone moves before the officer finishes giving the little speech? Is it OK for them to fire away at a civilian who hasn’t done anything wrong? Of course not.”
You may not recognize this as very odd but … what’s the point of this silly point? Why is there a need for purpose of the subdiscussion to advance even one step beyond the observation about what **ought **to be standard procedure and covered in training given what occurs on a daily basis (what we hear about in the news is simply small change as it were)? Why does someone need to also cover the “what if … and then …” for every possible permutation of what the training and procedures should entail?
“Like most mistakes by police, the main issue here is training and their approach.”
Well, yeah … that was kinda my point.
“Police need to be prepared to any number of very unlikely outcomes, but they also shouldn’t just assume one of those is going down any time something unexpected happens.”
Agreed. This is where pre-hiring assessments come in handy. If there’s even a chance someone will be the fuckwit who later says “but they didn’t cover that scenario in training, so I didn’t think I had to [x-y-z]” or “… that I couldn’t [x-y-z]” it’s helpful to know that before hiring them or during a probationary period (past which, once under union protection in most cases, it’s almost fucking impossible to get rid of them) … not after they’ve killed someone or forever altered a life.
One must acknowledge the fact that, general estimate, about a third of the population is either (a) not terribly intelligent, or (b) ignorant and apparently content to remain so. Otherwise, the world would be a far different place. We all know how dumbed down America has become in particular, and it’s an unfortunate reality that one must keep in mind the lowest common denominator.
I agree with this. I’ll just add to that I think part of the problem in the discussion is that we’re using the best words we have, but they’re getting in the way. “Blame”, as you say, isn’t very helpful. Neither is the notion of responsibility, as it pertains to the victim here. I think it’s correct to say that he dis absolutely nothing wrong—zero. BUT, there might have been some alternative actions he could have taken that would have prevented the cop from getting nervous and shooting. For instance, if he would have immediately put his hands in the air and said, “Okay, you want my license. It’s in the console. Do you want me to get it?” I doubt the cop would have gotten so nervous as to shoot, or even draw his gun.
I’m not saying that it was in any way incumbent upon the victim to do that. It wasn’t. Like I said, his actions were perfectly reasonable. But if he did take an alternative course of action like what I suggested, the outcome would likely have been different.
But that the outcome would have been better because he’d have been pacifying an irrational cop. Who goes into a simple traffic stop thinking they have to treat it like that?
By creepy I meant that it is kind of threatening. That’s not good.
It is. How long do you think it would take to say - 10 seconds at least? That was my rough guess, reading it (not out loud) as if someone were shouting it phrase by phrase. During that time the person has to stand still, I guess, and not interrupt or else it’ll take longer and something bad might happen.
Yup, there’s your problem. You want the police to say it, so you need to care how they feel about it.
My experience (as a human being, not as a cop) is that the lowest common denominator are not the ones who roll their eyes at training and orientation. It’s pretty much everyone, especially people at the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum.
To the extent they’re true, those kinds of things are the problems that needs to be addressed. Giving the police things to yell as if they were Shooty and Bang-Bang from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wouldn’t help.
Notice how you didn’t answer my question at all?
This is the same thing I discussed with Smapti: you have to pick your battles and choose the areas where you can really make a difference. A proposal that is stupid, complicated, and which would barely make a difference is not worthwhile.
Then you need a better way of improving their training. “Have them yell something fairly long before they approach anyone!” is not much of an improvement.
All true! And if you have a real proposal for improving that screening, that’s a much better idea than giving the police something new to yell at people.
You are a much, much nicer person than I am. I think it’s much more than a third.
Sure, “blame” has a certain amount of semantic freight that gets in the way sometimes. The thing I originally responded to was about how what the guy did was an “explanation” for what the cop did. Potato potato.
If we knock the semantic issues out of the way, we’re still orbiting around the same point. Suboptimal, should have, blame, bucked expectations, explanation, whatever; there’s a standard, and this guy’s actions deviated from the standard, and the result was that the officer acted rashly and the guy got shot. There is a judgment being made, whether we call it a character judgment or not, because that’s what all those words boil down to. Yeah?
What I’m saying is that I think all of it is shit. I genuinely do not care at all to what extent this guy’s behavior contributed to the outcome, because I judge him to have acted like a person might act in a situation like this. I don’t want him to act differently, because I judge his behavior to belong in the bucket of the ways that people might normally act. And I want the cop to be held to that standard: when normal people act the way they might normally act, you have to do your job in that world, and you can’t shoot them and make their blood come out of them. I think the whole dialog about what the guy could have done erodes the chances of what I actually want happening. The change that I want to see, and care enough about to argue about it on the internet, only happens on one side of this dynamic. I don’t care how this guy acted and I do care how the cop acted, as a policy matter. Do you agree with me?
The victim would have been less likely to have been shot had he not moved quickly.
The cop would have been less likely to shoot the victim had he not moved quickly.
If some of you can’t tell the difference between these two statements no wonder you don’t get some others posters points.
…what?
Look at the video again. The victim acted as any normal person would, simply following the cops instructions.
Agreed. The two statements are the same. Perhaps that’s his point.
Miscommunication on who’s part? The professional that pulls people over perhaps a dozen times a day? Of the fellow that is wondering why a police officer is confronting him?
“By creepy I meant that it is kind of threatening. That’s not good.”
OK. I’m not sure I understand your point. I hope we’ll at least agree that it’s not more threatening than any number of things cops say that can make someone anxious from the moment of interaction forward, or … shooting someone (or threatening to shoot someone, which happens more often than you might think, including in situations when the cop has every reason to believe he’s being recorded. (See Ferguson protest videos, particularly of the cop on camera threatening to shoot one or more people in the head.)
“During that time the person has to stand still, I guess, and not interrupt or else it’ll take longer and something bad might happen.”
OK, and the possibility that something ELSE may or might or could or will still go wrong in a given situation is not a basis upon which to say not to bother … not a reason to decide against requiring or employing a given strategy or protocol, whatever it winds up being. This reminds me of the comments on the topic of making it a requirement that police officers wear cameras and have them in their vehicles (a tool that can protect the officer and the person with whom (s)he is interacting, depending on the situation). Inevitably it turns to a needless discussion of “What about when the video doesn’t work?” “What if the cop turns off the camera?” “What if the cop can tamper with the equipment?” The response to that, rightly was (paraphrasing): Er, what is your point? Let’s not bother with a safeguard because it was ultimately unnecessary in X situation or doesn’t work 100% of the time? Shall we do away with seatbelts or airbags? … preflight attendant safety schpiels, because everyone’s heard it a million times and who cares about the dolts who’ve never flown before? … or [insert just about any tool or device or safety procedure and protocol]?
“Yup, there’s your problem. You want the police to say it, so you need to care how they feel about it.”
No, I don’t need to care how they feel about it and I’m not sure why this is coming up. We didn’t need to know whether or how they felt about it when any legal requirement came into existence, e.g., Miranda. They either do or they don’t (with the advent of (cough) standard protocol to record witness questioning, most officers know not to skip or fail to or forget to comply with the law).
“Giving the police things to yell as if they were Shooty and Bang-Bang from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wouldn’t help.”
With this logic, one might conclude you’re supporting rolling back every protocol and best/standard practice and procedure, from all those that are addressed from the moment when a cop is attempting to deal with someone who they perceive poses a threat, or in fact poses a threat, from “Freeze” and “put the [insert item here] down, back away, and get on the ground, and put your hands [wherever the officer decides is best] and [whatever else, e.g., ankles crossed] forward. I can think of any number of situations requiring an affirmative warning from the police. These sorts of things are not only situationally smart but typically procedurally required. There are many, many procedures required of prosecutors and judges too. Whether these people disregard standard or required protocol is another matter. Same goes for any number of professions.
“Notice how you didn’t answer my question at all?”
Which question? I responded to both the hypothetical “And what happens if someone moves before the officer finishes giving the little speech?” as well as “Is it OK for them to fire away at a civilian who hasn’t done anything wrong?” I’m not obligated by law or otherwise to respond to anyone’s comments or questions to their satisfaction.
“A proposal that is stupid, complicated, and which would barely make a difference is not worthwhile.”
I don’t know how someone feels comfortable declaring as though they were psychic “would barely make a difference.” As the sometimes-insipid saying goes, “if it saves one person’s life.” There exist any number of protocols and best/standard practices that were bitched about before and after they were required by law. Unfortunately, most required protocols – and this goes in virtually any industry or area subject to regulation – are instituted because of damages as a result of lawsuits (and/or, in the case of the criminal justice system, overturned convictions), not because it’s the right or correct or smart thing to do.
For instance, police agencies across the country did not sit up and take notice and uniformly change their policies and procedures on treatment of domestic violence until the lawsuit awards started coming in, e.g., Thurman v. City of Torrington, DC, 595 F.Supp. 1521 (1985). Things still hadn’t changed much as of the 1989 movie (that’s, in part, why it was made). Things are by no means where they could or should be, but they are far better than in the day where my mother, for instance, would have her windpipe dislocated or her finger broken and be in an even more vulnerable position were she to involve the police or my father’s commanding officer. I’ve little doubt that she’d have been hurt far worse and die much sooner than 66 had she done what we now accept as what she had a right to do (expect help from law enforcement).
You can rest assured that there were people out there claiming “that’s too complicated” or “that’s stupid”. Indeed, there are people who STILL cannot grasp why certain things should or need to happen (topical case in point, Ray Rice story). SenorB (paraphrasing) “cops are trained to handle appropriately” or “cops will do [x-y-z]”, where such blanket statements are not only ignorant but sadly laughable.
I entirely disagree that my suggestion or something similar (belatedly, you approached this as though my off-the-cuff suggestion wasn’t subject to any discussion or refinement) is “stupid” or “complicated”. If this is too complicated, then someone needs to turn in his/her badge because they aren’t equipped to be a police officer. Cops have resisted and complained about virtually every standard protocol once it became in effect or in fact the law of the land. (For one, Miranda. And even there, as with any number of protocols or required advisements that must be made by cops or, say, judges, it’s not a matter of having to be scripted and robotic as you suggest, so long as the essential elements are satisfied, whether it be an attorney waiver, jury trial waiver, etc. (Even then, on a daily basis I see judges, for instance, who ignore these requirements. Hell, there are courts in which the judge willfully disregars the fact that a clerk has issued a materially defective witness oath, where that is NOT stupid or complicated either. 
That something may or does go wrong does not mean the requirements ought not exist.
This has been a worthwhile discussion but, now, I must go home.