Has anyone else here ever been, er, detained by a bunch of jacked-up cops? I have. I didn’t do nuthin, honest. But that was beside the point. I tried my best to do exactly as told , but they were very hard to understand. Adrenalin does weird things to a person’s voice, and they were all shouting at the same time. I complied as best I could (limp, no resistance), but still got a knee ground into the back of my head and some very rough treatment. My arms were pulled behing me with the intent to hurt. Excessive twisting, face in the dirt, etc.
Anyway, some other cops caught the real bad guy, so mine just jumped into their cars and left. Left me lying on the ground even.
My point is, these guys get worked up. And it isn’t just out fear of for their safety.
So I can well understand how Mr. Diallo may have had trouble knowing exactly what they wanted him to do.
It’s that “Blue Line” that they erect that cost’s them the respect of so many civilians.
I do not hate cops, but each cop has to earn my respect individually.
I could go on about other encounters, but I won’t.
Peace,
mangeorge (Pant, pant)
That’s not quite true. If I recall the write-up of the testimony correctly, the officers testified that Mr. Diallo’s behaviour was suspect: you’d have to look back at the write-ups to see what it was exactly, but they determined from his behaviour he was possibly acting as a look-out for illegal activity. This was more than just the fact he was standing in a high-crime area; I can’t recall the specifics.
When I was seven, my mother had a rather shocking experience. While driving our family car on the military base where we lived (no, I’m not a military brat; my dad was DoD and we were allowed to live on the base), she was pulled over by base security. Wondering what traffic violation she had committed, she was quite surprised when the officer came quickly up to the side and pointed a gun at her and told her to put her hands on the steering wheel, where he could see them. At first, she didn’t comply; she didn’t know what was wrong. Fortunately, she did comply before anything bad happened. She found out that the car matched the description of a vehicle used in a robbery. Her lack of anticipation that she might be involved in such circumstances could have lead to a very unfortunate result.
In the same way, one presumes Mr. Diallo wasn’t expecting to be shot for offering a wallet with identification. Quite likely, he didn’t think the situation was serious. Certainly, that alone shouldn’t have resulted in his death for failure to comply with the orders of the officers, but it did contribute. This takes us back to the important question here: what lead the officers to treat this situation so seriously, and how can the force make certain that it doesn’t escalate so quickly in the future?
[quote]
quote:
Once they start shooting, their assumption is they’re still in danger until he’s dead.
FWIW, Firefly, my firearms training stressed two points:
- The weapon is always loaded, even when it isn’t, and
- One should never point a weapon at someone unless one is prepared (and expecting) to kill that person.
{/quote}
My training was a little different, possibly because I worked in NYC for a NY State law enforcement. We were taught to shoot neither to wound nor to kill, but to stop the threat. We were to stop when the threat was gone,and not assume we were still in danger simply because the perp was still alive. We were also taught to be aware not only of our target, but also what was behind it ( probably far more of an issue in a city than in a suburban or rural area) because in NYS the justification defense can’t be used if you kill someone other than the person causing the threat.
How did I miss this thread?
Firefly asked:
Yes, follow the instructions of the police officer precisely. I assure you the police officer was watching you closely to see what you were doing and probably moved his hand to his gun (he better have or he made a mistake). But remember he asked you to get something so he was expecting you to go digging for it.
With Diallo, this was apparently rather different. The police told him to freeze. He took out his wallet.
This isn’t to say it was his fault, I am simply answering the question on how you avoid this.
Keeves asks:
The answer quite simply is that there really is no such thing. Perhaps in the movies, but not in real life. The chance of a trained police officer hitting his target is only 1/4 (untrained civilians are 1/9!!!). It simply isn’t feasible to also to say we will only shoot in the shoulder or leg. This is simply the reality of a human being using a gun. Now if we can ever get RoboCops things will of course be different, but a human simply is not able to aim a gun with that level of precision in the split-second time required in self defense.
Police fire to end threats. They aren’t supposed to shot with intent to kill or not kill (they are still human though, I am simply stating how things are supposed to be).
Firefly stated:
I find this highly dubious, and to be honest, my condfidence in the Washington Post isn’t very high.
The assumption is that the risk is there until the person is no longer making any threatening action.
Freedom posted:
This is true only in some states. IMO, it is an exceptionally insane law that gets lots of people killed, or opens them up to ridiculous criminal and civil suits. Under the threat of serious violent attack your first thought should be to escape if possible; HOWEVER, this laws states that you MUST try to escape first regardless of the actual feasibility of the course of action.
I urge people to try to put this in the perspective of a possible violent encounter. There is roughly a 50% chance that an armed suspect will attempt to attack police officers, and this stat was unaffected by whether the police had the “drop” on the suspect or not.
Please take the time to read “Stress Fire” by Massad Ayoob. It will really improve your understanding of firearm encounters and in particular what it is like to be a police officer under fire or potential fire.
Like it or not, police are human beings that want to return home to their families at the end of the day just like everybody else. No, this doesn’t give them the right to just blast people, but although trained there are still human. It is this training that keeps the situation from being MUCH worse.
Again, read “Stress Fire” and re-evaluate the situation. I am not saying the officers did a perfect job here, that is obvious an innocent man is dead. But this “disgust” and “disdain” (amongst other words) for the police is unwarranted in light of the real facts of what it is like. Something I assume most of you, or even I, have ever experienced (although being stabbed in the back does pretty much sync up because ultimately it is the life/death struggle that makes the experience and not the weapon, still technically I have never been in a firefight knock on wood).