Those arguing in favor of the cops’ actions in this case have, so far, not addressed the various examples from other countries of cops apprehending deranged and armed individuals without killing them.
Do you think those other countries’ police departments are better trained/skilled than ours? Is it a matter of different priorities – many of our departments just don’t put a particularly high priority on not killing mentally disturbed individuals when they are armed in public, while those other ones do?
Obviously what the police did was
a. legal.
b. reasonable.
c. in the interest of protecting themselves and society.
Now, the case will be reviewed in light of the laws those YOU have elected have enacted to cover situations where deadly force is justified. So, in reality, you’ve already tipped your hat in support of this.
Y’know, I’m sympathetic to the argument that cops resort to violence too easily. There are certainly cases where they go way too far. Those cases where someone gets shot on a no-knock warrant, the cops involved ought to be in jail (and no-knock warrants should be removed from department policies).
But this? This is exactly a situation where they should have shot. Yes, they should have started by trying to talk the person down. But when someone’s advancing on you with a weapon, “Drop the knife or we’ll shoot!” is the best form of talking-down you have available to you. You don’t have time for a philosophical discussion about how the perp could accomplish so much more with his life. You have time for one quick, decisive, easily-understood sentence, if that.
If only there were some evidence I could evaluate on whether different tactics are successful in both protecting police and making deadly force a last resort…
Well, I’m not actually a cop, but if I were I’d no doubt have written something exactly like that.
No, it shouldn’t be part of the job to absorb abuse, any more than for anyone else. Normal people don’t scream abuse at people, whether they are shop assistants, call centre workers, or policemen. To do so is antisocial, and possibly criminal, behaviour, and no-one should have to tolerate it.
Fortunately, policemen are in an unique position to do something about it, by arresting the person abusing them, and they should do so on every occasion.
Put simply, no cop is put in a situation where they have to make a life or death decision except when someone else is doing wrong - or appears to be doing so.
There’s a very logical reason. The guy was coming at them with a knife. When someone is doing that, it’s past the time for talking. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cop or a normal person being threatened, the right to self defence is the same. The police should first be protecting the general public, then themselves, and only after that considering the safety of people threatening others. Whether they are threatening the cops or the public, that person’s safety comes last.
It’s a number of things. Firstly, we actually treat people with mental illnesses here, rather than letting them run around threatening people (vast generalisation, but as a mentally ill person undergoing treatment myself one I think I can get away with making), so there’s much less chance of it happening. But ultimately, were I to attack a policeman, they shouldn’t have to take my mental state into account before defending themselves.
Secondly, most countries simply don’t have the weapons culture of the US. Here, it’s basically unacceptable to carry any sort of weapon, and doing so would immediately get you arrested if it’s seen. (I don’t entirely agree with this, it ultimately makes self defence much harder). But it means that, unlike in the US, the police won’t be going into an encounter expected the other person to be armed most of the time.
I don’t honestly know what I’d expect a British cop to do in the event that someone ran at them with a knife screaming “shoot me, shoot me”. I almost can’t imagine it happening here, although it may have done. If the police weren’t armed (and many here aren’t), I suspect that they would subdue him, suffering some injuries.
Here are two examples of how the police in the UK respond to a knife-wielding and machete-wielding deranged person. In the second case, the knife-guy repeatedly lunged at a police officer, and the police officer (shockingly!) kept his distance and moved out of the way.
Did you see the video and the article of the Australian cops reaction? They had a deranged guy with a gun. I’d say a gun is more dangerous than a knife… and they still were able to handle it safely, minimizing risk to everyone, without shooting him.
What if they shouted “Shoot me” while wandering back and forth, and then sort of stepped obliquely roughly in your direction? No one was running at the cops in the St. Louis video.
See the examples in the link above. In both cases, they don’t kill him, and they don’t appear to put themselves at any more risk than the St. Louis cops faced.
But they didn’t, and that’s the entire point. How can you say they had no choice while while agreeing they could have done things differently? If they had tried other tactics and the danger grew, yes, they might not have had a choice other than shooting him. I think just about everyone has agreed to that. But the point here is that they did not need to come right up to the guy with their guns drawn and start yelling orders.
I didn’t say anything about “should.” It is part of the job, and that’ll never change. The police deal with people at their most stressed, at their angriest, and sometimes when they’re drunk, high, or crazy. This is news to nobody. It’s not fun, but they’re aware of it when they take the job. So I’m not arguing about the fairness of the situation. It’s just how it is, so police officers need to be able to tolerate more than the average human being in a difficult situation. That’s because they’re trusted with major responsibilities - you know, upholding the law, the power to kill people, stuff like that. If they’re not capable of dealing with that, they should pursue other work.
The normalcy of these people is irrelevant. Saying that rudeness or yelling people is “antisocial” is both meaningless and irrelevant since being antisocial is not a crime. Being rude and yelling isn’t a crime either.
What they should do is uphold the law rather than giving in to their own irritation. But yes, this is the exact sort of thinking that’s on display in that op-ed.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that people shouldn’t die because they appear to be doing something wrong. I hadn’t realized that was a controversial opinion. Live and learn, I guess.
Because I’m too tired to post videos where shit went horribly wrong?
By the way…I agree also that rolling up screaming with guns drawn isn’t ideal. And to all the people (not just here) who say how scarred those cops will be and the nightmares they’ll have…BS. IMHO of course.
Where in the video did they come “right up to” the guy? They stopped at least 30+ feet away from the guy and did not advance past the hood of their car at any point.
I’m rather surprised that you’d get such an obvious, and important, detail of their actions so terribly wrong.
This starts with a video where shit went horribly wrong. Just to emphasize, we don’t need videos of more people getting killed. We already know other tactics won’t always work, and nobody has said they will work 100% of the time.
That’s nothing close to 30 feet. It might be 10 or 15, and that’s only because Powell backs away while they’re pulling up. Estimating distances is tough!
I don’t know what the law is in MO, but where I live we (private citizens, aka “normal people”) still have a duty to retreat. I don’t believe Missouri has a stand-your-ground law. I don’t know if the duty to retreat applies to cops; I suspect it doesn’t, which means the rules for self defense aren’t the same for cops and normal people.
I don’t know if I speak for anyone else here, but there seems to be a lot of middle ground in between “step out of the car, plant your feet, and wait until the guy gets close enough to open fire” and “call Dr. Phil to schedule an intervention while getting stabbed to death.” If the officer had a made even a nominal effort to keep space between himself and the suspect, I’d be a lot more sympathetic. There’s a nuance between “This officer was not justified in using deadly force” and “This officer could probably have handled this situation much better and possibly saved a life” that I’m not sure you’re picking up on.
Well there’s your problem right there. Putting the lives of criminals above the lives of law abiding people, or law enforcers. Yes, I’d prefer to see criminals arrested and convicted than killed, but not when there’s a serious risk to the public or the police. And laws that prevent people defending themselves are ridiculous.
Retreating is a defense. Pretty good one too. In fact, I’d take avoiding a threat over trying to spear it with tiny projectiles any day of the week. After all, real life isn’t the movies where you can drop every baddy with a headshot while delivering cool one-liners, right?
This was a mentally ill man who wasn’t responsible for his actions. He’d stolen about $2 worth of stuff and begged the police to kill him. Calling him a criminal is asinine.
No, it really isn’t. Unless you’re certain you can outrun someone who’s coming after you with a knife. And if you try for a headshot, you’re doing it wrong.
Do we actually know he was mentally ill, or is that just your assumption? And frankly if he wasn’t responsible for his actions, he’s probably less predictable and therefore more of a threat.
I’ll accept that it’s more of a tragedy if a mentally ill person gets shot by the police than a criminal, but it’s no more wrong for the police to do it. They need to respond to the actions, not the motivation - that’s for courts and lawyers.
Right, exactly. Shooting people is hard, that’s why people are taught to aim for center mass and to keep firing until the threat stops, because it may take 6 or 8 or 15 bullets to actually hit something in all that flesh we have to make the target no longer a threat.
That’s why people are taught to avoid dangerous situations. That’s why they’re taught to keep space between themselves and threats, to be aware of their surroundings so they know where the cover is, to avoid getting backed into corners. When you’re at the point where you’ve decided to use lethal force, you should have exhausted all other options, because using lethal force is no guarantee of safety.
Furthermore, using a firearm in on a public street puts innocent bystanders at risk.
Would it be fair to say that the officer could have done things better? That he could have left more space between himself in the suspect, that he could have made a better effort to keep that space, that he should have been more mindful of the situation and his surroundings? Or, in your opinion, was this a textbook, thumbs-up way of handling this situation? Because everything I know about proper police and military tactics suggests that there is plenty of room for improvement here, and some of those things he could have done better might have saved the life of someone who was clearly suicidal.