Andy, I don’t give a shit about Mr. Blake. He’s a guy with multiple warrants out, for things like criminal sexual assault. I’m just sad the police didn’t shoot better in his case.
I’m also not being paid to write a legal memorandum or journal article about relative arrest rates, the law on when the police may lawfully use deadly force, Tennessee v. Garner, or any of that.
I care about you people here. If you are being yelled at to stop, by armed police officers with their weapons drawn, and you reach into a vehicle, or look like you might be trying to drive away from them, in a post Officer Kyle Dinkheller world, you might get shot. Even if there’s no additional weapon in the car. The way many of you are reacting, this is a surprise to you. Don’t do anything in that kind of situation that leads a cop to lose track of where your hands are.
It will be interesting to learn, and a pity that the city of Kenosha did not reveal before any rioting, what the officers knew and experienced that caused them to point guns at, for one of them to try and Tase, and otherwise attempt to arrest Mr. Blake.
I’m not sure what this is. Certainly it’s not a defense of shooting Blake – if anything, it’s a self-indictment, morally speaking, and an acknowledgement that American police are often murderously brutal for no good reason. We already knew the latter, but thanks for informing us as to the former.
I hear cops yelling something like ‘Drop it" or "Drop the’ Something or other here. I saw a screengrab (that made the Zapruder Film look crisp) that showed Blake with something curved and shiny in his left hand. I had heard it was a knife. Maybe it was his keys? God only knows what the officers reasonably thought Blake had in his hand.
So, let’s go through the decision matrix on this one. 1, Cops know Blake has felony warrants out. Officers then have P.C. to arrest, Blake tries to get in car, fleeing felon both trying to escape and/or may be reaching for a weapon in the vehicle. Depends, does Wisconsin allow deadly force to prevent a guy with felony warrants from escaping? Does Wisconsin require an officer to actually see a weapon before the officer may use deadly force to stop a potentially deadly threat posed by the armed suspect? Especially if there are kids in the getaway car?
Cops don’t know Blake has warrants, but do think he’s currently armed with a knife, and Blake is not complying with their commands to stop and drop whatever. Plus, Blake is heading to a car with children in it. See 1., above. May the officer use deadly force to stop a non complying suspect armed with a knife, approaching a vehicle with children inside?
My guess is Yes to all three, but IANAL, and I’m not a Wisconsin law expert by any means.
The tricky one is 3., no knowledge of warrants, no weapon seen by officers—they’ve just got their guns drawn on Blake for some unknown reason—and they are commanding him to stop. But Blake is trying to get into, again, the driver’s seat of a car with kids in it. Does merely reaching into a vehicle under those circumstances constitute a reasonable apprehension by police officers of an imminent deadly threat? I don’t know. I suspect No, but I also think that this situation is uncomfortably close to the Dinkheller shooting wiki I linked to above, which all of these officers have been trained on. I.E., if the officer lets a noncompliant suspect, resisting arrest, to re-enter their vehicle, that suspect is coming out with a weapon to use on the officer.
Exactly, and just like any dangerous animal, we have to assume that they will not act in a rational fashion, and will kill if given the slightest excuse.
You are absolutely correct that in dealing with police, one has to take into account that they would rather see you dead than be inconvenienced in the slightest.
The problem is, is that we would like to have our streets patrolled by rational actors who put the safety of the community as a priority, rather than wild animals who endanger everyone around them.
There is a side that would like to make reforms to improve these relations, and then there is your side, where you will just make stuff up and blatantly lie in order to protect their violent actions.
A police officer confronts a man who had been threatening people with a knife. The man walks toward her uttering misogynistic gems like “shut your fucking mouth, bitch” and “I’ll kill you, you stupid little bitch” and “I’ll fucking slice your fucking throat.”. The officer tells him to drop the knife at least 25 times while she backs away from him for a full minute. She shoots him once in the chest when he charges at her with the knife. He survives.
So a white guy had to actually attack the cop with a deadly weapon to get shot. The cop tried to defuse the situation without using force, gave him every opportunity to surrender peacefully, and used her weapon only when any reasonable person would conclude she had no other remaining option. Outstanding police work here. This doesn’t seem controversial to me.
Conversely, a black man being shot in the back while getting into his car, with no weapon in evidence, does seem controversial to me.
I think (hope) that the controversy is that everyone should be given as much leeway as this guy was.
In this same thread, just a few posts up, we have someone justifying shooting a guy in the back because they claimed to think they saw something clank to the ground. And in this situation, we have a guy that was posing a real threat to others, and to this cop, and was only shot, once, as a last resort.
She didn’t even empty her gun, as I am assured is the standard way to deal with a threat.
Yeah, unless this is another situation where I’ve really misread a poster (see Hilarity N. Suze), Monocracy is offering up this contrasting situation. The controversy, in this case, is the kid gloves this guy was treated with, even though he was advancing on the police officer with a knife.
Thanks for the clarification; I appreciate the effort.
We know there are problems with how police treat people differently based on the color of their skin; that’s large part of the reason this thread exists. I’m not finding Monocracy’s post particularly on-point or helpful, nor am I seeing any controversy in that encounter between law enforcement and a civilian.
WOW. She showed incredible restraint. I’m not a cop, but would have shot that asshole much sooner. Verbal threats, from a person that is approaching you with a knife. And you’re having to back away, even circling the police car twice. That’s a really, really dangerous situation.
