What guideline is possible when the merest glint of an object is justification to fire?
Might be easier to define what conditions lethal force is not justified, since our law 'n order types here have such a long list of exemptions.
America hates criminals. Not just disapproves and punishes, we hate their guts. Nothing easier than getting support for being “tough on crime”. We’ll take a car thief or a burglar and set him amongst violent sociopaths, where he can learn the fear is not just a feeling but a survival skill. Prison rape is a punch-line, har de har har. After a thorough course in fear and savagery, if they’re lucky they get a cheap suit and a bus ride. Oh, go get a job.
And the cherry on top of the shit sundae? We call that “corrections”. And why do we do that? Because they have surrendered their status as “human”, and their lives have no value. Fuck 'em.
At what point in time, during the example, did you draw your weapon?
It’s not the “merest glint of an object” but the reasonable assumption that a person known to be fleeing the scene of a burglary appears to have a weapon.
The example provided didn’t stop at drawing your weapon. The example had the officer firing and hitting the suspect in the back. Drawing and firing are two different actions.
I can’t imagine anyone having an issue with an officer readying their weapon.
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Criminals don’t actually intend to do any harm. They’re like puppies that keep chewing your socks. You have stuff and they want it. Why don’t you share? Why don’t you take your newly purchased items and take them directly to the burglars home. That would save all that door locking and 9-1-1 dialing that victims are now forced to do. You could get rid of all the prisons, and jails, and police departments, and criminal courts, and the lawyers. You’re looking at billions of saved tax dollars.
Criminals only steal because legislatures created police departments. :smack:
At what point in time, during the example, would you have drawn your weapon?
They have signs like that in your town? In 2014?
I’d DEFINITELY consider moving, then.
When I thought he might be armed, but what does that have to do with anything? The example provided says that is a justifiable time to shoot.
Another glorious moment for the men in blue as they shoot an unarmed suicidal teen 16 times.
This was a guy who only days earlier, two cops took him to the hospital after a suicide attempt.
I’m curious as to when people would feel the need to draw their weapon when chasing/confronting someone fleeing a burglary.
I wouldn’t draw when chasing/confronting a burglar. I’d draw when I felt I was in danger.
Perhaps to shoot him in order to halt his flight.
Hey, did you see that large, obvious thing a ways back? No? You were two knuckles deep into your nose when you zoomed right past it, so it’s not surprising you missed it completely.
Anyway, that was his point. If you get a chance, swing on back by and check it out.
Aw, c’mon, Vinny, that was satire! Really good satire is when someone takes what you actually say and shifts the perspective just a titch and reveals the absurdity at the core. Johnathon Swift, Mark Twain, Vonnegut, and now…doorhinge!
Dennis Miller, look out!
But, but, but, they’re all dead. :eek:
And Miller isn’t looking all that healthy.
(FYI - Vinny hasn’t posted since 04-12-2000, 12:02 AM )
When did we get the idea that law enforcement should be a low-to-zero risk occupation? It fell off the top 10 most dangerous jobs list in 2010 (it was number 10 then). Fishermen, loggers, construction workers, taxi drivers, farmers - even salespeople - are listed as a higher risk.
We expect firemen to risk their lives, and as far as I know, they don’t run a priors or outstanding warrants search before they go in a burning building to pull people to safety. No one wants a fireman to die, but I never hear of anyone saying the fireman’s life should be worth more than the idiots who were smoking in bed or overloading their outlets.
I completely agree that there are circumstances where a police officer has to use lethal force, but I also think many of these these incidents - and overall risk - would be reduced if there were better relations between the police and the communities they serve. Isn’t that a no-brainer?
The fact is that we are now a society where respect has to be earned, and cannot be conferred simply because someone has a badge or a gun - or any kind of authority position. I found that out the hard way myself when I made a career switch to teaching. Some may not like this, but it’s not going to change by becoming even more authoritarian, or hardening the “us vs. them” mentality.
He wanted to die. The cops killed him. Sounds like problem solved to me.
Although it’s a bit funny that the article fails to mention anything that happens between “he went out walking” and “six cops showed up and shot him”, as if to make him appear more sympathetic by leaving out details about what lead the cops to think he was dangerous in the first place.
Why, it’s almost as if the cops AREN’T just a bunch of murderous thugs whose first response to every problem is to shoot it.
They put Kevorkian in jail for assisting suicides. This boy obviously did not have the capacity to make an informed choice on end of life.
I agree that there is a lot left out of the article. Why were the cops called? Doesn’t say.
I’ll give the cops credit for not shooting what was probably an unconscious teen in his first suicide attempt.
Empowering the police to kill suspected criminals based on a small chance of danger violates the principles that keep our country free. A human being is more than the worst thing he has ever done, which is why we require that punishment be proportional to the crime and free from cruelty. Punishing an innocent man is worse than setting many guilty men free, which is why we insist that the highest standards of evidence are used in determining whether someone has committed a crime. When you abandon these principles in favor of shooting suspect criminals on the flimsiest of rationales, you abandon some of the fundamental tenets of Western Civilization.
Worse yet, you do so based on bad premises, reasoning that criminals and a different and lesser kind of person and that cops are very good at spotting them.
But the truth is that most Americans are criminals. You have probably committed felonies, but simply haven’t been caught. The reasons you haven’t been caught are many, but include the kind of neighborhood you live in–the single best predictor of which is race, in many places. It is very likely that you, or at least people you consider to be good people, have experienced a certain kind of privilege in not having been caught for felony crimes, such that you were able to go on living an otherwise upstanding life instead of the death spiral of collateral consequences that is modern criminal justice. This notion that someone who commits a crime is a different and lesser kind of human being is wrong. Criminals aren’t just like you and me. They are you and me.
And the police are not that good at matching crime to criminal. Thousands of people are wrongly convicted each year, and that’s just the ones that get arrested and charged, much less those merely suspected which is orders of magnitude more. Even limiting ourselves to fleeing criminals, it is common for police to arrive on the scene of a crime and have everyone run. My friend had such a client. He was carrying a small amount of marijuana, but his acquaintance had just allegedly committed a robbery (in fact, the acquaintance was later acquitted). The police showed up and everyone ran for different reasons. If the police had shot him for having a shiny object (a pipe), they would have been killing a stoner, not a robber.
When performing the inherently dangerous job of policing gets as dangerous as being a garbage man or a farmer, then we can talk. But making the job artificially safe by setting up tactics in which police defend themselves by killing suspects because of a small risk of danger is the wrong way to achieve safety.
And do you agree with jailing people for assisting a suicide? How much energy does society need to expend on protecting the life of an adult who does not want to live?