They forced him to reach for the gun by telling him not to do so? That’s an interesting interpretation.
I’m not saying the police were right in every action, I’m saying that it wasn’t murder, that the actual killing was in self defence. Their actions prior to that doesn’t change that.
You’re still not reading.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.
[…]
Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment. Separate research by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson has found that officers are rarely charged in on-duty killings, although it didn’t look at grand jury indictments specifically.
When grand juries indict in more than 99.9% of all general cases, but closer to 2% in cases having to do with cops, there is clearly something going on. It’s well known that grand juries will indict a ham sandwich if you ask them to. It’s also well known that grand juries tend to work closely with cops. This is not news. This is not hard to figure out. They are clearly and evidently biased. Even if the figures weren’t skewed like this, it would still be entirely reasonable to ask whether the people who decide whether to indict cops should be the same people who work with cops all the time. A man’s coworker would get struck from the jury instantly. The grand jury has no such luxury. But to look at numbers like this and a situation like that and say, “Yep, nothing wrong here, you’re just mad because they don’t do what you want,”… You’re a moron.
The only evidence or argument you have offered thus far is this:
That’s it. That’s all you’ve offered. That’s your entire fucking argument right there. “Juries know better, therefore you’re stupid if you think they’re wrong”. I don’t know if you noticed, pal, but I’m not dismissing the jury that failed to convict Michael Slager of murder “due to my own bias”, I’m dismissing them because of video evidence that Michael Slager murdered Walter Scott. Hell, I even looked into what the actual arguments of the defense were, and what they brought forward beyond the video evidence. I found it sorely lacking. What the fuck do you want from me? To blindly trust a jury that didn’t get what seems like an open-and-shut conviction? As said, the alternative hypothesis that there was one asshole on that jury who was biased is not unreasonable or unlikely.
Still ignoring this, Steophan? It’s okay to admit that you made a mistake. Maybe you didn’t realize that you were attributing motives to Rice’s actions with what you said.
Or did you realize it, and you just don’t care about possibly slandering a dead child for no reason?
Evidence is not proof. Yes, there was evidence of murder, but a full investigation showed that it was not, in fact, murder.
It is literally impossible that the video you link to could be enough for a conviction, if you actually apply the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard.
I don’t want you to blindly trust the jury. I want you to admit that you know far less than them about the case, and accept that, if their opinion is suspect, then yours must necessarily be far more so.
That you think a single jury member can force a “not guilty” verdict if the others all disagree shows how ignorant you are. They have to agree for there to be a verdict, otherwise it’s a mistrial (there’s a bit more nuance than that, but I doubt you’d either comprehend or care).
I’ve responded to your claims about this case repeatedly in this and other threads, and you simply phrasing your comments slightly differently isn’t going to change my view.
Tamir Rice wasn’t murdered, he was legally killed. That’s the fact of the matter, and won’t change due to semantic arguments.
The dead child had been running around waving what appeared to be a real gun, and when the police turned up instead of obeying them he reached for it. Any normal person would feel threatened by that. Whether he intended to threaten anyone is irrelevant - he’s not being accused of anything, so intent doesn’t matter. What matters is that his actions caused enough fear in passers-by that they called the police, and in the police that they shot him. Based on the observable facts, those fears were reasonable.
Do you even know how the Slager trial turned out?
It was a mistrial.
That means that they did not agree.
That means that everything about your argument is not only wrong, but also demonstrates that you know nothing about what you are talking about, you don’t even know the most basic facts of the case, much less any nuance.
ETA: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-south-carolina-police-shooting-20161205-story.html"]A link, for your edification.
“The jury knows better than you and therefore cannot be wrong” continues to be your only argument. It is not a good argument when we have video footage of the murder taking place. It’s an especially bad argument when I’ve gone over the reports from within the courtroom about what other evidence was presented and explained that I found the defense incredibly unconvincing. It’s a downright fucking retarded argument when you realize that the mistrial was caused by one guy whose mind could not be changed, meaning that among those you continue to want to claim “know far more about the case”, a supermajority agreed with me that this was murder.
Speaking of retarded arguments: if a nazi ran into your claim about that video not being enough to push an accusation of murder beyond reasonable doubt, they’d try to have it euthanized. What we see on the video quite clearly is Walter Scott running away, and Michael Slager pulling his firearm and shooting him. What the fuck do you want? A lengthy confession beforehand? The cop trying to frame his victim afterwards (oh wait…)? What in god’s name qualifies as “beyond reasonable doubt” in your mind? Has a single murder conviction not based on confession in the past 30 years fit your criteria?
You continue to claim that I said things that I did not say. Go ahead, quote me. Where did I say (or even imply) that one person can force a “not guilty”? I know full well it was a mistrial. They failed to get a guilty verdict. There is a reason I keep using that phrase.
Two seconds, from the time the police car pulled up to the time he was shot, including the police instructions to him. TWO. SECONDS. Do you understand how short a time two seconds is? Do you understand just how poorly the police handled this? Do you understand that, if there was even the slightest threat from Rice, it was because of the way the police recklessly charged in?
Let’s consider a few other cases:
This man was waving a toy gun around in a park. Not shot.
This man was waving an ACTUAL GUN at police officers in a park. Although he was EVENTUALLY wounded (about half an hour later) and taken into custody, the police did not drive up right next to him and immediately kill him.
This guy was waving a loaded rifle at police officers at a Dairy Queen. Not shot, and eventually persuaded to hand over the gun after 40 minutes (not two seconds) of negotiation.
But yeah, “anyone” would have shot Tamir Rice virtually immediately, based on the way he twitched after a police car screeched to a halt next to him and a police officer jumped out and shouted at him.
Based on the observable facts, you’re a dishonest shitbag willing to excuse lethal incompetence.
The below paragraphs are significantly different than “Rice tried to threaten the cops”. Good for you for recognizing this and changing your assertions, even if you won’t admit it to the rest of us. Baby steps!
This has nothing to do with what I said.
The video doesn’t clearly show that “he reached for it” – the video doesn’t clearly show anything, due to the extreme poor quality. But this is a very different claim than “Rice tried to threaten the cops”, so I applaud you for changing your claim. It really is important to be accurate and specific and not throw around nonsense like “Rice tried to threaten…”, not only because it’s slandering a dead child, but for your own credibility, and I’d encourage you to be more careful in the future. It’s really not that hard to be accurate and specific if one just makes a little effort.
Shit. Thankyou, I was mistaken.
Posts from many people in this thread (including myself, as it turns out) show that either this is false, or very few people bother to make the effort. But I’ll happily change “tried to threaten the cops” to “threatened the cops”, if you think the latter is less slanderous.
Both require knowledge of what was in Rice’s mind – “perceived by the cops, according to the cops, as having made threatening movements” would be entirely accurate and entirely non-slanderous. “Tried to threaten” and “threaten” both indicate malicious intent, which will forever be unknowable.
Why assume malicious intent when it’s entirely unnecessary to your position? It just makes you appear to be callous and unkind.
He’s not being accused of a crime, his intent is not relevant. His actions, and their effect on the cops, are the relevant issue. If you have evidence that contradicts the officers’ statements and the video, please share them. And ideally, not just here but with the relevant authorities.
I felt threatened. He threatened me. If someone does not see the difference between these statements, there is going to be a communication problem.
Emphasis mine.
This is the problem. The bar here is just too low. Just because a officer believes his life is in danger should not be justification to use lethal force. Hell, I believe my life is in danger every time I get on the road, that does not mean I should be able to kill anyone who I feel is threatening me.
We should expect much more from those we trust with our protection. They should be trained to on how to deal with threatening situations without use of force, deadly or otherwise, and if force is needed, it should be policy that an officer that uses deadly force will not be given a chance to use deadly force again.
You’re the one who made a claim about his intent, not me. You shouldn’t do so – it’s both impossible to know, and to ascribe a negative motive to a dead child is cruel and callous.
Why not just be specific and accurate? Why make claims that have anything to do with the dead child’s motive? It’s entirely unnecessary to your point.
I’m just recommending that you not say cruel and callous things. There’s no reason for it. It just makes you look bad, and since those things would require psychic abilities to know, it makes you look dumb as well.
I’m of two minds about your last suggestion.
It is the case that very few officers ever shoot anyone, but most of the time that it happens, it actually is because the person was presenting an immediate threat to public safety, so a blanket policy of firing any cop who kills someone goes a bit too far.
Now, if we want to say that any cop that has shot someone has gone through a traumatic event that they should not need to go through again, and so they go into retirement or administrative work.
This is of course, assuming that the shooting was actually justified.
Killing people, however, is not the only thing that cops do that turns the community against them. There are many examples of police abusing their power to abuse those in the community they are being paid to protect. IMHO, an officer framing a suspect, or raping women on duty, or sodomizing them with foreign objects, causes more harm to community relations than a controversial shooting.
A controversial shooting, you don’t know what went through the officer’s mind. I think that what goes through the officer’s mind in most of those is, “Ah, I’m scared, I didn’t know that policing would be this scary!”
What’s going through an officer’s mind when he decides to rape the woman that called him for help is a bit more deliberate. You don’t commit these sorts of abuses by mistake. There is nothing controversial about it, it is just wrong.
The first group of people do not belong on the force, the second group of people belong in jail.
I didn’t click the links. Were these all white people?
If you feel threatened by someone’s actions, and it’s reasonable for you to feel threatened - the standard for legitimate self defence - then they threatened you. Intentionally or otherwise.
First was not, not entirely sure on the second, I think so, but there was not a good photo, the last two, yes.