Then he gets to at least live with regret; the family gets to live with a memory. There really is no equivalency here.
I am not sure I agree with this. I think there is a generally understood system of communication of intent whereby if a lawful authority tells you not to put your hands near your weapon, and you do, this is taken as a threat. And I think the pragmatics of law enforcement require that this be the general rule, in the sense that it be presumed reasonable to take it as a threat unless something specific to the context makes it clear that it couldn’t have been reasonably so taken.
Cops yelling at you can be confusing and disorienting. Some people may even be deaf or hard of hearing, if you can believe it! Unarmed people are shot by cops all the time for reaching into their pockets (and for that matter, being deaf). Cops shouldn’t shoot someone for retrieving their ID or scratching their belly. There are thousands of CCL holders who manage to walk around everyday and avoid shooting pocket reachers, cops can wait for an actual threat to surface before shooting someone too.
I assumed the cops would take inventory of the situation on the scene first to realize no-one is in any immediate danger, no hostages, no wounded or injured. i assume the cops would take a moment under the guise of public safety to approach the suspect carefully with the aim of determining if the suspect was a danger to himself or others. Perhaps try to start a conversation with the suspect sitting calmly by himself first rather than speed in aggressively shouting commands then shooting to satisfy the cops primal fear?
That’s what i think the cop should have been trained to do!
Yeah, really, the Taser is a no go here. If the suspect has an apparent firearm readily at hand (and had been brandishing it moments before), it’s your gun you draw.
And the officer won’t live with a memory? His life won’t be the same going forward. You act as if police officers aren’t even human beings. :rolleyes:
So while I think even these situations can be (depending on the case) more difficult than you are making them out to be, it should be noted that my own post was referring to situations in which it is known that a weapon is there to be reached for. As I said, there are facts about the pragmatics of law enforcement that make for difficulties here. If a police officer says don’t reach for the weapon, and you do, then that’s got to be understood as a threat (presumptively, ceteris paribus, etc) if law enforcement in these situations is even to be possible. Wait any longer at this point and it’s going to be too late.
I don’t know what a CCL is. But assuming a CCL holder isn’t a law enforcement officer, that person is in a different situation than an on duty law enforcement officer.
I assume CCL stands for Concealed Carry License.
There’s some data that should be possible to gather:
-How often do police shoot and kill someone for reaching for a gun when the person actually had a gun?
-How does this compare to how often the police shoot and kill someone for reaching for a gun when the person did not actually have a gun?
I’d then want to look at cases in which police waited to shoot until after a person had drawn the gun, and examine how many of those cases resulted in death of someone other than the suspect.
In one possible scenario, for every time a cop shoots someone like this, there are a hundred times a cop shoots a suspect who’s about to draw down; and in cases where cops wait until the suspect draws, 90% of the time there’s at least one non-suspect fatality. If that’s how it plays out, this might be an acceptable level of risk, however tragic.
In another possible scenario, half the time that cops shoot someone reaching for a gun, there’s no gun, and 90% of the time that they wait until the suspect draws, the situation ends with no fatalities or only the suspect’s fatality. If that’s how it plays out, this is nowhere near an acceptable level of risk.
Discussing what happens to these specific cops is one thing, and frankly I don’t feel qualified to make that judgment, despite what my gut tells me. But we need to be talking about the broader social policies, and for that, I think we need more information.
Good post.
Of course, if you’re a white guy, you can carry an assault rifle around and the cops don’t do a thing about it.
I’m going to venture a guess of ~100 ft. What is your guess?
Hell, you can even aim that assault rifle¹ and they won’t² do a thing about it, see: Cliven Bundy’s bridge scene.
¹ in their general direction
² as far as I know
¹² to avoid any nitpicking
CMC fnord!
No I’m not. I just not giving the officer’s regrets the same weight as the despair the boy’s family will live with.
This exact situation happened in San Francisco 20-some years ago. on Portero Hill (OJ Simpson’s old 'hood - to set the stage).
The kid was a very large 13 year old who was a bit “slow” (retarded, to be un-PC) who had a replica gun (identical to a real one - 1911 .45 ACP, IIRC) which he would point at people and things and say “bang, bang”.
When the cops arrived, they did not know anything except “man with gun” report and what appeared to be an adult male with a .45.
He pointed at the cops.
Guess what happened?
The “orange muzzle” rule came out shortly after this.
I have not seen the video; I have seen pellet guns at Wal-Mart which brag of their ability to mimic a .22 as to slug and muzzle velocity. These are not toys, and should not have orange muzzles.
It may turn out that this kid was also “slow” and did not understand the gravity of the situation.
Tragic, but hardly “trigger-happy cop”.
Reaching for a weapon after being told to put your hands up has got to be the worst thing one could do.
Do we wait until after he fires to conclude he is a menace? What would the outcry be over that action?
(my bold)
If police believe you have a weapon concealed on your person, every single police department in the country will disagree with you that reaching into your pocket or waistband is not a threat. Especially if they order you not to.
You equivocated the tragedies of the child and of the police in your post #92. Just because they are not equivalent does not mean that both did not experience a tragic event.
I think the first item is probably tracked, but the second seems like it would be harder to get data for. Here is the 2011 NYC Annual Firearm Discharge Report. (pdf) I use 2011 because that is the first that came up in my search terms. On page 17 of the document, it says this:
I think this implies that in 8 percent of the incidents there was only a perceived threat which would speak to your second point. To the first point, 2/3 are vs. a firearm with another 25% vs. other weapons or physical force. Granted this is just one example, of one city, in one year. I don’t think it would be fair to extrapolate across the nation. I’d be interested in reading reports of other cities of a similar nature.
Yes. He was twelve. And from the video, it seems he looked twelve. You don’t shot a 12 yo who points in your direction something that looks like a weapon unless you’re in an African warzone or a South-American favella. You talk with him sternly. You definitely don’t shot him even before he actually has a weapon in hand.
Besides, the way the police arrived on the scene was completely idiotic if they expected an actual threat.
Definitely trigger happy cop, or cop who received a nonsentical training. Your (and some others’) milleage seems to vary, which I find frightening, to say the truth.
If you go on youtube you can find dozens, if not hundreds of videos of open carry advocates being confronted by police officers because people call in that someone is carrying a rifle around in public. Sometimes the police are friendly, other times not so much, but not a lot of these open carry guys get mowed down on sight. Even ones that curse out the cops and refuse to follow orders for 40 minutes.
I haven’t watched many of those videos, so I don’t know what a representative sample would be… roughly how many of these open-carry activists were black?
Every single police department in the country disagrees with you. The reason they do it their way and not yours is because your way is absurd.
Stern language. Of course, bullets respond to authoritative voices! Did you see the video? Rice was drawing his replica firearm.
Because racism? What are you asserting?
Rice was not engaging in open carry. First of all, the replica firearm was concealed in his waistband. The first word of “open carry” is open. Second, open carry is not brandishing a weapon in a threatening manner as Rice was seen and taped doing. Third, it definitely isn’t attempting to draw the weapon on police as they order you to raise your hands.
Equating what Rice was doing to open carry is ignorant at best, disingenuous and intellectually dishonest more likely.
I missed this earlier.
Officers claim they pulled into the parking lot and observed Rice sitting with some others. They observed the replica firearm on the table, and saw Rice put it into his waistband before they drove up to him. If that’s true, your statement about what you know from the video is false (that he was basically sitting by himself). Hypothetically the police could have observed Rice pointing the replica firearm at another person. That would justify the approach if true. Pure speculation on my part.
I know local police in my area have the option of a “hot stop” or felony stop for a man with a gun call. It depends on the circumstances at the time. Are there situations where the way the police pulled up would be appropriate in your mind?