And also because he has arms. Two of them, one attached to each shoulder.
This is incorrect. The standard for guilt is not “100% certainty”. It’s “beyond reasonable doubt”. These are not the same at all.
In addition, there is frequently some uncertainty about a number of things, which cumulatively determine the likelihood of guilt.
[As an example of both of these, consider OJ Simpson. He beat the rap based on his defense scenario involving multiple very-weak-but-theoretically-possible explanations of all sorts of evidence against him. If you are being generous to OJ and up the odds of each one of those from “extremely unlikely” to “quite possible”, then you get the verdict that he got.]
In that case, I will continue to do my utmost not to be black.
BobLibDem - I’m late to this thread but I’ve got to hand to you. You have single-handedly managed to encompass virtually all of the ignorance about the reality of police use of force in a few scant posts. You are woefully mis-informed about the way things work in the real world.
You are pretty cavalier with other peoples’ safety. I have an idea. How about we put one of your loved ones in danger from a knife-wielding assailant. As in: he is walking aggressively toward them and, despite your telling him stop, only gets closer and is now within 15’ of them. We will then give you a club, some pepper spray, a Tazer and a gun. Are your really saying that you will try the pepper first to see if that works? And then the club? And then the tazer? And then the gun? After all, this is what you the cops should do - “exhaust non-lethal alternatives” .
BTW, my experience with the real world includes 25+ years as a cop and having three friends who shot and killed suspects -one armed with a gun that mis-fired repeatedly, one armed with a knife and one not armed at all, despite many indications that he had a gun. None tried anything other than verbal commands before firing . All three were cleared of any wrongdoing and rightly so. Oh, I was also a homicide detective and handled officer involved shootings. I am currently a use-of-force instructor at a police training facility and the ignorance of people like you and the talking heads in the media never ceases to amaze me.
I suggest you go to www.forcescience.org and do some reading. Perhaps you may gain some insight into the reality of violent encounters.
See? You can tell when people aren’t using murder in any technical sense.
You know what it’s like? It’s like when people say Obama/Democrats want to take their guns and sodas away from them. They don’t really mean he’s going to personally take it out of their hands. No Democrats were convicted of stealing two liter bottles of Fanta.
Anybody listening, god help them, knows that it’s a waste of everyone’s time to say “he’s not going to literally take them from you.” The point, whether it’s a stupid one or whether the people making it are stupid people or not, doesn’t rely on the hypertechnical precision of the language used. No, the unjustified killings probably aren’t really murders. Maybe it’s stupid to say murdering instead of shooting until dead. Either way, the thing that people are upset about is unjustified killings, and you knew that all along. So what’s all this about Wikipedia cites for criminal convictions doing for anyone?
I went to that website. I think it’s great that there are people out there trying to apply scientific methods to police tactics. I think we need way more of that. Too much policing is done based on custom and instinct instead of evidence and science.
I am, however, troubled by their claiming that the following facts represent a justified shooting:
The point of the story was that people can get shot in the back and this doesn’t mean the shooting was unjustified, and that point is well-taken. But I am troubled by their implication that seeing a “glint of a shiny object” in the hands of someone fleeing a non-violent theft justifies lethal force. It does not. Maybe this is just unclear writing and what actually happened in that scenario was that the officer erroneously thought he saw a gun; hopefully he did not just conclude that the “glint of a shiny object” might be a gun. That would take this shooting into close-call territory instead of obviously unjustified territory.
Anyway, I don’t just write this to be pedantic. I think it goes to the core of one of the issues here, which is how much risk we should expect officers to take. If waiting the extra half-second to confirm that a shiny object is a gun saves 10 suspects from being unjustifiably shot but results in 1 police officer getting shot, then I think it is unreasonable not to wait. I suspect many would disagree, and would prefer that those 10 potential criminals get shot than to have one police officer take a bullet. I think that disagreement is important to explore.
I thought the first response is to hide in the car and call for help.
Regards,
Shodan
Why do you find that course of action unreasonable?
I might suggest that your experience has left you with a bias on the issue. Yes, I’d give the guy a blast of pepper spray and if that didn’t work, use the taser.
What seems to me to be the case is that cops know that they will virtually never be charged when using deadly force and because of this, it has become their first and only option. Somehow there needs to be a true impartial hearing (i.e., NOT police) on each and every time a cop fires his gun.
Example -
Burglary-in-progress call. Homeowners return to find their house being ransacked. A television and stereo are stacked in front of the sliding glass doors and a suspect is seen running out of the rear of the home. As your partner interviews the victims, you head out the back door. You catch a glimpse of a suspect jumping a fence and call out the foot pursuit to alert other responding units. "Police, stop!‘’ While running, the suspect turns in your direction. You see the glint of a shiny object in his hand. You fire and he goes down. You make your approach and see the object the suspect was pointing toward you is a screw driver. The subject, who survives, has been hit in the back by your shot.
You’re pursuing someone who has just fled from the scene of a burglary. The example doesn’t state that you had lost contact with the suspected burglar. That’s the same guy you’ve been following. You identify yourself as a police officer. The suspect turns and you see something in the suspects hand. It appears to be metallic.
Do you draw your weapon?
If you have decided to draw your weapon, how many seconds do you wait before deciding that it must be a firearm? Do you wait for the first muzzle flash before you return fire? Too late, you’re dying. Or dead.
What’s to stop an officer from saying he saw a glint thereby justifying EVERY shooting?
That’s a tough call.
At some point I’m sure we would disagree, because - as discussed earlier in this thread - I put a lot less value on the lives of criminals than a lot of other people here do. But there has to be a limit somewhere. You can’t have cops just shooting at people because you never know if there might be some slight possibility that the guy is a danger.
But what’s your position? Suppose it’s not 10 to 1. Suppose it’s 1 to 1. 2 to 1? Do you have a line?
It’s not “hypertechnical precision” to expect people to only call a premeditated, deliberate killing a murder. Certain people, such as BobLibDem are definitely accusing the police of that, of going out deliberately to find people - preferably young black men - to kill, and then cover it up. That is what I claim is, if it happens at all, vanishingly rare. That’s not some kind of arcane legalistic definition of murder, it’s what the word means. And using it any other context is intentionally inflammatory.
So, some subset of police killings are unnecessary, I think we all agree on that. Some amount of those killings will be unjustified - this is not something that we (large-scale we, not just you and I) will agree on*. Some smaller subset of those will be provably criminal, and some smaller again subset will be provably murder. What is happening is that people are calling any killing except for the provably necessary “murder”, in defiance of legal, moral and, in my opinion, meaningful usage of that word.
*It’s obvious if one thinks about it that there will be killings where the shooter bears responsibility by the threshold of preponderance of evidence, but not beyond reasonable doubt. In that case, the police department would be correct to discipline the officer (presumably, sack them) and compensate the family, if they weren’t already compelled to. That doesn’t mean we can consider the officer a murderer.
Sure.
None. But you must decide it is a firearm. It is not appropriate to shoot the guy to protect yourself in these circumstances just because you think it might be a firearm. And even then, whether a non-violent fleeing suspected felon who turns toward you and is carrying a gun justifies the use of deadly force is far from open-and-shut.
Of course not.
If it didn’t work, you’d be dead… His experience has left him with knowledge about the issue, knowledge that you once again reject in favour of wallowing in your own judgemental cesspool of ignorance.
[QUOTE=Sinaptics]
Why do you find that course of action unreasonable?
[/QUOTE]
Pop quiz - are you out of your fucking mind?
Here’s the scenario again -
Can you think of any drawbacks to the plan of running back to the car and calling for help?
“Do what you want to the girl - but leave me alone!”
You are correct - I very much disagree.
[list=A][li]Police can be, and have been, stabbed with screwdrivers. It doesn’t have to be a gun to be a lethal weapon.[/li][li]The presumption of innocence is a legal fiction. I don’t have a cite, and don’t intend to bother with one, but the overwhelming majority of the time, if homeowners find themselves being robbed, and a stranger runs out of the back door with a metal object in his hand, he is up to no good and should be considered armed and dangerous. And further -[/li][li]As much of the risk of any such encounter as possible should devolve onto the criminal, and as little as possible onto anyone else. It does not seem to me unreasonable to shoot 10 burglars in order to save the life of one police officer. This is true even if most of of the burglars were armed only with screwdrivers. [/li]
Someone who breaks into a house to rob it is assuming all of the risks consequent to that action. This includes things like cutting your hand on broken glass when you smash a window, getting your ass chewed off by the pet Rottweiler you didn’t notice, and being shot by the police when you try to escape and don’t make it sufficiently clear that you intend no harm.[/list]I don’t think I can put a precise number on it, but if public policy dictates that, unless a burglar does absolutely nothing except lie down and surrender quietly, he runs a good chance of getting shot, that is OK with me. IOW, as I mentioned, if the cops shoot 10 burglars to spare themselves one shot cop? Works for me.
Regards,
Shodan
I think 1:1 is a reasonable goal. In other words, we should set up tactical rules such that when an officer follows them and uses potentially deadly force it is more often than not the case that the person injured or killed was a genuine threat. If, instead, we are more often than not shooting people who didn’t deserve it, there’s a problem.
In reality, we will never be able to be so precise. But I think even agreeing in principle that 1:1 is the right goal would be a useful step in the conversation.
At what point in time, during the example, did you draw your weapon?
To answer your question, there would be rules and guidelines from the legislature, State Attorney’s office, and the police department. There would be oversight from the SA’s office, the FBI, the media, and the public.
Investigations are a good thing. Mobs demanding that officers be arrested and convicted before the facts have been gathered and the testing is completed is a bad thing.
Hahahaha. 1 to 1??? Good luck trying to hire a police force. You need to remember that police officer is a job. They expect to go home to their families at the end of their shift.
You seem to expect burglars to go home at the end of their “shift”. They need to get their rest so they can rob more people tomorrow? Or maybe they could, ya know, just stop robbing people.
Retreat isn’t an option?