Um, the issue is not whether the toddler intends to present a lethal threat; the issue is whether the toddler intends to pull the trigger. A very different issue. IMO, a police officer is not required to subject him/herself to the potential of death just because the person creating the risk doesn’t know that he/she is creating the risk. The police officer will be just as dead.
Sua
Certainly this goes beyond what I stated, but again I was saying that the right exists so that we can pardon officers. If a known psychotic-murder has a woman at gun-point and there is perceived to be no time to get a sharp-shooter in to make a precision, non-lethal shot and the only way to save the woman (without hitting her) is to draw/aim center mass; then it is a question of whether you can fault the officer for his decision.
In a case between this and one where it is a runaway truck and the policeman is not in personal danger, while we might not expect nor agree with his move to shoot at the driver; that directly equates to the court hearing being less likely to find the officer as having been in a position to start shooting–probably further dependent on whether the shot had actually spared lives or not. But so it goes.
The right to use lethal force was granted, again, to allow us a way to officially forgive officers for having had to make a hard choice, based on what will always be spur-of-the-moment gut-reaction for what needs to happen. When possible, certainly a slow and by-the-book/using previously tested and proved methods approach to a situation is the preferred course, and all of these will have the safety of all parties held as the most important objective. But given the job there’s no reason to expect that ability at all times, and expecting of your officers a minimum of the basic intellect and morals to operate effectively and honestly as an autonomous protector of the peace to me seems a good thing, and most probably quite unfair to expect out of any individual.
This seems to me to be the crux of the disagreement. I’m not sure why you had the “um” in there–I certainly recognize that this is one view, but surely you recognize that a lot of folks disagree that intent is irrelevant.
The Denver PD seems to disagree that intention is irrelevant:
Of course, later on they say that an officer may use deadly force:
The first part is from department documents; the second quote is from state regulations. I’m not finding a place where they elaborate on what it means to balance awareness of the possibilites of mental impairment with the facts of the incident.
Daniel
I did not say that intent was irrelevant. I said that you are focusing on the wrong intent. With your toddler hypothetical, you seem to be arguing - or at least claiming it is borderline - that a police officer should allow the toddler to pull the trigger and potentially kill the cop (or someone else) because the toddler cannot understand that pulling the trigger could result in someone else’s death.
And that is absurd. Would you be willing to die because the person who’s killing you is unaware of the consequences of his/her’s actions? Of course not
And the Denver PD’s policy does not support your position. Instead, it points out the truism that intent to commit an act that may cause another’s death needs to be judged in the context of the person whose intent is being considered. That’s pretty obvious.
Sua
I wasn’t pointing this out to create a confrontation or to accuse you in particular. In all actuality, my intent was just a caution that the discussion could go off into left field if this kind of thing dominated the discussion. I didn’t even have you specifically in mind. But after reading your statement, I re-read the thread.
To wit:
Slippery Slope Danger Indicator:
In my experience, any time the phrase “where to draw the line” is used, it is an indicator that the discussion is heading toward the greasy inclined plane. And really, that is the whole nature of the question - where do you draw the line on lethal force by police? I think it’s a valid question that can be discussed reasonably, but not if you expect a black and white answer.
Straw Man Scenarios
Umm… it’s helpful to use hypotheticals even though you normally shy away from them. But this is an exception?
Has this ever happened? Got a news story with details on the actual situation? I’m assuming this is supposed to be a “helpful” hypothetical situation.
Another hypothetical or do you have a cite of a specific situation?
If that is not a straw man I don’t know what is. At this point, folks, we have descended well beyond the realm of the hypothetical (but plausible) into total science fiction. I can’t think of a single plausible (however unlikely) reason why a police officer would consider shooting the driver of a runaway truck to even be an option for protecting the public.
If that’s the case, how about citing some actual borderline issues for discussion?
A hypothetical situation used to illustrate a point can be a helpful tool. A hypothetical situation used for the purpose of raising a question is precisely a straw man. Throughout the thread, you haven’t discussed a single, specific, actual situation.
My point is that all of the factors that you are hoping to discuss using hypothetical scenarios have to be accounted for in the real world in real time by real human beings. If I missed the point of your post, I humbly apologise, but the question seemed pretty clear to me, particularly having read the Pit thread about the Florida teenager. If my post was unclear, I hope this provided some insight.
I would look forward to hearing from some of our Law Enforcement dopers on what kind of training and policy is given on the use of lethal force.
(Disclaimer: This post took 45 minutes to write while dealing with a toddler who is demanding my attention - I apologise for anything that seems disjointed or improperly edited. My girl is still demanding my attention so in lieu of proofreading this, I am going to give in to her wishes and go play fire truck.)
NO situation is equivalent to ANY other situation. Every scenario you can make up here, could have the slightest tweak and become an entirely different one. Things happen IRL in split seconds. Any number of external factors could cause completely different outcomes.
[slight hijack] I think you might enjoy/get a lot out of your local “Citizen Police Academy.” My husband and I took ours a couple of years ago and it was incredibly fascinating and informative. I have no idea if the one offered by your community is similar in any way to the one we participated in, but ours took place over several weeks (one evening a week), and covered things like CSI, hand gun use (we even went to the police firing range and did some target shooting), SWAT, Dispatch & Communications, K-9 demonstrations, a ride-along, etc. One of the exercises they had us do would fit right in with your question. They had this machine that projected a scene on a screen. Connected to it somehow was a fake gun with laser. We had to watch the scene unfold and decide if and when it became necessary to shoot at anyone, and if we did, the machine immediately stopped the action, showed you where your shot hit, and then they played out the rest of the scenario and you found out whether or not you took appropriate and timely action. Some scenes were quite tricky and it was a fun and fascinating exercise.
Anyway, apparently Asheville, NC does have a Citizen Police Academy, as mentioned on their website here.
I poked around on the site, but couldn’t find anything else, so if you’re interested, you’ll probably have to go the old-fashioned route and pick up the phone and call them. [/hijack]
That’s because they are not telling the officers to balance anything. They are not giving permission to kill.
A legal right is not, as I have said elsewhere, a guarantee to be able to do something nor is it recommending that action. It simply means that if you do, do it no one can fault you for it.
If you have the right to cook peas, that does not mean that I want you to cook peas, hope you will cook peas, nor that I will even allow you to own any of the necessary tools (let alone the peas themselves!) to accomplish the act. It simply means that if by some miracle you are still able to cook a bunch of peas, I can’t penalise you for it.
If you have the right to kill in defense, that does not mean that I want you to kill in defense, hope that you will kill in defense, nor that I will even allow you to own any of the necessary tools to kill in defense. It simply means that if by some misfortune you end up killing in defense, I can’t penalise you for it.
I don’t think the “shoot the truck driver” hypothetical is a very good one. The reality is that it doesn’t reflect any real world situation. How can a cop be in a position to get off a killing shot on a truck driver as he zooms past at 50 miles an hour with no brakes, KNOWING that the truck’s brakes are out, KNOWING that if the driver dies the truck will drive harmlessly over the cliff, KNOWING that if the driver doesn’t die there’s a very good likelyhood that someone else is going to die, KNOWING that there’s no chance the driver can regain control over the vehicle? Ethically, the cop can’t shoot the truck driver because there’s almost no way the cop can know the answer to those questions, and there’s no way the cop can put himself in the position to pull the trigger anyway.
On the other hand, a cop encountering some random guy waving a gun around happens every day. Is the guy drunk, angry, violent, mentally deranged, fleeing a crime, or what? Is he pointing the gun at people, has he fired shots already, are there already dead bodies? Does he listen to orders to drop the gun, or does he ignore them for unknown reasons? Are there bystanders, is the cop under cover, does the perp have a hostage? What’s behind the perp? Is he standing in front of a group of nuns and orphans and fluffy ducks, or is he standing in front of a concrete wall? Does the cop have backup, does he have weapons other than his pistol, can he use those weapons effectively? These are the kinds of decisions a cop really has to make.
And all this comes down to a few seconds or less of decision making. And the answer is that if the cop reasonably believes the guy with the gun is a deadly threat to the cop or bystanders, the cop can and should use deadly force against him.
I don’t have a good answer either. I’m not sure a blanket policy for all situations is possible, although police departments have to have one. How’s that for a Catch 22.
I do think that the presumption should be that if a gun, or an exact copy of a gun, is actually pointed at you lethal force is acceptable and the burden of proof should be on those claiming that it isn’t acceptable.
I’ll cop to that (although GWVet, it’s not a straw man: please look that fallacy up, because it appears you have a misunderstanding of its meaning). Maybe, then, I need to back up and ask the underlying question:
ARE there cases in which police confront a person who, without intending to pose a risk of deadly force to others, do so, and in which if the police do not act with their own deadly force, the person’s risk of death to others substantially increases?
I don’t know. If these cases never exist, then the ethical question is moot. If they do exist, though, then it’s an important ethical question.
That may be obvious, but I don’t even know what you mean by this. Would you mind clarifying?
If I understand you correctly, a police officer might be faced with two situations:
Daniel
Just to get rid of all the hypotheticals and just give the straight answer:
At what point should police use lethal force?
At no point should they. It is understood however that they may have to for legitimate reasons to protect innocents and/or greater loss of life, having perceived no other options to do so in the time available.
I think the question you want to ask is, “At what point should we forgive police for having used lethal force?”
To which my personal answer is that they should be forgiven any time a court determines, based on evidence, that they had sufficient cause to believe in, and insufficient time to react better to, a threat of loss of life of innocents and/or a larger number of people.
Given that this is the current system, I have no beef. So what beef do you have with it?
I addressed this in the OP, in hopes that people wouldn’t say stuff like this. However, I disagree with you when you say that at no point should the police use lethal force. I believe that there are some cases when they should.
That denotes a utilitarian approach, I think, not an approach that the courts recognize. It may be that you phrased it poorly.
Daniel
If he has equal fear for his own life and the lives of those around him then yes. Whether his equal fear is accurate is something that can only be determined by finding witnesses of the incident and their reading of the body-language of the person who was shot. In the end, it hinges on how well the officer is able to read a dangerous situation–and given that it is his profession and trade to be able to read dangerous situations, I am generally going to assume that if he shot a five year old boy it had to do more with him having a genuine fear of dying than not being able to be arsed to placate the child.
I don’t believe it’s possible to devise rigorous rules that govern when lethal force can be used—the potential situations an officer can face are too varied. Attempts to come up with simple criteria, such as “imminent risk of bodily harm,” are impossibly vague, because the risk of situations can’t be quantified.
An officer driving his car on the freeway is in imminent risk of bodily harm, because there’s a probability that he could be in a crash at any moment (traffic accidents kill more officers then shootings). An officer raiding a meth lab is also in imminent risk of bodily harm. The difference between the two is the degree of risk, not the presence or absence of it. Any risk-based guideline is necessarily subjective.
Because risk is a continuum, I think it’s wrong to rely on absolute statements when analyzing any particular type of case. In the case of an officer being threatened with something that resembles a weapon, many people have made statements to the effect that lethal force is justified unless there’s certainty that the weapon is harmless. Should officers be allowed to shoot down theater actors who point prop guns at the audience? There’s no way to be certain that it isn’t deadly—actors have been killed by supposedly empty guns. This is obviously a ridiculous example, but that’s the point: it’s a ridiculous standard. Even people who claim that certainty is the correct standard to use are probably really using a more nuanced standard that makes room for minimal levels of risk.
When looking at certain types of situations, I think the degree of risk needs to be analyzed at all levels. Suicide by cop seems an appropriate situation to talk about, for some reason. 
Many people have stated that a person who is suicidal is mentally unstable, and more likely to harm the officer. I disagree with this statement. Yes, someone committing suicide by cop is mentally unstable. But I don’t think it follows that the person is homicidal—in fact, in the Florida case, the victim was obviously not homicidal. What’s the probability that the average person who commits suicide-by-cop is homicidal (excluding cases where it’s already known they’ve killed someone)? I don’t know, but I think it’s an important statistic.
People have also been using absolute standards to judge the utility of less-then-lethal weapons. Again, I think that this is inappropriate. Yes, there are people who will be capable of returning deadly fire after being hit with a bean bag or pepper ball. But that’s not the case with all people, and I’d be surprised if it’s the case with the majority of people. What the probability that a person could effectively return fire after being hit with a beanbag? I don’t know, but I think it’s an important statistic.
In order for an officer’s death to be the outcome of a suicide-by-cop “man points weapon at cop” incident, there are many different probabilities that come in to play. I think some of the more significant ones are: the probability that the person is using a real gun, the probability that the person has homicidal intent, the probability that less-then-lethal weapons will fail to sufficiently incapacitate the person, and the probability that the person will hit the cop with his return fire before he himself is killed by the lethal weapons of the officers present.
As I’ve said, I don’t know what those numbers are–if anyone has some hard, impartial stats I’d be very interested in hearing them. I’m inclined to think that they’re actually fairly low. I don’t think that most suicidal people are homicidal. I think less-then-lethal weapons will incapacitate most people. I think that shooting someone with a gun is a tougher skill then most people think, and not necessarily one that a mentally distraught person will be good at. The probability that the gun is real is going to vary greatly from incident to incident, and is one that the police will have the least confidence in. But it’s one that certain events can increase their confidence in (being told by a relative that the gun is fake would increase it a little, being told by an independent observer that the gun is fake should increase it a lot).
Given those beliefs, the probability that an officer would die in a suicide-by-cop incident is actually fairly low: taking the probability of the weapon being real as 90% and the rest to be 40%, the probability that officer dies is about %6. It’s a crude calculation, but it demonstrates how the outcome of a sequence of events can be far lower then the probability of any single event.
Given a hundred such incidents, there will probably be at least a hundred deaths (the suicidal person, and any officers that also die in the incidents) if the officers must shoot the suspect as soon as he points the gun. If the default behavior is to use a less-then-lethal weapon, there will probably be at least six deaths, although more of the total deaths will be cops.
Is this a fair trade-off? I think so. If you think that sounds callous, and that no probability of officer death is acceptable, consider that we send officers into dangerous situations all the time to accomplish goals far less noble then minimizing the loss of human life. If this sounds like cowardly Monday-morning quarterbacking to you, then that genuinely frightens me: The actions of our law enforcement officers, and the policies that shape them, must ALWAYS be open for debate and discussion. They are our servants, and we don’t want to let that tail start to wag us.
In my case I am stating explicitly that it is ok to use deadly force against a mentally retarded person so long as you follow the laws regarding deadly force. Unfortuantely, that’s only a general rule of thumb for me to follow as I have to examine each situation on its own merits to render a decision. As Oliver W. Holmes wrote, “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.” I suppose I could think to myself that Bob was having a bad day and that I should just talk to him but that might be a bit much to ask if he’s advancing on me with a knife.
I don’t really appreciate the sentiment implied by the words, “… to go ahead and blow away a mentally retarded person.” I don’t like it because it implies that I don’t take these things seriously or, worse yet, that I don’t consider it to be a terrible thing. Rest assured I do not take my statements so lightly and I would feel very bad about taking any human life regardless of the reason why.
Marc
All you said in the OP was “Where’s the line where it’s bad?” which as said isn’t a fair question as we are talking about something that is reactionary not premeditated.
And then you ask whether officers should be less-encouraged to shoot minors or mentally-handicapped persons, which again isn’t valid as they are never encouraged to kill anyone.
Then make an argument for it. Personally, I know of no case where any individual should be encouraged to choose to kill.
I’m guessing that you’re misunderstanding the point of the trial. It is a reverse trial–one where you are trying to prove innocence not guilt. We already know the officer killed the person in question, the question is whether he did so “to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force.” After that it’s a trial, just the same as any trial. You have evidence, lawyers, witnesses, a judge and jury.* But as said, the goal isn’t to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or anything. The goal is to prove that the officer acted " to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force." If he did so, then he is Not Guilty.
“To defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force” is not a recommendation nor mandate, it is a measure by which a police officer will or will not be sent to jail for having excercised lethal force. And as said, I am fine with that as a measure–so why aren’t you?
I know what a straw man is.
Just because it hasn’t been attacked yet doesn’t mean that it ain’t made of straw.
In which he refers to his own hypothetical as a straw man in need of dismantling.
:mad: I wish you’d read the OP before writing this. I didn’t actually say what you put in quotes in the OP. What I said was, “I’d offer a thesis statement, but I don’t have a good one. This is one of those subjects on which I’m very conflicted.” Asking me what my beef is with the system is actually kind of irritating, given that I stated up-front that I don’t have a beef with it.
In the case in Florida, I believe the officers should have shot the boy, tragic as that was. In the example of a bank-robber cornered with a waving gun, I believe they should shoot the bank robber. Whenever the police reasonably believe that:
then I believe that the police should use deadly force.
What I’m not sure about are cases in which 2 is not true, in which a person does not intend to kill others but may end up doing so anyways.
Not at all: I’m crystal clear on that. Are you clear on what I mean when I describe that as a utilitarian argument?
On preview: could someone else maybe try to address GWVet’s point? As near as I can tell, he’s simply using the term wrong: I have no idea how or even what he’s reading into my words at this point.
Daniel
He wasn’t referring to his own hypothetical as a strawman, he was refering to the argument that his hypothetical was equivalent to the Florida case as a strawman.
:smack: Ah, of course. I see how he was misreading me. GWVet, refer to the last line from Aanamika’s quote in post 11 to see what I was calling a straw man. She was saying that I was wrong to claim the toddler example was the same as the suicidal-teen example, more or less. I wasn’t making that claim. She was knocking down an argument that nobody was making. That’s what a straw man is.
Thanks for clarifying that for me, Metacom!
Daniel