Why are you busting my proverbial chops over this? My first point was being incredulous that the cop would have immediately thought some random druggie was playing Shogun, rather than having a baseball bat or any other commonly found item in houses. Yeah, our house is filled with swords; I’m not some delusional RPG’er who thinks everyone has a battleaxe or morning star hidden under their bed. When you hear hoofbeats, don’t think unicorns.
Second, I think it’s unrealistic that in the context of this event someone with a sword presented a serious threat. The cop has a gun already cocked and leveled on the target with the finger on the trigger. There was too much distance and not enough free space. Watch the video again and see how fast the shots ring out. Even I could have fired 5 or more shots in a couple of seconds. Drug dealers aren’t Marvel Comics superheros, real swords are heavy and slow relative to a fencing weapon. And even though sometimes it may be possible to injure or even kill someone with a gun across a room when all you have is a sword…seriously? What are the odds? Are you picking on the term “always?” OK, sure, I admit there is a non-zero chance the guy with the sword will win. Which side are you putting your betting money down on?
If swords are really as effective as some would make out, then I’m shocked they aren’t standard equipment for any drug lab or druggie hideout. Thus far my searching for citations of police being injured or killed during raids by men with swords is showing that the police are more likely to be injured or killed by frying pans, table lamps, and saltwater aquariums. If someone wants to offer some hard statistics to change my mind, I’ll be happy to read them…
I never posted in here that the cop should face criminal charges. I posted that maybe he’s not prepared for this duty and should be reassigned to a standard position. I also think in the long-term “no knock” warrants need to end, as do midnight house raids, unless there is a clear and present danger to innocents without such a raid.
If we want to continue the hijack of “swords v. guns” I suggest we move to GQ or GD.
In the future don’t speak in absolutes and you won’t run into this trouble. People don’t use swords because most people aren’t fencers (a sport unknown to most average joes and uninteresting to everyone else) and most people aren’t RPGtards that stock up on carbon steel replicas of medieval greatswords and etc. They are obviously an obsolete relic of a past age, and obviously no one would choose sword in a fight where the other person had a gun.
Did I find the claim that the officer thought the deceased was wielding a sword to be credible? No, I actually don’t find that credible. I don’t think that guy thought anything I think he just fired stupidly and without thinking, he had poor impulse control and poor judgment. By saying he thought it was a sword he was giving himself some legal protection upfront. That’s how I’d lean if I was on the jury, too. (Like I said upthread, I understand why no one has charged the police officer though, chances of conviction are very small.)
I just intensely dislike when people act like it’s no big challenge to gun someone down. How many people that talk that way have ever actually been in a live fire situation? Even trained soldiers can miss at close range, shit happens. Guns aren’t magical weapons that make you an immortal super man. If you think this is a detracting aside, well, you probably should have kept your mouth shut about it in the first place.
Una, cops aren’t required to fully assess the threat, compare the relative strength of one weapon vs the other, and assess the kill radius of each weapon. There is typically no time for that.
They don’t enter a home with the intent of looking for targets or excuses to use their weapons. They act in the pressure of the moment, as they are trained to do, when they encounter a threat. They are not required to wait for the "first shot"to be fired.
That’s exactly my point. People act like guns turn people into superman so if you have a gun you shouldn’t think like a non gun-wielding person. If you’re squaring off against someone with a sword, you should just let them take a few threatening steps toward you so that you can be sure they’re being aggressive, since your magic death wand (gun) can instantly disable them the moment you’ve decided its too dangerous you have nothing to worry about.
That’s just ludicrous.
In reality of course a police officer is a lot more likely to come up against a knife than a sword, and the truth of the matter is police are trained to shoot to kill knife wielding people pretty much as quickly as possible.
OK then, if that’s what this is all about, you just make sure and remember this yourself, and don’t act surprised when someone comes down on you like a fucking ton of bricks in GQ or GD. I’m sure it’s going to happen, too. Probably pretty soon…
So let’s parse the remainder of your maledictory post the Martin Hyde way:
Cite to where I said they were?
Cite to where I opined on that specific subject of interest to average joes[sic]?
Cite to where I said most people are?
Cite to where I said they weren’t?
Cite to where I said it was “no big challenge?” I said that in the situation the gun had the advantage.
Cite to where I brought that up people who talk that way and have or have not been in a live fire situation?
Cite to where I said they can’t?
Cite to where I said it didn’t?
Cite to where I said they were?
Cite to where I said it was “a distracting aside?”
Hmm…seems like the real problem here is you’re holding a separate conversation in your head where you’re assuming a lot of things I didn’t say. Perhaps in the future if you focus more on the conversation at hand and less on…well, you know…you’ll not look like a pedantic ass who is missing the entire point.
If a sword is arguably the most lethal hand-held non-powered weapon he could have been holding, and it was unlikely to injure or kill the cop who fired the shots, then it’s irrelevant what else the guy was holding from a threat perspective. You’re correct, the cop should assume the worst-case for weapon. But in this case the worst case was sort of not all that dangerous given the situation.
I’m through discussing this in here with this post. If anyone wants to start a GQ thread over the relative danger of sword versus gun in this day and age, I’ll be there, time permitting.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I can’t parse this.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
I never made the claim that you said anything specifically.
In case you’ve missed it, all I was talking about is the tone your post set. I can make inferences from that tone of your post and then go on to say, well, pretty much whatever I want. Nowhere in my post did I claim that you said:
-Most people are fencers
-Most people are RPGTards
-That you did not think swords were obsolete in the context of modern weaponry
-That you said it was no big challenge to gun someone down
-etc etc etc
In fact all I said was “I dislike when people act like gunning someone down is no big thing.” Words have meanings, and unfortunately you have difficulty understanding normal modes of conversation. No rational actor would have concluded anything I said was an assertion that you had made specific claims. No, most normal people would have realized that my words were just framing and exposition that helped me make my point. Since you obviously can’t point to any place where I specifically asserted you had made any claim your entire quote-ridden monster of a post is a waste of time, space, and grossly offensive to the eye.
As I said, my problem was when people act like gunning someone down is no big thing. Which means I’m not saying that you explicitly stated such a thing, I’m saying that your post conveyed the impression of such a thing, which is different than me claiming you directly said something. If you don’t like me responding to the impression your posts create then, well, too fucking bad. Unless you have some sort of disorder like Autism or Asperger’s then you should know that words and conversations happen on more than just the level of the plain text or speech itself.
In the future you should probably not bother giving me advice about how to act in future threads, it’s a most wasteful endeavor on your part.
Most states will specify something like this for the use of deadly force:
Reasonable tends to be interpreted as “how another law enforcement officer with similar training” would have acted.
I’ve never heard of a police officer successfully being prosecuted for manslaughter or a similar crime for shooting an assailant who had brandished a deadly weapon, regardless of whether it was a gun, knife, or baseball bat with nails in it.
Now, as I said some time ago since the individual in this discussion wasn’t brandishing a sword but instead a golf club, that’s somewhat irrelevant.
For the purposes of disciplining the police officer, I think the legal system has little ability to punish him. The case is tilted too far in the officer’s favor, the deceased was a drug user/drug dealer, I just can’t see a jury convicting.
Now, an administrative hearing, I would think the officer might be subject to termination or some form of punishment. However, police officers have a huge deal of protection in their employment, both by statutory protections and through typically strong unions with savvy representative acting in the officer’s interests.
I’ve said all along I think the police officer made a mistake, that he was trigger happy and acted irresponsibly. I don’t think he should be a police officer any more, but I also recognize that for any authorities even if they were inclined to go after him, it’s not an easy thing to get a cop in trouble for something like this.
That’s some fine irony you’re serving up there, considering you’ve assigned some inner meaning to my posts and seem to be almost debating some other person here.
I may have made an “absolute” statement, but you came in and acted like a jerk about it and I in effect am calling you on it. Don’t act surprised when it happens again, because I assure you it will. Perhaps if you had not seen “The BBQ Pit” and decided any pretense at a civil, reasonable rebuttal should fly out the window, you wouldn’t have got yourself into this situation. Your snide, finger-wagging “In the future don’t speak in absolutes and you won’t run into this trouble.” was a jerkish thing to post and if you don’t understand that or are too bullheaded to admit you were at fault there…(shrug).
I can concede the specific line about “not speaking in absolutes” was not polite behavior. However I think everything else I said was reasonable and accurate.
Just yesterday an NYPD officer accidentally shot and wounded the father of a suspect while serving an arrest warrant. According to this article, the officer was part of a “tactical squad” that served the warrant at 7 AM.
I’d argue that it was overkill, in more than one sense of the word, until and unless some information comes to light that this warrant had to be served at night and had to involve a no-knock entry and had to be served by a SWAT team. There so far just isn’t enough reason that I’m aware of to involve this much firepower and the attendant risks complicated by a nighttime entry.
For that matter, I’m not sure confiscating some paraphernalia and packages (and the article says only one was found) justifies the expense of staging the raid. I’m not aware there was even any expectation of seizing a major drug haul (or weapons, or contraband generally) and if the target was Melanie Chournous, who’d moved out, I have to wonder just how thoroughly the police looked into the situation before planning the raid in the first place.
Now, it’s inevitable that police will shoot and kill people without good reasons. Mistakes happen, addresses are written down wrong, there are kids in the dark holding toy guys, there are people who think the police want to see their identification so they reach into their pockets, there are witnesses who lie or are mistaken… it’s the price of an armed police force. This does not, I hope, mean that we should casually accept cases that are borderline questionable or blatantly careless.
Similarly, it’s inevitable that police find themselves under attack, by fugitives who don’t want to return to jail, by some who are mentally ill, by some who turn their frustrations in a domestic squabble against the officers… and cops will die. It’s the price of civil liberties. This does not, I hope, mean that people who assault or kill cops should get off lightly.
This particular incident is fairly obviously (to me, anyway) an egregious case of the former. I understand a nighttime no-knock raid has the express purpose to create confusion and hesitation, to overwhelm the residents before they can organize a resistance. But here, the police have been caught up in their own confusion, entering with inadequate light, shouting over each over in a confusing mishmash of voices, reacting without bothering to warn, reaction without bothering to make certain the target knew what was happening, indeed without telling him to drop his weapon. In fact, he stood there frozen, displaying exactly the find of confusion and hesitation the officers should have expected, and got shot anyway.
You’ve posed a hypothetical alternative, let me do the same. You (not some stranger, but you personally) are walking down a street at high noon when suddenly confronted by five or six shouting and armed men. Do you (as most of us would) freeze up or raise a hand in a defensive gesture or take a step back? In the time it is taking you to read this sentence, someone may have decided you are being noncompliant or resistant and you will be lucky to get a tasing instead of a bullet. Your continued life and safety will have very little to do with your actions or inactions, but will rest almost entirely in the attitudes (which may or may not be particularly concerned with your safety especially if the officer feels - as some in the thread do - that you’ve brought this on yourself), reflexes (which may or may not be hair-trigger and heightened further by the tension and excitement of the situation) and training (which may or may not be some slapdash cursory affair inspired by instructors who convey an “us vs. them” attitude to their students) of the people confronting you (any one of whom can shoot you), and you did not just get woken up in the middle of the night by people barging into your home, where the dangers are even greater. They don’t know the layout of your darkened home - you don’t know (at first) what’s going on… doesn’t this strike you as far more risky than necessary for all concerned?
I have my doubts that you have any idea what the significance of that number is. It could be half that and you’d say “56 million hits” or twice that and you’d say “212 million hits” and the context-free number would be equally valueless except as an obvious panic-trigger to individuals as easily impressed as yourself who seem to think drugs have turned the U.S. into a warzone where gun battles occur on every street-corner and cops must use paramilitary tactics on low-level suspects who don’t even live at the place being raided.
You try reading some actual crime statistics, ones compiled by the FBI and not some Google search-and-count function.
You brought up an irrelevance. I commented on it. It’s not really any more complicated than that.
Does this remind anyone else of a small dog frantically(but proudly) barking at a car that has has passed by? “That’s right! Run away! The only reason you didn’t stop on your way to work is because you know what I can do to you! Yipp!!”