This seems to be a key question in many ongoing police action debates, so I thought I would introduce it here.
I asked this in a Pit thread of only one particular person; the reply I got was “resisting arrest.” What say you? Where IS and SHOULD that line be?
Should it be any different than the “self defense” that you and I might employ if the need ever arose?
I’ll take ‘ceasing to care about his life’ as meaning ‘willing to use lethal force against the suspect’…I assume that’s what you mean. I think that the point where police are justified in killing a suspect is when either they feel their own lives or the lives of innocent civilians are seriously threatened. Nothing short of that justifies the use of lethal force.
Resisting arrest justifies the use of non-lethal force to subdue and apprehend the suspect, not the use of lethal force unless, again, either the police officers or innocent civilians lives are seriously threatened…and, in that case, I think the police need to be able to justify that use of force.
You and I are not sworn to serve and protect. Presumably a police officer should be ready to accept a greater degree of personal risk in the interest of protecting all citizens, including suspects.
At what point should they start caring about a suspect’s life? They’re cops, not guidance counselors. They respond to criminal complaints.
How many people do you walk past and not give a flying fuck about? If one of them tried to kill you, would you let them? Would it make a difference if you were at work?
If he poses a deadly threat.
This is misleading. Suspects are still people, and as such deserve to not be unduly subjected to harm. Also, police respond to all kinds of complaints, not just criminal ones; for instance, what crime has been committed by someone who “looks suspicious”?
I’d say they start caring about the lives of the civilians they have sworn to protect at the point they graduate the academy / finish their training and start “patrolling” and protecting the community.
As to when lethal force is justified - I’d say at the point when there is no other option but lethal force to protect another civilian from serious harm / death or a fellow officer from death.
I don’t think lethal force is justified to stop another officer from receiving a “beating” however - I think that an officer putting himself into harm’s way is part of the job description.
I don’t know if this is a whoosh or if you’re really confused about the topic.
We’re discussing lives in the literal sense not in the metaphorical sense that means the quality of a person’s life. You may walk past hundreds of people every day and not give a flying fuck about them. But that doesn’t mean you can shoot them.
My personal opinion is we need to rethink what we mean by “reasonable” when we say there’s a reasonable belief that a person is threatening the life of the police officer or some third party. It seems to me there have been cases where a reasonable belief is defined as “I could imagine a possible scenario in which this person might have harmed me or somebody else”. By that loose a standard, you can justify shooting pretty much anyone in self-defense in they’re in your vicinity.
By the nature of the work, a peace or law enforcement officer does accept a (much) greater degree of personal risk. This doesn’t mean that a police officer should be expected to accept assault, battery, or physical injury as just a consequence of their employment however; in fact, an officer’s job should be protection of himself or herself from harm such that they can continue to be effective at protecting the public and enforcing the law, and they should use necessary and prudent force to ensure their own self-preservation and effectiveness when confronted by an aggressive perpetrator. A severely injured or dead police officer isn’t serving anyone, and an officer that allows himself to be crippled or injured to the point of having to take leave has gone from being a public servant to a public burden.
As for when an officer should be willing to use lethal force, all major law enforcement agencies have very explicit guidelines (often set by state guidelines or training standards like California’s POST) which dictate the applicability and progression of use of force through lethal action. And as much as some people here and elsewhere may not want to believe or accept it, there are people out there in the wide world who have no care or restraint in harming others and who do not deserve the chance, once they have demonstrated aggressive intent and an unwillingness to back down, to attack an officer or someone else under some presumed hope that the attack will not be lethal or seriously injurious.
If you don’t understand this it is because you have never met this kind of person and live in some protected lifestyle where you don’t have to worry about having a knife shoved in the back of your head or being shot by some kid trying to prove how tough he is. There are, of course, bad police officers who take this as an excuse to behaving in a thuggish fashion, but the vast majority of police are hardworking people who often take an incredible amount of aggression and abuse from the dregs of society with whom they have to address on a regular basis without batting an eyelash or responding in kind as most of us would do.
Stranger
I’m in law enforcement and I’ll give you my views on the recent incidents.
Michael Brown- It depends. If Officer Wilson is telling the truth, then yes, he was justified, even if at one point Brown was fleeing at one point. If a suspect attempts to get your weapon, s–t just got real. However, there is a lot of conflicting evidence. I thought this would go to trial because of the public uproar regardless of the evidence, however, after reading the testimonies, I have no idea, how this case didn’t make the bench mark of probable cause. Cross examination and challenging of the evidence by both sides would have been very important in this case.
Eric Garner- Yes this guy was resisting, but not aggressively. I forget the exact name for that degree of resistance and it doesn’t justify deadly force. Also, there were several officers around. More than enough to restrain the man for handcuffs. My department is trained in using a similar choke hold that is going for the pressure points on the sides of the neck that restricts blood flow to the brain but not breathing. But that is considered deadly force. I can see why the officer likely disregarded Mr. Garner’s statements saying he couldn’t breath. If you can talk you can breath. However, 1) this man was not acting aggressively nor was there any reason (that I can see) that this guy would be considered a threat, 2) the officer used deadly force, which wasn’t justified and 3) that is not a hold that is allowed in NYPD apparently and going against protocol and training may be justified in a deadly force situation, but shouldn’t be in this. I’m very surprised that this officer is not arrested.
New Incident in Phoenix- This case is still new and not a lot is out on it but going on what is out, I feel the officer was justified. The officer was responding to a reported drug deal, the suspect fled and was pursued by the officer. When the officer subdued the man, the man reached into his pocket however, the man was apparently only attempting to access a pill bottle… Now here, it seems that the officer could only partially feel what was in the pocket and thought it was the handle of the pistol, which in a fight and in the heat of the moment, I find this believable. The officer instructed the man to keep his hands in his pocket and he refused leading the officer to shoot him. Of course, all this is preliminary and more is yet to come so we will see.
What the hell sort of question is that?! At absolutely no point is anyone ever justified in stopping caring about about whether another person dies as a result of their action!!! :mad::mad::mad: There may, sometimes, in very extreme circumstances, come a point when deadly force absolutely cannot be avoided, perhaps if even more lives would be put seriously at risk without it, but anyone who expects to not be considered a psychopathic murderer had damned well better still be caring about their victim’s, and even be feeling very, very bad about being a killer, however much they may have been forced into that position by circumstances.
Well, Officer Wilson, from what I understand of his interview, has said that he doesn’t regret anything about what he did that night. And as I said in my OP, someone on this board has already given a concrete answer.
So…
Part of the problem with that statement is the concept of “non-lethal force”. A more accurate way of phrasing that is less lethal force, because there is no method I am aware of for restraining/subduing/controlling a resisting and/or violent human that doesn’t have at least a potential to cause death.
Taser? Can cause a heart attack followed by death, especially in people with heart problems.
Rubber bullets? Can cause death at close range and/or if they hit just the right spot.
Pepper spray/tear gas? Can cause death in people with asthma or other lung problems.
Unarmed holds? See Eric Garner
Nightstick? Can cause a fatal head injury.
There is no way to reliably control an out of control human being that is 100% safe.
A lot of people frame regret in a way that seems silly to you and me. They think it means “Was there anything wrong with what I did?” rather than “Is there anything about the situation I would have preferred not to have happened?” To me, it seems they mix up regret and remorse.
This +1. The best guidlelines/police policy in the world is never going to reduce the number of people killed by the police to zero.
Case in point - Eric Garner. I have applied the same kind of sleeper hold used to subdue Garner scores if not hundreds of times. 100% of those who lost consciousness from it recoved in thirty seconds or less with no after-effects. In the whole history of competitive judo ranging back more than a hundred years, there has never been a documented fatality from a judo choke hold. Yet they applied that same hold to Garner, and he died. Why? Because he was not a relatively young, fit competitor - he was grossly obese, and suffered from heart disease, asthma, diabetes and breathing problems. I see no indication that the police stopped caring if he lived or died - they used methods that 99.99+% of the time have resulted in a life-sparing outcome. But that was the 00.01 time.
Regards,
Shodan
You are completely wrong on that. A “beating”, as you put it, is potentially lethal.
Would you agree that an officer is justified in using lesser levels of violence than shooting, to stop an officer from receiving a beating? I am thinking about a nightstick, Taser or sleeper hold.
What if the suspect dies as a result? Is that justified?
Regards,
Shodan
In terms of when the cops just flat out quit giving a shit whether they kill the guy or not, I think that Rubicon gets crossed when the suspect/perp/whatever is a clear and present danger to the police or bystanders. And, AFAIK, the rules of engagement regarding the use of lethal force reflect that.
But in Garner’s case, there was no intent to kill from what I can tell. The cop jumped the gun on the chokehold- I do agree that it was unwarranted at the time that it was applied, but that doesn’t equate to a murder, just a really unfortunate outcome.
Would things have been any different if when they’d tried to put his arm behind him to cuff him, his brachial artery tore and he bled out internally? Just as dead, just as unintentional.