In the latest police shooting - this one in Madison, Wisconsin - the media are harping on the fact that the victim was unarmed, much as they did when Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, MO.
It remains to be seen whether the Madison shooting was justified or not, but the fact that he didn’t have a knife or gun on him is irrelevant, given that it is possible to kill a man with your bare hands. Here, for example, is video footage of a cop shooting an unarmed man in 2013. I don’t recall much protest or outrage over that particular shooting.
So I don’t care if he was unarmed; I want to know what he was doing or not doing at the time of the shooting, and whether it was something that would make the officer reasonably fear for his own life.
I don’t know anything about the Madison shooting except that the police chief there appears to be infinitely smarter (or just more empathetic) than most of the guys I’ve seen on TV lately post-killing.
There are many nations where police do not routinely carry firearms, and they don’t tend to have lots of deaths from unarmed people they interact with.
One of the arguments for arming police in the U.S. is that the people they encounter are likely to have firearms as well. Which is true enough, but I have a hard time being sympathetic to a police officer who feels that the only reasonable course of action is to shoot a person who is not armed. There is tons of empirical evidence that it was probably not the only reasonable course of action, in the form of thousands of police officers all over the world who don’t even have that choice and still manage to interact safely with unarmed individuals.
You can Monday morning quarterback this all you like. However, you’re doing it in view of a luxury the officer didn’t have, that is, time to thoughtfully reflect on the situation, weigh the alternatives, choose the best option, then proceed. If you review these matters in the same time frame the officer did, then majority of the deadly force situations are justifiable. That doesn’t mean they aren’t tragic, but it does mean that they comply with the laws of the jurisdiction regarding use of force by the authorities. Those who break the law, face criminal charges.
It seems to me that many people (conveniently) forget about possabilities such as that the suspect may have been trying to take the officer’s gun – and indeed, early reports indicate the officer was responding to a domestic disturbance and was attacked inside a house, which would almost certainly be a close-quarters confrontation.
Much like the Ferguson shooting, early reports of the deceased’s behavior suggest he might have been under the influence of some kind of mind-altering substance. According to this morning’s news, the initial call to police was about someone standing in a gas station parking lot yelling at people. This person was eventually located at a nearby house (the news report seemed to indicate it was not his own house), and an officer made the domestic disturbance-type call that ended in a shooting.
This is a case of American exceptionalism. That is to say, Americans are exceptionally crazy. Cops and suspects. America was essentially founded by crazy people other countries chased out. Americans attack cops, resist arrest, and give them shit knowing the cops have guns and are just looking for an excuse to use them.
I agree with the underlying sentiment of the OP, but I think you have overstated the case. When a cop kills a civilian, whether that civilian was unarmed or not is certainly not some magical sole determining relevant data point, where “unarmed” absolutely means that the cop was in the wrong. At the same time, it’s clearly RELEVANT. A cop killing an armed civilian has to clear a much lower bar of justification, purely speaking of my personal opinion of the incident.
There are any number of arrests on record in which, once the suspect is handcuffed, the officer finds a weapon during a search. Similarly CCW permit holders who are stopped by the police for unrelated reasons (e.g. a traffic stop) and asked if they are carrying must answer in the affirmative if they are currently carrying a concealed weapon. Neither of these people instantly get shot to death by the arresting officer.
Point being that, no, it doesn’t particularly matter to me whether a police shooting victim was armed at the time; it matters whether he was a threat or not, and that comes down to behavior. A weapon is not needed in order for a suspect to be dangerous, and the mere presence of a weapon does not by itself make a suspect dangerous.
A bare-knuckle assault by an unarmed assailant may justify a lethal defense; a cooperative subject with a gun in a holster or pocket does not.
All the information I have implies very strongly that this action was completely justified, tragic as it is.
I just came from another website that leans to the right, and some of those posters are saying that the officer should get a medal, because he probably prevented an awful lot of future crimes. :mad: I pointed out that one of the racist jokes found on the Ferguson e-mail server was, “A black woman had an abortion, and got a check two weeks later from Crime Stoppers” and that some of them would probably find that funny, and if that’s how they’re wired, maybe they should mosey on over to Stormfront where they belong. :dubious:
Am I being flamed for this? You bet!
Last year in my area, an officer of mixed black and Hispanic descent fatally shot an unarmed disabled man in his 60s who was Caucasian. Why didn’t you hear about it? Because there were multiple witnesses who testified that the man was a danger to the community and an imminent danger to that officer. Of course the officer was placed on administrative leave, as is common practice whenever an officer shoots another person, and it was determined to be justified.
Lovely turn of the phrase. Accepted without argument. Show me the country that says, proudly, “We’re Number two!”. I’ve lived in the USA, Ireland, Canada, Russia and Australia and every citizen of those countries will absolutely say they are the best. And I agree!
With (hopefully) BG’s permission, may I quote him and ask for a:
Cite?
As I said, I lived in Australia and have heard that criminals / chased out bit a lot. They don’t appreciate it and it’s not true. I have not heard it about the USA.
Not IME.
Sure, there’s national pride everywhere you go, but that’s not quite the same thing as saying “we’re the best!”. I’m proud of my family, even though we’ve yet to win any nobel prizes or oscars.
One issue with American Exceptionalism is an unwillingness to adopt ideas and practices from other countries. That’s a bug that is not universal to all cultures.
America just wishes it was founded by a bunch of exiled convicts. Instead, it was a bunch of stiff-necked religious types who were too intolerant of everybody else back in the Old Country. They weren’t kicked out, they just flounced off in a huff, as much as you can flounce off on an across-the-Atlantic pilgrimage.
I too want to know what he was doing for the officer to react by shooting him, but being armed or not is a completely relevant piece of information. If you’re armed, the police are almost always justified in fearing for their safety. If not, they have to look elsewhere. If the story came out without saying whether or not he was armed, then that’s the first thing people would ask. If armed, most people will make up their mind on the spot that the police were justified. If not, that’s when the story needs to go deeper.
