The September 11th attacks, of course, were done by teams of five hijackers.
Okay. I grant that you could technically use that information to help you plan some nefarious scheme, by having a slightly better estimate of how many armed opponents you may have. But you don’t know how they are trained, you don’t know how they are armed, you don’t know who exactly they are, you don’t know how they personally would react to any given situation, and so on. Anyone would assume that they’d get stopped by someone near the cockpit, and presumably you’d asssume that they’d be near the front of the plane.
Methinks you’re overreacting to this.
A few things:
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Even if the passengers didn’t observe him saying he had a bomb, doesn’t mean he didn’t say it.
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Some construction workers opinion on when deadly force should be used means about jack shit to me. Last I checked the construction worker isn’t familiar with the standard operating procedure of law enforcement, and I’m going to wager he’s never been in a situation where you have to make a life and death decision like that.
And plus, the news reports have clearly state the shooting happened outside the plane out of view of all the passengers. So none of them are going to have relevant info on the ACTUAL shooting. Just what lead up to the shooting.
- Even if he never said he had a bomb, when officers have weapons trained on him and in response he starts reaching into his back pack, they were justified in shooting him. You don’t reach for shit when law enforcement has guns trained on you and are telling you to stand down.
Anyways, the real reason I started this thread is because it seems like anytime police officers use deadly force the family of the person who gets killed makes a huge fuss. It becomes some sort of crusade, and the law enforcement officers get railroaded to some sort of disciplinary action they don’t deserve (luckily they rarely end up on the wrong side of things in court.)
It gets to the point that I wonder why we should arm our police at all if society is unwilling to accept the fact there may be appropriate times to use that weapon.
This pisses me off.
Are you completely divorced from logic and reason?
In what world is the opinion of some blowhard construction worker, superior to the judgment of a trained law enforcement officer? And let’s not forget the shooting happened outside of the plane, not inside. So this construction worker (and all the other passengers) didn’t see what happened.
Armed with box cutters.
5 guys wtih box cutters vs. 2 guys with guns.
Not hard to guess who wins that fight.
Heck, 9/11 like attacks probably will never happen again because the pilots will simply refuse to open the cockpit doors (which are now heavily secured.) No matter what’s going on on the other side.
And considering what happened on 9/11 I doubt the passengers will sit there like sheeps for the slaughter, they’ll rush anyone hijacking a plane with small weapons like boxcutters and probably pretty easily overwhelm the hijackers. A boxcutter just plain isn’t all that useful when 100 people are beating the hell out of you.
Wolf_meister said that were he a terrorist, since he now knows air marshals come in pairs, he would bring an accomplice. I was saying the terrorists have already done that, so it doesn’t increase the risk to anybody.
Death does make people do silly things.
Funerals are a great excuse for family get together!
'Cause cops NEVER shoot people who don’t deserve it, RIGHT???
Here’s part of your problem—your willingness to give virtually unconditional credence to anything said by a law enforcement officer, and to privilege it over anything that anyone else might say. This is an issue that goes beyond this particular incident and gets to the question of the role of law enforcement in our society.
Sure, the idea is that we should be able to place our faith and our trust in the actions and the words of these people, but there have been sufficient incidents over the course of American history where they and their actions have proven to be less than noble or admirable. Hence the desire by some people to look at situations like this with something of a jaundiced eye.
As i’ve already said in this thread, i think that the marshall in question probably had little choice but to do what he did, based on the information that we have. But i’m not willing to dismiss out of hand statements that contradict the offical version. That you are apparently willing to do this says little for your credibility.
Of course, as your starting of this thread shows, you tend to view everyone who disagrees with you on this issue as some sort of knee-jerk opponent of law enforcement. Sorry to disappoint you, bucko, but my stepfather is a retired cop and my mother spent the last ten years of her career working in a civilian capacity for a police department. About half the guests at their wedding were cops.
I believe that police and other law enforcement officers are an essential part of our society, but i believe that we need to be willing to scrutinize their actions to ensure that they serve civil society rather than subvert it. And good law enforcement officers—true peace officers—believe this also.
We could, of course, help to ensure a higher standard of law enforcement by ensuring standards of pay and conditions that reflect the danger, the difficulty, and the importance of the job. But many of the same people who want the protection the cops offer aren’t willing to pay an appropriate amount for it. It sometimes seems to me that those who are willing to excuse just about any barbarity on the behalf of law enforcement do so to make themselves feel better about the fact that cops often get paid so poorly. Empty platitudes, for some, take the place of monetary rewards.
Look, the details are still coming in. But, if it is true that the suspect indicated that he had a bomb in the bag AND then reached into the bag, I cannot possibly see how you find it reasonable for the officers to wait. This is not even about their safety anymore, it is for the safety of the hundreds on the plan loaded with jet fuel, the thousands inside of the terminal, etc… That was the gist of my point. If the threat of a bomb was there, and he reached in the bag, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that he may be about to utilize deadly force, thereby legitimizing the use of deadly force to prevent his further actions.
Thus, I see no reason to “come off it” at this point.
Air Marshals sound a little trigger happy to me. Having been through airport security a few times since 9/11, I can’t imagine someone getting a bag with a bomb in it through security. This guy was on the plane for a couple hours, right? He waits until he gets off the plane to start running around yelling about a bomb? I’m thinking “loony.” Wasn’t his wife yelling “bipolar, need to get his meds?”
Hell, there have been times I felt like screaming and running off the plane. I think we’re getting kinda crazy in this post 9/11 Homeland Security America we find ourselves living in.
Marley 23 and NinjaChick
Yes I am aware that the Sept 11, 2001 attacks were done with teams of 5 people each. My point being, were there any “sleeper” terrorists on those planes? I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that. However with the knowledge of Air Marshalls always working in pairs, the odds of terrorists using a “sleeper” (or 2 or 3?) have increased considerably. Then again, someone said the probability of such an attack occurring again is very low and so my argument has been rendered academic.
Also, in posting #100 I said I may be over-reacting and it is *definitely *off-topic so I think we should leave it at that. My fault. I’m wrong. I won’t bring it up again. Boy is my face red.
And that was after he had been repeatedly order to hit the deck.
As I have stated elsewhere, even my 95 year old mother would have capped his ass under those circumstances.
So, does anyone have any direct quotes from a passenger who was onboard the plane or someone who was in the jetway or a crewmember that indicates that Alpizar said he had a bomb? I heard second-hand that he said he did in the inital reports, but none of that has been confirmed. Does anyone have any cites for testimony to the effect that he was behaving in a threatening manner, even? “Panicked” and “agitated”, yes, but “threatening” or some synonyn thereof?
Form the latest reports I have read, no one but the Air Marshals heard the Bomb part. The Air Marshals say that hewouldn’t stop and kept approaching him.
From CNN
No verification so far from outside the Air Marshalls.
Jim
This is what I find troubling, and what I am so eager to hear what the investigation reveals. If the marshals are saying he was yelling about a bomb while running down aisle of the aircraft, they should have no problem producing any number of passengers to confirm that. If no witnesses can be found, it throws the whole story from the marshals into question.
It looks like the air marshalls might be lying. According to the passengers, the dude never said he had a bomb.
I also think the excuse that he was reaching into his bag is bullshit because the marshalls already knew he had to have cleared security to get on the plane. They knew it was impossible for him to have a bomb or a gun in it.
I don’t know if this is your implication, but have we become so cynical that we can’t take the marshalls at their word? I seriously doubt that they were so eager to shoot someone that they were just waiting for an excuse.
They only had a split second to make a decision and pray it was the right one. We can all sit back in our comfortable armchairs and second-guess them, safely outside of the heat of the moment, but is that really fair? Do we really expect our law enforcement officers to be omnipotent?
Not impossible, not by a long shot. Remember the tale of the fellow who got in so much trouble because he “forgot” the gun in his bag, but called a radio station after the flight to report he had carried it on?
Secondly, a makeshift, but perfectly deadly gun can get past metal detectors. The inmates in the prison in which my husband worked once made one (confinscated before anyone got hurt) which was tested and shown to be almost as powerful as a .22.
Security screeners make mistakes, just like air marshalls.
Impossible.
No implication was intended. Check my earlier posts if you are unsure.
But also read the quote from Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service who now appears to have some of his information wrong.
I keep saying, wait for the full story to come out. The FBI is investigating this and they will probably get to the truth.
What a spokeperson for an agency says is not a fact. It is just PR. I still suspect the Air Marshals were justified and acted in a reasonable fashion. The quote about Alpizar running in the plane’s aisle yelling, “I have a bomb in my bag.” never came from a Marshal, just some flack.
Jim