Oh my, I’m taking away the privilege of a person to die to save your life. Why don’t you take that honor yourself instead of calling the police next time.
Absolutely. Let me clarify. I’d rather (and I’d expect) the police to take steps to minimise their killing of an innocent person. If those steps result the police being put at greater risk and ten extra police being killed for every innocent person not killed, I think that would be fine.
How nice of you to desire that ten cops dies so you will be unharmed. But this is just a phony choice. This was a case where one innocent man and no cops died when there was no crime because the police were afraid of being killed by taking an unnecessary risk.
The real choice is between an innocent dying by the act of a criminal, or an innocent dying by the act of a police. Apparently you would prefer the latter.
This is simple. It is wrong, flat out morally wrong to require a police officer to sacrifice his life for anyone. If a police officer wants to take a risk he can’t use that as an excuse to kill an innocent person. There was no risk in this case, there was an innocent life lost. If the police had taken the steps to protect themselves first no one would have died.
I’m not special. They’re there to take a bullet for every member of the public. That’s their job. Any cop who objects to that shouldn’t be trusted with the power to exercise deadly force on behalf of the state.
Yes. There’s nothing strange about multiple people bearing responsibility.
Fine, swatting-dick gets maybe 10% of the blame for the death, and all the blame for wasted time and resources. The cops bear 90% of the blame for the actual death.
So on top of a cop’s life not be worth anything but a salary you are the state too:dubious:. Cops are human beings. There’s no justification for a cop being required to sacrifice his life to save you. Deadly force is to be used only as a last resort to protect the innocent, not to kill the innocent to ease your fears.
Look at this case clearly, there was no risk, there was no crime, the police saw no crime being committed, and then killed an innocent man out of fear. Fear in two forms, one that they might be killed themselves without any justification, and then fear that they’d be blamed for a criminal’s act if there was an actual crime and they didn’t sacrifice their own life. The latter led to the former, all because you think you are entitled to have someone else sacrifice their life for yours.
You’re preaching to the choir here; go tell that to some cops.
If those cops actually believed it was more important to protect innocents than for them to survive, they would not have fired a gun, they would have tried to talk the guy down, despite some risk to them.
I have no clue why you think people are dishonoring cops, or devaluing them. Nor how you get from “they should take a bullet” to “they killed this guy”.
Lots of people do dangerous things so others can benefit, and mostly, we respect those people and the risks they take. (Maybe coal miners and chicken packers are treated like subhumans. But police, military, search& rescue squads, secret service, and the folks who climb street poles so you can have power are all respected.)
When police start to care more about police than about the public, things go poorly. Police lose the ability to keep the peace. Crime rises because citizens don’t trust the police.
I was speaking of the national guard, and not the army. But if that was not legally possible, then simply use State Police assets in the same manner. At a certain practical level, the distinction between a dedicated police unit and an army platoon gets real slim. As for Englands case, before those officers were even called in, a lot would happen before hand to resolve it without sending in a tactical team, were as in Kansas, they launched for a breach assault almost immediately from what I have read.
Swatting dick guy gets 100% of the responsibility for having the police show up. Police take 100% of the responsibility for what happens next.
There are some cops who need that message. There are more who are getting a different message. See below.
I mostly agree with what you are saying, but the reality is that the public message to the police is that they are responsible for crime and they are being paid to sacrifice their lives to save yours. All of us should be willing to make the sacrifice for the greater good. We have the police so that job will be done professionally instead of each of us arming ourselves and fighting crime vigilante style or out of desperation. But the police are told by the public, if not be their own, that they must take the bullet for us, creating an enhanced fear whenever they do their job. If a cop protects himself and an innocent person is killed by a criminal the cop will be blamed for that innocent death, the public outrage will be directed at the cop instead of the criminal. But there is no moral basis for the police to sacrifice themselves to prevent that crime, it is not the existential threat that the military or the Secret Service at least claims they are defending against, you and I are not important enough for some other innocent to die in our defense on a statuatory basis. We should not be surprised that we have police killing innocents when we treat them like this.
Eventually, I hope, people will begin to understand how screwed up this situation is. Finally after years of needless deaths by firemen the realization has come that it is stupid for firemen to sacrifice their lives in vain hope of saving others. Firefighters have in the past, time and again, been ordered to enter burning buildings simply to die when there was no hope of saving anyone. In recent years the realization has come that bravado is no substitute for sense, and slowly fire departments are changing to require a command decision before anyone is told to take inordinate risk. I hope the police can learn from this, the police must first protect themselves and only take great risk to their own life based on a command assessment of the situation which rationally decides the risk will be for the greater good and not to avoid a public outcry for the sacrificial death of the police to assuage their own selfish fears.
The problem is that the only way you can hold the swatter responsible for the victim’s death is if you concede that the police shooting the victim was a reasonably foreseeable outcome.
Let’s say the swatter had followed a more traditional route and ordered a dozen pizzas to be delivered to the victim’s house. And when the pizza delivery driver showed up and was told no pizzas had been ordered, he got so upset at not being paid he shot and killed the victim.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the swatter had foreseen this as a possible outcome. We don’t expect pizza delivery men to shoot their customers. We could agree that the swatter was responsible for the prank call and the fake delivery but not responsible for the shooting.
So what reasonable assumptions can we make about the police? Can an average person reasonably conclude that there is a realistic chance that the police will show up at a house, based on a false report that a crime has occurred, and shoot the occupant of the house? And that therefore making such a false report is a cause in the occupant’s death?
Certainly.
This is going to be a tough one to deal with in two different states and at the federal level. I am hoping the feds go after this guy for wire fraud and that can turn the into a felony murder charge. It’s certainly foreseeable that a false report of a crime could result in harm to innocent people, but the actual police action itself may be in question giving reasonable doubt to the guilt of the asshole swatter who started all this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this incident creates a lot of new legislation to deal with these circumstances. Likely IMHO to make the problem even worse.
Given the progressing state of drone technology, I’d think specially outfitted police drones could be used in these types of situations.
Example: One officer stays in the squad car and directs the drone to the front door. Other officers stay at a safe distance, behind their ajar bullet-proof squad car doors, with firearms trained at the door. The drone’s “knocker” knocks on the door. The drone’s remote megaphone shouts, “police! Come out with with your arms raised!”
If the alleged perp comes out with arms raised then drops to the ground as ordered, no problem. No at-risk twitchy cop, no loss of life.
If the perp comes out acting hinky, the drone can zap him with it’s taser till he drops to the ground. If he comes out with guns ablaze, then he gets justifiably shot. If he slips out the back, one of the perimeter cops can deal with him, with help from the redirected drone.
If the perp holes up inside, the drone can break through a window, locate the bad guy, spray him with tear gas and zap him with the taser until the police apprehend him.
Sure, it sounds a bit sci-fi-ish. But, apart from cost and training cops to fly drones, why not?
#5 should be: Deploy the drone.
I ageee with beowulff. The pizza delivery analogy breaks down because there is no pattern or history of pizza delivery guys pulling guns and shooting innocent people dead.
There is that pattern with police in the US, where innocent people are shot dead because they did not exactly follow the shouted instructions from the police.
The training the police receive of shooting when someone does not follow their instructions would also probably be a useful indicator of the reasonableness of that assumption.
I feel that Barriss (the swatter) is going to benefit from the legal system’s reluctance to go in this direction. In order for the court to hold Barriss responsible for Finch’s death, they would have to rule that Barriss or any person could reasonably foresee that the police would shoot an innocent person like Finch. And I think a court is going to hesitate before it goes on record saying that the police shooting innocent people is a reasonable belief for the average person to have.
The Wichita Police are presumably going to want to argue that they did not act wrongfully. They’re going to want to say the shooting was justified based on Finch’s behavior and that a typical person would have complied in an appropriate manner and wouldn’t have been shot. They’re not going to want to admit that their procedures typically lead to unarmed non-criminals being killed. They want to present this as a atypical and rare outcome.
And that argument is going to help Barriss. Because he can then argue that he was reasonable in assuming his victim would act in a typical manner and therefore wouldn’t have been killed as a result of his call. Barris will want to agree with the police argument that this was an atypical and rare outcome and that therefore he can’t be held responsible for anticipating it.
You or I might agree with that. But is it likely a court will issue a ruling that it is a reasonably foreseeable outcome?
I agree they are unlikely to find that as a reasonable belief. I think it is a reasonable belief, but not as defined by the law. Of course if it was then it opens the door for a lot of arguments that the state could reasonably expected to cause great harm in any action it takes.
Your post is a very good analysis of the situation. I don’t know if a felony murder charge is feasible in this case. It would be akin to the death of an innocent person during a bank robbery when a policeman was acting properly and justifiably in the use of deadly force such as a ricochet from a police bullet fired at the bank robber who was actively firing his own weapon. In this case though, the swatters actions were not directly threatening lives in reality. And that even the fictional crime was not witnessed by the policeman who fired his gun favors the defendant as well. And I believe for any such case to be brought to trial a judge would first have to rule on just the possibility of a reasonable belief of the police shooting an innocent person, which is likely to fail for the reason you stated, and would then never even end up before a jury to decide.