Agreed. Like Cheesesteak, I’m not particularly sympathetic when loudmouths and nutballs end up tasered, and while nobody likes to see dogs get shot I think it’s often justified. This one looks like they jumped straight to the last resort.
Why?
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Because I was responding to the following post: “I highly doubt this was suicide by cop, it looks like the kid was having some sort of psychotic break.” If he wants to opine as to whether it looks like a kid having a psychotic break, I naturally want to ask his opinion of what a man looks like when committing suicide by cop.
You know, I’ve been watch ADAM-12 on hulu.
Last night I watched a show, based on real incidents, where a sniper was on a roof top and had killed and wounded several people. Now they brought in a SWAT Team, which Reed and Malloy had trained with so they got to do the exciting part.
They get on the roof and the guy is hiding and Malloy talks to him but Reed gets around him and tackles him as he is trying to light a stick of dynamite.
A reporter on the scene asks Reed, “Why didn’t you shoot him? He had already shot and killed people. I would have just shot him.” Reed responds “It wasn’t necessary.”
My how times change.
Well, as it happens, a suicide by cop can look remarkably like someone having a psychotic break and ignoring commands. That’s the point. Now if he’d been lunging at them, or holding a hostage, we’d have some understanding. But cops are supposed to be able to handle lots of situations! Including people having psychotic episodes. Without unnecessarily killing them. We give cops a lot of respect for doing a hard job and expect better than this incident would reflect.
Something we see often in these threads is that some Dopers do not grasp that some people do not think rationally sometimes. (Should that be a death sentence?)
Ironically, failing to grasp that simple point is an example of not thinking rationally. 
I can agree with that. But if so, then…
…that warning/threat should have not been issued. Just go ahead and taser or mace him if you’re not willing to wait him out all night.
Yes, there is always the consideration that tasering/pepperspraying the individual upon taking that other step would not necessarily make him let go of the knife but instead left him flailing and twitching with it still in his hand (yet still mostly a threat just to himself), but this looks like a mishandled escalation to deadly force .
See, if you ask me to put myself in the cop’s shoes, and you start describing the situation, I’d think: “Well, if I have to, then, yes, I can imagine reacting the way he did, if a man with a knife looks remarkably like he’s having a psychotic break while repeatedly disregarding my reasonable instructions.”
And if you ask me to put myself in the dead man’s shoes, I’d interrupt you halfway through: “A cop with a gun just told me to drop the knife? Done.” And then you say “No, you don’t understand; he asked you half-a-dozen times.” And then I say “Uh, okay; same answer.” And then you say “Yeah, but imagine you hadn’t, and let me now spell out the rest of the hypothetical.” And I say “No, stop, wait; I’m having trouble getting into character; what’s my motivation in this scene? Am I trying to commit suicide, here?”
[QUOTE=septimus]
Something we see often in these threads is that some Dopers do not grasp that some people do not think rationally sometimes. (Should that be a death sentence?)
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Should a choice to commit suicide be a death sentence?
Being irrational on a message board is relatively consequence-free; being irrational and armed in a bring-a-knife-to-a-gunfight scenario – when given a second chance and a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh by armed law-enforcement personnel to reconsider and end the situation peacefully – eventually becomes a judgment call as to whether you’ll get hit and with how much.
tl;dr: as you act less like a Doper and more like the dog in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, mod warnings get replaced with physical force applied from a safe distance.
[QUOTE=JRDelirious]
Just go ahead and taser or mace him if you’re not willing to wait him out all night.
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Tragically, that police department apparently doesn’t equip such cops with tasers.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? Applied from a “safe” distance.
If one is “safe” then one does not need to use deadly force to protect oneself. If others are “safe” then one does not need to use deadly force to protect them. In such a case, what are we using deadly force to accomplish? I can come up with 2 ideas. 1 - to punish the person for non compliance with a legal order. 2 - to end the standoff more quickly and save everyone a lot of time.
I don’t consider either of these items important enough to warrant the use of deadly force.
Tasers have a shorter range than someone with a knife, unless the cop is very fast on the draw. (Seriously.) If the guy with the knife is already in taser range, he’s too close.
Wow. It was almost like the police were simply impatient with his refusal to obey a command and decided to end it. While I usually support the police (e.g. in the dead Rottweiler case), this incident does seem like a case of exceedingly excessive force.
Of course, the video was unclear and I suppose that there’s still a slim chance that there were mitigating circumstances, such as he was rooting through a backpack (which could have held a gun or explosive) or held his hands in a way to suggest he had a gun. But still. I agree that this was definitely a case where trigger happiness led to an unnecessary death.
Shorter range? Not sure what you mean but tasers have a much longer range than a knife…unless I suppose we’re talking about throwing the knife.
Anyway, haven’t watched the video but I don’t understand why they didn’t just tase him from the get go after the very first time he failed to comply with instruction to drop the knife.
And tasing someone after you’ve shot them multiple times? Seriously? I mean…what’s the point?
They were trying to get the point across that he SHOULD have LISTENED in the FIRST place.
I see this said again and again. There is nothing preventing the cop to already have his taser (or gun) already drawn and aimed at the suspect with the safety off. Do you still think the taser has a shorter range?
From what I’ve heard? Yes, especially because a tie will go to the knife. If the assailant lunges with a knife they can cover 21 feet in 1.5 seconds and stab their target. Better decide fast, and hope you aren’t going to get sued for the knife-wielder having a heart attack and dying.
I’m not saying what these cops did was right. I’m saying a taser is less lethal than a gun but not a magic wand.
Which command? The one – any of the ones – about dropping the knife, or the one about not taking a step in this direction?
The trouble with a taser is that it’s a single shot short range non-lethal weapon. You don’t want to be in a faceoff with a guy that has a multi shot lethal weapon when you’re holding a taser, even if his weapon is melee only. A taser can be foiled if the dart bounces off the iphone the guy keeps in his breast pocket, at which point he’s gettin’ stabby and you’re defending yourself with a lightweight plastic club.
If you can taser him while he’s not actively trying to harm you, you’re probably OK, as long as there are men with real guns to protect you if it doesn’t work.
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If you’re pointing something at someone, you better have already the considered the condition under which you’re willing to deploy it
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I can pull a trigger a hell of a lot quicker than 1.5 seconds
I don’t know how many cops were on the scene, but surely they could have drawn more than one taser for redundancy’s sake.
We established in the parent thread that only one of them had a taser.
Right. Though I am on record worrying about facile overuse of less-lethals in other circumstances (e.g. zapping someone after a single warning to shut up or leave the room), that can be addressed through training and this would have been an instance where less-lethals could have been a useful first choice – but it seems the staff on the scene did not have a good spectrum of resources at hand. Bad situation for everyone.