I would presume I would have been killed in Germany (unless I escaped, like my grandmother), like most of my German relatives were in the 30s.
I hope I’m exceptionally moral and strong enough to resist that kind of horrific societal pressure, but I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m entirely comfortable saying that it was wrong, as was lynching, and excusing lynchers, and injustice in the courts, and the like. This is a choice I make, and I’m totally baffled why you would choose something different. You can choose to live by a moral system that judges such actions as morally repugnant. Why would you choose otherwise?
I’ve never been a suspect of a crime, much less arrested or indicted. Nonetheless, I’ve dealt with police officers or other law enforcement officials a few dozen times in my life (I’ve witnessed a few crimes and was questioned; I’ve been pulled over for traffic violations; gone through secure areas guarded by cops; etc.). I’ve never felt mistreated.
I don’t know a single black American adult who hasn’t interacted with police at least a few times. Most of them, if not all of them, have interacted with cops a lot more than me. And probably about half of them have a story in which they say they were mistreated. Even more have a story in which they witnessed family members or friends being mistreated.
Isn’t it possible that they’re honestly and reasonably accurately portraying their own experiences?
The question is, why would you even consider resisting that kind of pressure, or at least more than other people - there were plenty who did, but they were a minority. You are talking as though it’s obvious that not only are those actions wrong, but they are so wrong that any person, no matter their background should be able to know that and fight against it no matter the cost. That’s simply not how it works.
What is it about you that is special, that means that if you were brought up in a different society you would somehow know that slavery, or racism, or for that matter rape in many military cultures, was wrong? No-one around you would think they were particularly wrong, they may have been unpleasant but they were just part of life. What about you makes you uniquely able to question those things despite likely having little to no education?
The thing is, I do live in a society and by a code that judges those actions as repugnant. The point is, a point you seem to keep ignoring for some reason, is that the people we are talking about, those who lynched or those who worked in the concentration camps, or those who kept slaves, did not. Saying they were wrong by our standards is fine, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really tell us much. It certainly doesn’t help us to understand history, or to understand why humans develop different morals in different circumstances, and perhaps most importantly, by privileging our current morality, makes it harder for us to question it.
A few dozen seems a lot, although I guess it depends what you mean by other law enforcement officials. Even then, that’s far more than I have, maybe I’m just sheltered…
If we’re doing anecdotes, everyone I’ve ever spoken to who’s complained about being mistreated by the police has been a criminal. And probably white, not that I’ve kept track. I don’t particularly believe them either.
Yes. My last sentence acknowledged that. But you want my honest opinion? If black people were treated as badly as you claim, as often as you claim, there would have been a literal revolution by now. But even in the 60s, that didn’t happen, change was achieved through political means.
Which isn’t to say I don’t believe that too many black people are treated badly - because any is too many.
Saying (and insisting, strongly) that they were wrong is part of the necessary bulwark, which can never end, to minimize the chance of such things happening again.
I’ve traveled a lot and been in the military. But so have lots of folks. And many black people live in localities in which they deal with cops every week, if not every day.
And any change today will be through political means. Part of that might include calling out parts of society, such as bad cops, who are part of the ongoing injustice.
I’ve heard the “…literal revolution” argument before. It’s silly. Minorities can be brutalized and “held in check” by majority populations who support such oppression. This has always been true. Black people in America didn’t revolt en masse because it would have failed, and likely could have lead to genocide. In those rare situations in which the oppressed population is the majority (like Haiti before independence, or South Africa in the 2nd half of the 20th century), they eventually do revolt and they win (or as in SA, force a political solution by threat of force).
If you don’t believe it’s 50%, how many do you think it is? Do you think it’s reasonable to suspect that significantly more black Americans than white Americans, relatively speaking, are mistreated by police? If so, isn’t it then reasonable to conclude that law enforcement in America might have systemic bias problems against black people?
Or we can say that such behaviour is wrong, and should never happen again, with the same effect.
I note you still haven’t explained why you think your would have been so vastly different from the prevailing ones had you been born at an earlier time.
If you’re saying there are people being stopped by the police every day, on suspicion of a crime not at a checkpoint, despite there being no actual crime involved, I’m going to have to ask for a cite. I can’t see how that would work, where the cops would even get time to do that.
It doesn’t require the majority to be oppressed, just the majority to recognise that some are oppressed. America was founded in revolution despite the fact that the majority of the colonists paid no tax to George III
What I suspect, although I could be wrong, is that there is a significantly higher rate of mistreatment of black than whites, but that black people will report minor mistreatment (or what they perceive as such) at a higher rate than white people, because (for whatever reason) black people are looking to see mistreatment, where white people aren’t.
So (pulling figures out of the air, for illustrative purposes only) either 50% of blacks and, say, 20% of whites are mistreated, or 3% of white and 10% of blacks.
In another thread, I think the one that lead to this one, a white poster reports hearing from two friends that, at separate traffic stops, they were held at gunpoint by the police despite doing nothing threatening, and at least one of them felt that their treatment was fine. I strongly suspect that almost no black people, if any, would consider that acceptable. (For what it’s worth, I don’t consider it acceptable, nor would I really call it a minor mistreatment, it was just the obvious example that came to mind).
Where did I say I would have? All I said is that I hope I would have, but I don’t know.
That’s not what I’m saying.
This doesn’t really dispute anything I said.
Considering how, historically in America, black people have been much, much more accurate in describing how black people have actually been treated by society than white people, I disagree pretty strongly. I think it’s much more likely that black people are still the most accurate source of information about how black people are treated than that this situation has reversed and somehow white Americans know more about how black Americans are treated than black Americans do.
That’s not entirely true. There are many things about the current case that the jury is not allowed to see. For instance, in the castille case, the jury requested to see the transcripts of the interaction during the deliberation, and they were denied by the defense (and the prosecution did not object). I don’t know all the things that the jury did or did not see, but I do know that anything that they saw is on public record, and they did not see everything the public did.
And all of that I snipped is not the standard I am asking about. The standard I am asking about is, if a civilian simply says that they were in fear for their life, and an investigation gives no reason for that civilian to have been in fear of their life, would they be given the same weight as a cop who claims they were in fear when there was absolutely no reason for them to be in fear in the first place?
Recognize, and care. It does appear that some of us recognize and care, and it does even appear that you recognize, but you just don’t care.
First, we have a minor revolution in this country every two years, and a major one every four. We have determined a method of changing the govt regime without violence, but it is still a revolution.
Also, there nearly are violent revolutions. People go out and protest. People even riot. The reason that they riot is because they feel that they are oppressed. Violence is usually unacceptable, but it is the appropriate answer to oppression. We are trying to deal with this in a non-violent way. We keep telling them to stop the violence, and then we will stop the oppression, but we really need to hold up our end of the bargain there.
You could be correct that white people tend to rationalize their mistreatment at the hands of the police more than black people. You may very well be correct that black people have a tendency to overreact to the impersonal nature of the justice system personally. And you may be correct that the 3 to 50 ratio does not reflect the actual reality of mistreatment. At a WAG, I would say it’s probably more like 15% to 45%.
“The standard I am asking about is, if a civilian simply says that they were in fear for their life, and an investigation gives no reason for that civilian to have been in fear of their life, would they be given the same weight as a cop who claims they were in fear when there was absolutely no reason for them to be in fear in the first place?”
Sure. Why wouldn’t they? There seems to be a misconception that all a cop has to say is, “I was afraid for my life” and that ends it. That is not true. The cop has to give objective reasons as to why he had such fear. It is then up to a prosecutor, judge, grand jury or trial jury to decide if those reasons make sense (was he **reasonably **in fear for his life?) If there was, objectively, absolutely no reason for him to be in fear for their life I think he’d be hard pressed to defend his actions. That goes for cops and non-cops alike.
Okay, so no witnesses, no alibi, just me, a dead guy, and a smoking gun. Can I claim self-defense?
Witnesses that claim that they did not see any hostile act on the part of the dead guy, still my word against theirs?
Camera recording that shows that the dead guy did not do anything to provoke my shooting, but I still claim that I was in fear for my life, am I getting off now still?
The first, I can kind of see, because the only evidence against me is a dead body, and if we want to err very heavily on the side of the accused, then I can get behind that.
The other two, I am thinking that at the least, I should get some sort of negligent homicde rap or something. Maybe I did fear for my life, but I was wrong, and there was nothing to fear.
The standard is not whether the officer actually had anything to be afraid of, just whether or not they were afraid. I do not think that standard is applied to civilians, and IMHO, I don’t think it should be applied to anyone.
Ending someone’s life is a big deal. If you are the cause of a person not coming home to their family, then you bear a responsibility. You bear a responsibility to make sure that the reason that they aren’t going home is becuase you wouldn’t be going home otherwise. You should not just get on with your life after you have made it impossible for at least one other person to do the same.
Whether a suspect actually has a weapon on them afterwards is irrelevant. The issue is whether an officer has a reasonable belief that his/her life (or the life of another) is in immediate danger. If the officer has a reasonable belief that the suspect is armed (statements by witnesses, prior behavior by suspect, ect.) the prosecutor & the courts will find in favor of self-defense.
But you wouldn’t know about that, as you’re self-admittedly pontificating from another country.
No, it isn’t. They, like anyone else, must both be afraid, and that fear be reasonable.
And, where the law is how (in my opinion) it should be, it’s up to the prosecution to prove that the killer was not in reasonable fear, not up to the defendant to prove his innocence. Because killing in self defence should be a right, and should not be a crime, even if the killer made an honest mistake about the level of threat.
I doubt the subject was both obeying the cop’s command, and running away. I mean, anything is possible but that’s vanishingly unlikely.
As for the idea that running away suddenly makes an armed (or reasonably believed to be armed) person not a threat, that’s just stupid. Guns still work at a distance, that’s kind of the point. If someone is running from you, they can turn and shoot at you in an instant.
None of your arguments for “this can’t possibly be self defence” stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
In Steophan’s ideal world, it’sawfully easy (it appears to me, anyway, based on his posts) to kill people. Just make sure they’re dead. Kill anyone you like, and claim it was self-defense, and based on his monumentally high standard of evidence, there’s a very good chance you’ll get away with it.
It’s the same standard of evidence as for any crime. Just because it’s difficult to meet that standard, it doesn’t follow that the standard should be reduced.
To me, it’s not acceptable that someone forced to kill in self defence not only had the trauma of having their life threatened, plus the trauma of having to kill another person, but added to that has to prove their innocence, despite them being the victim, not the criminal.
People are trying to spin this as me wanting to protect the guilty. It’s precisely the opposite, I want the victims of violent crime (and for that matter, the victims of false accusations) to have the full protection of law.
Whatever your intentions, what you describe sounds like it would make it incredibly easy to murder someone and get away with it. It would greatly motivate people to be armed, lest someone mistake mundane actions for danger and try to kill them – they better kill the would-be-killer first. I think your ideal society would be the wild west, with everyone twitchy and ready to draw and kill at the slightest whiff of anxiety.
And yet, that’s not what actually happens in the places where the law is as I describe. Because most people do not want to kill, and would find it extremely traumatic. Even most cops. Just look at the lengths the military has to go to to make soldiers psychologically ready to kill.
Not sure how relevant this bit is, but the historical “wild west” was nowhere near as violent as it’s made out to be in films and folklore.
I know of no places in which the witness testimony of friends/relatives of the deceased is considered irrelevant for cases in which self-defense is declared, as you have proposed in other threads.
You do realize that the trauma of being killed is actually greater than the trauma of having to pull a little trigger, right? You do realize that the trauma of having a loved one, a friend, a colleague, or a family member killed is still going to be greater than the trauma you felt with a little pull, a bit of a buck, and a small bang as you ended someone’s life?
If you were responsible for ending someone else’s life, it is your trauma that I am the least worried about out of all of the other people who were impacted by your act. If you did so in self defense, then I feel that you do not need to be further punished, but being required to show that what you did was really necessary is not too much of an inconvenience compared to the inconvenience of begin dead.
Seriously, if it’s just me and no witnesses, there is no way I could ever be convicted of murder, based on your standards. I could break into someone’s home, murder them in their sleep, and then claim self defense with only very slight staging and some reasonable lies. Even with witnesses, by your standards, the witnesses may not have seen that slight furtive movement that I saw that made me fear for my life. Even if the whole thing is on camera, I could say I saw something that wasn’t picked up on the camera, and that is what made me concerned enough for my safety that I felt the only course of action was to kill. By your standards, I cannot think of how you would ever convict anyone of murder, unless you can show prior intent and planning, and most murders are not pre-meditated.
Well, actually, I can think of how you would convict people of murder quite easily. Even if we put your standards of evidence into play, unless we improve the public defender system, then poor people will probably still go to jail for homicide, even in cases of legitimate self defence. So, if we did adopt your standards of proof of self defence, you would be seeing many more wealthy people go free from murder charges, but it would probably not help the less wealthy at all, it would just further increase the “justice gap” the difference in punishments that are doled out to the poor and minorities compared to the wealthy.
That’s all irrelevant, and your implication that killing someone is a trivial act is ridiculous.
It’s too much of an inconvenience, just as it’s too much of an inconvenience in any other situation when someone is accused of a crime.
So what? Better that than convicting innocent people, who were forced to defend themselves.
That’s a separate issue, really, and one that should be addressed. People should obviously have equal access to justice. In practice though, in places with Stand Your Ground laws, it seems to be the poor that benefit from them, as they’re generally at more risk of violent crime.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that the vast majority of defensive gun use does not result in death, or even injury. There’s over 2 million defensive gun uses in the US per year, and something like 16,000 murders. What you are suggesting just doesn’t happen to any significant degree,and should not be the basis of policy.
I get what you’re saying and in theory there’s nothing fallacious about what you’ve written. I think what people are protesting is that the reality seems to be quite different than the principle. It seems that it’s too easy for officers to kill civilians without any sort of repercussions other than being fired from their jobs. I have no doubt that a discharge from duties as an officer to a true blue officer is a stinging rebuke both personally and professionally. But it’s still not justice in the eyes of many people, particularly those living in communities that have been marginalized economically and politically. Do you understand that part of it at least?