In the context of refusing a police demand to disarm yourself, obstinacy implies malice. It means either you think you’re going to use your weapon, or at least need it to stall for time so you can try to escape or work some kind of a deal to surrender yourself.
In other contexts, like refusing to give me change for a twenty, obstinacy carries no such implication. Sorry if that was unclear.
But yes, when confronted by a guy holding a knife, a clear-headed gent who refuses to disarm strikes me as being more dangerous than a gibberish-spouting loon. The former has rationally decided that he needs his knife for whatever it is that he’s about to do. The latter might just enjoy a shiny surface, and have no conception that it is a weapon intended for stabbing or slashing, or want something to gesture with, or any other irrational purpose.
So wait, which one is it? Is it admirable and heroic that they shot this guy because his poor decision-making skills marked him as somebody who needed to be put down, in which case it needn’t have even mattered if anyone was in danger, or is this about how “frightened” the police were?
See, to me, the “any other irrational purpose” part is plenty danged scary. If someone refuses to drop his knife because he’s rationally decided to be obstinate, that’s bad; if he refuses because of an irrational purpose, that’s – jeez, I don’t even know what kind of irrational he is, just that he is irrational. Does he even realize we’re in a standoff? I mean, a rational guy you can maybe reason with – at least on the level of Balance Of Power or Balance Of Threat; with an irrational guy, the odds of playing Come Let Us Reason Together drop accordingly, right? As we approach the point of “have no conception”, the odds of Solve This Problem Physically rise?
[QUOTE=Jimmy Chitwood]
So wait, which one is it? Is it admirable and heroic that they shot this guy because his poor decision-making skills marked him as somebody who needed to be put down, in which case it needn’t have even mattered if anyone was in danger, or is this about how “frightened” the police were?
[/QUOTE]
In the part you copy-and-pasted, I mentioned that I’d be more frightened by a knife-wielding man who happened to be mentally ill or on drugs than by a knife-wielding man who happened to be obstinate. I’m not saying the police were frightened; they apparently just did their duty, regardless of their personal feelings.
Hey, neither situation is anybody’s perfect Sunday. The tradeoff of “maybe I can reason with the rational guy”, though, is that the rational guy decided to arm himself with a sharp bit of steel, and also decided that he can’t do without it. I’ll take my chances with the loon. You might not be able to talk him out of doing you harm, but you might not need to, either.
That is a good idea; if it is implemented, you just have to be aware that the decline in “Police shoot unbalanced person” stories will be matched by a rise in “Police taze six-year-old” stories. Still a net gain in my book.
Well, sure, but that’s the debate. As far as I can tell, they gave the armed man plenty of time to comply with reasonable and well-repeated instructions before opening fire; you can agree or disagree, as can Jimmy Chitwood or anyone else – but either way, it’s irrelevant that I find crazy people more frightening than rational ones.
If the police see it as their duty to shoot people who are not an imminent threat to anyone, that is a serious problem.
It’s a lot easier to hand out Tasers than to train every officer in their responsible use and to have them abide by that training. Taser abuse can be minimized, but eliminating it is too much to hope for.
If they see it as their duty to shoot knife-wielding people without first giving eminently reasonable and duly repeated instructions, I’d agree with you.
It would also be pretty easy to teach (Toronto) police how to close trolley doors from the outside, thereby confining the perp inside and reducing further the chance of injury to others. All it takes is a push of a button, a button located on the outside of the trolley - trolley drivers do it all the time, when they stop for a coffee for example. (In any case, the trolley driver was there at the scene. He could have told them how to do it)
In fact, considering that a significant percentage of these types of incidents take place on buses, trolleys, etc.* (in Toronto, at least), it’s the type of thing that might have, maybe even should have, been anticipated.
Well, yes, that’s what you said. And you said that in response to Human Action’s mentioning that often in these kinds of incidents the lunatic is an actual lunatic. And he mentioned that in response to your saying that this particular individual needed to be shot because of his terrible judgment in this particular case. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that I assumed you weren’t changing the subject entirely.
I’m not saying it was unreasonable of you; I don’t fault you at all, and I therefore certainly don’t mind clarifying that how frightening I’d find a knife-wielding lunatic happens to be a separate issue from whether this particular individual needed to be shot.
I have seen cops running away from bands of gun toting criminals and abandoning civilians to those criminals so my expectations are low.
But in a more controlled situation, I expect the cops to do everything they can to avoid killing someone. Against someone armed with a knife, I don’t expect them to shoot unless the guy with the knife is charging one of them.
Which whips us right back around to my initial question, which was did the guy need to be shot because he was being frightening, or because he was being unreasonable?
Dunno. As I already noted – and you copy-and-pased when replying – I don’t even know what kind of irrational he was, or whether he was irrational. I don’t know what the grown man with a deadly weapon was going to do next, because I don’t know whether his profoundly unsettling choices were fueled by insane delusions or a clear-eyed desire to commit suicide by cop or something else entirely. I see him as a psychological black box – in that, behaviorally, he’s the dog in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.