I think it fortunate for California police officers that this bill stands little to no chance of passing. I wouldn’t want to be a cop in that state if it did. But I’m open to persuasion. Is there any merit at all to this proposal?
From an article linked to in the article in the OP -
I’m not sure how much faith I can put in the description of the law as presented by the Sacramento Bee but on its face this seems more than mildly ridiculous. Police try to arrest someone, he pulls a knife, they shoot him. Therefore their own actions in trying to arrest him made it necessary to use deadly force. :dubious:
There are always alternatives, if you exclude “reasonable” from the equation. If he has a knife, you have the alternative of attempting a disarm. IME it tends to get you killed or badly injured - most of the time, knife disarms don’t work. Real life is not a kung-fu movie. If he shoots someone, you don’t have to shoot back - you have the alternative of running away, or using a Taser, or a baton. Same problem - you tend to die if you use less-than-lethal force against lethal force. “He’s shooting at me - first, let’s try to talk him down”. No thank you - you get further with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone.
TL;DR version - fuck that.
I hope this law doesn’t go anywhere, not because the police resist it, but because sane people do. Of course this is California, but I can still hope.
Regards,
Shodan
The standard of “reasonable” is so loose as to be virtually meaningless. Juries have decided that the cop who shot Philando Castile acted in a manner that was “reasonable”. Juries have decided that the cop who shot Tamir Rice acted in a manner that was “reasonable”. Juries have struggled to decide that the man who shot Walter Scott didn’t act in a manner that was reasonable when he shot a fleeing man in the back then tried to frame him. The “reasonable” standard basically means “if any reasonable person could in theory be afraid for their life”, which provides a degree of freedom that is quite frankly insane, and which is absolutely not afforded to the average person in a self-defense case. If you or I drove up to a playground after hearing that a kid was waving a gun around, saw a 12-year-old reaching for something on his belt, and immediately shot that child dead, we would be prosecuted for murder, and justifiably so. “Self-defense” would be a ludicrous defense at that point. On the other hand, a police officer could very reasonably be worried that that 12-year-old is going to shoot them, so it’s hard to even get a trial.
Police should only use “deadly force” when they or the public in the immediate vicinity are threatened with “deadly force”. Is that a plain and simple enough statement to understand? Wouldn’t that be better than the vague and extremely subjective “reasonable”? If I’m holding a gun, shoot me. If I’m holding a cell phone, don’t. If I’m holding a knife at a distance, tase me, don’t shoot me with a gun unless I’m on top of someone and ready to stab them.
Cops who panic and kill people when there is no valid threat of deadly force are killers. The fact that they carry a badge is immaterial.
Hmm … Why do they still call it “common sense” when it’s become so “uncommon”?
I don’t think it would be better because I don’t see how it is different from ‘police should only use deadly force when a reasonable officer would believe that they or the public are threatened with deadly force’.
Suppose I am a cop, I am chasing a suspect in a burglary, the suspect stops, turns, reaches into his waistband and pulls something out and points it at me. Am I being threatened with deadly force? I have a second or less to decide - if I guess wrong, I’m dead.
Regards,
Shodan
Is it a cell phone? Then no, you are not being threatened with deadly force.
Would a reasonable cop been able to determine that in the second or so he had, under the same conditions?
If the end result of this proposed law is to prosecute or fire cops based on facts not in evidence at the time of the shooting, then the law is counter-productive to an almost breath-taking extent.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not a lawyer but “The guy had a cell phone and not a gun” would be facts in evidence at the time of the shooting, wouldn’t they?
No, it hasn’t been established as a fact at the time of the shooting - that’s the point.
Monday-morning quarterbacking doesn’t help either.
Regards,
Shodan
I see. So the bad guy having a gun also wouldn’t be established as a fact at the time of the shooting?
The first change needed is to have officers protect themselves first instead of placing themselves in danger to begin with. A command decision should be necessary before officers put themselves in a situation where they would need to use deadly force for their own protection unless there was an immediate danger to others. As long as police officers operate out of fear, or can use fear as an excuse, the problem will continue.
And everybody else has to stop expecting police officers to be human shields to protect them because it’s cheaper than addressing the societal issues that gets us to this point in the first place.
They would be facts, sure. But the officer isn’t going to know if it’s a phone or a gun until it is pulled (and perhaps not even then).
Well, I’m fine with a law stating the officer has to know before killing a guy.
As someone else pointed out, this sort of law means that if someone points a realistic-looking imitation gun at a cop, and gets killed, but it’s only discovered later on in the investigation that the gun was in fact, not an actual gun, but just an extremely-realistic fake, that the officer’s shooting would be ruled as “unjustified.”
And also that, if you have to wait to be sure it’s a real gun before you shoot him, that gives him a chance to shoot you. And that is simply not a requirement that very many sane people are going to subject themselves to.
"Welcome to the Police Academy, and your first class on correct Use of Force. The principle is, you have to wait for him to fire first, or you will go to prison.
Hey - where’s everybody going?"
Regards,
Shodan
You know there are numerous videos of a guy with a clearly recognized real gun that managed to not be shot by the police? Do you think the cops in those videos were idiots for not instantly shooting the guy dead when they realized he had a gun?
To be fair, AIUI, the RoE of “Do not fire unless fired upon first” is very common in military deployments or UN peacekeeping, however, such military personnel are/were usually at distances where an enemy was unlikely to hit them with a first shot, or if an aircraft fired a missile there was ample time for countermeasures, not the mere feet or yards away that a cop might be from a suspect.
You forgot to add “Unless he’s black. Then fire away.”
Thankfully law enforcement officers are equipped with new, state-of-the art devices which can distinguish between guns and cell phones, even at a distance. They’re called “eyes”.
The law should err on the side of public safety, not the safety of cops. Shooting unarmed kids is not just a “whoopsie” that should be dismissed as the price of law enforcement. If that means occasionally a cop takes a bullet, so be it. That’s what medals are for.