There are more differences, of course. There are a lot fewer Europeans that masturbate over their guns. In the US, it’s patriotically correct to get the vapors and swoon every time you see a uniform. Every fucking holiday is another reason to verbally fellate the troops. Get rid of the gun culture and the militarism, and we might have fewer people getting murdered by police.
The audio on that video actually has the cops reporting that they had shot a 20-year-old with a gun.
There’s some good pictures of him in this link. Does he look 20 to any of you?
No he does not even remotely look 20. The fact that police reported that lends credence to my hypothesis about police’s brains suffering from a systemic breakdown in these types of situations.
The cops (and anybody else for that matter) definitely can be reasonably expected not to shot a 12 yo, even when he’s reaching for something, even when he’s actually holding a weapon (or more exactly what looks like a weapon). Yes, wait and see seems a way more sensible attitude than opening fire.
A 12 yo? After he starts shooting.
I’m not at all convinced that even your society realized that it agreed to have 12 yo shot by the police when they don’t raise up their hands within one full second after having been told so.
Saying “society agrees” in such a peculiar situation instead of “the law allows” is extremely misleading.
Hopefully the NRA will be taking up Tamir’s case and castigating the police on behalf of gun rights; otherwise they will look the most fearful fools.
Not wholly sure re Europe, since we have stupid cops also — although discipline and tradition militate against our police gunning us down willy-nilly — but I can be sure that if a 12-yr-old was killed in Russia or Libya by police, the American Propaganda Corps would be all over the wicked barbarism of presidents Putin or Gaddafi like white on rice.
This has been offered a couple of times. Really? I think it’s fair to question whether or not the cops could have avoided the specific confrontation. But you truly believe a cop facing someone with a gun needs to wait till the person actually opens fire? I think you shifted Bricker’s point as well. The point was not if cops get to open fire when someone doesn’t raise his hands, period. It was whether the cops need to wait for someone to actually shoot.
I am speculating but very confident that society supports cops’ freedom to protect themselves short of when someone shoots. “Short of” can be debated, but it seems ridiculous to me to ask cops to wait till someone actually opens fire regardless of the situation if a youth is involved. In fact, I think such a position would be considered fringe lunacy and hinders further debate on an important topic.
Facing “someone”? No. Facing a 12 yo? Yes.
The police, like anyone else, are allowed to start defending themselves when in reasonable fear of attack, and to use lethal force when in reasonable fear of death or serious injury.
Someone reaching for a gun meets that standard, there should be no debate here. That he was 12, that the gun was fake, none of that is relevant. The only thing relevant is the officer’s state of mind when he shot Rice, an whether that state of mind was reasonable. It was, so the shooting was justified. One look at the video makes that clear.
Do as you’re told by the police, and argue about it later. Instead of being dead, you’ll get a lovely fucking payout to live on the rest of your lives if they did actually fuck up.
And you know why this doesn’t happen here in Europe? People aren’t fucking stupid enough to pull guns on cops, or start fights with armed cops. You attack someone who’s got a gun? They have every right to kill you. The only people to blame are yourself and, in this particular case, the parents. Who were either too stupid to teach their kid about gun safety, or too negligent to know what he was up to.
The common standard, AIUI, used to be that officers could apply lethal force to someone who was directly posing a credible, imminent threat. Gun pointed. Knife in hand and charging.
Facing “someone”? No. Facing a 12 yo? Yes.
(And in fact, I’m don’t think a cop should open fire as soon as he faces “someone” with a weapon in hand, either. “Killing by cop” European statistics have been mentioned several times in these threads. Presumably, they sometimes confront people with a weapon, and still nobody dies. So shooting to kill as soon as you see a weapon is obviously not the only alternative. But that wasn’t my point. My point was that he was fucking 12, in case it wasn’t clear)
You keep saying this, as though a 12 year old with a gun is somehow magically not a threat, and guns can only be fired by adults. I know that you’re a civilised European, but so am I, and I’ve somehow managed to learn how they work.
There is no reasonable fear of death when facing a 12 yo moving his hand towards his waist.
Obviously there is a debate, since I disagree with you and I’m not the only one.
It wasn’t reasonable, so the shooting wasn’t justified. One look at the video makes that clear.
That you think that arguing with the police might result in being dead clearly shows that you have a big problem (with police procedures, I mean, not personally).
Yes, European criminals are all reasonable and well behaved people, of course.
The only person who was attacked was the 12 yo kid.
I guess he would have had every right to kill the cop, if he had survived.
So, since he attacked nobody, he isn’t to blame, I assume.
I would blame the police academy’s instructors who were too stupid to teach not to kill 12 yo who move their hands, or too negligent to realize what this officer was capable of.
Factually wrong.
Anyone who thinks people don’t have a right to defend themselves against someone threatening them with a gun is a fucking moron. There should be no debate on this subject, as there is only one side that’s even remotely reasonable. Anyone who thinks people don’t have the right to defend themselves is a lunatic.
If you’ve actually watched the video, you are either a lunatic or a liar. I’m guessing based on your other posts, you’re a liar. You know it was reasonable for the cops to shoot, you just don’t care because POOR WIDDLE CHILDREN.
Not really, no. Don’t argue with people who have both the power and the right to detain you, and use force if necessary to do it. Argue with them in court, later, when they don’t have the right to do that. And no, I don’t have a problem with police procedures that rely on immediate compliance, followed by sorting it out later. It’s only a problem when people don’t have the right to sort it out later.
They don’t as a rule threaten the police with guns.
Oh? I haven’t seen anything that showed me that. I suspect you don’t know what “attack” means. I’ll give you a starting point - it’s the opposite of “defend”. One can’t take two opposite actions at once, so the cops literally cannot have attacked him.
Nope.
No, him and his parents are solely to blame for his death.
That’s because you’re a fucking moron, who has probably just won the world record for the post on the internet with the most innaccuracies. Why on earth would you want to teach anyone not to kill someone who’s threatening to pull a gun on them?
And you keep saying that too. So, how many cops have been killed by 12 yo shooting at them with guns during the last years, in so dangerous USA?
A 12 yo with a gun is dangerous because guns are dangerous. That’s why you tell them to put the weapon down. But they don’t amount to an immediate threat worth shooting to kill, because 12 yo with guns extremely extremely rarely try to kill people. And 12 yo with something that looks like a gun are even considerably less dangerous, because what they’re holding, in 99,999% of the cases, isn’t a real gun. And 12 yo who reach for their waist are even considerably less dangerous than those who hold something that looks like a gun.
So, no, I don’t feel the slightest bit threatened by a 12 yo who reaches for his waist. And after having watched the video, I wouldn’t have felt threatened by the kid when he was wawing his “gun”, and at least I would have seen the gun, contrarily to the police officer who shot to kill when he saw the kid moving his hand (and to prevent the objection, the LEO didn’t even know this kid was the person wawing a gun they had been called about. Anybody passing by when the police arrived and moving his hand could have been killed instead.).
If you don’t feel threatened when someone’s threatening you with a gun, then you are probably actually, literally insane. Thanks for clearing that up.
You know, I have a problem with use of the word “fear” in the phrases “fear of attack” or “fear of death”. Now, I’ve never been a cop, but I have done armed patrols in places a bit more more hostile than Ferguson and Cleveland, and at no time in all of the pre-mission briefings and lectures on rules of engagement did the word “fear” ever come up. Fear is an emotion. A trained, armed, uniformed professional shouldn’t have his actions dictated by his fear. His judgement, his assessments, his calculation of probabilities, absolutely. But not fear.
And whether or not you “feel” threatened has nothing to do with anything. Nobody gives a shit about your fucking feelings. A cop should be able to assess whether or not he is being threatened, in a calm and logical manner, or else he has no business being a cop.
He was twelve. The fucking cops should be smarter than a twelve year old. There were many ways this cop could have figured out what to do other than administer the death penalty to a twelve year old with a fake gun. I hope he’s fired and I hope the kid’s parents sue the ass off of the police department so this never happens again. It would be really nice if some people did not make us look batshit crazy to the rest of the world.