If it was, police would be justified in shooting everybody on the scene preemptively. That’s the result of letting police decide unilaterally when someone poses an imminent danger and subsequently are justified in defending themselves with lethal force.
No, they wouldn’t, any more than you can go and shoot everyone you see because they might be a danger. It’s ridiculous to suggest that the police should have less right to self defence than anyone else.
Many lynchings were supported by police and de-facto legal. In fact, many southern states even instituted laws that made it easier to get away with lynchings. There is absolutely a direct line from slavery to Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, and modern mistreatment by police (which is often technically illegal in any case, even if it’s sometimes not treated as such).
All of this is totally irrelevant to what I’m saying and to the issue of police mistreatment of black people in general.
This can absolutely be harassment and mistreatment if they are being disproportionately applied to one race. The same goes for issuing fines and court summons – if they are disproportionately issued and applied to individuals of one race it is mistreatment.
I’ve never made this claim.
I’ve never made such claims.
I’ve never made such claims.
I’m not aware that “anyone else” has the right to do what you’re arguing police should have the right to do. If they did:
A shoots B.
A claims that B posed an imminent danger to A.
A maintains that A had no obligation to employ any response other than lethal force, says any suggestion that A should have considered other options is “fucking ridiculous”.
At best, we can later examine the circumstances to try to judge whether or not A’s claim is reasonable. We don’t have to (indeed, could not) prove A is lying, but if we just decide to give A the benefit of the doubt then not guilty, case closed.
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. If you are a clear and present threat to my safety, I am under no moral or legal obligation to chivalrously offer you a fair test of strength; I may defend myself by any means of which I am possessed.
Do human beings have the right to self-defense or not?
If yes, then do police have less of a right to self-defense than other human beings, and by what process have they been divested of this right?
More people carrying firearms to defend themselves from badged thugs is not the solution.
It’s not the issue of self-defense that is key - it’s the right to instantly resort to lethal force.
Of course, if you’re suggesting that ANY circumstance of self-defense (or perceived cases of self-defense) carries the right to instantly resort to lethal force, then you’re even more foolish than I thought, and I’ve already called you an idiot which is a label I reserve for the particularly foolish.
If your mindset is that the police are people you need to be armed to defend yourself from, then you’re part of the problem.
You seem to be the only person in this thread making that claim.
What about the person who said this:
This person says the very IDEA that police can’t use lethal force first is fucking ridiculous. Of course that person had the foresight to specify “imminent danger”, which is understandable, except that “imminent danger” is in the eye of the beholder. Someone reaching for his pocket? He might have a weapon - imminent danger.
Tell that to the people who have been improperly killed by police. Oh, wait a minute, you can’t tell them, 'cause they’re dead.
Which it is. Using lethal force first is a tactical decision that sometimes has to be made depending on circumstances - an officer who has no backup and is being charged by an assailant with potentially murderous intent can’t afford to take the chance that his Taser may misfire or fail to get a connection, a suspect who’s on drugs or mentally ill may not respond to Tasing or pepper spray, unarmed combat may be too risky for the officer to attempt. To say that someone is never allowed to shoot first is to declare that a person being attacked has the obligation to die if their attacker wishes them to.
Who’s eye should it be in? A cop on the scene doesn’t have the luxury of pausing and replaying a video over and over again and Monday-morning quarterbacking about what the suspect had been going through in his life that morning or what the state of affairs with police-civilian relations in the community may be. He has to make a life-or-death decision in a matter of seconds.
If he’s wrong and the person wasn’t reaching for a gun, the consequences for him will be much less severe than if he’s wrong and the person was reaching for a gun.
Why should the person being attacked be obligated to value his attacker’s life more highly than his own?
Of course, if those people had heeded your advice and tried to “defend themselves” against the police, then there wouldn’t be any “improper killings”, because they’d all have been justifiable self-defense.
So because of the worst-case-scenario, the very IDEA of considering other options before going lethal is “fucking ridiculous”?
Not always and not even really all that often.
It’s a rational concern that the consequences for bad decisions, indeed obviously foolish decisions, isn’t severe at all.
My concern is with circumstances where the person is not being attacked, even cases where the police officer is the attacker and later declares that anything other than instant silly-putty compliance constitutes a counter-attack and it is “fucking ridiculous” that the officer need hesitate before resorting to lethal force.
When in imminent danger of death or serious injury, to yourself or someone else, then yes, the idea of stopping to consider whether a lesser use of force would work is silly, and the idea that someone must do so is absurd.
Do you actually know what “imminent” means? It means, quite specifically, that there is no time for the careful reflection you seem to want. When anyone is in imminent danger of death or serious injury (except where their own criminal actions put them in that position) they have the right to use lethal force to defend themselves. Same for defending someone else.
It’s not a matter of who decides that it’s imminent in terms of the basic right, but in law it should be a reasonable person test.
That’s a lovely straw man you have there. Not every instance of non-compliance allows for the use of lethal force. Just, to pick an example, when someone has been told to freeze and instead reaches for a gun.
So… you’re saying what I described never happens, or perhaps is so rare as to be negligible?
The problem is when any hand movement constitutes a “reach” and when a gun is presumed present by default. By that standard, what I facetiously described earlier ( police shooting everybody on the scene preemptively) is perfectly justifiable and you’ve made my straw man real. Thanks.
Apparently it means whatever a police officer decides in the moment.
Yes. A direct line of things getting much, much better.
Only if they are deliberately and intentionally issued because of race. Otherwise it’s simply criminals being punished for their crimes, according to the law. The law, don’t forget, which they voted for, it having been illegal for the last 50 years to prevent people form voting based on race.
Yes you have :-
You are acknowledging that some black people’s behaviour when in contact with the police will increase the chance of a confrontation, but you also say that only the police can and should change the way they behave. You are making black people out to be passive victims rather than active participants, which is both false and insulting.
Now I doubt it’s what you actually mean to say, but as I said, it’s extremely close to white supremacist bullshit like " blacks can’t help being stupid and criminal". You damage your whole argument by saying things like that, and rather than simply saying you’ve made no such claim you should perhaps explain better what you actually mean.