That’s your opinion.
That’s my point. No one is redefining anything. That’s always been the definition. Just because you didn’t understand that, doesn’t mean anything has changed.
One thing at a time.
I’m not even sure the stats are that different now. When I look at crime stats for my city, they are not that different between the “good” urban neighborhoods and the “bad” ones. It’s the perception that’s different, not really the stats in some instances. I haven’t really looked at the suburbs, though, so you may well be right that the enforcement lags there so that it affects the stats.
So you want cops to subject themselves to more than an imminent threat of lethal or grave bodily injury? Do they actually have to be injured or shot at before they respond? It is almost entirely unworkable if you want a police force of 60 year old experienced prosecutors and public defenders. Who the hell signs up for that job?
The majority of NYC’s voters are minority. They do not need white saviors to vote out the oppressors and vote in the liberators. Is NYC free from police oppression?
Yes but it’s not typical. You can’t undermine the statistic by pointing to a case that you admit is not typical. That would be like me saying that rape statistics aren’t indicative of anything because I found a case where the rape victim lied.
Yeah. So?
I am familiar with the case and the case STILL allows you to shoot a fleeing unarmed felon in the back despite a lack of imminent threat of death of grave bodily injury.
Most Americans have the right to wield a gun. We are talking about who should have the police power. How many cops do you think a city like NYC would need? A senior attorney (non-partner) makes~300K/year, about 4 times what the average NYPD cop makes. Assuming these attorneys that are between 8-12 years out of law school meet your requirements for competence, you are now asking them to put their lives in more danger than they would if they remained civilians. What do you think we would have to pay to get enough cops to police a city like NYC?
This seems like a huge increase to the police budget. At least you aren’t one of those defund the police types.
This is not true.
Felonies, particularly violent felonies are geographically concentrated. There is a science to it. Your anecdotal evidence does not negate that.
Yes, mine and pretty much every elected politician. There are no federal level politicians that i can think of that continue to think that defunding the police in its original form is a good idea.
Wait. What? They redefine the term “defund the police” to go from, get rid of the police to just moving a few dollars around and you say see they didn’t redefine anything?
That’s an even dumber idea than defunding the police.
There are a few issues with determining if a shooting is justified after the fact
- Evidence. Cops control the evidence and can make a scene fit their story.
- The thin blue line. Cops are not going to rat on each other. I was reading this week that Frank Serpico still gets harrassed/threatened by police. I would expand this out by saying the court system (prosecuters, judges, juries) improperly give more weight to LEO testimony than civilians. If a cop testifies, He said he was going to shoot me." and a witness (or victim) says the victim never said that, who will the courts believe?
- Bullying. Cops will attempt to violate witnesses’ constitutional rights by ordering them to stop filming. This is part of a larger problem where cops make up laws or are justified by claiming “resisting arrest” or “obstructing justice”
- Lack of accountabilty. If a cop does something wrong, they move on to another department. In this way it is similar to the RC priest/pedophila contraversy. At what point do the powers-that-be say you can no longer be a cop? Professionals lose their certificstions, Lawyers get disbarred. And often those records are public. But no equivalent for law enforcement. And adding to that, “qualified immunity” gives police protection for their oopsie-doopsies. Protections us civilians don’t get.
How does this answer the OP’s question? In a world where these are not issues, I believe almost every case of a police shooting could be looked at by an impartial panel and like pornography, they’d know an unjustified shooting when they saw it.
This is one of my ‘unholy trinity’ causing police violence, in no particular order:
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Ubiquitous ownership of firearms. There is a backdrop of “this guy could have a gun” that is present for every interaction of police and non-police.
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The thin blue line. We’ve all seen videos of unnecessary police violence, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video of an officer stopping another officer from doing something, or arresting another officer for an egregious attack on a non-officer. They universally support their fellow officers while in the field, and at best grudgingly backtrack on it if it’s shown that their peer was criminally violent.
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Reliance on violence. Police routinely escalate situations in order to force compliance, often resorting to violence to get their way. I saw a video of a man talking to a few officers when another officer grabbed him from behind, yelled at him, then slammed him on the ground breaking his arm. His fellow officers were upset, because he bodyslammed the wrong guy, an innocent old man. They were not upset because grabbing a non-violent person and slamming him to the ground is bad police work, if it had been the right guy, they would have been fine with it.
Nothing that you have said there is actually in relation to what I have said, only positions that you have attributed for some reason.
What you asked was whether a cop should have to endure more risk than a civilian. I think that the answer to that is obvious. We give them a gun and training and everything.
Then you extrapolate into stupidity, for whatever reasons you have for that.
I would say that at the very least, yes, someone should be actually threatening them in some way. Not just a potential threat, not just a suspicion of a threat, not just a fear of a threat. But an actual threat.
If that means that occasionally a criminal gets off the first shot, then that’s what it means.
One of the benefits of having a higher quality, better trained and educated police force would be that they would have much better threat assessment.
Some presumptions on you part there to ask that question.
Unless you are saying that the poor neighborhoods, some of which are predominately white, are represented as well as the wealthy areas and businesses, then I’m not sure what it is that you are trying to claim.
NYC is getting better, but the police are still more of an occupation force for many areas than they are there to serve and protect.
No, it would be more like saying that looking at stats of weapon or drug possession should be looked at with some suspicion as those who have sworn their duty to protect their communities have planted guns and drugs, and that their colleagues have lied to protect them.
There is no collusion among false rape accusers. There is no “thin blue line”. They don’t risk their lives and their careers for outing other false accusers.
So, your analogy was very far off the mark, extremely so. I can only assume that you meant it in good faith, but as it not only is so poor of an analogy, but also does a good job of minimizing sexual assault, that I would ask that you not try to use such a fallacious and potentially harmful debate tactic again. If you want to try to continue making an analogy involving dishonesty, I would suggest you pick any of the many other times and circumstances that people lie, and leave sexual assault out of it.
So, he counts as armed. When you say that most people killed by police are armed, you would include the times when someone has a legally registered firearm, and has not used it or threatened to use it.
The case in controversial encounters right now has a person who dropped their gun while they were fleeing from officers, which prompted them to shoot him in the back.
That would be considered in the stats for being armed.
Cite please? I have cited that you may not. Can you cite the case that overturned this SCOTUS ruling?
Now, that a police officer can get away with shooting someone in the back by claiming that they thought that they were an imminent threat, sure, cops lie all the time. But if a cop was honest, and said, “I knew that this person was no threat to myself or others, but if he got away, it would be extra work to try to find him again.” then he would not be justified.
I’m not sure what it is that you are saying that I said is not true. Apparently all of it.
But, I guess what you are trying to say is that crime doesn’t exist in middle class neighborhoods, only in poor ones.
You mean, according to the definition that you have chosen to latch on to, and refuse to change, no matter who tells you otherwise?
yeah, that’s what it’s meant for longer than you’ve heard of the phrase.
It’s not really changed so much as you refusing to acknowledge that it doesn’t mean what you insist it must mean.
Once again, a good goal to have, even if it is at the end of a long road that we will never likely reach.
Governments have both good aspects and negative aspects. We endure the negative because we assume that they the alternative is worse, and in this world, it certainly would be.
But, the government is a symbol of force and tyranny, and it always will be, no matter how benevolent. If we are able to achieve a world where that force and tyranny is unnecessary, then that’s a good thing, not a dumb thing.
Will we get there? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that traveling the road of decreasing the force and tyranny of the government is not a good thing, and certainly not a “dumb” thing, as you so lazily describe.
This seems to be his mo.
[quote=“Saint_Cad, post:267, topic:919153, full:true”]
There are a few issues with determining if a shooting is justified after the fact[/quote]
I agree that this is the problem. I think a more honest accountable police force is necessary no matter what else we do.
The hotspots are based on reported crimes, yes? His anecdotal evidence is that the crimes went unreported. Unless you have a cite that says crime concentration measures include unreported crimes, it looks like a valid criticism. Anecdotal evidence that statistical evidence being cited is not accurate is a valid criticism.
I don’t dispute that there are concentrations of (reported) crimes. I do dispute that these areas necessarily correspond with areas commonly referred to – by the public or the police – as “high crime areas.” And when police say it, it tends to be taken at face value, and not scientifically proven. Just looking at a crime “heat map” of my city, some areas of town that people are afraid of (and which have a higher concentration of black people) have lesser crime rates than areas that are regarded as very nice, and quite safe.
But that’s not the standard. Cops don’t get to shoot someone because of a potentiality of a threat or suspicion of a threat. There typically has to be an imminent threat. How would you change that standard? I extrapolate to stupidity because I think that is where your position leads.
How does a prior career as a prosecutor and public defender improve threat assessment ability?
NYC is a democracy. The rich people don’t get to vote twice.
OK then by analogy we should look at rape statistics with suspicion because there are anecdotes about false rape accusations. Anecdaotes simply do not trump statistics. I pick sexual assault because it makes it clear how bad your arguments are when applied to other situations where you want to believe the statistics rather than undermine them. So I think the rape analogy works particularly well to rebut you when you use anecdote to undermine statistics.
Yes and until they get discovered, false rape accusers are counted as raped. So does that mean we can’t really trust the rape statistics? Or is it possible that outliers and anecdotes do not undermine data?
Of course a cop can’t shoot to kill someone because it would be a pain in his ass to find them later on. But if he reasonably thought that that person posed a significant threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others (regardless of whether they are armed) if they escaped, then they can shoot to kill.
Tennessee v Garner doesn’t say what you think. The cops still have pretty wide discretion to reasonably assess when a fleeing felon poses a threat. This was clarified 4 years later in Graham v Connor.
So, if for example a cop saw a guy butcher someone, and he dropped his machete and ran away, and I (after 20 years as a prosecutor and public defender) didn’t have the stamina to catch him, I think I can shoot him to prevent him from getting away if I reasonably thought he was dangerous enough.
No, I am trying to say that crime is not evenly distributed geographically. Some places are more crime ridden than others. Some neighborhoods have more crime than others. It seems silly to police high crime areas the same as low crime areas.
I’ve provided a cite showing that people actually meant defund the police. I agree that they have since changed the definition. But it was a redefintiion of words that already had definitions.
I’m using the definition used by people who actually want to defund the police. You can insist that i redefine the word defund to actually mean reform but that is no more accurate than saying that defund planned parenthood means to pass out free condoms.
That is a stupid idea because in EVERY world, the alternative to anarchy is better than anarchy. Pursuing an impossible goal can in fact cause harm in some cases (see war on drugs).
BTW how do i report personal attacks?
No gun?
Look, only one major nation doesnt arm it’s beat officers routinely, that is the UK, where it is tradition, and they also have few handguns in the hands of the populace.
As opposed to the uSA with 300 Million guns and a long tradition of armed police.
Gangs have announced 'wars" on police, shooting them whenever possible.
Are content free personal attacks still prohibited in Great Debates?
You think that rapes, murders, burglaries, robberies, etc are more likely to be reported in poor neighborhoods than wealthy ones? There may be some bullshit in what police departments call high crime areas but there is a science to this.