At what point should police use lethal force?

Great Debates
61

My opinion of the unfitness of the opinion of the original OP in the original thread wasn’t bashing his bash of the cop who killed the kid so much as a bash at his opinion that the officer should be required to put his life on the line not to shoot a suicidal kid with what he believed was a 9mm handgun pointed at him.

I am not a cop, but I know a few and have trained in Department of Homeland Security classes with a lot of them. They’re just ordinary people, with ordinary dreams and ambitions, who took up hard and dangerous jobs in order to make a difference. These classes are often taught by police officers who use the words “bad guys” and “good guys” a lot. They don’t want to kill anyone, but in order to protect others and themselves, some of them have had to.

In a situation such as the one that started this whole thing, the officer has to trust his/her judgement and the department policies to make the correct decision… in a fraction of a second. Otherwise it could be them or one of their colleagues laying on the ground dying or dead.

In the toddler scenario described earlier, the officer would consider the child in danger and would take heroic effort to remove the gun from the kid’s possesion. Police officers train with shoot/no shoot training videos and in live demonstrations. I’ve seen some of them, I would have died many times over by choosing wrong, and killed some innocent virtual people for the same reason. These training sessions are not easy.

62

Then why are you arguing against everyone? Last I heard it wasn’t kosher to start threads purely for the purpose of being able to play the devil’s advocate. And if you are going to play devil’s advocate, then at least have the creativity to come up with a beef. Or if it wasn’t your intention to argue against the right to use lethal force in self defense, then stop arguing against everyone who agrees with it and ask for someone to step up and argue against it.

I think that he police officer should be taught how to defend himself and how to read a situation. I don’t think that a police officer ever should use force, just that as it is now, it should be expected that he will and that isn’t a bad thing, thereby we should have methods of dealing with it–which we do. I doubt I am saying anything different from you here, I’m just being much more technical.

It’s no different. Either the officer does or does not feel the need to pull his gun.

Doing some definition checking, I’m guessing you refer to utilitarianism rather than the vernacular utilitarian=dull/unimpressive. I assumed the latter, being unaware of the former. (From Wikipedia: The rule of utility–that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people.)

So in response to that: Law is by definition (mine) a tool to define in succint terms what is and isn’t allowable based on common morality. For instance, “Private Property = Good”, “Litter = Bad.” Saying that a law isn’t valid because it’s based on the common morality that “self-preservation” or “preservation of those we trust more” is a valid reason to kill ignores the entire raison d’etre of law. All property law is based on selfishness, capitalism is based on selfishness, inheritance, the 40 hour work week, etc. all exist because humans want law which allows them to organize their own personal selfishness in a concrete way so that everyone knows when they have to “back off” and yet we can still all be cool about it.

Certainly that is utilitarian, but 100% all law is and is so by definition until such a time as it is proven there is a god and our morality isn’t just a jumbled mess of managing selfishness.

63

Damn… forgot to put in the actual reason I decided to post…

Rubber bullets, Tazers, and other such devices are not called non-lethal in any class I’ve been in. They’re called “less lethal” because these things can kill. It may be nit picky, but the instructors are very adamant about correct terminology.

64

Policies on use of force simply cannot be black-and-white. They can set general limits, but the final decision MUST be left to the officer in the situation.

Think about the examples that Left Hand of Dorkness gives (a child or an emotionally disturbed person with a weapon). So, you adopt a policy that you cannot use lethal force against anyone who is obviously EDP (let’s pretend there is a way to actually know this by looking at a person) or under a certain age. Now an officer suddenly finds himself face to face with such a person, and is about to be shot. He has two choices: 1)allow himself to be shot, or 2)protect his own life by shooting the subject, thus risking being fired or prosecuted. Quite the No Win Scenario, isn’t it?

Of course, many (probably most) officers would rather be shot that shoot a small child (the cut-off age for this would vary widely, depending on a lot of factors). I know that I would. But not everyone is willing to die so readily and I don’t think that it’s reasonable to order a person to do so.

With an EDP, it’s not such a hard choice for most. Again, one would probably feel terrible for having to shoot someone who was unable to comprehend the quality of his or her actions at the time. But that person’s incapacity is not enough for me to want to die rather than hurt them.

I hope that everyone can see why excluding any person who is a deadly threat from a lethal force response simply isn’t going to work.

Less lethal weapons may be the answer in many such situations, but not all. As Martin Hyde accurately shows, they all have limitations (usually effective range).

Also, there is only so much we can carry on duty. I carry a Taser, pepper spray and a baton. My department owns a Sage SL-1 37mm launcher. It’s can be effective at distance, but we only have one and I’m not one of the guys trained to use it (and even if I did, I wouldn’t be walking around with it slung around my neck at all times).

If I’m faced with a person with a deadly weapon, regardless of why he/she is doing this, I’m going to go for my firearm. The Taser has an effective range of at most 25 feet, only works if both probes make solid contact, takes time to reload, and I’ve only got one extra cartridge if the first fails. Pepper spray takes a bit of time to work on a person, and they can still force their eyes open and aim a gun. The baton is obviously too risky, since I have to get within 26" of him to make contact.

65

Sage Rat, if you believe I’m either playing Devil’s Advocate or arguing against everyone, we’re clearly not communicating effectively; I’ll have to bow out of discussion with you, therefore.

Thalion, I agree that no policy can be black and white. I think a more interesting question is the ethical question that officers face: what ought to be their guiding principles in making the decision whether to shoot? Other than that distinction, your post makes a lot of sense to me.

Daniel

66

Well you weren’t until you finally came out pro-killin. (No it was not obvious from your OP.)

But my suggestion still remains, if you want a debate (this being the forum for debating) then you are probably best to specifically request for people who disagree with you to respond. Or possibly to rephrase your question as, as is there isn’t much to really debate.

“What ought to be their guiding principles in making the decision whether to shoot?”
Fear of death.
What they were told in their police schoolbook.
What they have to do for the sake of being able to go home to their families and be able to do so with a clean conscience
Whether the target’s gun nozzle is pointed to within precisely 10[sup]o[/sup] plus or minus of my center of mass…
etc.

Certainly we could all pick one of these and run with it, but that seems a rather unexciting end to the topic.

But indeed, if that’s what you want to discuss and don’t want to wait for any descenting opinions to the core idea, then I will indeed be on my way.

67

Uh, if you shoot the trucker of the run away truck, won’t said truck just end up crashing anyways?

:confused:

68

With the reminder that I’ve conceded it’s not a very good example and asked whether good examples even exist:

The point of the example is that, if the driver is shot, they’ll continue straight and crash off the mountain, hurting nobody but themselves. If they continue steering down the winding mountain roads, they’re far likelier to hit someone else.

But I’m offering this to explain the reasoning behind the example, not to defend it; y’all are right that it’s kind of a lame example, for other reasons.

Daniel

69

Sorry, I posted that before reading that part. That’ll learn me.

:o

70

Yes. The bullet that will be expelled from both of those guns will kill just as effectively.
I will concede that there is a valid ethical issue as to whether an adult should sacrifice his/herself to save/avoid harming a child. Indeed, I think that an adult should do so. But that is not the situation with the toddler. Once the 5-year old has pulled the trigger and shot the cop, the child remains a danger. He could shoot someone else. Heck, he could shoot a 2-year old next. So you have one dead cop, and no resolution of the danger to others.
So the cop takes the shot, kills the 5-year old, and never gets over the nightmares.

Sua

71

Why does the ability to form criminal intent make any difference? A police officer (or a civilian) who is shot by someone too depressed/insane/stupid to form criminal intent is not any less dead than he would otherwise be.

Regards,
Shodan

72

I think the 2 in the list is completely unhelpful, since until telepathy becomes standard issue no-one is ever going to know someone’s intentions directly.
Substituting:
2) There appears to be an imminent danger that the person will use it to unlawfully kill others
seems more practical, but at the same time eliminates the whole argument, so it may be I am imposing my own preferences through language selection.

It seems to me that if a toddler or mentally incapable person has got hold of a real gun, they have the potential to be a real threat, and to really kill people. Whether the toddler deserves to be shot for an action they cannot comprehend is wrong does not override the right of others to be protected from immediately foreseeable harm.

My stance is that if it seems likely that someone is going to suffer a severe injury, then lethal force may be applied to the person who has initiated the situation, regardless of their personal circumstances. If there is no immediate likelihood of a severe injury being inflicted, then there is no need for lethal force and everyone can go home reasonably happy.
The threshold of what consitutes a ‘severe’ enough threat to justify lethal force and the degree of ‘likelihood’ necessary is complication enough without concerning oneself with the intent or lack thereof behind the threat.