It’s good we have people like you, hard headed and realistic, not afraid to look at the harsh facts of life. Or make them up, in case there are too few.
That would be superior to charging the police with murder or manslaughter. It’s going to be hard to secure a conviction for an officer who kills in the course of his duty, regardless of how bad he does it. Reasonable doubt and all that.
But perjury seems easier to me. And I’m guessing a lot of good cops can be caught up in that as well. Also prosecutors and judges.
[. . .]
We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.
One fascinating thing I have noticed from the two hardcore cop supporters in this thread is that they often speak of the police as if they are not culpable actors capable of reason, but instead are more akin to a force of nature or a tiger or something instead of a human being, and those who end up killed by them were fools for expecting any different outcome. They aren’t even really defending the police and saying their actions were reasonable, just that anyone who is foolish enough to behave badly when dealing with them was a fool and got the predictable outcome of that.
“If you resist and antagonize the cops you’re going to end up hurt or dead period”
And you know what? I can’t even disagree with their position, anyone who fights with or resists cops are behaving very foolishly in a very dangerous situation. I’m not saying they deserved it or that it is acceptable for cops to behave like they do, just that with knowing how easy it is to end up dead it is very foolish.
I’m starting to think they may not even be defending the cops, just saying that someone who enters a a cage with a man eater tiger with pants made out of steaks is going to come to a predictable end.
That’s certainly part of what I’ve been saying, but I’ve not only been saying about cops, I’ve said it about other self defence situations, where I believe the person killed is responsible for their own death, if they initiated the violence.
I certainly don’t think cops are a force of nature which can’t be controlled - their actions can and should be controlled, and investigated where they’re questionable. I’m also strongly in favour of body cameras.
Only if you think all violence is equal. If I punch a cop in the arm, is he justified in sitting on me until I suffocate? Should cops be held accountable for proportionality of their response? Or is any kind of aggressive action a justification for lethal force?
Body cameras can help in those rare cases when police use deadly force appropriately, as in the Boston terrorism suspect shooting. The police were backing away and the guy kept coming with the knife.
What I object to is the notion that a cop never has to take the slightest risk whatsoever and has liberty to shoot or suffocate or strangle whenever he feels he might get a hangnail. Take the situation where a guy is handcuffed and in leg irons. He isn’t going anywhere. He isn’t going to hurt anyone. There was no need to sit on his back and ignore his pleas to be allowed to breathe. That’s simple sadism. It’s killing for the sake of killing. If you can justify that, you’re not fully human.
It’s not the level of violence already used that’s relevant, it’s the threat of imminent violence.
Apart from that, the police are allowed to use force to restrain someone. If someone insists on continuing to resist until they die, that’s not the police’s fault.
That’s just plain nonsense. Stop pontificating out your ass about things of which you are astoundingly ignorant.
Lethal force is not permitted simply because some is resisting. It is only permitted when objectively (not subjectively) there is *probable cause *for the officer to believe there is a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others. Graham v. Connor 490 U.S. 386 (1989) and Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985).
But I’ll bet you think you can make a case for just about any cop’s behavior being “not questionable,” body cameras or no.
Yep, such as when someone continues to resist.
No, I think there’s a lot of questionable behaviour. Any shooting should be questioned. And they are, and investigations are finding nothing wrong. Body cams will help those investigations.
Not all resistance involves imminent serious bodily harm, you insane clown. Struggling to breathe would be one item that doesn’t. Hell, punching you square in your dumb fucking face would not typically involve a significant threat of serious bodily harm.
It makes perfect sense now! That hand/leg cuffed guy could have bitten someone’s jugular, kicked them in the temple, or headbutted them repeatedly to death. Good thing they handled that miscreant like the poisonous viper he was.
If it helps, I’ve actually found footage of this incident here which shows just how dangerous a man unable to use his arms and legs can be.
Its not a matter of them being a “force of nature” its a matter of meeting the legal line where a police officer can feel threatened or obligated by situation to fire. That line is fairly consistent nationwide. Refusing to drop a weapon, ramming police cars, fighting with police officers, all examples that can result in that line being crossed.
If you point a gun at a police officer, don’t be surprised if he does his best to shoot you first. That should not be a surprise to anyone. If three unarmed guys attack a police officer, don’t be surprised if he starts shooting “unarmed” people (at least in CA 3 to 1 is considered lethal force).
I do not blanket agree cops are always right, the Freddie Grey situation for example, zero excuse for the “Rough ride”, injuries sustained while resisting cuffing I have a little less pity for.
Scenarios like Eric Garner, bigger guys are far more prone to something called positional asphyxia. Cops are aware of this, but at the same time He was not going along quietly either. Positioning, exertion, and pre-existing medical problems all contributed to his death as well as questionable levels of force. If he did not have the medical history he did, he probably would not have had a problem.
Do you know anyone who repeatedly gets into car accidents? And then always claims that it was the other person’s fault? Sure, perhaps this time the other driver pulled out of a blind driveway. And maybe that time, their brakes suddenly failed without warning. But, after a while, one really should conclude that it’s time to take steps to drive more carefully.
Every individual police shooting might or might not be justified. But when you compare the rate at which police shoot civilians in the U.S. and other wealthy democracies, there seem to be two main possibilities:
- Our country has descended into some kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape
- Police use lethal force too often
Personally, I think it’s mostly “2”.
- We are developing a culture of refusing to submit to legal authority and are forcing the issue.
- Policies of not continuing high speed pursuit when danger to the public is too great gives an incentive to run.
- 3 strikes type rules start creating scenarios where someone doing something wrong KNOWS they are looking at 25 years minimum because of prior convictions so they have little to lose by fighting, fleeing, resisting.
- Many of the people killed in these situations (conceded, not all) have significant arrest records. We are not talking about the best, the brightest, and the most functional people with good decision making skills.
There are dozens of aspects to this, its not as simple as (cops bad/minorities victims) or we would not be having this discussion. There are thousands of arrests a day that occur without significant incident by the same officers involved in these incidents. Every cop knows that the minute he fires, justified or not, his universe is going to get turned upside down. There is no “bonus” in this for the cops.
It’s very difficult to talk about this issue beyond speculation and intuition for the simple reason that we do not even keep track of every time the cops kill a guy (much less use deadly force against one).
We should all be able to agree that we should start keeping uniform national or statewide statistics so that we can say, for example, what percentage of these shootings happen at vehicle stops or involve people with two strikes in a three strikes jurisdiction, etc. Then we can really understand whether the kind of speculation that drachillix offers has any basis in reality.
And that’s what you would see if those who hold the power were interested in accountability. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that, or you might end up like Eric Garner.
You’re funnier than Bricker.
For a start, you haven’t answered my question. You claimed that police need to sit on top of a suspect in hand and leg cuffs because they’re still resisting. I asked in what way they could possibly resist that could be harmful to the police.
Why will you not answer that question?
Secondly, no, a suspect who’s “flopping around” on the ground is not going to cause themselves any significant injury. Even if they manage to bang their head against the ground, and it’s a concrete floor, it’s going to be from a very low height.
They will, however, probably be able to turn themselves into a position where they can breathe better. Law enforcement can then see the suspect better so will be able to see for themselves if the suspect is having serious trouble breathing, having a fit, bleeding a lot, etc; you can’t see much of the suspect when you’re sitting on them. Then they call for help or administer some of it themselves; for example, if a suspect passes out due to oxygen deprivation (from the restraint or asthma or whatever) then a police officer can perform mouth-to-mouth without any risk to themselves. You asked what I want cops to do, and that’s my answer.
You’re the one who stated that a suspect handcuffed and legcuffed could injure themselves, so please state how.
Or admit that you’re wrong. If you refuse to answer my very reasonable questions then, to anyone reading this, that’s the same as admitting you’re wrong. Because I know you will keep responding to this thread anyway.
It’s like you think all suspects in leg and handcuffs are Houdinis who can escape at will or Lectors who have secret stashes of pins they can use to get out of the cuffs without the cops noticing.
Another argument for giving a suspect a better chance to live, apart from that just being the right thing to do, is that they could even be useful to the police. They could confess to other crimes once they’ve been convicted of a similar one, helping both the victims and solve rates (I know this happens with major crimes sometimes, not sure about minor ones). They could provide information about where they’re getting their drugs or whatever from. After questioning, a cop could realise that their suspect is actually so-and-so from a more serious crime than the one they were arrested for. All sorts of things.
There’s just nothing to be gained from killing these people when you don’t need to - they’re already cuffed hand and leg. You seem to think that the cops need to kill them, but you really need to give reasoned arguments why because killing a person isn’t just a trivial thing that can be handwaved away.