I thought my response here was too far off-topic from the linked thread, so I thought I would start this.
That’s because law enforcement officers have been trained that nothing is worth more than their own personal safety.
Which I strongly disagree with, BTW. Part of great power is great responsibility. But many police officers want all of the power with none of the responsibility to actually protect those they are sworn to serve and protect if it involves any personal risk to themselves. That is why they frequently refuse to go into dangerous situations (like school shootings), and also shoot people who pose little or no risk (like a mentally-disturbed person waving around a knife).
I feel that potentially putting one’s life in danger in order to protect the public is part of a police officer’s sworn duty, and is part of what they signed up for. Nobody is forced to become a police officer or law enforcement officer. If you don’t like this, then don’t sign up.
(I myself served in the military, and was fully aware there might be situations in which my life could be placed at risk. And again it’s part of what I signed up for.)
Anyway, I think this mindset is also behind many of the police abuses we have seen in recent years.
I’ll go even further. I also don’t think police officers should be using deadly force against people until and unless they are actively under attack (as in taking fire). The presence of a gun should not be enough. Not even a person waving around a gun or a knife. And I wish laws were changed correspondingly.
Because right now I feel like we live in a police state, and I personally fear the police in this country.
I agree, it should be part the legal and implicit duty of cops that their lives are secondary to the mission, sadly, SCOTUs or other courts did not agree.
To play devil’s advocate here, you cannot order people on a pointless suicide mission. In order to rescue victims, you have to avoid becoming a victim yourself.
The Texas incident, though, IIRC involved cowardice and incompetence of the cops (who sat on their asses waiting for the feds, without professionally securing the scene or rescuing any hostages), and they were indeed brought up on multiple criminal charges, so no one thought anything was properly handled there.
For what it’s worth, you certainly can do this with military personnel.
And no, I don’t think you should necessarily be able to do this with civilian police. But I do think it’s a bit ironic that many law enforcement agencies and law enforcement personnel want to outfit themselves in surplus and/or wannabe military accoutrements while also wanting to be treated like civilians when it is convenient for them.
You can read the details, but the police knowingly left the perpetrators in the house for hours as they raped and murdered a mother and her two daughters. They could have stopped the ongoing crime at any time, but instead simply set up a perimeter and waited.
(The mother passed a note to a bank teller hours before she and her daughters were killed.)
I think this botched response was due to incompetence and a systematic prioritization of police safety over protecting a family who was being tortured to death while the police waited.
I am astounded at the comments on this thread. I had to check if it was April Fools day.
First of all, I believe that the police are currently trained to quickly charge in to an active shooter situation. Remember that this is a phenomenon that has developed during our lifetime. The don’t become an additional victim ethos that all first responders are taught has been, I believe, discarded in these situations. I am not LEO and am certainly not an apologist for the police but the fact is they have and do put their lives on the line in situations like school shootings.
The topic of use of deadly force is a whole other kettle of fish.
It seems stupid to you because it is ingrained in you (and our society) that nothing is more important than the police officer’s personal safety. Certainly not the well-being of the public who are unable to go about their daily lives without the risk of being killed by a LEO “in fear for their life” even if such fear is unwarranted and entirely in their head.
You know, there was a time when it was not a crazy idea for a LEO to calmly tell someone to “put the weapon down.”
But this is never done any more. Instead we have the opposite extreme with police officers using deadly force and shooting people multiple times at the mere sight of a gun, or a toy gun, or a cell phone that was mistaken for a gun (which resulted in the victim being shot eight times, including six times in the back).
But here’s the thing. Police officers signed up for this, and if they don’t like it, they can go find another line of work. Whereas we, the citizens of this nation, did not sign up for this and cannot opt out of the current deadly situation.
So if someone has to be legally disadvantaged such that they cannot use deadly force unless they are actively being attacked and taking fire, I’d rather it be a police officer in a bulletproof vest than the twelve-year old kid playing in the park who was shot to death within two seconds of the arrival of the police.
No doubt. But a well-run police force can make up for lack of experience with proper training.
And note that the two perpetrators weren’t international terrorists like in Die Hard. They were a couple of local hoodlums known to police who were given carte blanche to rape, kill, and set the victims’ house on fire (in an attempt to destroy the evidence) over the course of hours with the police never even announcing their presence—instead simply sitting safely at the perimeter they had set up.
I don’t think it should be a legal requirement, but certainly a moral and ethical one. When I was a soldier, there was never a question of whether I’d risk my personal safety for the mission. It was essentially a requirement. I can’t understand why police are any different.
Here is a fun one. A man in Brampton Ontario was questioned by officers when they found out he had built a Flock-like camera specifically to see if he could track the movements of police vehicles (his experiment had a 2 in 7 success rate). Not only are officers overly cautious about dangerous situations, but they also are uncomfortable about being watched or tracked.
There is a sort of cart before the horse thing going on here. Many citizens have developed a sense that police are associated with violence, so, when they enter a situation, violence is kind of expected. They fear dangerous situations because their very presence is likely to make things worse.
I’ve watched countless LEO-interactions videos, and the only only logical conclusions is that they’re a gang. They look out for themselves, and they’re at war with anyone who is not in LE.
They don’t give a rat’s-ass about your rights, or the Constitution. They look out for themselves. And they can do whatever they want because of “qualified immunity.”
Oh, no. I think this standard applies to anyone not just police officers. Someone pointing a gun at you is a reasonable cause for you to be in imminent fear of grevious bodily harm or death. Requiring someone, anyone, to allow another person to shoot at them first before they can defend themselves is unreasonable. I accept that this is your belief, but I don’t think there’s any middle ground here, so there’s nothing more to discuss.
In my job at a public water and sewer utility, we are required to utilize local police for traffic control on construction projects (so-called “private-duty police”). We get off-duty police who are working overtime. But they don’t actually care a whit about traffic control or public safety. They simply want to get paid $200/hour to sit (and sleep) in their air-conditioned police vehicles with the lights going. And because they refuse to get out of their cars and actually direct traffic, we also have to hire flaggers (i.e. civilian flagmen).
If a contractor cancels due to rain, we still have to pay them for a full 8-hour shift. If a contractor goes just one minute past 8 hours, we get charged for another 4 hours at overtime rates (time-and-a-half).
It’s a complete scam, and everyone knows it. But nobody can do anything about it, because the police union is all-powerful. We’ve complained to the mayor and the police chief, and nothing changes. Why? Because they’re the biggest gang in town, and nobody will take them on.
I recently spent over a million dollars on private-duty police on a recent $12 million water main project. That was nearly 10% of my construction budget. We had to go back to our board for additional funds due to the egregious overcharges.