Read this, World Eater…
http://vietpage.com/archive_news/politics/2003/Jul/21/0241.html
Sam
Gee, GaWd, you lost absolutley any chance of persuading me of the correctness of your assertion when you called the police officer “pig.”
Neither of us was there and I tend to think that someone coming at you with what appears to you to be a knife is a legitimate reason to use the means at your disposal to stop that person. Come to think of it, isn’t that what some defendants use as a defense themselves?
I’m given to understand that people under the influence of drugs can sometimes withstand the taser. Dunno if it’s a hard fact, but anecdotal evidence suggests there may be something to this. Also, the officers may (possibly) have been bad shots with the taser, or might (potentially) had the darts hang up in clothing, and very likely didn’t have more than the two shots anyway. Truth of it is, I don’t, and neither does anyone else here, know all the facts. Until I do, I’m witholding judgement.
What happens if your taser doesn’t make very good contact against the target?
Marc
Gawd- I read the article. Whether the blade was 6" or 10" doesn’t really matter when it gets inbedded in your skull. I think you only need about 2" to do damage. OTOH back in my college days I had the “pleasurable?” experience of being treated in the LSU Medical Center emergency ward for an accident.
I spent 45 minutes in a neck brace sharing an operating room with a guy who had a screwdriver embedded about 5" in the top of his skull. He wouldn’t shut up and was under restraint because he wanted to get out of there and kill the &*^) who did this to him. So in this case I guess a 5" stab wound to the skull wasn’t exactly life threatening. I might add that we both were left alone in the room because the staff was trying unsuccessfully to revive a 2 yr old girl who had been beaten and raped by her mother’s boyfriend.
Screwdriver-boy got damned lucky. The Romans had a saying: ‘2 inches in the right place is fatal’, or something to that effect. Never rely on luck…
Monty I don’t seek to convince you otherwise. If one word makes you turn your back on the facts, well, you never would have been persuaded. Hell, I’ve already apologized for my use of the term.
Had the Officer taken his fucking time and not jumped tot he conclusion that it was a “cleaver”, he might have noticed the difference. Instead, he did what many paranoid cops have done in the past-killed someone because it “looked” like this-or-that.
Sam
That sure is some nice Monday morning quarterbacking there.
From the linked article
Doesn’t appear to be a knife in the classical sense?
That’s weak.
Which last time I checked falls under the category or “other bad things I wouldn’t like to happen to me”.
I would imagine the cop may have felt the same.
Like I said before, she could have “avoided” getting popped, by putting down the non classical knife. Why isn’t this mentioned?
Ducking behind a counter or a cabinet? Are these people smoking crack?
I love how these MMQs make it sound like it’s so easy to disarm a “tiny” lady with knife. What they fail to realize, most likely because they are completely stupid, is that a weapon can level the playing field. Sure, she most likely wasn’t some ninja assassin, but there are plenty of “tiny” people that could carve up plenty of not so tiny people, and I’m sure the officer was aware of this.
Taking his time? You do realize that this is an adrenalin filled situation with about a 3 second time frame to make a decision?
Surely you can’t be that dense.
**
And some non-paranoid cops have been killed themselves.
No Worm Eater, I’m not dense, and yes, I think he should have performed better under pressure.
Ok, I saw this too and thought it was lame.
They get paid to protect the citizens and take that risk.
Maybe if the police had left when the lady yelled at them to, this wouldn’t have happened at all…
Rather than hijacking this thread I simply wanted to chime in and let people know that the same sort of situation was going on here as well. Someone who was distressed/distraught did something stupid and the police, instead of using their heads(most likely), used their guns.
I doubt the real story will ever be released to the general public. The ongoing investigations have silenced coverage of the case…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing seeing how impartiality is needed.
Sam
Well that is just completely dunderheaded. I guess that means a kid would never be a threat to a soldier. And, say all you want about it being a war or the kid being under the influence of drugs, but both the linked article and this incident are dangerous situations and both suspects were apparently under the influence. But, apparently, you know enough to tell on sight that a 300 pound man is dangerous while a petite female is going to easily be cuffed and questioned. Certainly there aren’t exceptions like Yao Ming or Bambi Bemebenek.
**
Doesn’t seem to have stopped you from jumping firmly into the “police screwed up, took an innocent life, and are getting away scott free” camp.
I don’t mean to keep quoting what you post, but considering the above doesn’t exactly jibe with this:
I have to wonder if you are even reading your own posts. Let me see if I have this straight. According to you, a 90 pound woman doesn’t look like a threat, but the same woman holding a cleaver does look like a threat. Kinda seems to go along with what the cops were thinking. If only they had the time to call some impartial observers to the scene to ask them what they thought of the situation.
Mully-It’s not a cleaver. From most accounts, it’s probably not even sharp.
My posts do jive well in your above-quoting. The LEO jumped to the conclusion that it was a cleaver, and a little woman with a veggie peeler/supposed cleaver isn’t dangerous enough to cap on sight. The LEOs were asked to leave, instead they went into the woman’s kitchen where she pulled a kitchen utensil out and was subsequently killed. In less than a minute.
Just an opinion. Feel free to disagree.
Sam
Who cares about that, is the LEO magically supposed to know this?
**
And you are jumping to the conclusion that the LEO jumped to a conclusion. Do you see how hypocritical this is?
**
Why not?
**
So the moral of the story folks is…
…if the cops bust up into your house, don’t tell them to leave and then proceed to wave around something that can easily be misinterpreted for a cleaver at them.
If this easy step had been taken, then the cops wouldn’t even have been in the position to make what may or may not have been a bad decision.
Got it?
How the hell did Yao Ming get mixed up in this by the way?
Let’s see…if it wasn’t a sharpened cleaver, and in fact was a vietnamese version of a vegetable peeler, then the LEO made a very incorrect assumption. I’m not sure how you can argue this point with a straight face.
Sam
He was just a simple example of what I can only assume fits a generic enough description of a threat to police. According to GaWd, since a small woman isn’t a threat, perhaps an athletic 300 pound man is. Except, of course, there are countless instances where that 300 pound man is pretty darn nice and not a threat to a policeman. Yao was oddly the first one that jumped to mind.
Of course, I would think that based on this thread, GaWd will continue to choose to paint in freakishly broad strokes and ignore differences within certain classifications.
Here’s another link to this story, with a picture of the dao bao peeler. This story says the victim was about 6-7 feet away and gesturing with the thing. Don’t know about you, but that peeler looks pretty dangerous, it’s 10" long, and has large metal edges that look like they could be sharp, even if they’re not.
Not to say the LEO shouldn’t have retreated first, he should have, but let’s not act like that peeler is a teddy bear on a stick.
I’ve seen firsthand an un-intoxicated person take a taser shot and remain standing. I have no problem believeing someone could take two.
GaWd
Excuse me, but WHAT THE HELL? Do you think that if I am pulled over for speeding I can just yell at the police and they will go away? Think they will call and try to re-schedule for a more convenient time?
Ok, so she held up an object that was made of the same material as a huge cleaver, and had the same shape as a huge cleaver. This object was brandished in the same threatening manner as a huge cleaver would have been. The officers were supposed to have figured out in a few seconds that even though it looked exactly like a cleaver, it was not actually sharpened. Take into account that she was not calmly holding it out for inspection; she was waving it around like a freaking nut.
Finally, we have the “she was in another room” argument. I don’t know the setup, but you do know that it is possible to have two people in two different rooms, and still have them be able to touch each other, right?
The teenager is not even an issue. A strong young man, out of control, with a real large knife threatening to kill various people seems like a reasonable target to me.
Where is the pic?
My point Gawd was that you are making assumptions on a situation of which you know very little about.
Usually this is considered bad.