What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced.
You are a cop with 5+ other cops.
You all pull your guns.
Someone comes to the door, groggy in the middle of the night. They may or may not understand you are police. They may or may not believe you are the police.
They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence.
We now begin the dice rolling process.
Since every police officer with a gun drawn is now a DECIDER they get a dice roll.
Every single millisecond, all these dice are rolled simultaneously for the entire arrest process as the "suspect" is ordered around like they haven't been since grade school gym class.
This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.
The person making the prank is in the wrong, but so are the officers.
How I see it is that the officers of their own freewill took on the role of law enforcement and public service.
Fully aware that they would be put in life threatening situations.
Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin, but be trained to take time to assess the situation and risk erring on restraint of force.
Most of the talk coming from police departments usually state their actions in terms of the officer's personal safety.
Though that is important, due to their choice and the role in society that they play, their safety should be a secondary concern to the safety and lives of those they are to protect.
There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety.
The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened?
When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? What is the worst case scenario then? Hostage gets shot by a criminal instead of a policeperson?
In this day and age, they could just fly in a drone in with a microphone and and a speaker while they sit 200 meters behind a bullet proof screen. Instead they proactivly put themselves in a situation where they felt at personal risk from ... turned out to be some dude sitting in his house. How could they have come up with a worse plan?
This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution.
UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends up being rare.
Stupid accidents still happens (e.g. an unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back), but serious ones are predictably few when police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns. But even firearms teams who are specifically called out when a suspect is armed have few serious accidents because they're not there to shoot their way to a resolution except as a last resort.
It looks like a default approach to provoke and escalate confrontation. A few days ago I watched the video of a police officer armed with a rifle arderimg a drunk guy to crawl on the floor. The drunk crawled wrong, so he was shot and killed. Turns out he was unarmed and innocent of any crime. The officer apparently will not be charged. Here in the UK this would be completely unacceptable, but in the US it’s routine.
And I witnessed a suicidal guy walking around Portland at 5am holding a gun to his head. The police surrounded him on three sides, wearing bullet-proof armor and hiding behind large armored vehicles and even had snipers in the parking lot across the street. They seemed pretty secure in their positions and decked out with heavy weaponry from a safe distance. He had a small 6-shooter and was walking in circles. They called out to him to drop his gun, to which he replied that he needed help (they wouldn't admit him to the hospital for mental care because he couldn't afford it). He pointed the gun towards the ground and fired, upon which they shot him multiple times from multiple positions. Don't they have people trained in psychology to deescalate such situations? Or is that just a movie trope? Even if wanted to shoot a cop, from my vantage point, there was no way he would have hit any of them.
In the end it was labeled a police-assisted suicide i.e. he still shot himself and the police have 0% responsibility. The irony is that at the same time across town, the police chief of Portland was giving a conference about how the police will use less deadly force in such encounters in the future (because this wasn't the first time).
Shoot pretty much any direction in a busy city, and hit somebody. He was a loose cannon, aiming a deadly weapon irresponsibly. It can be argued, he had to be taken down. Cruel, but when people put themselves in that position something has to be done, and quickly.
Not clear why a sleeping dart couldn't have been used though. Animal control does a pretty good job in such situations.
I should have mentioned, the police cordoned off the entire block with tape and there were armed police on every street. The police were also yelling through the megaphone. Nobody was on the street and nobody was leaving their houses in that climate. The parking lot was 99% empty.
As mentioned, he shot the ground directly in front of himself. Once.
And as mentioned elsewhere here, German police would in that case shoot e.g. a leg to disable the threat, not aim to kill. Someone gave the kill order and a lot of shots were fired. Of course your suggestion to use a sleeping dart (or something similar) would be ideal.
On top of all that but less relevant to this thread, they left the body uncovered on the street until late in the afternoon, approx. 8 hours. I took a lot of pictures of the entire thing (starting after the shooting, because I was afraid the police might think I had a gun too with my huge black camera with telephoto lens).
> Someone gave the kill order and a lot of shots were fired.
I honestly don’t believe anyone gave a kill order, I rather feel (maybe not fairly) that police had guns trained on him and heard gun fire and instinctively pulled without even taking a second to analyze situation. If I’m right (good video footage could help prove the theory), this should scare everyone (but likely won’t).
So if someone throws a firecracker near an active US police situation all the officers are just going to open fire on whatever is in front of their gun barrels?
I probably shouldn’t have been that vague, knew I was leaving myself open to whataboutism / trolling. Here’s a bit more specific version:
“If a police officer hears and sees the perp’s gun go off, they likely won’t stop to think even long enough to see who got shot, but likely instinctively pull to neutralize the threat.”
In most places outside the US, they’d aim for legs / arms as that would “neutralize” but not “kill”. In this scenario they’ve got snipers trained on him after all, no excuses about handgun accuracy. Yet in the US, you’ll virtually never see that, all shots will be into the chest.
"n unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back"
That was 2005, 3 weeks after a successful terrorist attack on the tube, and 1 day after an unsuccessful one. It was news for weeks and resulted in a criminal prosecution for the head of the police force involved.
The prosecution was not of the head of the force as an individual but of the office of the head of the force (effectively equivalent to the force itself being prosecuted - a legal quirk due to the way the force is legally constituted). And it was for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, and resulted in a tiny (comparatively speaking) fine. This was viewed by many as a whitewash.
More broadly, the whole episode made them look incredibly incompetent, callous and uncaring. No action was taken against the officers who were clearly culpable through their abject incompetence (for example, if he was a potential suicide bomber, why wasn't he stopped before he got on a train?). Furthermore, the force took far too long to apologise and admit errors publicly. And they never adequately explained the tactics that led to an innocent man being shot without warning.
This is very similar in character to the issues which plague policing in the USA and has served to sow a great deal of distrust of the police here. Witness the "London riots" in 2011, for example.
And that's also set against a background where they have been publicly found to be "institutionally racist". Subsequently to the de Menezes incident, armed police also "accidentally" shot an unarmed suspect in the shoulder while running upstairs in a house in the Forest Gate raid (which again, just makes them look like amateurs).
And so on.
So our police are very far from perfect - it's just that being better than some of the worst excesses seen in the liberal world is not a hard standard to meet.
> police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns.
I think this might be more of a difference between the legality of guns in the US and UK. Guns are so rare in the UK because they are illegal to own for almost everyone. I can imagine that makes a big difference for a police officer's expectation of the likely potential danger of public adversaries... yes there are still knives and acid and whatnot but those are close quarter and improvised weapons that don't emerge so suddenly from a distance, I think those make you far less "jumpy" for lack of a better description.
PS. Please don't start an "anti guns" thread under here because we all know that never goes anywhere on the internet. I'm simply pointing out that the prevalence of guns will have a big impact on personal risk felt by law enforcers and that is a relevant difference between these two countries.
I live in a country where guns are legal to own and the police still doesn't shoot random people for no reason. It's not that hard, just don't give the job to thugs.
Norway has one of the highest gun ownership rates, and until some years back the territorial army had people keep their AG3 service weapons at home. Yet it's only been for time limited periods that police has been routinely armed, and they certainly also doesn't act like the US. I don't like guns, but I also don't think guns alone are sufficient to explain the high firearms related crime rate in the US.
Some of the differences:
1. a different gun culture. Most weapons in Norway are actually for hunting, and no that does not mean semi-automatics etc.. A few are for firing on a range, but there's no culture for seeing a firearm as intended for self defense, and the laws specifically makes it hard (you need to store the weapon locked down and inoperable, and generally you'd e.g. store gun and ammo separately; if you have time to arm yourself, police will question whether or not you had the ability to get away and call for help instead - if the threat is not immediate enough you risk a murder charge).
2. A culture for not meeting suspects with force unless they're armed, and generally focus on de-escalation, and for taking weapons use extremely seriously. E.g. officers need to account for every time they take their weapon out and every bullet fired.
3. A legal system that is generally lenient but where there is a clear path of escalation in response based on how dangerous a crime is. E.g. a robbery carries a sentence up to 5 years if unarmed, of which you'd generally serve less than half (and most people won't get the maximum sentence) - as an example, a robber that participated in a stealing one of the instances of Scream and Madonna by Munch got 2 years and 6 months a decade and a bit back.
Arm yourself, and you risk an additional 7 years. Kill or seriously injure someone during a robbery, and you might get 21. As an example, one of the largest armed robberies in recent Norwegian history, that ended up with one dead poice officer, (the "Nokas" robbery) ended up with one of them getting 18 years, and several others getting 16. That's a pretty substantial extra risk on top of the risks involved in a shootout with police.
Combine that with #2, and criminals have a very strong incentive in general for not being armed - by not arming themselves they don't risk being shot at by police, and they cut the worst case punishment from 21 to at most 5 years in a robbery, for example.
Compare to the US, where a robber has little reason to want to take the risk that police won't shoot even if they're unarmed, given how often we hear of police firing even at innocent civilians. Couple that with high sentences and the incremental cost in using firearms to prevent police from catching or killing them is low.
> I think this might be more of a difference between the legality of guns in the US and UK.
I don't think so; UK gun restrictions are relatively recent (~20 years). I would attribute it to the Peelian Principles¹, which post-date US disconnection from Britain.
> UK gun restrictions are relatively recent (~20 years).
This statement is misleading. Yes there were gun laws made twenty years ago, as there were ten years before that, twenty years before that, thirty years before that ... right back to 1594. Source Wikipedia.
Interesting, I didn't know about the peelian principles, and no doubt a substantial amount of differences can be attributed to it... however I still suspect gun ownership differences play a significant role, 20 years law or not, guns are and have been prevalent in the US like they have never been in the UK.
That would affect incidents where the police is not yet sure whether they're meeting someone armed, but the de-escalation is generally adhered to when firearms teams are brought in too - which are generally situations where they know they're dealing with an armed suspect.
> A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution.
The reason for this is simple. It just takes one situation (or at least one believably plausible situation) for people of power to justify a quicker resolution that ultimately gives them more power and meets their KPI goals (more arrests, less bad guys living).
In this case, imagine a real armed gunman shoots a hostage or a stray bullet hits an innocent bystander. Imagine the outcry of the public and SJW's: "OMG they should have just run in there and killed the SOB! Or better, shoot him in the leg! Do something police!"
Solution? A more swift resolution to the problem - i.e. SWAT style infiltration.
I think this political escalation process is itself specific to the US... I think if it happened in the U.K. there would be no such outcry... just tributes to the innocent bystander and a nice funeral. Shit happens. It doesn’t have to always be someone’s fault.
Americans seems to be perpetually caught in a victim-aggressor-rescuer drama triangle...
Notably after most UK police shootings - and there's rarely more than one a year, sometimes years without - police ends up having to apologize and face demands for tighter rules, but the opposite rarely happens. There are occasional demands for police to be more regularly armed, but they've not gotten very far.
You are reading too deep into it. The situation is that the cops have too little downside and too high an upside: since they never get convicted for these crimes, you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine.
Cops need to go to jail for this. Its as simple as that. And they will find the way to not shoot like that anymore.
> you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine.
I'm disturbed by that line of thought. A normally educated human being from a developed country should feel bad about using deadly force, and worse after using it. The whole point of military training is to break the human instinct no to kill and even with the pressure of actual combat situation (where the upside is much higher, the downside much lower than for SWAT teams), killing breaks the soldier mentally.
What kind of people is the US is selecting (or what kind of training) for its police force that only some fear of criminal prosecution is keeping them from shooting people ?
After shooting dead an innocent, you would expect a police officer to be mentally wrecked. Even worse as he utterly failed at his primary mission of protecting the citizen which, as a Police officer, should normally be pretty high up in his list of personal priorities. So I can of understand going easy of the Police, from a legal point of view. But if the kind of people you have in the police are the one looking for the license to kill to assuage their most primal instinct, the problem is not with the legal side, you are hiring/training really wrong. That's not a police force, that's a criminal cartel.
Im sure there is grief afterwards, but there is also grief and pain from over eating and overdrinking: some consequences are very hard to measure at the point of decision. Specially when its related to your own survival.
The ghost of a 1% danger vs a 0% consequence makes it a pretty rational decision. Bear in mind that criminals, even those with hostages, dont make the decision to shoot so fast: they know that if you shoot the hostage you die or get captured immediately. So the criminals do respond to the punishment. Why wouldnt cops?
US is hiring lots of former soldiers as LEO.
Also the training for the soldiers is not to break the human instinct not to kill (there is nothing like that), but to follow orders, react quickly under pressure, reduce the risk of panicking and to use superior tactics for killing the enemies. We train soldiers to be effective killing machines, nothing else. And many become LEO after retiring from the army.
You're right, US police officers are trained to be less hesitant in using force than would be natural. They are taught that at any moment they could be in a life and death struggle and that they have to have a "warrior mindset" to react quickly before it is too late.
> The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened?
The police is also under an immense pressure when they are assigned to a hostage situation.
Yes, I suppose much of that comes from their own feeling that they must achieve a quick resolution to a distressing situation, and if they are not well trained, not experienced and do not have the right incentives to work in a professional way, this kind of tragedies will happen.
In my country of 5 million people, the police force (8000 policemen) often uses less than 10 bullets in action per year, per the whole force (including warning shots but excluding ammunition used in training), but on the other hand, police officers being killed in the line of duty is also extremely rare, so they can usually approach most situations without being too aggressive.
(This is not because we wouldn't have a lot of guns in the country - we do. We just don't have violent subcultures that would shoot each other or the police.)
All the money goes to “more important” things. Police are badly educated, badly trained, badly equipped, etc. And part of a culture that views dead bodies as an acceptable outcome, “better than the alternative”.
Cops are laughably trained. A fresh boot from any service has more resolve than beat cops. I used to think SWAT was different but the last few years proves otherwise.
As a son of a cop and former service member myself, the whole thing makes me sick. And the COMPLETE lack of repercussions makes me furious. God forbid some idiot doesn't get his "gold watch." The thin blue line will rally around that idiot to protect him.
It's not a prank, it's a deliberate attempt on someone's life.
And it takes advantage of US police officers' lack of training in de-escalation. Compared to other western countries, American police officers receive less training, and their training is more focused on shooting, less on de-escalation. Better training would go a long way towards preventing them from being abused like this.
Individual police officers individually opting out of individual SWAT missions, or teams, or equipped-police-departments, isn't going to end SWAT tactics.
>Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin.
I agree with this, however, do you realize that the officers were told this was a hostage situation? I think in this case they were thinking about the hostages, not themselves since they weren't the ones being threatened.
The most interesting opinion about this subject I've read comes from a comment, in the popehat blog, by an experienced military:
There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish
them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or
an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for
routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent
target of the raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to
tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video of the
Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they looked "like a monkey
fucking a football" – and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on
the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and
Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against
armed defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through
the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did NOT identify
themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track, so Guerena was justified
in hunkering down in a defensive position with a rifle. If Guerena (a former
Marine) hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and not fired
without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down.
Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is, negligently) fired
a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect because they tripped or
bumped their elbow – an accident that can only happen if you are in violation of
the two most important rules of gun safety: don't put your finger on the trigger
until you have decided to shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that
you do not intend to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger
on the trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting –
because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless the trigger
is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a non-police civilian in
my state had done this, he could have been sentenced to life for manslaughter.
But if you are a cop, you can recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will
throw the case…
Here's that quoted section without weird formatting:
>
There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not
to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual
hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way
out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest
warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the
raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to
tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video
of the Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they
looked "like a monkey fucking a football" – and I was in the Air
Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen
considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps
infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed
defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire
through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did
NOT identify themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track,
so Guerena was justified in hunkering down in a defensive position
with a rifle. If Guerena (a former Marine) hadn't been far more
professional than any of the cops and not fired without identifying
his targets, several cops would have been down.
Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is,
negligently) fired a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect
because they tripped or bumped their elbow – an accident that can only
happen if you are in violation of the two most important rules of gun
safety: don't put your finger on the trigger until you have decided to
shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that you do not intend
to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger on the
trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting
– because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless
the trigger is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a
non-police civilian in my state had done this, he could have been
sentenced to life for manslaughter. But if you are a cop, you can
recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will throw the case…
On my mobile, the text is cut off after the 25th character on each line and the browser doesn't render a horizontal scrollbar preventing me from seeing the right half of each line.
It would be nice if MIME format=flowed was a thing for quoted text on web pages that otherwise would be hard-wrapped.
This comment makes a lot of sense to me. SWAT / Armed police aren't inherently a bad thing. There are cases where they are needed, we're just overusing and undertraining officers.
I'm Irish, so while we do have some branches of the police who are armed, most are not. I wonder how the armed Irish Gardi would stack up training wise against armed American cops (ignoring the fact that every state / city would be different..).
Would our limiting of arms to a smaller group result in better training and responses? Or are they just as likely to mis-fire and fail to identify themselves?
and being woken in the middle of the night, wearing boxers or pajamas with hands in the air, better pray that they don't happen to slip down causing you to instinctively "reach for your waistband" in order to hitch them up
This seems to me to be what happened in the Daniel Shaver case, who was drunk and in his pajamas when police (responding to a report of a brandished gun being spotted in his motel room window) confronted him. He was facedown and yelled at for ~4 minutes before being shot when officers mistook him pulling up his waistband for reaching for a weapon:
The officer who shot him was exonerated but IMO, the officer belligerently shouting confusing instructions at him should have faced scrutiny. Instead, he got to retire with a full pension while testifying on behalf of the officer who did pull the trigger.
if i recall correctly Shaver was not wearing pjs, he was wearing shorts. but yes, he appeared to pull up his shorts which were being dragged down because he was being forced to crawl on his hands and knees.
i would bet that almost everyone being in such a position, or standing at their front door in front of their neighbors, who felt their bottom falling down, would instinctively reach down without thinking.
some points to note about that incident -
a) he had the pellet gun as part of his job as an exterminator, even if he was careless in demonstrating how he used it to shoot birds for pest control
b) think about how easily the officers could have gone to the wrong hotel room; you, me or anyone random could've been in the room next door to Shaver and been treated the same (and probably wouldve reacted the same), even if we'd just poked out head outside our room to see what the heck was going on
How was he “careless” in any way? Was it not completely legal for him to own it, and completely legal for him to show it to other people, especially in the privacy of a hotel room?
I thought the right to do this was for many the single most important principle of your country, shouldn’t the police have responded to reports of somebody with a gun with “Well this is the USA, nothing to see here?”
it was called in because he was pointing the rifle out of his hotel room window.
i guess it's up to you to decide for yourself whether or not that could be called "careless". or whether it would be reasonable for a passerby to call in a report of someone pointing a rifle outside of a hotel room window, a couple months after Las Vegas.
ah thanks for that bit of info. still, even pre-Vegas, i think it is reasonable to label pointing a rifle outside a hotel room window as "careless", which is the point i was responding to.
the commentor seemed to conflate the questions of "was it not completely legal for him to possess that item?" and "was it careless (legal or not) to show it off in that manner?"
this particular situation was not Life:Death. Which is the important thing to remember when the media becomes complicit in the coverup of police brutality.
Technically not murder, as that requires premeditation. However it is apparent that this is a no-win situation for the victim, the officer is clearly intent on creating a situation for a "justifiable" homicide.
What's just as horrifying is that the jury acquitted.
a bit further, you're absolutely correct; it seems the US has a more nuanced definition of murder, for which any of the three definitions of second degree murder could potentially apply in this case[1]:
- A killing done impulsively without premeditation, but with malice aforethought
- A killing that results from an act intended to cause serious bodily harm
- A killing that results from an act that demonstrates the perpetrators depraved indifference to human life
As for my original point, that just makes the aquittal even more shocking!
Note that the US does not have a single definition of murder; there are loose common guidelines, but each jurisdiction within the U.S. has its own, slightly different, definition of each form of murder. The specific statutes matter a lot in actual cases even if they get ignored in general discussion, as do the actual charges filed. The fact that another form of murder exists that could have been supported based on the trial evidence will not save a conviction on appeal if the appellate court feels the evidence cannot reasonably support a conviction for the specific form of murder actually charged.
I have seen use-of-force training exercises that look very similar except there is actually a weapon being drawn. I don't think it makes the officer who pulled the trigger innocent, but I believe he behaved exactly the way he was trained, and holding him personally responsible would not prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
Note in particular it is a different officer who is talking in the video and created the whole situation.
Fair enough. The horrifying part to me was not the moment the shots were fired, but the escalation and screaming of inconsistent instructions by an unmistakably bloodthirsty officer to a man who was clearly scared out of his mind and literally begging for his life.
One thing that gets overlooked in police shootings is innocent bystanders as an aside to the people getting shot by police, justified or not.
Imagine the person that called the police to investigate someone with a possible weapon in a hotel, moments later police show up in SWAT gear with AR-15s and discharge them in the hallway, with many other rooms around, and kill an innocent man. Worse, bullets could have gone into rooms or out the window into the parking lot and who knows where else. Why not rubber bullets, why not a taser, why an AR-15 in a hotel hallway?
Next time you see one of these shootings, watch the disregard in some for who is behind the person the police are shooting at [1][2][3] whether justified or not, it is a bit scary. It is getting to the point that maybe it is safer to not call police, what if you were robbed and they come in and shoot the guy in front or you house, bullets everywhere?
That happened in New Zealand a few years ago. The police missed their target (an actual active shooter running on foot) and instead killed the driver of a nearby van. I don't know how you can be trained to use a gun and not learn about looking at what you're shooting it at.
Handguns are difficult to use. Moving targets are hard to hit. Extensive training helps, but many people who have found them in situations where they need to use that training have found their performance suffers.
I also don't get why they said he should move to them. instead another police officer could've just came from the back and searched him for potential weapons. but well the video shows that the police basically was harmful.
This happened to me on Wednesday about 5:00am. My wife and I had gotten into a terrible fight. She suffers from terrible alcoholism. This week of Christmas has been absolutely horrible as demons resurface. She awoke me from my sleep about 4am, drunk and outraged because I asked if she was wearing a robe in bed. Things spiraled very quickly out of control, my wife was out of control, and so was I. We both said terrible things and made unwanted body contact. The fight made its way to the driveway and a neighbor called in the disturbance.
About 30 minutes later I was awoken by the doorbell. I knew who it was. I threw on my PJ pants and a hoodie. Fifteen minutes later I was in handcuffs heading to the county jail.
I could have easily been in a very very bad situation if I hadn't followed orders to the letter.
My wife and I are in therapy and she will be entering detox this next week. I hope this event turns into the wake up call that helps her beat this disease with my help all along the way.
So sorry to hear your story. As an alcoholic though (currently 1.5 bottles of wine down, and wishing I had another to hand), I find it hard to reconcile your situation. Your wife was drunk, you were not, but both lost control? Not judging, just asking.
The reason I ask is that only situation in which my alcohol abuse has triggered any kind of verbal exchange is where (unaware of my situation) my partner has been snappy about something, and due to lack of sleep (staying up late, secretly drinking), I've responded less diplomatically than I would have liked. Never abusive, never physical by either party, and only a small number of times.
Under no circumstance has either of us become physical. That's a totally different problem, and I'd encourage you to seek help for your wife (If I'm understanding correctly that she was the one that became aggressive, or both of you otherwise) It's probably also the time to consider what's best for you both in the long term.
Unrelated to that, but apropos your comment and the OP, I had a cop pull a gun on me when I was 19. I naively, but quite literally laughed it off, as I was doing my job and had no idea the risk I was in from his overreaction.
I was in college, but working a night security job. I had to check the premises set the internal alarm, then check the outside doors. Unfortunately a (really stupid) design flaw in the alarm system resulted in the occasional false silent alarm.
On this occasion, as I was checking the outside doors, a cruiser rolled up, the cop saying they'd received an alarm call.
I identified myself, invited him in (first mistake), then said I'd switch off the alarm (second mistake - why I don't know - it was a silent alarm!)
Switching off the alarm with a key switch required reaching around a door in to a closet where the alarm system was.
I turned around to discover the now less-than-friendly looking cop pointing his gun at me.
I laughed instinctively, as to my innocent mind it seemed absurd. Thankfully, that seemed to drop his guard. He was 6 feet away, and my hands were now clearly empty.
I wasn't asked to follow Simon-says "crawl towards me with your left foot over your right, and your hands straight in the in the air, or we will shoot you type instructions, and shortly after, the dispatcher ID'd me as being a registered person for the property.
Now that I think about it, I had several negative experiences with the cops in a 2 year period. (Broke into my residence in the middle of the night for no reason - I was more embarrassed that it was untidy!; gatecrashed a party because they "didn't like the music" (no neighbours, no disturbance), probably looking for underage alcohol; stopped for speeding on a bicycle!!!
I read your comment, kept going with my morning, but then felt compelled to come back. You might not see this given it’s a throw away, but I hope you do.
As someone who has lost family members to alcohol (both figuratively while they were living, and now literally as they have passed away), I’m always prone to respond to opening sentences like yours with “today is a great day to get sober.”
If you’re looking for some inspiration from another addict, I always recommend Bob Forest. You can hear him on the This Life podcast with Drew Pinsky http://drdrew.com/thislife/.
In general so many things can be misunderstood. E.g. when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by anti-terror police in London who mistook him for a potential suicide bomber, one of the things brought up was how he got up from his seat in a rapid motion by lifting his arms in front of him to shift his point of gravity.
It stands out to me because they thought it was weird, but to me it's just the easiest way to get up when you're on a crowded train and there's no space to your sides to support you on.
But to a stressed out, scared armed response team even that made him seem scarier.
To this date, almost ten years later, I think of that case ever time I get up from a seat that way. Not that I expect to be mistaken for a terrorist, but because it underlines just how bad people are at interpreting body language, and how dangerous that can be when combined with stressed out armed police.
The initial claims made about Jean Charles de Menezes included that he ran, he jumped the barrier, he did not buy a ticket, he was wearing a thick jacket. In reality he walked, bought a ticket, used the barrier normally and was wearing a t-shirt. This is visible on the cctv footage.
Yes, but the part I'm specifically talking about was how he got up from the seat on the tube when confronted in a way the officer in question thought was aggressive, but that in reality is something you often see on the tube. There's no doubt there was lots of bullshit coming from the police over it too, but that he stood up was one of the few claims the jury in the inquest agree was proven, an it stands out because the testimony relating to it as far as I remember made the officer seem genuinely to not realize why someone might get up that way, which is quite unlike their other excuses in that it exposes ignorance compared to the other attempts to describe things in a way that could have actually contributed to giving them an excuse.
The video leaked online. He is not even trying to reach for his pajamas or something. A cop asks him to move towards them and the next second you hear the shot. It's crazy.
He definitely reached for his shorts. It's a reflex that comes from a whole lifetime of being able to pull up your pants without risk of being shot.
But that's all irrelevant. If the cops were only interested in securing him, they would've made him lie down like a starfish and have someone approach him instead of letting Jigsaw make him play Twister.
Since we just told you we'd ban the account if you kept breaking the guidelines with unsubstantive comments, we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start posting civilly and substantively.
They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.
The worst case scenario? I’m pretty sure that is the scenario that played out. Police should be prepared to die wearing the badge, with civilian casualty being an absolute last resort.
It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.
> It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.
The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence. We dress it up today and make it seem all noble, and selectively forget all the torture at Abu Ghraib, drop weapons [1], the famous song about the "Little Haji Girl," .. and the list goes on.
The military get away with much more murder and torture than police. Many people I knew who came back from Iraq hate Iraqis; they have to justify their hatred because they've killed so many of them.
In the words of Bill Hicks, "I've been watching all these Congressional hearings and all these military guys and all the pundits going, "The esprit de corps will be affected, and we are such a mora …" Excuse me, but aren't you all a bunch of fucking hired killers? Shut up! You are thugs, and when we need you to go blow the fuck out of a nation of little brown people, we'll let you know."
>> It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.
>The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence(...)
But the police are a part of the state's monopoly on violence as well - they're the ones who commit the violence on behalf of the state, and the ones whose violence the state legitimizes.
> The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence. We dress it up today and make it seem all noble, and selectively forget all the torture at Abu Ghraib...
Are you suggesting that there's a better solution to handling conflict than relegating the use of violence to the state? If so, what's that solution?
What military unit did you serve in, and how much combat did you see? No service here, but if my reading is worth anything, soldiers do risk their lives - to a degree - even to capture rather than kill the enemy at times. But most won't take large, constant risks, and some won't take any risk if nobody's looking, or their unit has adopted a fiercer culture. In Vietnam, some units were willing to kill their own officers to reduce the friendly death toll overall (fragging.)
I understand the U.N. Laws of War, official terms of engagement, and military law don't talk in terms of risk percentages, but practically that's the calculation each soldier must make. We have to be careful of how much saintliness we ask of policemen (and soldiers) else we won't be able to hire more than a handful.
Try finding enough people willing to do that. I'm not willing to die with the badge on, so I will never be a police officer. But I suspect that if you ask police officers the same question, many of them are also not truly willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Surely many of those who are willing to make that sacrifice are already police officers or other first responders.
It's not, or shouldn't be, "willing to die". It's "willing to accept a heightened risk of death or injury" that every cop should be ok saying "yes, that's my job."
Because time and again when you look at SWAT tactics or other situations where a cop kills someone, they were being pre-emptive. They were taking no risk at all of being hurt or killed. They pulled the trigger at the first ambiguous sign of threat, resistance, or something going wrong. They've created and valorized a mindset of taking no risk, of making sure they go home at night, of winning every encounter that always has death lurking somewhere.
They've made cops chickenshit, is what they've done. Some of that is internal cop culture, "warrior cop" mentality, etc. Some of that is us having built up a lot of drama around policing and police deaths making us all think that it's a terribly dangerous job. And some of it is just a refusal to hold police accountable for mistakes, which makes erring on the side of a dead civilian preferable.
Yet, plenty of people go into the military. I call bullshit. And frankly the only people I want wearing the badge are ones who are willing to sacrifice themselves, even if it’s a much smaller number of officers being paid much more and are much more skilled.
These cops have to be willing to consider their lives less important that everyone else's. Bullshit.
Yes plenty of people go into the military. For myself it was because I could not get a better job. Was I willing to die for my country, yes, but I sure as hell wasn't of the opinion I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to make sure I wasn't.
I was just reading the other thread on here about the original story. The police got a proper doing on it.
I bet myself before clicking the link for this one "I bet no one is speaking about the linked story just slagging the polic." Correct.
More police are killed in traffic accidents than in violent confrontations. When you factor out traffic accidents in police deaths, being a cop is actually one of the safer jobs in North America.
All your bullshit about putting your life on the line is just psyching yourself up to shoot people. Cops don't put their life on the line. They sometimes get killed by people for no reason, but in smaller numbers than civilians get killed by people with guns for no reason. All your heroic language does is justify cops shooting innocents because they're scared.
>More police are killed in traffic accidents than in violent confrontations. When you factor out traffic accidents in police deaths, being a cop is actually one of the safer jobs in North America.
Love to see the stats on that. Either way you wouldn't get me doing a cops job in America without a gun, for obvious reasons.
>All your bullshit about putting your life on the line is just psyching yourself up to shoot people. Cops don't put their life on the line. They sometimes get killed by people for no reason, but in smaller numbers than civilians get killed by people with guns for no reason. All your heroic language does is justify cops shooting innocents because they're scared.
Not really worth a response seeing as how this is just trolling, but I can guarantee 2 things that you'll not like hearing because you're obviously convinced all cops are just bad men in uniforms but, 1 yes cops do put their lives on the line, 2 my supposed "bullshit" about putting my life on the line is just not psyching myself up to shoot people. Sorry to disappoint you but you're speaking shite.
Of course cops don't put their lives on the line. Now let's all slag off those cops, because let's face it they deserved what happened to them didn't they!
Because it's clear that if the system we've built is so fragile that one idiot can cause this kind of outcome, there must be something wrong with the system?
Because this idiot in some other situation can be seating in some other country. So to take out some high value US target say someone from US intelligence the only thing they have to do is to make a believable sounding call over VOIP line and they are golden especially considering the target would likely have a gun on him which will make it that much easier.
The military offers a much larger compensation package for your employment/service. As a LEO, you get a paycheck, and a pension. As a soldier, you get room & board, food, transportation (mostly), and all your necessities issued to you.
For some people, those are worth the potential of death, where as the LEO compensation isn't.
Lastly, there is a large group of people who enlist due to patriotic beliefs (i.e. "Doing your duty"/"Serving your country"). I don't see that same type of patriotism towards local LEO organizations.
While in the e.g., Army, you are likely away from your family and friends for the better part of 4 years, and if you perform much better than average, you’ll be an E4 late in your third year, earning $25k/yr.
Meanwhile, cops are paid north of $50k/yr; they get to go home to their families every night, and compared to IED-laden roads and AK-47s, their risks are very minor.
Also, saying the military pays for room and board is like saying prison pays for room and board; it’s not exactly the room and board you would choose, and you’re not allowed to just leave when you choose.
Police are paid well in this country, better than the military by a long stretch. I suggest we find out how many are willing to step up and be heroes, I think there are many.
Our civilization is so lacking in the honorable stoicism which would serve these personnel so well.
Well, that's a case of a branch that never even occurred, so what's the point?
In that case, it's not as bad as if it was a secret ISIS compound and one of the bad guys set off a bomb that blew up the block. That's worse than your worst case. But notice how this adds no value to the discussion.
As much as people slag off the "thin blue line" mentality it does mean something. You put that uniform on and you are the meat-shield between order and chaos, between civilization and lawlessness. You're performing a grim but necessary service, and there's no shame in retiring to civilian life if you can't or won't accept this duty. This is why soldiers are taught that they are outranked by any civilian.
Every officer used to know this. Maybe less so today, when police work is an attractive option for violent people to let loose on civilians with legal sanction. But that's a separate problem from the mentality of duty and sacrifice.
The one time I was arrested (for illegal use of a roadway during a protest), during the post arrest search of my belongings, the cop searching made some comment about something in my bag and I turned my head (I was facing a wall) to reply, for which he immediately shoved my face back into the wall and said "You're not allowed to move - my safety is more important than yours". Keep in mind, this is in a police station surrounded by other cops, he already body searched me, and I was a 5'10, 120 pound nerdy teenager.
Of course, this is just an anecdotal, singular data point, but it strongly accords with the sense I get watching videos of police shootings that many if not most police officers today are in fact trained to put their safety and the safety of their fellow officers above that of civilians.
It is a collection of dashcam/bodycam videos of US police involved in some kind of shooting/assault. They are not edited down to fit a news report so videos usually last 10-30 minutes. Some show cops stealing money/drug from suspects and US media actually showed such clips in news reports. But lots of the videos show actual circumstances leading up to shooting by police. Some clips show cops getting shot at by suspects. And even some getting killed. I have a whole new perspective on cops after watching the videos.
I have a relative who was arrested (due to his own fault) and got roughed up by police and he HATES cops. And I kinda used to shared his sentiment.
But after watching the clips on the channel, I feel somewhat less animosity.
When scums of earth are around, most of us have a choice of moving away. But these cops don't have the choice.
Why wouldn't they? They do have a choice. Of course it's more complicated than simply saying that, but it's ridiculous to suggest a cop doesn't have a choice in where they work or live or even the field in which they work. Being a cop is not compulsory and even offers more opportunities for movement than many other professions.
I was actually watching a bunch of videos on this very channel the day before last. And I totally agree with your characterization of it. It did make me more sympathetic to cops as individual people with hard jobs, seeing all the crazy bullshit people put cops through on a daily basis.
But it doesn't negate my critique that there's a systematic flaw in the way police are trained. I don't hold the individual cops to blame for acting as they've been trained. but in watching a lot of the videos I get the sense that because of the warrior mentality of the cop, they simply cannot allow themselves to opt for the de-escalatory path, because they think failing to dominate a situation will put themselves at risk. Which may be true in many of the situations!
But why is this? Why are there criminals who are willing to initiate gun violence against police, despite the overwhelmingly bad odds against that ending well for them?
It's a complex question, but I suspect one significant factor is because they have also been trained indirectly by the warrior mentality of other police they've encountered or observed. I think it's fair to say almost all people who pull guns on cops are not having their first brush with the law. They know that once a encounter with a police officer becomes adversarial, the only possible outcomes are: suspect in custody, suspect dead, or suspect escaped by incapacitating the officer. People hate to lose control, and being seconds away from indefinite, total loss of control over your life on the shoulder of a road creates a situation quite analogous to the first strike problem in nuclear strategy. Except unlike in potential nuclear conflicts, the initial deployment of force is a very common eventuality so the perceived need for counterforce is that much higher.
Now admittedly, the warrior mentality isn't the root cause of this dynamic - criminals on the run would still have a first strike incentive during encounters with police, but the presence of a warrior officer ratchets up the potential for escalation nonetheless, because the criminal is now credibly worried about losing their life in addition to losing their freedom.
I don't know where to go with this, but, the point I wanted to make is we can both maintain respect for police as individuals and critique the aspects of police institutional culture that exacerbate these problems.
Cops act like thugs because the overwhelming majority of people they arrest/hassle/shoot are guilty. Period.
However, this does not justify any of the collateral damage to the ones who are innocent - the scales of justice are not a probability distribution! The entire point of the rule of law is to have a clear dividing line between the acceptable and the unacceptable - every innocent person assaulted by the police is a victim of a freshly-committed crime, and should be entitled to (at the very least) civil recompense.
I 100% agree with your second paragraph but as for the idea that most people hassled by the cops are not guilty, well publicized stop and frisk statistics in NYC indicate the opposite. Besides, why does that even matter? Even if most alleged perps are guilty of something, that "something" isn't usually a violent crime, it's a traffic violation or public drinking or selling pot or a minor domestic disturbance. And I would argue that cops should not act like thugs in any circumstance. That comes from the attitude that asserting control over the situation is more important than protecting and serving the citizenry as the cop was hired to do. It comes from the attitude that some people are intrinsically less worthy of protection than others.
In the case of this SWAT call, the cops had plenty of time to secure their own safety and to wait out the hostage taker. First and foremost they did not even confirm what the situation was before rushing to action. And now the citizen is dead.
My first paragraph wasn't describing what ought, but what is.
> stop and frisk statistics in NYC indicate the opposite. Besides, why does that even matter? Even if most alleged perps are guilty of something, that "something" isn't usually a violent crime, it's a traffic violation or public drinking or selling pot or a minor domestic disturbance
Without refuting either of these points, I stand by the intuition of my comment. Stop and frisk seems more like an exception that proves the rule, showing just how bad the narrative of "good guys" "inspecting subjects" has gotten.
> That comes from the attitude that asserting control over the situation is more important than protecting and serving the citizenry as the cop was hired to do
I totally agree - focusing on their desire for control, and the injustice committed when they demand that control over an innocent person, is a good way of analyzing it.
> the case of this SWAT call, the cops had plenty of time to secure their own safety and to wait out the hostage taker. First and foremost they did not even confirm
IMHO, the "in-situation" framing is heading down the wrong path. Primarily worrying about what the police department policy is, how much of a paid staycation a murderer will get, etc is buying into the corrupt idea that cops aren't subject to the laws themselves. Under the actual rule of law, murderers go to prison no matter what costume they wore. And if policy department policy encouraged/defended the murder, we call that conspiracy.
> You realize that judging acts is not within their domain and sphere of interest, right?
Wat? Judging acts is in the "domain and sphere of interest" of any person.
Please note (if you can avoid shooting from the hip) that I'm making this point to criticize police overreach - even a perfectly "clean slate" cop with no peer pressure will develop a bias towards thinking of everybody as a criminal! Similarly, a cop that lives in a White community and works in a Black neighborhood is going to find it awfully hard to not develop a bias of thinking Black people are more likely to be dangerous. (and, in case it's not clear, vice-versa)
If you cannot bear to entertain thoughts like the above, then you really aren't interested in analyzing the problem. Because all of the "training" in the world isn't going to counteract a bias that is reinforced every single day!
What is needed are actual real incentives to not murder people, but fortunately this is a pretty old problem. Apart from responding to a rare overt attack (eg aiming a gun or charging the cop), any cop that shoots someone is themselves committing a crime (somewhere between voluntary manslaughter and second degree murder) - undermining that very "law and order" that police purport to uphold! The routine and casual corruption that allows these crimes to go unpunished needs to be rooted out.
A ride-along is easy to arrange, that’s true. I’ve had the chance to take advantage of the opportunity a few different times. Twice with officers from the LAPD (Rampart and Olympic divisions), and once after I moved back to the East Coast when I spent three hours riding with officers from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s department.
Perhaps my experiences were exceptional examples and everywhere else across the United States, a majority of LE interactions are between officers and “guilty” people, but that’s not what I saw.
I’m open to the possibility, of course, but I’d still like to see a citation backing up the statement I was responding to.
> Maybe less so today, when police work is an attractive option for violent people to let loose on civilians with legal sanction
Many of the early US “professional” forces were essentially violent ethnic gangs given official sanction to combat other violent ethnic gangs; the present violent condition is more a result of the fact that that culture had continued to shape US policing than some kind of recent deviation from historical police culture; it's more visible because of changes in media and some pro-transparency reforms, not because the actual behavior is worse.
If anything, the recent trend has been for many institutions to try to correct some of the long-standing cultural problems, but that's a long, slow process facing internal and external resistance.
I don't claim to have inside knowledge but often many cops some to become cops because there are no better job prospects. I'm sure they would've picked a factory job or any other trade if it guaranteed life time employment and pension afterward.
But these days such jobs require much studying/preparation/luck.
A soldier is in direct danger of losing life/limb only upto 25 years old so. As you go up higher in rank, your exposure to danger goes down exponentially.
And that is usually when an active war is going on.
Even when an active war is on, those in charge have learned to limit the length of time a soldier spends in warzone to 1 year. Like US did in Vietnam war.
For cop in certain areas, they are exposed to loving life/limb any day. It may happen only once a year or just a few years. But still, I wouldn't say one can be a cop only if you are willing to lose own life.
I don't think you've ever been a soldier. Sure the average private or corporal is in their twenties but when I was in Afghanistan the average NCO was in their thirties. Even higher ranked people with office jobs weren't immune from danger. Rocket attacks on KAF and the FOBs was a regular occurrence.
Soldiers can easily get a lot more than one year of combat time. How many full time soldiers only do a single tour in Iraq or Afghanistan?
The stats show policing isn't that dangerous. Most cops never need to draw their weapons. If you want to see a dangerous job look at crab fishing.
No I've never been a soldier but I know a USAF graduate who spent I think 6 month long tour in Iraq. And he did mention being in mortar attack a few times. But it didn't last years. And I agree with what you said about even older/higher ranked people being in danger. But the point is how long has war been going on? And how many of US soldiers are actually in combat zone.
But for US cops, any chance encounter on the street can be deadly. And that lasts for their entire career.
I have trouble with agreeing with someone who says that a cop should be ready to give up life during their whole career of 30 + years.
A 30 year cop (presumably) isn't going to spend the ENTIRE career working as a beat cop on the graveyard shift in the worst parts of Baltimore or Chicago. They also rank up and/or change positions to be detectives, special investigations, expert witnesses for prosecutors, bosses or administrative police staff.
Meanwhile SWAT details (particularly in medium sized cities with more toys than mandatory training) are going to consistently attract the worst of the so called "bad apples" from the greater ranks of police. Individuals that joined up specifically because the rough and tumble stuff appealed to them.
> Even when an active war is on, those in charge have learned to limit the length of time a soldier spends in warzone to 1 year. Like US did in Vietnam war.
This is absolutely false. It may have been true in Vietnam, but that has to do more with there being a near infinite source of soldiers (the draft) and also an insane amount of soldiers being killed an maimed and unable to take a 2nd term.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, I knew people who were serving five or six tours.
Shouldn't they prepare for the most likely scenarios, i.e. it's a bogus call or misrepresented whats happening, or that the perp just wants to surrender?
How often do these calls turn out to be actually dangerous? One in a dozen? A hundred?
Should cops wearing body armor use sniper rifles to shoot someone on their porch several hundred feet away just on the off chance they might have a pistol in their waistband?
My line of work routinely puts me in the immediate vicinity of equipment which will kill me if I make a mistake. (Huge winches and their associated power systems - some in the megawatt range)
I have yet to injure myself; in large part I ascribe this to the fact that I always think and think again about what I am about to do, and how it may conceivably put me at risk, then take the required measures to eliminate that risk.
However, more importantly - I have also yet to have anybody else injured on my watch. Why? Because I am not only concerned about my own safety, but also that of anybody who are, or may possibly come, within the blast radius in case something goes pear-shaped.
I would expect police officers to do the same - though granted, most of the time they have to make their decisions much faster (which makes it even more important to think things through beforehand - and, hopefully, come up with alternatives to "Shoot at anything you are not 100% certain is harmless, then sort out the details after the gunsmoke clears."
Do troy routinely destroy that equipment if you suspect it’s dangerous? Should cops routinely point their weapons at unknown citizens, with safeties off and their fingers on hair triggers?
If I suspect it is dangerous, I do whatever I can to eliminate - or, if not possible, at least mitigate the risk to make it as low as practically possible - then see what can be done to ensure the safety of people within range even with that residual risk present.
Now, I appreciate that my circumstances are not directly comparable to that of a police officer responding to an emergency call; however, the basic methodology should be applicable in both cases.
Police officers are granted a monopoly on applying force on the civilian population; with that privilege comes great responsibility to use that privilege sparingly and proportionate to the situation they are sent to resolve.
I do not expect the police to disarm completely - that wouldn't be realistic - but as a member of the public I do expect them to show restraint and train -and aim for- non-lethal outcomes in encounters with the public. They have, after all, taken an oath to serve us. I hardly think the best way of serving is to assume civilians are hostile until proven otherwise.
Perhaps this is the problem. When you go into every encounter prepared for the worst, you'll probably find the worst more often than otherwise. Perhaps if they went into every encounter thinking that it could one a hundred different ways, they'd valorize keeping their wits about them, rather than pulling the trigger the first time "the worst" seems like it's about to happen.
While any unnecessary loss of life is a tragedy, I would agree with your statement simply because the LEO puts on the badge knowing the risks they are accepting. The victim from this article did not. He simply answered his door, and lost his life for it.
Ironically, militarized police training teaches the exact opposite: the officer must protect their lives and the lives of their fellow officers above all else.
With unaccountable murder machines freely roaming the streets with the power to kill you at the slightest provocation (real or perceived), you don't have to have be in a particular profession to fear for your life.
Exactly my point: “prepare for the worst”, meaning me a police officer preparing for the worst that happens to me personally. This is not service, it is self serving.
Preparing for the worst means wearing body armor, not pointing your hair triggered gun at unknowns who aren’t aggressive and whom don’t appear to have weapons.
It’s a great example of why these SWAT units shouldn’t be in every small cities police department. Paramilitary tactics should come with military discipline.
Police shouldn't be using military tactics or equipment. If those tactics/weapons are truly needed, then the National Guard should be called in.
There is a fundamental difference between military tactics/actions and law enforcement. It seems that over the past 4-5 decades, we've allowed the lines to be blurred in exchange for a false sense of security and safety.
Yea, this outcome seems to happen surprisingly infrequently for the amount of SWATings that occur, precisely because big city SWAT units are selected for experience and discipline. When any small town cowboy sheriff and his goons can ride in with assault rifles on a bargain bin APC courtesy of the Pentagon, these standards fall off rapidly.
No, they're literally taught that protecting their lives and the lives of their fellow officers is their top priority. They're taught by the 'warrior mindset' not to treat civilians like, well, civilians, but instead like potential enemy combatants.
Sure, they're mitigating the personal risks they endure on the job, but they're doing so at the cost of increasing the risk of harm and death to everyone they encounter.
Hate to break it to you, but America IS a macho, gun-loving, power-tripping culture. What macho, gun-loving, power-tripping game were two man-children playing that got one of them so pissed at the other that he SWATted him?
That's quite the victim blaming you're doing there. I'll make sure to never play an FPS against a twelve year old again, just to make sure a cop doesn't shoot me for no reason
Not good enough. The person who got killed was not one of the people involved in the game. The guy who was the target to be swatted gave a false address to the person calling him out. Not playing the FPS would not protect you in this case.
That's what makes this so much worse - the guy who got killed never knew why the cops were there, which is presumably why he was confused and made the mistake that killed him. He died because he was innocent.
> Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily.
What you are asking them to be is super human, indeed even better than a computer could in the same situation. No amount of "proper training" or "discipline" can prepare you to make perfect decisions based on imperfect data (your sensory perception, plus all the data that isn't present such as must be read from the mind of the suspect). Oh and add to this the stress that if you screw up, one of the following is likely:
1. You get killed
2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison
A different approach is needed. I'm not sure what that is, but asking/requiring certain humans to be super human is a sure way to fail.
Yea this answer is total and utter crap. We aren't asking law enforcement to be super human, we want them to be educated and competent. The fact that the U.S is both lacking in training and competence is a well established fact. Law enforcement in the United States has proven itself to lack training and discipline by firing on innocent unarmed citizens many many times. I don't believe any other country in the world has this problem to our extent. We have a very dangerously trigger happy law enforcement. These issues correlate with lack of training. Civil crime is not like a battlefield, people should be presumed innocent until proven guilty as is law. If someone can't handle this reality, they shouldn't be allowed to wield a weapon that kills. With great force and power comes responsibility. We should be far more selective at the type of people that can go into law enforcement, only those with a grounded temperament and proven track record should be allowed to use deadly force after extensive training. In the U.S, any Joe shmoe hungry for a power trip can attain a legal license to kill by going in law enforcement. That is the actual problem.
I'd love to hear an actual solution or alternative if you have one. But the U.S isn't a special snowflake. It should take a leaf from other countries like Germany, England and France and foster a strong culture of policing by consent rather than the bullshit we have right now.
Also when was the last time an American white law enforcement agent was imprisoned for discharging his or her weapon on an unarmed suspect?
The murder charge was dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on civil rights charges, which is what the 20 years was for. Even with an eye witness and a clear tape of the offense the officer still wasn't convicted of murder.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but what you quoted wasn't my answer in its entirety. The parent made the assertion that we are asking police officers to be super human and I was disagreeing with that and the rest of the answer goes on to explain why.
The why amounts to you knowing a special incantation that nobody in the US has otherwise stumbled upon. The assertion remains less compelling than the rational explanation that I first heard in the 80s (the context of that is important). Computerx didnt just originate that thought, further demonstrating your lack of knowledge.
Actual solution or alternative: You and tons more people like you, should apply for jobs in law enforcement, work your way up into leadership, and change policy.
My brother, quite an intelligent person, attempted to do just that at least three times but no law enforcement agency would admit him (clean record). I am assuming this is because he made comments that to them seemed subversive in interviews.
Somehow police in the rest of developed world are able to resist shooting a great deal of suspects on the spot. Find what's different in America and fix it.
I agree. I'm far from an expert in this field, but my general observations is that we have a huge police presence in America. They are also empowered way beyond what our founders intended. That for one needs to change. It may also help if we stopped criminalizing every little thing, and giving our Environmental Protection Agency a freaking SWAT team[1].
A biased article, which does not mention any "SWAT team"—only that some gold miner was outraged that the police investigating him had handguns. Big deal.
The next substantive, impartial article from Fox News about the EPA will be the first one I've seen.
We know what is different but we refuse to address it. I understand that many people feel the second amendment is very important, but we at least have to have the intellectual honesty to admit that shootings like this are a consequence of it. We might decide we are willing, as a society, to accept that risk, but we can’t pretend it isn’t there.
Americans have 101 guns per 100 citizens. Finns have 34.2 guns per 100 citizens. Icelanders have 30.3 guns per 100 citizens.
America has 110x the murder rate than Finland has. America has 13,000x the murder rate Iceland has.
Whatever the cause is, 3x the guns ≠ 110x the murder rate (or 13,000x the murder rate).
A more interesting comparison might be to examine countries with similar murder rates to the U.S., regardless of arbitrary "developing or not developing" boxes, and ask what the two countries have in common. For instance, countries with similar murder rates to the U.S. include:
• Burundi (1.2 guns per 100 residents)
• Cuba (4.8 guns per 100 residents)
• Kazakhstan (1.3 guns per 100 residents)
• Kyrgyzstan (0.9 guns per 100 residents)
• Latvia (19 guns per 100 residents)
• Niger (0.7 guns per 100 residents)
• Rwanda (0.6 guns per 100 residents)
• Somalia (9.1 guns per 100 residents)
• Turkey (12.5 guns per 100 residents)
• Turkmenistan (3.8 guns per 100 residents)
• Ukraine (6.6 guns per 100 residents)
What about the U.S. makes it more like these countries, murder-rate-wise, than more developed countries with higher gun ownership, like Finland or Iceland (both of which have far and away higher gun ownership than all the countries on that list)?
I am from Ukraine originally. Poverty is the reason there. So yeah let’s have that proper safety net instead.
But when we are talking about this, let’s break it down a bit between different types of violence where guns are used: police shooting suspects, gang violence, run of the mill murder, and acts of terrorism. You don’t believe that the police are shooting suspects because the officers are poor, do you? Or that the Vegas shooter was poor? Or the Sandy Hook one? Gang violence is a result of poverty, but terror attacks (the US likes to call these mass shootings when the suspect is white and/or Christian), are not.
I think it is time to repeal the second amendment. It clearly failed to create an organized militia that could stand up to an oppressive government. The US police force alone is enough to suppress any rebellion by the civilians, and if aided by the military, no militia could stand up to it. You can have gun ownership without the second amendment. Individual laws could grant access to weapons. But it is time to switch from a loophole that lets us have all the guns unless specifically disallowed by a law to a denied first, allowed second system.
Do I hear you ask about all the criminals that would keep their guns anyways, and only the law abiding citizens would be left unarmed? I will buy that argument the day it’s applied across the board to drugs and abortions.
I would go further to say that the second amendment failed so miserably that if you shoot a police officer in self defense (such as in the case of the article), it is game over for you. You either won’t see the light of day again or be put to death. They’ve essentially made acting against the establishment _so illegal_ you’d be crazy to even try.
By merely being engaged by a police officer, you’re dead.
Even with all the technology police + military has. I don't think it would be an easy win if the gun owning population decided to revolt. There would be millions of deaths. The government may end up on top, but the consequences would be dire.
Not an American. Canadian here. I actually wish we had American gun laws, even with their consequences.
See, I want to send my kids to school and be reasonably sure that some idiot can’t go down the street, buy a couple of rifles, and murder them and their classmates. Being able to go to the gun range once in a while and post on /r/guns is sorta secondary to that. Different priorities I guess.
Edit: and funnily enough the above scenario doesn’t happen in the developed world, except in the US, where it happens multiple times a year. Here we don’t tolerate things like weed, or abortions, or refugees because the societal price for those is too high, but mass child murder is cool because otherwise how would we prove our manliness?
> See, I want to send my kids to school and be reasonably sure that some idiot can’t go down the street, buy a couple of rifles, and murder them and their classmates.
Everybody does. Let's not be disingenuous, though: the chances one of our children dies from a gunshot wound at school is incredibly small.
By my counts, 4 students have been killed at school shootings this year. 4 students out of ~50 million kids at over 130,00 schools. Consider also there are over 350 million firearms in the US.
People only care about it because of _guns_.
<soapbox>
Nobody seems to care much about the ~30,000 firearm deaths in the US each year.
They don't care that 2/3 of them are suicides, usually of middle-aged men.
They don't care that most of the remainder are usually in poor areas (often because of the US' long history of racism) and often gang-related.
They only care about the sensational (and very tragic) 0.0001% of deaths.
It annoys me to no end because it's proof they don't care about gun deaths. No, they just care about tear-jerking cable news stories. It's gross and disingenuous.
I lived next door to Sandy Hook when it happened. A relative of mine was a student in their school system and for a while I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. My town and towns around it have events every year honoring each person that died in the shooting. Yeah it’s a little close to home both figuratively and literally.
And I never said anything about not caring about other gun deaths. I don’t have a magical scale to weigh lives, and say which gun deaths are more meaningful objectively, but my solution to most of these is exactly the same: repeal the second amendment. Don’t let suicidal middle aged men buy guns. Don’t let legally owned guns become illegally owned guns. Don’t pawn them, privately sell them, hide them, find them, etc. Don’t put them in the hands of 12 year olds, or 50 year olds. What does seem true to me is that you almost never see a story where the gun made a difference and a life was saved. The NRA loooooves to talk about self defense the reason to sacrifice the poor, the defenseless, and the sick every damn year. Yet there is no damn evidence for this.
Also yes sure you can say schools are “safe” because it might not happen at yours. Add churches, malls, movie theaters, concerts, etc. and the picture gets a lot bleaker.
This experiment with guns has clearly failed. Arming a bunch of civilians and glorifying gun culture to the point of fetishism turns out leads to a not insignificant amount of death, a good chunk of which is innocent bystanders. So we can spend another year or ten or 100 pretending that this is a good idea or we can repeal the second amendment and start over. I am willing to bet that mayhem and pandemonium won’t happen and instead we would learn that not having a bunch of people armed to the teeth is a good idea.
This is blatantly incorrect. From the Violence Policy Center:
"Using the NCVS numbers, for the three-year period 2012 through 2014, the total number of self-protective behaviors involving a firearm by victims of attempted or completed violent crimes or property crimes totaled only 263,500."[0]
In other words, about 87,000 defensive uses of a firearm per year. This is up from the VPC's previous numbers, which totaled ~67,000[1].
> Also yes sure you can say schools are “safe” because it might not happen at yours.
They're "safe" because 4 deaths out of 50 million is safe. Similarly so with the other venues.
I will say, though, I respect your position on gun control much more than the folks who think we'll solve our gun death issue by banning characteristics of firearms (i.e., "assault weapon" bans).
That's fair, but as easily dismissed as the 4 in 50 million number: from http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable16.pdf it's clear that only in 0.9% of cases was the victim offering resistance using a gun. From what I can tell the outcomes of such resistance have not been compiled to see if offering resistance using a firearm made things better or worse for the victim.
In other words, personal firearms made very little difference in preventing crime. "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" is therefore at best a stretch.
I will grant you that the media does sensationalize mass shootings over someone defending themselves from a criminal. Sensationalizing mass shootings is possibly one of the reasons there are so many of them. I am not a huge fan of Malcom Gladwell, but he did describe school shootings specifically as spreading in an epidemic-like fashion: after Columbine they were given so much attention that it sort of self-perpetuated. But the fact remains that if I am being mugged in a dark alley, I am most likely safer if I simply hand over my wallet and phone, then cancel my credit cards when I get home, than if I try to resist.
> I will say, though, I respect your position on gun control much more than the folks who think we'll solve our gun death issue by banning characteristics of firearms (i.e., "assault weapon" bans).
I appreciate that. I don't believe that the problem is scary looking rifles. The problem is first and foremost hand guns which are responsible for most firearm-related deaths. At the same time, mass shootings are a US-specific problem that I do believe comes from two sources: easy access to firearms AND fetishizing guns. As a society we can't change the latter. By definition it's the very rare outliers who go on mass killing sprees. You can't just teach them to not do it. So the solution is to control the former: gun control. You can take incremental measures like stricter background checks, but people will still slip by that. That's the thing about a sociopath: they know exactly how to get around rules and restrictions. But I am in favor of just starting over: repeal the second amendment, remove as many guns as possible from the society, bring that 101 guns per 100 people down to 1.1 guns per 100 people. Then see if there is an actual need to introduce them back into society. My guess: you won't see a strong need beyond the cries of a few enthusiasts.
I also support the hunting exception. I am not a hunter myself, but I know that lots of people derive their livelihood from it. But weapons used for hunting are significantly different than you'd use for self defense. You don't need a huge quick reload magazine to take down a deer for example, because deer by their nature will bolt shortly after hearing the first shot. You won't be able to unload into one unless you are spot lighting the. You can make hand guns used for hunting boar or bear highly reflective orange. Again, quick reload is likely not necessary for these guns.
I looked into bow hunting for a bit, and the funny thing is that the advice I got in one of the classes was to always zip tie your bowstrings when leaving the hunting area so that if a rangers stops you, you can show that you aren't actively using your bow. But you can carry a loaded pistol with the safety off at your hip while doing this and the ranger can't do a thing about it because the pistol is protected by the second amendment. A bit ironic, I think.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your first sentence. Even if only 0.9% of cases involved resistance with a firearm, it still totals over 87,000 a year which is nearly 3x the rate of _all_ firearm deaths. It's over 9x the rate of firearm homicides.
I'm not sure how you square
> the outcomes of such resistance have not been compiled to see if offering resistance using a firearm made things better or worse for the victim.
and
> But the fact remains that if I am being mugged in a dark alley, I am most likely safer if I simply hand over my wallet and phone...than if I try to resist.
> So the solution is to control the former: gun control.
I have some ideas for this :-) It's another pet-peeve of mine: lots of gun control is never run by gun owners first. While there's an obvious conflict of interest, it also means those implementing it lack a whole lot of context and insight that only gun owners can provide.
> But weapons used for hunting are significantly different than you'd use for self defense.
Sorta. A shotgun used for hunting would make a fine home defense firearm. AR-15s can be used just fine for hunting and home defense. Although, a deer hunting rifle (bolt action, scope, etc.) probably wouldn't be a great choice. (Additionally, usually hunters are limited to 3 cartridges in their rifle, but that wouldn't make much sense for home defense.)
> the advice I got in one of the classes was to always zip tie your bowstrings when leaving the hunting area so that if a rangers stops you, you can show that you aren't actively using your bow.
I wonder if this is similar to how it's illegal to have loaded long guns inside vehicles (in most states...)
You say 60k deaths from guns is bad, but 4 kids not involved with guns is ok. I say the 87k uses of guns in resisting an attacker (where there is no documented outcome and it is possible that quite a few of the outcomes do add to the 60k deaths) is not a big number as compared to all crimes where a gun could have been used in defense (hence 0.9% is a low number).
I see your point about how gun experts, which could also include gun owners, should at least be included in deciding policy. As a counter example I will posit that gun owners have failed to put forth any meaningful policy changes. The second amendment still failed to created a well regulated militia, gun deaths are still rampant, mass shootings are still a mostly US problem in the developed world, and the NRA which is supported by most gun owners still is pushing for less gun control.
I think most reasonable people will agree that things like hunting can be treated separately from other uses of firearms by civilians. If there is more nuance to this, we can talk about that. But gun control debate often gets lost in nuance. Who cares about bump stocks when you can buy the AR-15 to attach it to without doing many or any background checks? Who cares about the rate of fire or magazine size when you can go to your pawn shop, buy a 22 and blow your brains out in the parking lot? Repeal the second amendment, give a 30 year cooling off period, then start with new legislation, with data from the past 30 years.
(I hope you don't mind me quoting parts of your comment—it helps me categorize stuff.)
> You say 60k deaths from guns is bad
Well, 30k. And I'm not saying the 4 deaths are okay, I'm saying it's not an epidemic and, statistically, schools are safe. But, I'm still not sure how that part of your comment logically proves much.
> As a counter example I will posit that gun owners have failed to put forth any meaningful policy changes...pushing for less control.
I'd suggest that gun owners have always had to play catch-up. For example, consider the '94 AWB. It was rammed through as a halfway, last-minute measure that pitted gun owners against each other and has left a bad taste in many of their mouths. The general feeling is if they give an inch, "the other side" will take a mile. It's evident if you compare and contrast the positions groups like GOA and NRA take on bills.
I'd also posit that defense of one's self _from_ the state is an underlying reason for the 2nd amendment. Considering the massive (over 350 million) number of firearms in the US and entrenched gun culture, I'm of the opinion the amendment is fine in that respect.
> I think most reasonable people will agree that things like hunting can be treated separately from other uses of firearms by civilians.
As it should. I think where we disagree is on the type and scope of difference.
> But gun control debate often gets lost in nuance. Who cares about bump stocks when you can buy the AR-15...[or] buy a 22 and blow your brains out in the parking lot?
Granted, an AR-15 is not necessarily more dangerous than "any old rifle." It's simply a platform that encompasses different calibers, gas systems, etc. But, good gun control could help stymie sales to prohibited persons. Is it any better, though, if instead of purchasing a $200 pawn shop gun the person hangs himself? When I had a family member dealing with that issue we were told that, essentially, those who _want_ to commit suicide _will_. Have we achieved much if we've simply caused those people to change methods?
Anyway, as an aside, I appreciate the dialogue. It's not too often this topic can be discussed without name calling and such or without degrading into "muh rights" versus "think of the children."
On my side of the aisle, the feeling is that gun rights groups take a mile with every opportunity they get. While some states, like Connecticut, have enacted slightly stricter gun control measure, federal laws have been more and more relaxed as the likes of NRA lobby and bully congress. Again, I don’t believe gun owners and especially organizations that represent them have done anything to make me safer in this country. All they managed to accomplish is to stoke the fire around gun ownership to the tune of rising profits for gun manufacturers. Because of that I support the idea that they aren’t responsible actors and should not be a major voice in the debate. Basically self regulation didn’t work.
Again, if we are talking about gun experts, Wayne LaPierre ain’t one.
As far as the second amendment, yes there are a lot of guns in this country. But, I still posit that it failed:
1. We don’t have a well regulated militia. We have a bunch of individuals, often times with poor training.
2. The individual gun owners are not doing anything to keep the State free. There have been no instances where there was even an attempt to form the well regulated militia it talks about.
3. Even if a major threat to the State showed up, within or without, in a modern world hand guns and semi automatic rifles would not stand up to modern military tech. That fight is over before it starts.
Notice that the second amendment does not talk at all about personal safety, hunting, or anything like that. It basically says that for the purposes of having a civil defense force, individuals can own guns. So in my view it doesn’t even apply to most cases of gun ownership.
As for suicide stuff, I am not sure if you are familiar with some of the stats around it, but basically women are more likely to attempt suicide but men have a higher rate of success. The difference is that men tend to use more lethal methods, often times hand guns. In HN terms, guns reduce friction. Of course if someone is determined to commit suicide, they will. But the other thing is that most people are not. They will go through the steps but also look for an off ramp as they do. And the longer the steps, the more chance they have to change their mind. Suicide is a very complex issue with a large number of underlying causes, but I would argue that not having access to a firearm will in some cases give the person extra time to think before they go through with it.
Lastly, as for mass shootings, I would say that schools were safer in 2017 vs 2016, etc. but they aren’t at an acceptable level of safety in absolute terms. As a citizen I want my schools safer than this. Also, check this out http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.....
I also appreciate the dialogue. If only this had any real world effect :)
> federal laws have been more and more relaxed as the likes of NRA lobby and bully congress.
How so? Also, keep in mind the _entire_ gun lobby spends less than Microsoft does each year. It's pitifully small compared to many other lobbying groups.
> Again, if we are talking about gun experts, Wayne LaPierre ain’t one.
Yeah. Although I don't recall bringing him up. :-)
> 1, 2, and 3
1. Sure, perhaps not "well-regulated" (whatever that means), but see #2
2. They are, because see #3
3. Not really. Consider the case of the middle east: two super powers—Russia in the late 70s/80s and the US ever since—haven't been able to "win" their wars in that area for the last 40 or so years. Why? Because ultimately you still need boots on the ground physically controlling the area. Sure, we could use our military prowess to turn the entire thing into a sea of glass, there's _zero_ benefit to that. Which is why we've lost over 4,000 soldiers instead of just bombing the place and calling it good.
Now consider if the US government turned on its citizens or if the US were attacked by another state. You'd end up with the same thing as the middle east, except for the US has many more firearms and, in case #1, the US government would be fractured: plenty of soldiers and police would not want to take the government's side. That's what plenty of people think about wrt "militia."
> Notice that the second amendment does not talk at all about personal safety...my view it doesn’t even apply to most cases of gun ownership.
This is part of the long debate about the 2nd amendment. You can reach different conclusions depending on how you interpret it. When it was written, firearm ownership was simply an assumed right. People owned guns and could protect themselves with them. Depending on how you parse the 2nd amendment's text you can reach different conclusions. That one comma could make a world of difference (historical details about gun ownership notwithstanding).
> but I would argue that not having access to a firearm will in some cases give the person extra time to think before they go through with it.
And so it seems the question is then: are there better ways that don't trample gun rights, and if not, is losing the gun rights worth the extra time it buys some individuals?
(As an aside, I'm not incredibly familiar with suicide, I just know what I was told by doctors when I had a close family member "go through" it, for lack of a better term.)
> As a citizen I want my schools safer than this.
I do too, but at 4 per 50 million (1 per 12.5 million) I'd consider it safer for my kids to attend school than, say, swim in pools or drive a car—both of which are considered routine and "safe" events.
Interesting link! I've always wondered what would happen to the rates of mass killings and such (the "high profile" incidents) if we'd focus on it less. It seems the 24/7 news stories only seem to inflame tensions and normalize it, increasing the propensity of it happening again and spreading fear of what is an otherwise rare occurrence (see: right-wing folk and terrorist attacks).
> Depending on how you parse the 2nd amendment's text you can reach different conclusions. That one comma could make a world of difference (historical details about gun ownership notwithstanding).
And herein lies the crux. We are staking up to 30k lives a year on a comma. Also, historical context is important in that when the second amendment was written, a group of people with muskets could take on a government force. That's not the case anymore. Police now drive tanks and come at you wearing body armor. I agree that if there was a full scale uprising, with say all the liberals arming themselves to the teeth and going up against Trump's administration in a rebellion, the police and military might be at best divided on the issue. But still, there is no well regulated militia that currently exists.
So my point is that why not re-write the damn thing, taking into account modern tech and modern way of life? The second amendment is held as nearly holy by some, but at one point it was just written down on paper by a few people. It's not exactly a stellar piece of legislature that is above all scrutiny and reproach.
> We are staking up to 30k lives a year on a comma.
Well, 2/3 of those might be taken with other (possibly "worse," like suicide by cop or ODing) means. But, regardless. I understand what you mean.
> That's not the case anymore.
Sure it is, because ...
> Police now drive tanks and come at you wearing body armor.
... anybody can buy body armor. Hell, you can even own tanks in the US. And, like we've seen with the middle east, a guerilla group doesn't need body armor and tanks to stall and protect themselves from the world's largest super power.
> So my point is that why not re-write the damn thing, taking into account modern tech and modern way of life? The second amendment is held as nearly holy by some, but at one point it was just written down on paper by a few people. It's not exactly a stellar piece of legislature that is above all scrutiny and reproach.
To me, that sorta defeats the entire purpose of the US experiment. I believe a lot of our successes have to do with how seriously we take the constitution. Sure, we've trampled over it from time-to-time (e.g., slavery, women's suffrage, etc.) but a lot of the ideas that went into it are just as prevalent in the US as they were 240-some years ago. In fact, some of those ideas have helped the least fortunate and minority groups. Minor edits are one thing, but complete rewrites usually don't go as planned. And having 240-some years of history simply makes parts of it that much stronger. Unfortunately, humans are more complicated than software. :-)
Side note: I'm checking out your family fortune app. It should work fine for just one person, right?
Well in at least several states wearing body armor is illegal. Same with driving a tank. The US has the largest and best equipped military in the world. And unlike the Middle East, I don’t think the US government would hesitate to act against any attempt to secede. Take for example Texas, a state which still believes it never joined the United States, and one that is heavily armed. Do you really think Texas could revel and secede?
As far as the constitution goes, I do think the rest of it is rather workable. Except the second amendment. It is the single most vaguely worded and most misapplied portion of it. It’s like if you wrote a piece of code that ran all the systems in all the hospitals in a country, and did a fantastic job of it, except it picked out randomly about 30k people a year and killed them because of an edge case and a bit of undefined behavior. Would you fix that bug or would you just point out that because overall the system is better than most we shouldn’t worry? We clearly set the precedent that the constitution can be too vague and in one case outright wrong. I say the second amendment is a bad amendment and has been for at least the past 50 years.
Yup the app will work great for just one person! Thanks for checking it out.
Apparently the USA is behind Norway, Finland, and Switzerland in mass shooting deaths per 100k population [1]. For typical gun related homocides it is most certainly correlated with poverty and education.
In USA, the measure "number of mass shootings per year" doesn't have real outliers, it has a reasonable number every year. In Norway, it's different, you get a streak of zeroes, followed by a 1.
The comparison is bogus, because you can make the numbers arbitrarily high by subdividing into tiny areas and then conveniently ignoring all the places where they are zero.
Why not subdivide further and claim that Buskerud is a veritable warzone, compared to the whole of USA on average?
Sure, but that doesn't solve the original problem which is that you picked small population countries with number of shootings too low to do meaningful statistical analysis your way because any rare event will have an outsized effect.
There are however plenty of European countries with populations large enough to avoid this problem (Germany, France, Italy, UK...).
Which year is this for? The Finland numbers don't seem right at all.
Neither do the Norway ones.
The numbers are in fact so wrong that one has to seriously question the motivations of the author, it seems like this is a propaganda piece with made up numbers designed to make the US appear slightly less terrible.
The number from Norway is from a single mass shooting in 2011 where a man shot children trapped on an island. There have never been anything like that before or later. He killed more people than the total number of murder victims in an average year.
Here is how you can get a gun in the Iceland[1]:
" all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and most handguns are banned for public use in Iceland.
People who hold a gun license can buy semi-automatic shotguns, bolt-action rifles, single-shot rifles and double-barrel rifles to hunt with but all rifles over 8 millimeters in caliber are banned in Iceland, although with a special permit to hunt large animals abroad, such as elephants or African cape buffalos.
It is also possible to obtain a special collector’s license for handguns and sports associations practicing marksmanship can apply for a license to use small indoor 22 caliber handguns as used in the Olympics.
To obtain a gun license people must attend a course and pass a test at the police station. They also have to pass a medical examination where they are specifically asked about their mental health. The gun license is issued by the respective District Commissioner."
Legal firearms in Finland must be registered and licensed on a per-gun basis[2]
Do you the see the problem? In the US, the second amendment makes it extremely hard to make sure that bad actors (a small percentage of the population) don't get a gun. In the countries you mentioned, they have an effective of preventing this from happening.
These kind of comparisons are so dishonest, at least you used Finland and Iceland instead of Germany and Switzerland, but the basic flaw still remains: Did you actually compare the gun regulations in place [0] instead of just comparing raw numbers of guns in circulation?
Because it's exactly those proper gun regulations which allow these countries to have many guns, without irresponsible owners constantly getting innocents killed and police being forced to treat everybody they encounter as a potentially armed suspect. That's also the reason why not every police officer in Iceland needs to carry a gun [1].
Case in point: Neither Finland nor Iceland has "open carry", they actually require you to have a reason for wanting to get a permit. In Iceland, applicants have to go through a government course to show they are actually responsible and able enough to own a firearm. In Finland, each individual gun is registered with its own permit.
Contrast that with the situation in the US: There is no federal gun regulation, each state makes its own laws, which leads to lots of loopholes (buying guns at gun shows) and ultimately leads to a flood of unregulated guns getting into the hands of people who lack the training and responsibility to own such a "tool".
Additionally many of these "high ownership, barely any shootings" countries put in place peer control by demanding that gun owners actually state a reason for wanting to own a gun. This entails either regular participation in organized shooting sports or in actual hunting clubs.
Nobody there gets a gun "just because" as getting a legal permit entails quite a bit of work, effort, and responsibility on the side of the applicant. Which is the exact opposite sentiment of that present in the US.
As dukeflukem said below, Iceland and Finland probably have very different aspects driving up gun ownership (rural populations hunting, vs self-defense).
An issue with the provided list is that these countries are all relatively poor. As for something that stood out for this list for me: inequality. i.e.: with the exception of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, all the Gini coefficients are above 35% (with the US (41%) being most similar to Turkey/Turkmenistan/Ukraine (41%/43%/41%). Compare that to Iceland and Finland (26%, 27%)
America doesn't have much in common with those countries listed. They are much poorer countries where law and order isn't upheld as well as the US.
I think the key is not just gun ownership rates but WHO is owning the gun and WHY. The Iceland and Finland examples make me think cold countries with higher rural populations and hunting as a sport or necessity.
OTOH in USA perhaps more ordinary people buy guns for self defence purposes with the intent to shoot a person not an animal.
Edit: weird I can now see the reply button for that comment I didn't before. Apologies
The second amendment is irrelevant, as employers (eg the police) can simply prohibit carrying a gun as a condition of employment. How many meter maids get shot?
I don't see much of a plausible argument that lack of gun control makes American police more trigger happy. And I say that as someone with no particular stake in gun rights. America doesn't have that high a murder rate, it just has a high rate of killings by cops. Lack of training, poor training and overall problematic police-culture seem to be the main offenders.
Easy access to guns in this country means it’s plausible that anyone the police encounter may be armed. As a result all the police also have guns and are reasonably concerned about being shot themselves – especially in tense situations. That’s a pretty direct connection from more guns in the public to more heavily armed, twitchier police.
There’s more connection to excessive traffic stops than to gun ownership.
Guns are definately a problem, but a bigger problem is the idea that we Officers at high risk so that they can be gloried toll collectors. If you cut traffic stops by 80% and used cameras for speed enforcement, you’d dramatically reduce Officer shootings and attacks on officers.
Train them to be EMTs and paramedics instead. The police and public should not be afraid of each other.
3x france 4x UK. The USA has a high murder rate; ok.. not as high as Iraq, but by the standards of developed nations, high. Put it this way, more than 10k people a year are murdered in the USA that would not be should the murder rate be the same as the UK's.
I think there's at least a plausible argument to be had. A lot of bad guys get guns through holes in gun control, getting a gun out of state, etc. If it were harder for the wrong people to get guns, maybe there wouldn't be such a need for a militarized police force, or at least officers might not fear for their lives during stressful situations.
That said, I'm a believer in the second amendment -- I just think there's definitely an argument to be had.
The average American spends several hours a week watching TV and movies where the rule-breaking shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later cop is the hero. Probably most people who join the police see themselves in that role.
Here in the UK our cop shows are like Midsomer Murders. Most episodes don’t even feature a gun...
NCIS? Don't assume anything based on that show; it is a ridiculous farce of nonsense and made-up bullshit. I have family members who watch it religiously, in all its goofy flavors. Not a minute passes without the seemingly serious portrayal of something that would never happen.
As an Infantry soldier who deployed to Afghanistan, I received more training on how to handle this type of situation than most cops seem to ever get. If we require soldiers to be better, why not require cops. Soldiers get to face more stress than cops.
I also received military training. I don't think it enabled me to make perfect decisions. In fact I saw several poor decisions made by my fellows-in-arms. If you didn't, then you were probably lucky enough to have not been placed in those difficult situations.
That would be more relevant if it happened on the scale of the Police shooting unarmed people. That is a one off story that you are giving the same weight as something that happens every day in the US.
No he isn't. Some people are better suited to these situations than others, and people can be better trained for it too. I've talked to more than one Iraq veteran who's troubled by how ready police are to discharge compared to the rules of engagement they used in Iraq, which were more than sufficient for them to maintain public safety.
Part of the problem is that police in America offer the default excuse of fearing for their lives in virtually every situation where they shoot someone. I doubt they're actually that cowardly, but it's been a successful formula for them in administrative proceedings.
> Oh and add to this the stress that if you screw up, one of the following is likely:
I think this sums it up better than if you were trying to make the point that I’m about to attempt. It’s not necessarily “likely” that someone is going to die in all of these situations. It’s a possibility.
It’s probably near impossible to tell the difference in the middle of a high-stress situation, but the assumption that it’s going to result in death at the outset is the problem.
It's not a binary thing, it's a matter of probability, one can be more or less likely to overreact and training helps with that. You most likely can't fix the problem entirely, mistakes happen, but you can at least reduce the number of incidents.
I broadly agree, but why does the US seem to have a higher frequency of this sort of thing? It isn’t a problem everywhere, so why not do what other places do?
Precisely why the "feared for my life" defense of police execution has to be ended. I fear for my life on the freeway when an idiot driver cuts me off. And I didnt make a conscious decision to risk my life by being on the same road with said driver. And yet, cops are given that power to end a life for a situation they consciously chose to put themselves into by career. US law is bullshit.
Exactly my point. Why should a so called trained officer of the law have more fear and less ability to preserve life in at a level of risk the average commuter or health care professional has? Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically and don't kill anywhere near the rates of cops.
My point is that if you did have a way of killing a commuter to save your own live, you would be justified in doing so, just as a cop is. The fact that you don't is a consequence of how driving works, not of power that society is stripping you of.
You do have this right on the street, for instance. Just as a cop does.
My point is that any living human in your presence can be interpreted as a 'threat to your life ' and the law is too loose and allows cowards and nervous people with badges to get away with preventable murder.
Of course I can imagine one. The point is, the law is written such that any statement by the cop stating fear has to be interpreted as truth. Hence non convictions on a body armored cop, with 4 backing officers shooting 5 ak rounds in a prone crying man's unarmed back after a stupid game of Simon says.
This is what you said "Precisely why the "feared for my life" defense of police execution has to be ended."
Which is a clear argument for removing officers right to defend themselves when they fear for their life, reasonably or unreasonably. You're moving the goal posts.
I think you're reading my intentions in bad faith. Of course police should be able to defend themselves when warranted. The law and training of the police has been shown to exhibit too broad a defintion of when warranted, at the expense of the citizen, because it is based on the subjective, ambiguous definition of fear.
This is my last clarification of what I meant as I find this conversation is a waste of time, because you are being pedantic rather than dealing with the spirit of the argument. If you follow the Roman Calendar, Happy New Years, in advance. Cheers.
> Can you really not imagine a situation where a cop would reasonably fear for their life? Really?
This is just a blatant straw-man argument. The real issue is whether unreasonable claims that an officer acted out of a fear for his life should effectively be 'get out of jail' cards.
It is rather ironic that you should write that, when the poster had already clarified his meaning (for those who had not realized it from the context in which it was originally made) and in the very post to which you were replying, no less.
If someone finds that what they wrote did not express precisely what they meant, then making it clear is perfectly reasonable. It happens all the time in reasoned discussions.
You might have had an arguably tendentious point if you had made your comment immediately, but once aswanson had clarified his position, it became a straw man. Rational discussion moves along, and flogging a dead horse that's left the station has no part in it.
The problem is that the cop feeling get to decide if violence is warranted. It’s all in the wording ‘fear’ - you can argue, prove and disprove risk and threat, but ‘fear’ is entirely subjective and as far as thing goes subjective is not a good standard upon which base laws
If that was the only way to save your life in that circumstance, which when driving it almost never is, then of course. What about self defense laws do you not understand?
The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it.
Most people are not trained to handled these situations properly and they will be nervous and start slipping up which a not well trained or inexperienced officer may wrongly interpret as suspicious/dangerous.
If I am truly innocent then perhaps I am the one that needs the hostage negotiator from the threat on the other side of the door.
>The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it.
Who said you're going to get any chance to call anybody? They could just as easily break into your house shouting and pointing guns...
Right, most of these calls are designed to provoke no-knock forcible entry... "hostages actively being threatened", "domestic violence in progress", etc.
Neither of these situations should trigger no-knock forced entry. The response to most situations should be careful assessment of the situation at hand, the involved actors and the dynamic of the situation, especially since swatting has come up. Police truly need to expect that an anonymous tipster is trying to goad them into action. There’s few situations that should probably trigger an immediate forceful response, active shooter for example and that should be relatively easy to confirm on site.
Agreed. Though this "swatting" thing is horrifying and tragic, I think the Wichita police should shoulder most of the responsibility. Am I wrong in thinking that they could have done some reconnaissance or something? In any case, I hope they revise their procedures to give a horrible prank like this zero chance of succeeding.
I utterly agree, as I think my other posts should say. But regardless of the should, for better or worse, we are in the "they likely -will- provoke...".
Of course there are scenarios out of our control. In this one particularly the victim walked out of the house and then was shot after he slipped up on one of the commands.
Not to blame the victim, but his mistake lead to their over reaction. My point is even us citizens aren't experienced these situations and some guidance could help.
>In this one particularly the victim walked out of the house and then was shot after he slipped up on one of the commands.
In what other first world country a person would just be shot if they merely "walked out of house" and "slipped up on one of the commands"? Even if they had a gun on them, unless they actually fired, they still might not be shot by one of the actually competent police forces -- they'd tried to talk them down first.
Then again, in what other first world country a person can be shot if they walk out of their car after they have been stopped by the police?
Heck, unless he has been messy with their wives and they just found out, nobody in a first world country would shoot an unarmed man sitting on the floor and BEGGING not to be shot:
"Congratulations! You've survived another year without being brutally murdered by the public servants whose generous pensions your city has gone bankrupt to fund! If you want to keep your streak 'alive', here's how you can help these heroes not murder you and your family!"
Yes you are blaming the victim. People should not be required to perform jumping jacks just because someone in uniform tells them to. That's not cooperation, it's coercion.
It's not right, but we have a broken system that favors them over us. And I don't think it will be fix soon.
Another problem we have is people getting falsely accused and sent to jail when they make mistakes in interrogations. It's why you always if you can afford one, get a lawyer for guidance.
You might have noticed if you observe them that nobody is in command of a group of cops. The notion of an officer in charge who is responsible for the actions of his subordinates is completely contrary to the attitudes of US police.
Unless you are murdered by the police for pulling up your pants.
Unless you are murdered by the police "restraining" you.
Unless you are murdered by the police in your cell.
Unless you are mentally incompetent and are tricked into signing a confession.
Unless you are mentally competent and are persuaded by the evidence (not of the crime, but the evidence that the system is corrupt) that you should plead to a lesser crime.
You have to make it to the court before that little sound-bite of freedom kicks in.
Ideally it wouldn't get this far but at a minimum, the police should not shoot until an actual gun is seen. Thinking they are in danger is not good enough, their rules for engagement need to be as high as the military, if not higher... they should have to confirm there is an actual threat and should not fire their weapons until at least that threat is confirmed. A feeling is not enough to shoot on.
I don't think it's the training standard, but it is the most common defense in court. Somehow military soldiers are able to resist these feelings and have much more strict rules of engagement. Citizens should have the same protection against being shot at by the police that terrorists get from being shot at by the military. I don't think that's too much to ask.
For what? For the SWAT team to do a better job at the scene? For their training to be better in such situations? For 350 million to not prank call the police?
Any of these three solutions are better than praying to god to someone who is not religious, and yet, none of them will produce any result what so ever.
Like many problems, I think the root issue is money in politics. The police have a dangerous job and doing it right involves a balance between risk for the officer and risk for the citizenship. When police unions have the ability to exert large amounts of pressure ($$$) on politicians, the whole system folds to their inevitable inclination to shift that balance toward their personal safety.
What's more, are those SWAT teams trained policemen or scared little children?
Because if they are the latter, why do they go with guns and ammo and equipment enough to equip a small army just to arrest some kid who's selling weed or some guy who threatened their neighbors and such?
SWAT teams should be for breaking into Escobar's hideout or stopping angry mobs, not for responding to random phone calls and simple cases.
Aren't they men enough to just send 1-3 people with their fucking guns in their holsters?
The overuse of SWAT is ridiculous, but sending them into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation is entirely appropriate. And no different from most other developed countries. If you go into a house in Germany, shoot someone, and then threaten to shoot everyone else, do you really think you’re going to get an officer or two casually knocking on the door without weapons at the ready?
German cops have fired a total of 52 bullets in 2016, which killed 11 people. I think it’s very likely that situation would have had a different outcome.
It's important to not equate sending SWAT "into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation" and a situation where it's been claimed by an anonymous phone call that something like that might be the case.
It's not the same. It's reasonable to respond with lethal force after shots have been fired by the opponent, it's totally not reasonable to do so when you suspect that it might be the case that they might get fired with no good evidence that it actually is so.
> This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.
Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.
Or is it whoever (edit: in the Wichita police) dispatched them without checking the details of the call, or adequately briefing them that the details were not clear?
Because the guy who shot made a huge and deadly mistake, but the fact that you can call 911 and have someone SWATted is a big problem on its own.
SWATing should just lead to a bit of wasted time, and a “sorry to bother you sir”. With proper response procedure it should be a complete non-issue. Placing blame on anyone but the cops is completely discounting the problem.
I am saying it should be placed on the cops' boss.
I agree with you that those should have been the consequences---i.e., none. Though, in a country where SWATting is a thing, whoever placed the call is very much responsible too, because he must have known the possible effect of his prank.
All in all, the cops (while responsible) don't have the largest slice of responsibility.
If you are a cop in this situation, not the lead officer, a grunt among other grunts. You are told the basic situation is that shots have been fired and women and children are in danger...as are you and your team. There is an ARMED individual in the house. Your police training also tells you there is a split second between you and one of your team getting killed as well. Your team members are also husbands and fathers. Your version of deescalating the situation is to remove the suspect as quickly as possible before anything REALLY bad happens (wife gets killed, kid gets killed, you get killed). These aren't "rage-monsters", they are afraid of what could happen.
Also, it is good to remember, the worst case situation, is what cops often have to deal with. But those cases often don't make the news. Even in my small city, these worst case situations happen.
But there isn't an armed individual in the house. You've just been told that there might be. Don't you see how you've fallen into the epistemological error here of not only assuming the truth of a claim without further evidence, but also shifting all your attention tot he possibility of someone being armed.
That sounds very hand-wavey and you might say well it's a lot different in the real world, but I've been in a bunch of high-danger real-world situations. Survival is about more than having great reflexes, it's also about having a cool head and knowing when not to act.
And look, while it's legitimate to have some fears/stress, rage monsters are absolutely a problem in policing. Cops are just as likely, or more, to take steroids or be assholes as people in the general population. Let's not forget that nobody is forced to be a cop. If you want to help people and like excitement you could always be an EMT or a firefighter.
Your version of deescalating the situation is to remove the suspect as quickly as possible
See, that's not de-escalation, it's catharsis through crisis - literally the exact opposite of de-escalation. By abdicating your own decision-making power you've ended up arguing for counterfactuals. I realize that you're attempting to model the thought process of police in high pressure situations, but counterfactuals + weapons = deadly errors. The thought process is, however, something we could change.
They signed up to put themselves in danger. I as a civilian never signed up for it. If anyone should accept an increased risk, it's not me or my family that were peacefully minding our own business.
I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50. This job requires a GED.
There is no universal concept of "market pay" which applies across occupations; only within a given occupation. The Oakland police are the only police available to examine in this particular "market"; there is therefore no basis for an argument about "market pay" in this context.
Compared to newly-minted coders getting low 6 figures? Well... The world would be a better place if cops and teachers were trained, paid, and respected like doctors. Police officers' jobs are mostly boredom (e.g. manning a radar gun) mixed with occasional stress and quite a bit of dealing with people in their worst moments (e.g. desperate, angry, drunk, or high). If they were paid more, the job might attract enough candidates to hire more people with the intelligence to de-escalate situations, and fewer who get off on the power.
Police officers in Suffolk County New York get $250K-$350k/year compensation packages.
The former Suffolk County Police Chief is currently in federal prison for attacking a handcuffed citizen. [1]
Sorry, but paying Police Officers as if they were SAP consultants does not improve the quality of their policing.
Oh, and if you're wondering, why didn't the District Attorney protect citizens from the police? Well, he is under federal indictment for covering up police crimes. [2]
> I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50.
For a job dealing with crime reports and disputes all day and one of the routine job hazards is being shot dead at any moment, that's hardly a particularly attractive deal. Hell, I doubt there's very many people on HN would take that job for twice the pay.
This is a misleading point. Assaulting an officer ranges from an elbow to the rib during an arrest to beating the crap out of them.
We have roughly 900,000 police officers. A total of 135 police officers were killed in duty in 2016.[0] And 14,453 injuries. We point these people towards danger daily and in a single year only 1 in every 62 of those officers will be 'injured'. I would say that's an acceptable risk for the job if the alternative is the circumvention of due process.
The police, particularly in the US, seem to be quite fond of shooting people who are laying face down on the ground, or otherwise clearly not a threat. It isn't so clear how we are expected to act in an effort to reach the goal of avoiding death during a police encounter.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re both equally liable. If this was a case of mistaken identity rather than a malicious call, we’d all be calling for the cop’s head even though it would have been the same error.
It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent", which is exactly what that officer did.
I can't fathom how someone can invite an armed squad to some location, under the pretense that a violent crime is in progress, and not have the slighest inkling about the ways things can go wrong in that situation.
Felony murder. If someone does in the process of a crime being committed the person committing the crime can be charged with felony murder.
I don't know the details of the case, so I can't comment on the SWAT officer. But the person illegally calling for SWAT should be charged.
Swatting is a form of domestic terrorism. The caller wasn't someone trying to waste time, that was someone who wanted to potentially turn someone else's life upside down.
Because it's a gaming community, so they're not really trying to shield their identities, which led to this article, in which I read the news first (note: different than the source of this thread): http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html
He intentionally created a situation where it was very possible and forseeable that innocent people could be be killed. I believe that's more serious than voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.
I get where you are coming from, but blaming the police officers is not the correct conclusion. You should be solely outraged at the caller Tyler Barriss.
Tyler Barriss is going to go to prison. He's a sociopath. Nobody is on his side. But the cops killed an unarmed, innocent man. Clearly whatever process they are following is deeply flawed. 'Swatting' is also a UNIQUELY American phenomenon - why?
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune?
Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys, and refuse to take a balanced view by empathizing with them and the danger they encounter on a daily basis.
If any rando can call in a 'dangerous situation', then yes, they should be more circumspect. There is just no excuse for killing an innocent civilian. It's outrageous.
Response to the parent's edit: These are supposedly trained officers who acted with absolute incompetence leading to a completely needless death. How is one supposed to empathise with this? It's a complete and utter fuck-up.
Someone here is trying to increase the consequences for killing suspects and they had a rep from the police union arguing against it because it could have unintended consequences like “people dying”.
I ended up yelling at my radio, “PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DYING!”
What the rep meant was cops dying. But the statement, as worded, makes it sound like cops don’t consider the rest of us to be people. Which is exactly the thing a lot of Americans are terrified is actually true.
In the end I expect he made the case for the people arguing for bigger penalties.
Too many cops see the people they interact with as criminals. They know that they interact with innocent people sometimes, but they are heavily biased towards thinking that by the time they are interacting with you, it is very likely that you're a criminal. And it's their job to protect "society" from "the criminals."
Let's cut the BS US Military is facing unimaginably more dangerous situations on daily basis yet expected to obey engagements where rule often is do not fire unless fired upon. Police is not even in the top 10 list of dangerous professions in US. Situations that in most countries are handled by few police officers in US are handled by paranoid SWAT teams on armored vehicles with assault rifles in full tactical gear.
Police gunfights are typically at much closer range than the military’s. Soldiers have more armor and are often already in fortified positions when fired upon. The situations aren’t exactly comparable.
Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.
I am not advocating for police to have a rule that disallows them to fire first. But police officers should be capable of acting cool under pressure and to use lethal force as a last resort not as a first tool to be used in any situation. I'd favor the rule that police should be filled with Army vets that have actually being on deployments and can keep their cool in an adversarial situations. There are plenty of footage of real firefights both involving police and Military
in 80% of situation police looks like they are scared out of their mind and are acting purely out of being in uncontrollable fear which is a horrible situation.
> The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering.
Speaking as someone in Fire/EMS who has friends who are on SWAT teams, and as someone who has personally trained with SWAT teams for active shooter situations, going into unsecured scenes to remove patients while under the cover of law enforcement... I'm still going to disagree with you, and with the assertion of wilful ignorance. Speaking of which,
> when it is clear there is immediate danger
It evidently wasn't that clear. Even when I go to a structure fire, one of the confirming criteria is "multiple callers". To be clear, "one of", not deciding, or otherwise.
There is just one way this isn’t a massive police screwup, and that’s if the person SWATed reacted in a way that was (very) threatening, such as grabbing a gun, or something that is reasonable the police could believe was a gun.
My hunch here is that, just like you are suggesting, Swat teams are used incorrectly as first response in unconfirmed situations. No investigation by anyone has confirmed the threat.
At the end of the day, police officers just can’t shoot unarmed people, no matter how stressful the situation.
What kind of investigation would you suggest take place before hand about a situation where there is supposedly a person with hostages who has already killed one?
A situation that doesn't include the "supposedly" qualification you make. A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch.
Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
> A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch.
No one is arguing that.
> Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot.
That sounds great. Until there is an actual hostage situation, and police waste their time doing this and a hostage is killed, at which point people will be asking why they didn't kick the doors down if they knew someone was being held in there.
> Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
The reporter claimed to be the person who killed his father and was holding other people hostage. How would you confirm if the reporter was physically in the area? E911 includes location reporting, but this can be spoofed(I don't know if it was in the situation)
This isn't the movies, cops should never be kicking down the door in a hostage situation. They should be guarding the perimeter and trying to talk to the perpetrator.
The video below shows how the British police handled a high-risk incident - a report of a mentally ill man wandering the streets in his pyjamas, brandishing a handgun. The suspect is believed to have returned to his flat by the time they arrive on scene, so the officers literally knock on his door and politely ask if he has a gun.
With the right training, American officers can behave in exactly the same manner.
Could be a simple as calling the suspects phone or knocking doors at neighbors. If the suspect answered the phone and said he was asleep and said he would be happy to show the officers around his house, maybe things would have gone differently.
Did you listen to the audio? The person calling 911 was the supposed suspect he claimed to have killed his father, so I'm not sure how you would contact the suspect without just getting the same 'prankster' again.
Knocking on doors of the neighbors sounds great, but does it give you any useful information if no one heard a gun shot? What if he shot his dad in the basement, or the walls of the house are thick enough to block the sound. You still need to go in and check even if every neighbor said they didn't hear anything. Also, knocking on doors wastes what may be valuable time in a real hostage situation.
Calling the house won't get the "prankster" again. If you call the house and the same person answers making the same threats, that's confirmation that the situation appears to be serious (most likely someone attempting suicide by cop though).
If the person who answers tells you that nothing is wrong, and that no one called the cops, then swat team can be a bit more careful about keeping their safeties on.
If it was real, and the hostage taker picked up, he could say everything was fine. What do you do then? Calling seems like a good idea but I'm not sure it provides any actionable information.
You're making an amazing effort to dream up new worst-case scenarios that could justify the speediest, least hesitant response. Great imagination and creativity, but you're violating Occam's razor by multiplying entities, ie inventing new facts to rationalize an illogical position. Yeah, maybe the murder could have taken place and the neighbors would be unaware of it because it occurred in an almost soundproof basement, but how do you know the house even has a basement?
Sure, you want to get police into position as quickly as possible, but you can also direct other people to investigate at the same time. And instead of just yelling directions at the guy from a distance when he came to the door, they could have tried asking questions when he appeared.
I mean, you can just as easily imagine other non-threatening factors. What if it was real, but the person at the door was actually one of the hostages who had been released but was scared and disoriented? What if it was an innocent person who was deaf? Police in Oklahoma shot a deaf guy 3 months ago even though people were yelling at the officers to tell them he was deaf. Police know what swatting is, and it's a common enough term that newscasters can use it in a sentence these days, so why didn't they consider that possibility?
I realize you're trying to be objective, but almost every one of your posts on this subject actually depends on a logical fallacy.
I said the police could only have gained from calling. You have not provided a scenario in which it would further endanger lives. Even if it didn’t provide “actionable” info, it wouldn’t hurt to try and some semblance of doubt around the veracity of the initial claims could be forwarded onto the SWAT team.
I have moderate sympathy with police for the difficulties of their job. If they find it uncomfortable or find themselves unable to handle the rigors, like the rest of us in society, they can get a new job that is better suited.
When it comes to police shooting people, I have little sympathy. They are the only class of people in society who can kill and under most circumstances, face no real consequence for their actions unlike the rest of their citizen compatriots. With that privilege comes a greater responsibility in my assessment.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for post-shooting employment difficulties police face who have, unlike nearly the rest of society, union protections and can not be terminated at will. When my employment circumstances are equal to a police officer, either by at-will provisions being extended to that class of citizen, or by me having access to a union of equal effectiveness, will I have one iota of sympathy for cops who find scrutiny too hard to bear.
Police officers are free to do like the rest of us and find a new job.
Police were responding, in this case, to a call made by someone claiming to be armed and holding his family hostage. You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst.
What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
> But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns. That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and then ran back and tried to stab someone? How can you mistake anything someone unarmed does for a deadly threat?
It mystifies me why you believe anyone thinks the shooting was justified. Literally NO ONE has said that. Please try to engage with the actual debate instead of making up strawmen to attack.
There are people right here in this thread who think the shooting was justified because the guy at the house didn't follow instructions carefully enough and the police (supposedly) had to assume the worst.
Yes, the guy is definitely guilty of some degree of murder, because he knew what he was doing. However, I'm contrasting it with my country, where calling in such a situation would be very unlikely to get someone killed, because the police are much more reticent to shoot people. In such a case, the caller could be guilty of wasting resources, but not of murder. The only difference is the handling of each situation by the police, hence my reasoning above.
> However, I'm contrasting it with my country, where calling in such a situation would be very unlikely to get someone killed, because the police are much more reticent to shoot people.
Yeah, but I don't think that's reasonable to do. If you live in the U.S. you know this is a problem, choosing to still do it is more damning.
I think the disagreement here lies in that people think "given that the police is likely to kill someone, the person who called in an innocent man is a murderer", and I agree. However, I contend that the police should not be likely to kill someone, exactly because they might be killing innocent people. The police are the ones with guns and ostensible training.
> However, I contend that the police should not be likely to kill someone
I'm not arguing that they should. I'm saying that they are, and having knowledge that they are makes the one calling in the threat seriously in the wrong. I can't stress enough, the caller's twitter handle is SWauTistic. They know full well what they're doing.
That's why it seems a bit unreasonable to compare how the police in your country would react to how American police unfortunately reacted in this scenario. Because the situations those officers face on a daily basis is completely different. American cops can reasonably expect to regularly deal with armed and hostile psychos, unlike the cops in many other countries. Again, that's not to say that the shooting was in any way justified, but try to put yourself in the life of American police officers.
Yes, that's another good point, and a big factor in why the police there acts the way it does. Yet, even with all the needless deaths, gun culture remains widespread.
How do you know he didn't have a gun? You were told her has a gun, you get to the house and the person letters his arm and then raises it and starts pointing it at a fellow officer... What do you do?
I don't think this particular incident is as cut and dry as you think it is.
We have 1 possibly-armed-with-a-handgun guy of unknown intent and ability on a porch, vs 5+ SWAT officers who are definitely trained in shooting people, are in cover, have body armor, rifles (presumably good ones with scopes and whatever else), and high-powered lights trained on the house.
So yeah, I would say they should wait until a suspect starts shooting because they have an overwhelming tactical advantage. Yes, that's a risk because the guy on the porch might be John Wick or Jason Bourne or the Terminator, but most people, even most professional criminals, are not expert marksmen under any circumstances, let alone ones where they're at a large tactical disadvantage.
Next time you meet a cop socially, ask them if criminals are smart or supervillains 'like in the movies' The cop will laugh and regale you with stories of how dumb and inept most criminals are. Police know perfectly well that most people don't have a clue, are easily intimidated by police, and not super-skilled. Sure, they have to consider the small number of dangerous exceptions, but overstating the risk factors is also a really convenient way to get off the hook for their own poor firing discipline.
What do you think will happen if a shirtless man on a porch a pulls a pistol, while you have your high powered rifle's scope locked on their chest while you are wearing body armor, positioned behind a police car, a few hundred feet away?
This was apparently a SWAT team that initiated a confrontation in response to a report of a situation involving firearms. Why weren't they already behind cover so that if the guy really did come out of the door shooting at them, they were protected? And if they were, why was it necessary to shoot first when the situation obviously wasn't clear at all? Nothing about this adds up.
The worse outcome is that the innocent bystander is killed. That could be a hostage, or some random person caught up in a hoax. The whole point of the police presence is to protect that person. In this situation they failed in that objective.
A call from someone calling in via a VOIP line that was effectively out of country, yet pretending to be the neighbor. Corroboration is a good thing, and based on my (first hand) knowledge of what information shows up on a 911 dispatchers screen about call origin, should have prompted more 'skepticism'. Little details like "it's a one story house" (when in fact it's two story), and the like.
> But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst.
We're talking about literally a life or death situation here. Why on earth would you assume anything, rather than being cautious and trying to confirm for sure what the situation actually is?
In this case there was no immediate and present danger yet SWAT was called in. There was a report which turned out to be false. The SWAT team also was under no danger when they shot this guy.
I should add that being a police officer is not a particularly dangerous job. A telephone lineman has a dangerous job. A garbage man has a dangerous job.
I am going to strongly disagree. Being a cop is extremely dangerous — just because more cops don’t get hurt doesn’t mean it’s less dangerous. We can probably agree that being a race car driver is dangerous despite there not being a large number of injuries. Training and equipment mitigate some of the effects of the danger — but that doesn’t make it less dangerous.
Spend a night doing a police ride along in a major city, then report back on just how “not dangerous” the job is.
To be clear, I am not defending the cops in this situation, merely disputing the ridiculous claim that being a cop isn’t particularly dangerous.
How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Any snipers taking out garbage men? Any garbage men getting routinely assaulted on the job?
Yeah considering that the 911 call mentioned a 1 floor house and the house in the video is 2 floor they should have had some idea it wasn't quite right.
How? Are you going to send an officer to the door to ask someone if there is a murder going on?
This was a bad shoot, but the tactics were sound. Don’t correctly they would have called him out of the house from a distance with lethal cover from multiple angles and then cleared the house.
You cant send people up to the door, as you have to assume the person is telling the truth and has the means to shoot through the door at them. When someone has a gun, distance and cover are your friend.
You then get everyone you can out of the house so you can clear it and assist the victims. That is what any police force in the civilized world would do if they had what they thought was credible information about a murder / hostage situation.
Obviously pulling the trigger in this case was a mistake, but what do you do differently? Everyone is criticizing training in this thread but no one seems to have any real solutions.
How about asking the guy on the porch some questions? Like 'what's your name? Do you have any weapons? Did you call 911?'
It seems not to have occurred to you (and a lot of other people) that yelling commands at people is not an effective way to handle many common situations.
> when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger.
And that makes sense. There are certainly situations where it's neccessary to subdue everyone in the room and ask questions later.
The problem is here
> when it's clear
The whole subgenre of "SWATing" works, because SWAT teams are being deployed based on dramatic, but unsubstantiated information, on the suspicion of a dangerous situation.
This does not help protect officers saftey. It endangers them, and it makes police officers into the tools of criminals.
It’s almost as if the USA isn’t the only country on earth and other developed countries manage to have police forces that don’t murder their own citizens regularly.
At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst.
Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.
This mindset is exactly what's wrong with policing in America. Every single part of training seems to be designed for worst case scenarios. There's no room for common sense or judgment.
Because if you consider average case scenarios, logic will inevitably force you to make a choice: what percentage of cops should die during their career? The police chiefs decided the answer is zero. That leads to extreme aggressive tactics.
Too bad the owners of mines, oil rigs, logging operations, etc. don't share a similar concern for their employees' lives.
If "zero" were really the decision, they wouldn't be involved with made-up crimes like drug possession.
Mining, logging, etc. certainly make trade-offs, but at least the trade-off is between safety and the viability of the business. The trade-offs that cops have made are between safety and indefensible political goals.
Why in the hell do you need "the element of surprise" unless your goal going in is "shoot the shit out of somebody?"
If you are genuinely trying to deescalate a situation, you need to talk to the people involved. If we're genuinely that worried about people getting shot, why aren't we rolling "Officer Robot" up to the front door to say hello?
Even if there IS a hostage situation, these SWAT events demonstrate that the hostage is probably in more danger from the SWAT team than the hostage taker.
"Element of surprise" implies shoot first, ask questions later. And that NEEDS to change.
The element of surprise in coming to the house of the person who had supposedly called them in the first place? A possible hostage situation in what was described to them on the phone as an already-existing hostage situation?
Also, who are these multiple individuals and 'compatriots'? I thought this was about a guy who claimed to have shot a family member and was holding others hostage while threatening to burn the house down. When did this one guy turn into a foreign invasion force?
Not to be too blunt, but that's why they call it law enforcement. What's causing all the cognitive dissonance is the fact that law enforcement was summoned inappropriately -- i.e. on a an innocent person in a situation where no laws were broken and no enforcement was needed.
If the drug-lord whose assassins raped and killed your sister is confused and groggy in the middle of the night and gets shot accidentally or even "accidentally," there won't be any conflict in your mind. That's the kind of situation the process is designed for. Unfortunately it's also designed for a world where you can mostly trust what a 911 caller is saying. They'll have to tighten that up, especially after this incident. I just hope it doesn't get so bad that real victims have to beg and plead for 15 minutes and show two forms of ID and receive an auth code on their 2FA before a cop can show up to save them.
I am a firm believer is due process and equal protection under the law for all. What you are suggesting is far from it, and a far cry from the ideal.
SWAT teams, as heavily armored as they are, are still police, serving under the motto of protect and serve. If armor and automatic weapons are necessary to fulfill that goal, so be it.
But SWAT teams are fundamentally not an extrajudicial force to kill people in the middle of the night.
Actually I agree, and I think most cops would agree with that too. One thing hindering that ideal is how police officers are trained to have a chickenshit mentality where no risk to an officer's safety is tolerated ever. In that philosophy the balance is tilted too far in favor of officer safety and away from public safety. Scour the news for any "hero" story. A hero never displays concern for his own safety, he acts out of concern for someone else's safety. (Remember heroes/heroism? So quaint!)
Nonetheless, and maybe I'm just jaded here, if the police show up anywhere, be it an Occupy protest or a carjacking, there is likely to be mayhem and bloodshed. They're a blunt tool with a single purpose. It's only after the smoke clears and the cuffs are on, that someone gets a formal legal proceeding. Cops always stand between you and a courtroom, in other words. Not sure I like it that way, but that's how it is.
>if the police show up anywhere, be it an Occupy protest or a carjacking, there is likely to be mayhem and bloodshed.
If you grew up in the US (I can't speak for other countries), I think most people, despite the media coverage, would say otherwise. There's way too many cops for this to even make sense. If even 1% of police interaction ended in a death, there would be literally millions of people dead by cop every year.
>chickenshit mentality where no risk to an officer's safety is tolerated ever.
Again, I'm not sure this is true. Are cops selfless superhuman crime fighting machines, charging heedlessly into danger? Of course not, and it's unreasonable to expect them to be. I would go so far as to argue we don't want heros. Heros are a band-aid fix, a substitute for good training and careful decisions made possible by always selfless, often reckless, decisions. We shouldn't be putting officers in a situation where they need to step up to become a hero.
Of course, there is the unpredictable event that necessitates a hero, but we should be working to reduces these edge cases.
I think we are waiting to hear: "and this culture of impunity and valuing their own lives above the lives of the people they swore an oath to protect needs to end and we need to re-train our forces and hold those who use deadly force accountable"
That would go further than making excuses for the rash thinking on the part of trigger-happy leo's.
The "swatter" should be charged with 2nd degree murder, minimum, but this particular instance is just the icing on a cake in which over 1000 people die every year from leo firearm discharge, and that is due to a culture within law enforcement that needs to CHANGE NOW. We have seen this coming for over 50 years, and it's OUT OF HAND at this point.
It's past time for legislative actions to have taken place.
We are absolutely globally isolated in this regard (unless you count Duterte as good company and a supporter of the sort of society America should stand for.)
Of course. I think bodycams are a huge step in the right direction, in terms of holding police officers accountable for their actions whilst also protecting them from false claims.
Culture change is fundamentally slow, but I think process is being made. We're talking about a whole new generation of cop, from new supervisors to new codes of conduct and police union leadership.
The comparison to Duterte is unfair and minimizes the atrocities in the name of justice happening in the Philippines. The NYT has/had an excellent article, replete with photos, of the devastation. It is a whole order of magnitude more people in a much smaller nation.
>One thing hindering that ideal is how police officers are trained to have a chickenshit mentality where no risk to an officer's safety is tolerated ever.
Absolutely. And in spite of this zero tolerance, "officer safety over everything" mentality, they continue to use the PR crutch of being in "constant danger" without ever acknowledging the extreme mitigation tactics they employ against that danger, regardless of if it's real or imagined.
Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards.
Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely goes some way towards explaining their apparent eagerness to shoot first, then ask questions later.
However, what puzzles me most is this - if the police around here shot but one innocent, there'd be cries for resignations, perhaps even going all the way to the secretary of justice; we collectively would expect - nah, demand - that the police come up with policies and training which would make it less likely that another, similar incident would ever occur, &c.
So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?
Say, requiring better people skills, more use of non-lethal weapons (and, if sufficiently effective non-lethal weapons do not yet exist - to have them developed), more passive safety for police officers (say, if you are wearing body armour which will stop a cal. 50-round, maybe you do not have to fire the first shot) etc?
> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?
I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough portion of the population holds these viewpoints, preventing further progress:
1) Anyone who gets shot by cops must have done something to warrant being shot. Even for people who get shot during traffic stops, that person did something to get pulled over in the first place. If they had a criminal record in the past, even if they didn't commit an offense during the situation where they were killed, there's a good chance they would have offended again, and this preemptive killing probably prevented a future crime.
2) In the case of this swatting incident, the blame lies 100% on the person who made the false police report. No false report, no shooting. The cop had reason to believe based on the report that the man who emerged from the door claimed to have a gun and had killed in the last hour, so it was plausible to believe he may try to retaliate and the appropriate force was used. No time for fact checking during an active shooter situation. "Shoot first, ask questions later" is considered an appropriate way for the police to deal with criminals.
Obviously there are numerous refutations, and that isn't lost on people. Many people will justify it by saying that regardless of the circumstances, the police put their lives on the line every day, so that gives them a pass when they make mistakes. Many people would view your suggestions as weakening the police, and the militarization of US police is viewed by many as making us safer, not less safe.
Sorry but almost all the blame is on the person who pulls the trigger. Swatting is possible because of police militarization. Frankly while the idiot who made the call certainly shares some responsibility, our police policies of shoot first and ask questions later are the problem. When police are trained to respond to citizens, even violent ones, like enemies in war, we get the outcomes of police killings that we have today. Citizens are not enemies or combatants and as such the military style training of police in the US today is wholly inappropriate.
Exactly. This could have been avoided by asking the neighbors if there was gunfire or if they called. Seems weird that an “active shooter” would result in a quiet street. Surely they’d get multiple reports. This is where better training needs to come into play.
That, and it sounds like the “hostage situation” narrative should have thoroughly unraveled as soon as he shambled to the door and let them in. I’m not an expert on hostage situations, but I’m led to believe that they typically involve more than one person, not to mention that hostage takers are not known for being immediately compliant.
Police militarization makes this man more culpable, not less. He called the police with foreknowledge that doing so would provoke a militarized response likely to end in a death.
The blame can be placed on both. The person who faked a police report is guilty of homicide, but this was made possible by an overly trigger happy police force.
Here we have the exact opposite and police are often prosecuted for firing their weapon. Result is they get kicked, slapped, scolded and vocabulary assaulted by 13 year olds who know they would win the case for a judge if it comes to it (or otherwise get 40 hours of public service). Why? Because "police needs to know better and accept it as part of their job".
Maybe US is a bit much to the other side but with the statistics of people with guns there it makes sense.
You know what would help? If the police tells you to do something, do it without question or big mouthing. Cops tell you to put your hands where they can see them? Do it. Tell you to lie down? Do it. Fight them later for any unjust actions but while at gunpoint just beeping comply.
April from all that I hope they will prosecute the idiot swatter to set an example. This ain't no games you do for fun.
> You know what would help? If the police tells you to do something, do it without question or big mouthing. Cops tell you to put your hands where they can see them? Do it. Tell you to lie down? Do it. Fight them later for any unjust actions but while at gunpoint just beeping comply.
-The problem, at least in some cases, is that you may get confusing, if not direct contradictory orders.
Say, if one officer yells 'Put your hands up' whereas another yells 'Get down, get down' - sure, keeping your wits about you, you could get your hands up, then kneel and get down - however, you are probably stressed as hell (being at gunpoint hopefully not being an everyday occurrence), and stressed people make mistakes.
Being frightened is NOT a condition which carries the death penalty. Police officers are the professional party in encounters like this. They should act like it - and receive training in how Joe Q. Public is likely to react when having a gun pointed at him.
(Heck, it might even be justified to have a masked instructor crash a class at the police academy and holding them at gunpoint for a few seconds (better make it a class where the cadets are not armed!) - with any luck, the brighter ones will remember how scared they were and cut civilians they encounter later a little slack for being scared s--tless.
True. That's why I said US might be exceptional here. The chances of a person drawing a gun are large compared to other nations. Which means as an officer you have more reason to quick draw and as a convict/victim you have more reason to behave/be unlucky.
I have no doubt the police is trained. I have no doubt they did not draw because they wanted to have a party. They most likely thought they were in serious danger.
Let's do the Devils advocate. You are the cop standing there. You are almost certain he will pull a gun on you or your colleague. What would you do?
I don't think it will be solved by having an actor join their class. It's statistics and interpretation of it mostly.
> Let's do the Devils advocate. You are the cop standing there. You are almost certain he will pull a gun on you or your colleague. What would you do?
-Fair question. IMHO there will be situations where the police are justified in firing on suspects. I just think that bar is currently (apparently) way too low - and that much can be done BEFORE a situation goes as far as the one in the parent story.
I would expect that SOP at 911 dispatch when receiving a call like the one triggering this death would be to seek more information as the team dispatched; why didn't they call the neighbours? Why didn't they call the house the call supposedly originated from? Why didn't they floodlight the entrance to the house as they ordered the victim to come out? He wouldn't see a thing with a couple of lights in his face, and it wouldn't matter one iota whether he had a gun or not.
My point isn't that police never are justified in exerting violence on us; my point is that they could do a lot more to avoid ending up in situations where deadly force is the only apparent solution in the first place.
This is anathema to the American self-image of independent/free.
Growing up, in my civics classes, we were taught that police were no more privileged than an ordinary citizen. It was WW2 Europe where your papers were required. If you were being bullied by a cop, you can stand up for yourself and be shown to be right by the justice system.
Of course, even as a kid, I knew this was self-delusion. I have always distrusted police and treated them as super powerful combatants who weren't targeting me, but would put me in their crosshairs if they didn't personally like something about me.
> Result is they get kicked, slapped, scolded and vocabulary assaulted by 13 year olds who know they would win the case for a judge if it comes to it (or otherwise get 40 hours of public service).
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if an offense only warrants 40 hours of public service, it's probably not serious enough for a cop to use their firearm.
Oh no, children saying rude things? So long civilization, it was good while it lasted.
If we're talking about the Dutch police, they actually seem to do a pretty great job with patience and professionalism from what I remember when I lived there (for about 2 years).
According to the nickname, I'd says Netherlands. But it doesn't matter, you can find people from every single country in the world holding the same (mostly fictitious) discourse.
+1 for the Netherlands. Nice job on an irregular name :).
Regarding mostly fictious: we have national television reporting our first aid/response units are being assaulted on their jobs. We have police officers on trial for arresting people who didn't comply simple questions (no crossing orders). We have the generic public joking about public service. Mostly fictious is not what I would call it. The image of our national police is not great. I would say we could have a bit more of the US respect and they can have a bit of our control. Then again, no proof so hard to fight either way.
P.S. I knew I should jot have taken a 13 yo example :(.
It’s important to understand though how the (rest of) US thinks about situations like these. Throwing. Your arms up and declaring the moral high ground instead of being a apart of pragmatic conversations reminds me of the stance R.M.S would take on things.
That's unfair. What is missing from this discussion is that American crime rates are an outlier in the developed world. I worry that trigger happy 'militarized' police force won't end until crime rate goes down to the level of other developed nations.
3) Anyone implying that the police need to change is labeled anti police by a large portion of the population because this has become a political issue in the US and given the current political climate of identity politics there is really no reasoning with those people.
It's the symmetric property of identity inequality. The fundamentally incompatible axioms of some worldviews make communication nearly impossible in either direction, within a timeframe and level of effort most people are willing to expend.
There is no reasoning with people about specific issues when they are tied up in identity politics. That is true whether they are a liberal or a conservative.
Actually no, because 'those people' are the set of 'people who have chosen to label others as anti police' and a singular opinion isn't the same as a collective identity.
Admittedly people who hold that opinion might adhere to a 'conservative identity' but the gp was specifically describing people who engaged in categorical dismissal of of political proposal, so it's legitimate to say they can't be reasoned with because categorical dismissals are an example of a genetic fallacy.
The wording implies you can't reason with "those people", meaning the anti-anti-police ones. But it kinda misses the mark, because you can't reason with "anybody" active in the identity-politics environment that pervades the US.
Police violence is a universal problem. A Harvard study has shown that white people in the US are statistically more likely encounter lethal force from police than people of color [1].
That is true. I didn't mean to imply that white people somehow have it worse than minorities. That is not evidently the case with general police harassment and mistreatment.
However, all races should be equally concerned with police executions. This isn't the land of Judge Dredd. We still have the 5th and 14th amendments.
Unfortunately, because the officer was Somali and named Mohamed, I've heard nothing but bigotry back home regarding this case. "Wouldn't have happened if the officer was white", etc. If the officer had been white, I could envision the following responses, in order of likelihood:
1) Damond must have done something unusual or stupid to cause the officer to fire on her, making it her fault, because what officer would be threatened by a Pretty White Woman?
2) As mentioned above, officers make mistakes, and this is a terrible tragedy, but they put their lives on the line every day and they were trying to do the right thing, so we can't punish them for this.
3) This is one of the "rare" cases of actual police brutality and the cop deserves to go to jail for murder.
> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does
Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.
> Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice
Actually, they don't spend a lot of time doing gun practice which is a problem. Police firearms training budgets are lacking in most states. They also don't do a lot (if at all) training to deal with dogs unless their has been public outrage. A growing separation from the community they police is also a factor.
SWAT is a whole different problem. The overuse of SWAT to do the simple things like serve warrants and the whole war on drugs has been a disaster. Its isn't the populace with guns, its the lack of real training, a cover everyone's butt attitude, and a percentage of people on a power trip. Look at the incident with the nurse in Utah. No guns just CYA[1].
Just a side note, because you’re from Norway, that may be surprising to some. The US is #1 with 1.01 guns per capita, and Norway is #9 with .31 guns per capita.
In any case, i don’t think the number of guns per capita explains the difference in gun crime rates between the two.
> Just a side note, because you’re from Norway, that may be surprising to some. The US is #1 with 1.01 guns per capita, and Norway is #9 with .31 guns per capita.
Being from #10 on that list, the type, quality and "outings" of guns matters a lot. In France, "owned guns" are either sport or hunting weapons, seeing one outside of hunting season basically does not happen and they're regulated:
* single-shot (per barrel) smooth bore long guns must be registered (for hunting or sports), buying requires showing an ID and either a hunting or a sports license (from an accredited gun club)
* air guns beyond 20j and various types of long runs replace the registering by a declaration (a more complex procedure)
* various more powerful and smaller weapons (including handguns) have to be authorised before they can be bought, for sports or defence (mostly professional). Amongst other concerns the would-be owner must have a clean criminal record, show a clean bill of health (physical & psych) under 1 month old and demonstrate ownership of a safe
* automatic, high-capacity (30 for long guns and 20 for handguns) and very-high caliber (>= 20mm) is forbidden
Guns must be disabled or under lock when not heading to, coming back from, or performing the activity they're used for.
I expect Norway, Finland, Canada or Germany are very similar: though specifics probably vary, weapons ownership is most likely regulated and generally restricted to hunting and sports (the licensed, olympics-able "Shooting Sports" kind, not the "I went at the range to play with a minigun" kind).
In Norway, reservists can keep their assault rifles home. Once a guy in our neighbourhood decided to clean his AG-3 on the porch, triggering armed police response in the area. This being Norway of course, no shots were fired and the situation cleared up.
Otherwise, you can buy pretty much anything non-automatic when you have a hunting or sports license. Neither is hard to obtain. The circulation is regulated but still quite simple. You can even sell a gun over post with cash on delivery.
-Reservists and the home guard no longer store weapons or ammunition at home; that practice ended a few years ago as the AG3 (HK G3 made under licence in Norway) was the weapon of choice for reservists to kill their spouses, then themselves (what we call honor killings when committed by non-native Norwegians)
Additionally, it was no secret who was a member of the home guard, so there were numerous cases of homes being burglarised for the AG3 stored there; the weapon was then used for further crimes, like bank robberies.
Now, weapons are stored at the home guard's places of assembly in case of mobilization.
Also, while I agree that it is no problem obtaining a hunting rifle or a shotgun (passing the test isn't THAT hard), a handgun is more complicated:
a) You need to have a clean criminal record, and be more than 21 years of age. Also, the local police must approve - say, it is (theoretically, at least) possible to be turned down even with no record if the local police do not think you are suited to own a weapon - say, if you regularly binge drink, are known locally as a trouble-maker or whatever.
b) You must have completed a safety course at an approved gun club. Typically 3-4 nights, intended to learn you how to handle the gun safely, know and follow shooting range regulations &c.
c) You must be an active member of an approved gun club, and must have been so for at least six months prior to applying for a purchase permit. Active basically means turning up at club events and shooting with one of the club's weapons until you have your own.
d) Yout licence may be revoked if you no longer have a need to own a weapon - say, if you stop showing up at club nights and let your membership lapse. Also, any problems with the law? Better take a good, hard look at that licence, because it will be revoked as soon as they get around to it.
e) You normally only get a permit for one weapon, unless you can lay credible claim to being a collector (in which case even more training and vetting is mandatory).
The difference is very pronounced in the kind of weapons we have, though - the average Norwegian gun is a 12 gauge shotgun or a 6.5x55 rifle. Handguns are strictly regulated - in order to obtain one, you need to have a clean record, be an active member in good standing of a gun club - and you can only carry your weapon - dismantled - between your home and the shooting range; keeping it in, say, the glove compartment is likely to result in a fine and having your gun licence revoked.
For deer during hunting season, though, Norway is a place best avoided.
You're absolutely right. The difference is that we are a more violent society. Violence is something we value here. Just look at entertainment for children. You're way more likely to find parents more amenable to letting their children watch scenes of people being hurt than people making love. One gets a pass and the other is considered obscene.
Indeed, I was at an activity with my son, and there was a TV in the lounge, showing a cartoon program. The program involved an evil scheming person trying to take over the world, and culminated in a literal war, with cartoon soldiers, guns, tanks, and so forth, killing one another.
I don't think that's uniquely American. As a child I consumed plenty of violent media (mostly American, in fact!) but in my country very few people get shot.
I think most of us would agree here that "violent media creates violent people" is false. But violent media can still be a problem, if it is caused and enabled by a pathological society, a symptom of that pathology. I personally think it is, and I think that's the point the post you were responding to was making.
I don't think it is any coincidence that most of the violent gun-laden media you consumed as a child was American.
Killing is a* fundamental problem-solving strategy in American culture (both domestically consumed and exported). And the overwhelming most common method of killing is a gun. This is why it is very rare to find a film or TV show with any kind of action/adventure/thriller/crime/mystery plot without guns, usually on the poster.
When this is true in other countries, it is usually because they are intentionally aping American media.
I think it has never occurred to most Americans that there is any alternative to 'kill the bad guys'.
* On reflection it is probably 'the' fundamental problem-solving strategy in American media.
> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?
Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally.
So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?).
There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.
They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly.
IMO this is backward. Representatives should choose their issues by the voice of the people, or people should vote on issues and the appropriate candidate suggested automatically.
We will always get suboptimal results when people are forced to commingle their opinions on everything from science to security into a single binary choice.
In places that allow ballot initiatives you can target specific issues. That's how marijuana legalization has been happening. There are places where majority of the people support it, but they vote in politicians who don't bother to legalize it, so activists take the issue directly to the voters.
Even still, though, it's a small number of people who bother collecting the signatures and informing people about the initiative. The vast majority of people are extremely disengaged and won't bother working on changing things.
Non US'ers should understand that Europe, and Scandinavian countries in particular, is a different world than the US. No social safety net, lack of public transportation, exorbitant health care costs, tragically ineffective 'war on drugs', guns, violent crime, poverty. Honestly, the US really kinda sucks now, for most people living here.
There is no viable feedback loop at this time. The FBI will get involved if there is a consent decree. This provides oversight, but that requires a Justice department that will investigate police departments. You see this happen after a litany of civil rights violations. But Sessions and Trump have made it clear that that won't happen. Maybe Congress will get involved after the midterms if things change or if there are mass protests. However, since police departments are local you might be able to put pressure on city councils and the mayor / maybe governor to make some progress.
But there should be better training but that will probably only happen if juries start to decide that "being fearful for your life" is not a sufficient defense.
To your point about non-lethal weapons: it seems to me that we haven't yet claimed the low-hanging fruit in the US when it comes to this problem. Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons?
It will probably introduce new problems, such as even more unnecessary use of force. It addresses absolutely none of the cultural or institutional problems. But it may also save lives and better maintain justice. A family of a person wrongly tazed has been afforded more justice than a family of a person wrongly shot and killed.
People who hold out for either a panacea or nothing will be unsatisfied. But if we can at least separate incapacitation from lethality, we may be able to save lives while still satisfying the cultural and institutional lust for violence.
Because indulging such impulses is a good way to get them to proliferate. I see your approach is to treat them as matters of fact and try to redirect them towards some less-lethal-than-guns solution for mutual benefit, but this is just going to give you more of what you don't want.
Right now a police officer in my area is typically equipped with:
baton;
taser;
pepper spray;
knife;
handgun
shotgun (in the car);
flashlights (high powered, doubles as a club in a pinch)
5 weapons, with others in reserve, is already a lot to carry. Indeed, it's partly because of this proliferation of weapons (and all the training and liability issues that go with them) that many police are under-trained in physical combat (this from undercover and head-of-training officers I've known, whose opinion I'm inclined to take at face value).
So you've got heavily armed individuals who are trained/socialized to maintain a somewhat irrationally elevated perception of danger and most of their training if focused on using weapons to induce coercion. This is a bad combination. not just for the job and the public, but for the police themselves. I know a former police officer who doesn't keep any weapons in the house, but who's also paranoid about crime because he's been rtained to think about all the bad things that could happen to the point that he's afraid to hire someone to clean his house because they might case it on behalf of burglars or home invaders. This despite the fact that he doesn't own anything especially valuable; he lives in an ordinary suburban home and probably has less stuff than most people.
You're arguing that coercion is bad. I don't need to be persuaded of that. I'm suggesting that potential increases in coercion be tolerated if they can be part of a tradeoff that results in fewer deaths.
I also didn't mean to suggest anything about increasing the total amount of equipment carried by an officer. Are you suggesting that proliferation of a greater total number of weapons is a likely practical outcome? Variety coincides with proliferation, or something to that effect?
And in special circumstances a butter knife could probably kill someone. But I don't think getting trapped in a continuum fallacy represents forward motion in this kind of conversation. Maybe a tazer should count as lethal and should be excluded. Let's draw the line somewhere, most definitely. But I'm not any closer to understanding whether you merely object to that example or the principle itself, and the latter is the pertinent thing.
It's not the lethality of the weapon, but the police response that's the problem.
In most (northern) European countries the response to somebody brandishing a knife would be to set up a perimeter around that person, rather than directly engage them. Only as a last resort would you resort to violence. Instead you try to tire them out.
By comparison, the American police response would be to immediately subdue the person with any force necessary.
If you really mean what you are saying, then you seem to be suggesting that police armed with butter knives, tazers, or guns all represent exactly equally dangerous situations that can't be distinguished from one another.
It's not just lethality, but it's also not just the way police respond, because it's not one or the the other. If you don't agree that the lethality of the weapon is a significant input to whether or not a dangerous outcome is more likely, we can't have a serious conversation.
I'm mostly replying to the thread at large, which started with lb1lf pointing out that the police response was the problem, and this side-thread is now bogged down in the quagmire of arguing what constitutes as a non-lethal and lethal weapon.
Of course the weapon in question is also a variable, but I by far the biggest variable is police behavior in the US, where it seems every situation calls for force escalation and solving the matter at hand with a full-on assault of some sort.
I agree that the thread was needlessly bogged down with a continuum fallacy about the word lethal.
I think you're right that escalating behavior is a significant variable. But I think that's a very tough thing to change. It may be that the low hanging fruit consists in changing the equipment rather than the culture. But I don't disagree with you in the big picture.
Anyway, I'll be careful not to assume your comments are attempting to be responsive to the things they reply to when I see them in the future, to prevent my misunderstanding.
A Taser can kill. Removing the presumption that you are shooting to kill seems like it would make the police more readily, and in more situations, use the weapons, so I'm not sure it's clear that a switch to less-lethal weapons would be a net positive (in terms of deaths).
That's an interesting way of thinking about it. That would mean we are either already at an unimprovably optimized combination of lethality and inclination to use force, or that the real problem is police weapons are not lethal enough.
At one time, police in the U.S. were trained that to shoot to kill-- only. If the officer discharged the weapon at all, she emptied the magazine and aimed to kill. No warning shots, no shots to disable, that would be against training.
Thus confusion, inattention, or misunderstanding in the face of commands from a self-identified officer easily can be a lethal situation.
If you haven't done anything wrong, and then one day your home is surrounded by a paramilitary force barking instructions at you and threatening your life, confusion, inattention and misunderstanding are inevitable. If police procedures don't allow for that, they are fundamentally broken.
This tragic outcome could have been avoided many times, and in most of those cases, the difference would have been in the behaviour of the police.
> is there any significant push
It'll be business as per usual: "shit happens", "thoughts & prayers" etc. Just another one of the "periodic plagues from the gods" [paraphrased] that you can't do anything about.
All good points except for the last one even if you could even theoretically develop practical armor that could stop cal. 50 round it would still be able to kill a person through the impact force damaging internal organs.
Not true at all. If the person firing the round can survive the momentum imparted into their shoulder from the rifle, then the person on the receiving end can survive it if they're wearing armor that spreads out the imparted momentum similarly. Basic Newton's Third Law.
Also, there are .50 BMG handguns (and no, I'm not mistakenly referring to .50 AE, I mean .50 BMG). They are stupidly impractical, but they exist. You're making this out to be some mythical projectile when it's really just a bigger bullet. It's not like getting hit by a tank shell.
The real flaw with this scenario is that full body armor required to stop .50 BMG would be so bulky and heavy that you wouldn't be able to move. The imparted momentum isn't the problem, it's stopping the penetration of the round.
It's also worth pointing out that this conversation is pointlessly academic, as .50 BMG has not been used in a murder once. Ever. In the entire history of the United States. Out of over one million gun murders total. It's ridiculously impractical for that purpose.
The killer is not the momentum, but the impulse. Let's do some simple kinematics:
The M82 has a barrel length of 20 inches (51 cm, .051 meters) and fires a 45 gram bullet that, at the end of that time, is going 900 m/s. Meaning the bullet goes from having zero momentum to 41 Newton-seconds in 1.13 milliseconds. Meaning the shooter feels over that 1.13 millisecond period of ~36,000 Newtons of force on his shoulder. The person getting shot has to make that bullet go from 900 m/s to 0, but he has to do it over say 2 inches of distance or his organs start getting smushed. Meaning he's experiencing, over that 110 microsecond period, ~360,000 Netwons of force. The exact same momentum, but in the shooter's case it's like getting punched and in the shootee's case it's like getting your torso gummed on by a T-rex.
This is why going from 0 to 100 in a car can either be no big deal (if done over 60 seconds) or kill you six ways from sunday (if done in a few milliseconds when you crash into a wall or something).
We're also not getting into the power of a good muzzle break or the weight of the rifle itself, both of which considerably reduce the felt impulse by the shooter. You can look up people rapid-firing 50 cal rifles from the hip on youtube for an illustration of just how much you can tame the recoil of these guns.
A typical body armor plate has much more surface area in contact with the body than a rifle butt does though -- we're talking roughly an entire square foot. Said body armor plate, if it's to stop a .50 BMG round, also will be thick enough to weigh as much as an M82. This makes up for the fact that the acceleration happens over a reduced distance. Also keep in mind that a rifle needs to be comfortable enough for many repeated shots, while body armor only needs to be survivable.
Note that you're at ~80 pounds from wearing just two plates to protect most of your chest and back; you'll collapse under the weight by the time you've armored your entire body.
For point of reference, shotgun slugs can be stopped by modern armor. It still cracks people's ribs through sheer impulse. A 50 BMG has 5 times the kinetic energy and 3 times the momentum of that.
It's simply not enough to stop the bullet at these kinds of impulses, you need something to distribute the force over time as well as space. Cars use crumple zones for this purpose - the time it takes the front to deform is extra seconds over which the momentum change takes place, thereby decreasing the impulse.
Even if we could develop some sort of powered armor that let you carry absurd amounts of armour I don't see how you could really solve this problem. The suit is still going to push back into the wearer's body with the same impulse, and crack bones when it does.
Ultimately, the truth is human beings are just too squishy. #BringOnTheRobots
Shotgun slugs are a lot less penetrative than .50 BMG though; they're proportionally heavier and travel slower. 12 gauge is .73 inches. You need significantly more thickness of armor just to stop the .50 BMG at all, by which point you've added so much more mass that you've gone much of the towards solving the higher impulse as well.
>Shotgun slugs are a lot less penetrative than .50 BMG though; they're proportionally heavier and travel slower.
What does the word "proportionally" mean in this sentence? Because factually, the slug is about half the weight of the BMG round.
>You need significantly more thickness of armor just to stop the .50 BMG at all, by which point you've added so much more mass that you've gone much of the towards solving the higher impulse as well.
You're looking at elephant-stomping-on-you levels of force, and you're trying to say it'll be mitigated somewhat because you have 5 pounds of steel on your chest rather than 2 pounds. You will be a person salsa even if you strapped a kitchen stove to yourself.
You don't seem to be understanding the magnitude of the forces involved.
>You're looking at elephant-stomping-on-you levels of force, and you're trying to say it'll be mitigated somewhat because you have 5 pounds of steel on your chest rather than 2 pounds. You will be a person salsa even if you strapped a kitchen stove to yourself.
the momentum conservation means that the 5 pound of steel would be moving with the speed of 18m/s after full momentum transfer from the 45g bullet hitting it at 900m/s. 5lb at 18m/s - is like somebody would hit you with a frying pan. While painful and dangerous if say into the head, it is still much less so than getting the bullet directly. Even better result would be with a 25 lb steel plate - just 3.6m/s - like somebody would shove an office/kitchen table at you.
Elephant leg say weights 250kg - that would mean that if you have an elephant leg as an armor in front of you, after being hit by a 0.50 bullet with full momentum transfer the leg will be moving at the speed of 0.18m/s - you can just slowly step away from it.
>You don't seem to be understanding the magnitude of the forces involved.
please enlighten us and correct my calculations above.
I don't mean to be rude, but did you not understand what I wrote above?
>the momentum conservation means that the 5 pound of steel would be moving with the speed of 18m/s after full momentum transfer from the 45g bullet hitting it at 900m/s. 5lb at 18m/s - is like somebody would hit you with a frying pan.
The change in momentum over time is what matters, not the momentum itself. As I said above, think of a car. The momentum change on your body from going from 0 to 100 mph is a slight push on your chest....if you spread that momentum change over 60 seconds of steady acceleration. The exact same momentum change, if done over a few milliseconds from say smashing into a brick wall, is probably going to kill you.
I mean this isn't rocket science, it's literally high school physics.
>please enlighten us and correct my calculations above.
I...did the math already? Did you not read it? The momentum change over the distance of 2 inches produces a force of about 360,000 Newton - a 6000 kg elephant just standing on you would produce "only" 60,000 newtons. He needs to be actively trying to stomp your daylights in to get the kind of forces we're talking about.
50 cal is the kind of round that you hit someone in the torso and their arms fly off. It was built to kill vehicles and planes, for people it is absurd overkill.
>The momentum change over the distance of 2 inches produces a force of about 360,000 Newton
you're right that the force will be huge, and you're dead wrong about the force effect.
lets say we stop the bullet over the distance of 1cm instead of 2 inches - the stopping force to act upon bullet would be even bigger - 1.8M Newtons (30 elephants!). The same value force will be acting upon our 5lb armor plate. This force will be acting until the bullet stops, ie. for about 0.02 milliseconds. During that time the force would accelerate the armor plate to the speed of 16m/s and the armor plate would travel less than 1mm - only starting to compress the padding under the armor plate. So, 0.02 milliseconds after the bullet impact we have a stopped bullet and the armor plate moving with the speed of 16m/s through the first millimeter of the padding - the situation is no different than being hit by a frying pan.
>lets say we stop the bullet over the distance of 1cm instead of 2 inches - the stopping force to act upon bullet would be even bigger - 1.8M Newtons (30 elephants!). The same value force will be acting upon our 5lb armor plate. This force will be acting until the bullet stops, ie. for about 0.02 milliseconds. During that time the force would accelerate the armor plate to the speed of 16m/s and the armor plate would travel less than 1mm - only starting to compress the padding under the armor plate. So, 0.02 milliseconds after the bullet impact we have a stopped bullet and the armor plate moving with the speed of 16m/s through the first millimeter of the padding - the situation is no different than being hit by a frying pan.
That's not how impulse propagates. The force carries through the plate, into the person, and does its damage as a compressive wave. Think about seatbelts in a car during a high speed crash - they don't often penetrate the torso of people, but they can and do pop organs through compressive effects if they're worn too high. Yet calculate the momentum of the seat belt at 100 mph and you'll find it's tiny, like a light slap.
But let's assume your analysis is true. Why then does a shotgun slug, with considerably less momentum than the .50 cal and even a frying pan, crack ribs through armor? Why can I put a piece of AR500 steel in front of a watermellow, hit the steel with a .308, and have the watermellon explode despite nothing getting through?
But I'm done. I've explained this same concept 5 different times, and I'm still having to cover basic physics with people too proud to admit their layman's interpretation is wrong. If you think you could survive a .50 with armor, you're welcome to go buy a 1 inch plate from shootsteel.com and an M82 and test if out yourself. Remove one more prideful fool from the gene pool.
>That's not how impulse propagates. The force carries through the plate, into the person, and does its damage as a compressive wave.
That would be true if the plate was pressed hard against the body. A force requires a carrier - a field or a matter. This is why there is padding behind armor. The padding air-gaps the body from the plate. Nothing crosses the air gap during the 0.02ms that the huge force you're talking about is acting between the plate and the bullet. The body isn't aware that something that violent is happening just a few millimeters away. At t=0.02ms the interaction between the bullet and the plate has finished and the plate is flying toward the body with the speed ~16m/s. At that t=0.02ms the plate has so far traveled only for less than 1mm and it will take it ~0.5 milisecond to cross the air gap and to slam into the body at about the same speed of 16m/s. Such slamming is like being hit by a frying pan. Can be pretty damaging if hits a joint or the head. May break a rib. Yet nothing close to being subjected to the force of being stepped on by an elephant or 30 of them.
>Why then does a shotgun slug, with considerably less momentum than the .50 cal and even a frying pan, crack ribs through armor?
The slug momentum (0.03kg at 540m/s) is 2.5 times less than that of .50 cal (0.045kg at 900m/s), so nothing surprising here, especially if it is through a flexible (i.e. different mode of action) kevlar armor. The steel plate armor we're discussing is much heavier.
>Why can I put a piece of AR500 steel in front of a watermellow, hit the steel with a .308, and have the watermellon explode despite nothing getting through?
Even if the watermelon is air-gapped from the steel, the watermelon still can't sustain being hit with a frying pan ( even with less than a full swing of it). If the steel isn't air-gapped from the watermellon - in this case the watermelon do get the force applied if the steel isn't fixed, or a compression wave by the steel plate vibration if the steel is fixed in place.
See this is why I come to HN. For nerdy interesting analysis that's relevant. Much better than 90% of the comments that are fools who find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.
This is no better than a political article as far as bringing out the dark side of people.
If we allow for powered armor I can imagine armor with appropriate crumple zones. But I guess with powered armor you also get to carry ridiculously huge guns...
Oh, I just figured 50cal would leave sufficient overkill factor to cover all situations - after all, I think it would be unfair to require police officers to show lots more restraint using their firearms if they didn't have armour capable of saving them should the situation escalate; after all - if I was given PPE at work which would be sufficient to get me out of 70% of incidents alive, my first (and last!) question would be "Fine, what about the 30% which'll kill me?"
If this incident began with a planned approach by the police, on the assumption that they might be facing someone violent and armed, one of the first questions should surely be why any officers outside the building were so exposed that they were concerned about being suddenly shot by the suspect. Do these officers not arrive equipped with body armour, shields, armoured vehicles and the like in a situation like this?
I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article:
Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said.
"The male then turned towards the officers on the east side of the residence, lowered his hands to the waistband again, then suddenly pulled them back up towards those officers at the east," he said. "The officers on the north side of the street feared the male pulled a weapon from his waistband, retrieved a gun and was in the process of pointing it at the officers to the east. Fearing for those officers’ safety, the officer on the north side fired one round."
From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement. Stuff that looks like that is how officers die. Asking them to not react when someone does that puts them in pretty serious danger. A sudden movement like that is how gunfights start.
It's tragic that it's also something a panicked innocent citizen might do! But that doesn't change the fact that it's a genuinely threatening thing to do.
I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation.
Some of us have been insulated from violence for so long that we don't know what it looks like. We have no reason to know that innocent sudden movements can just like dangerous sudden movements.
I'm not saying the guy's death is his fault. The whole thing is a tragic misunderstanding between good people. But I am saying he could have been educated to prevent it. I don't think it's realistic to ask police to solve the problem at great risk to themselves when regular people can solve it by learning that the best way to avoid misunderstandings and snap reactions is to move slowly and deliberately in any confrontation.
> the best way to avoid misunderstandings and snap reactions is to move slowly and deliberately in any confrontation.
Excellent idea. Let's train/condition 300 million people exactly how they should behave in stressful and life-threatening situations, and put at least part of the blame on them for any deviation from "acceptable" behaviour when put in an unknown situations with guns pointing at them.
It would take far too much time and effort to modify police training and expectations.
Perhaps we should cut funding for some more arts and phys-ed programs in public schools, and start funding "police/violence readiness prep" classes in K-12.
I really do think teaching people how to be non-threatening would be one of the most effective methods of avoiding tragedy. I know you make light of educating large numbers of people, but there are a lot of things we all know about society in order to be safe. It seems to me that "sudden movements in tense situations provoke violent reaponses" isn't that hard of a thing to learn. Don't we teach people not to run from bears, for example?
I am not saying the guy's death is his fault. I am saying expecting policemen not to react to certain movements just because they can be innocent is not a realistic expectation to place on them. It is safer for everyone if we all just stay calm, de-escalate, act deliberately, sort things out. Flapping around is a good way to look dangerous, and I just think things would be safer if people understood this.
What about mentally ill people? People on medication that make them groggy? People who are drunk in their own home? People who are exhausted from a huge week at work? Children? Elderly?
People cannot reasonably be expected to “stay calm” at a moments notice. That is completely unreasonable.
Special cases make bad rules. Seat belts make you safer... but not if your car gets crushed between two semis. That doesn't mean seat belts are pointless, just that they don't work in that case.
Moving deliberately and keeping your hands visible around police, particularly if they seem to think you're dangerous, is a good way to stay as safe as you can, and will put them less on edge in the encounter. You want that. In a dangerous situation, you want everyone as calm as possible.
Will it always work? Of course not. Maybe you're drunk or high. Maybe you're insane. Maybe you panicked in spite of yourself. Whatever. Hopefully in that situation one of the other protections will work for you.
Wear ya damn seatbelt. Not because it always works, but because sometimes it's the only thing that saves your life.
Safety is about tradeoffs and incremental improvements, not perfect solutions. If there really is a murderer in the house, we want police to be aggressive. If it's a hoax, we want them to be cautious. But expecting them to magically know which situation it is isn't a practical solution. Making it really obvious that you aren't a tactical threat is a practical way to make the situation safer. ER!
Obviously the whole situation is super dangerous and the blame rests almost entirely with the hoaxer.
But with that said, I think it is practical and reasonable to talk about the best way to surrender safely and avoid a misunderstanding in a situation like that. It won't work in every case, but it should generally work and could improve the situation.
and it's not necessarily just about "stay calm". if surrounded, any movement at all could be interpreted by someone (who can only see one side of things) as potentially threatening.
the vast majority of people in the US know not to run from bears. They also can identify pikachu on sight. Knowing how to respond to the unexpected appearance of police who think you're a bad guy seems to me at least as useful of a skill. And it's not a difficult concept that requires a great deal of training -- just understand that hands kill (nobody ever draws a gun with their feet, except maybe James Bond), and if you're in a stressful situation, slowly move your hands into totally visible open space (unless you're a cartoon character, you definitely can't draw a gun from midair.) No, this won't prevent 100% of police shootings, but it can prevent an awful lot of them. It's also useful for defusing a lot of other potentially violent situations.
> "and put at least part of the blame on them"
There are two types of blame. There's the "you shouldn't have done that" that you say to the guy who stabbed his neighbor over a fence dispute, and there's the "you shouldn't have done that" that you say when you're watching a zombie movie and someone wanders off alone.
One is about moral culpability, about someone's intent being wrong. And we should NEVER impose that kind of blame on victims.
The other is about risk management, about someone's actions increasing negative outcomes. It's why we have things like debriefings and post-mortems in contexts ranging from military to software development -- learn what factors can lead to negative outcomes, and develop tactics to mitigate them. And we should stop being so afraid of "victim-blaming" that we instinctively balk at this.
When I watch the Philip Brailsford body cam footage, I find it hard to believe this is a sane assumption to operate under. The polite come in, in full tactical armer, to a guy in shorts and t-shirt, and execute him because he couldn't keep his pants up as he crawled across the floor towards them face down? Come on.
Holy cats. That looked like a weapon draw to me, too.
I know I've made a fuss about not making sudden moves in tense situations, but if you are going to make a sudden move, definitely avoid doing exactlythat.
This is a training issue, absolutely. But Police should be trained to deal with the population, never the other way around. No one should be shot because a police officer is spooked by a hand that isn’t where they can see it. Suspects should have the benefit of the doubt and police officers should carry all the risk.
I think it is true that police carry the bulk of the burden for training and the bulk of the responsibility for making things proceed safely. But I think it is unrealistic and ineffective to give them the entire job.
Sort of like, car drivers do have the ultimate responsibility to not hit people, but it sure is a lot safer if we also tell people to generally stay on the sidewalks.
Policemen are generally going to try to do the right thing, but it's a whole lot easier for them to get it right if, in addition to being innocent, you also act safe.
From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement.
You don't have a perspective here, you're uncritically adopting theirs, which is designed to present things in a certain way.
'the male' - not a person or a man; dehumanizing language
'turned towards the officers' - probably because he had just noticed their presence; this language implies intent
'the residence' - it's a house; unnecessary abstracting leads to a loss of valuable context
'lowered his hands to the waistband again' - do you wear pants or a skirt? then you have a waistband, and guess what, your hands naturally hang just below wait level; everyone who isn't naked and holding their hands in the air is assumed to be armed with a concealed handgun
'then suddenly pulled them back up towards those officers at the east' - probably because they were telling to put his hands up and most people lift their arms up in front of them rather than to the side as when doing jumping jacks; implies the action was directed at them without evidence
See? It all sounds like delightfully objective, but it's actually selective and subjective. You were manipulated into treating conclusions as if they were evidence.
I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation.
You know police departments consider hands and feet to be 'personal weapons' right? A paranoid person (and police suffer from a degree of professional paranoia) is apt to make irrational assessments of threat factors, and this problem is compounded by a deficit of integrity among some officers and police unions, so that you get police like Michael Slager claiming to be acting out of fear when actually they were shooting someone in the back for running away (fortunately he was convicted of murder, but probably only because he was caught on video).
Some of us have been insulated from violence for so long that we don't know what it looks like.
I'm not. I have a lot of experience with this. If it's alien to you then maybe join a martial arts club or visit a shooting range or whatever would broaden your experience; or don't, if you'd rather not. But insofar as you're not well able to judge this, you should absolutely not be taking the statements of people who have a vested interest at face value because by your own admission, you're not in a good position to assess their claims.
I do actually have a little bit of a martial arts background. That's actually why the officers' story seemed plausible to me - I know both how fast combat happens and how easy it is for an innocent person to look threatening because of the ambiguity and pace of it.
I can't say that the officers acted well or badly here - I wasn't there. All I am saying is that this sounds like a tragic misunderstanding to me. And that people not understanding what real threats look like can lead them to behave in ways they don't realize are dangerous, and that's a real problem, and maybe something we can do something about on the civilian side.
I find it really unlikely that cops kill people for laughs. Does their training make them too high strung and jumpy? I mean, I've seen it, and given the threats they face, I don't really think so.
I do have sympathy for police. I know police officers. I train with some sometimes. I'm not saying there aren't bad ones or that there isn't bad training - I'm just saying that it would be a lot easier for them and the people they interacted with to stay safe if everyone understood what being non-threatening actually looks like, and how to surrender safely. I just hate to see a tragic outcome result from a misunderstanding. And maybe that's not what this is, but it's what it sounds like.
I think a lot of people have this really unreasonable standard for police, that they're supposed to know who's good and who's evil, and who's attacking and who's panicking... and man, they're just trying to get the situation under control so it can get sorted out. They aren't God. They aren't even juries and courts. You can't just be innocent, you also gotta act safe. I understand the outrage when innocent people die - I do. I'm just trying to offer a practical way to make the world a safer place. I don't think outrage at police alone is necessarily practical. There are some practical issues when people who don't know what combat looks like wind up in a tense situation, and they're real issues, and being mad at police isn't a great solution alone. All I'm sayin.
I get the points you're trying to make, but I think you need to broaden your perspective.
For one thing, combat is something that happens between two belligerents. I've been in a lot of fights and I've never, ever, gone off on someone by mistake because it's legally safer to risk a bit of disadvantage than to create a situation where none exists.
I absolutely disagree that we need to 'doing something on the civilian side' to make civilians more accommodating of police anxiety. That's literally the recipe for a police state, and there's good arguments for the proposition that we already inhabit one, it's just that it's benefits and costs are so unevenly distributed and the structure of it so decentralized that it's hard to perceive.
Knowing police officers gives you some xtra insight, as it has me. I suggest you expand your awareness to include information from criminals, attorneys in the criminal justice system, and other participants. Right now you seem to think that because you know some martial arts and some cops you're far enough ahead of the general population that you're half expert already. I think that's more likely knowing one corner of a field and thinking you've seen the whole thing.
I am no expert. I just know enough about what physical confrontations look like to know how to genuinely look non-threatening during one. And I know that I didn't always know this, plenty of people still don't - some have said in this very thread that they don't! - and I think that ignorance is potentially dangerous.
I have no idea what you're talking about with a police state. Understanding how to be non-threatening violates no rights of yours, and is a very practical life skill in any physically tense situation.
Look, there are plenty of things that are messed up about the way police function - though nothing that applies to all of them, either good or bad, since police are a local institution. But in general, civil asset forfeiture is very bad, and often a grave injustice. Policemen lying under oath to get a conviction are very bad. Arrest quotas are bad. The high price of justice in the courts is very very very bad. There are bad things, and I am all for working to make them better. But on the other hand, I think police are people who deserve empathy and fair treatment as much as anyone does, and who absolutely deserve the right to protect themselves and work safely as much as is practical. I don't think understanding what that entails and putting them at ease and keeping yourself safer is building a police state. It's just being smart and decent.
an absurdly violent culture with too many guns. the culture needs to reduce the violence, and remove the guns already... or simply state how many innocent people you're perfectly fine with being killed for any reason each year, including if that happens to be your own family because you believe guns are fine that it's someone else's issue.
Absurdly violent culture? Culture is arguably less violent than at any point in recorded human history. If anything the issue is repression of the inherently violent human tendencies. Why else would people be so fascinated by violent movies and television?
They accept that risk by signing on the dotted line and picking up their badge. Cops should have a policy of never shooting first unless someone who isn't a cop is in immediate clear danger. That's what we pay them for. Any bozo can shoot first and ask questions later. A trained, well-paid professional's job is precisely not doing that.
I think probably the most effective way to solve the problem would be to make people better aware of what makes you appear threatening and non-threatening in a confrontation.
Unfortunately in America, what makes you seem threatening is based on the color of your skin.
I am an African American living in a predominantly White county in the south that was made famous 30 years ago nationally for being anti-minority.
While, the county has changed somewhat because of an influx of younger people to the burbs, I still worry when my son starts driving because he is a big tall dude even though he would never hurt a fly, has lived in the burbs all of his life, and his friendship circle is like the cast of a WB show.
That's very fair. Unfortunately, being a big black dude is a great way to look threatening, which does suck. As a point of encouragement, though, it is worth noting that in spite of the national news, encounters with police are really rare, and deadly encounters super rare. Many officers go an entire career without ever firing their gun at anyone - it's just very rare. Your staircase is way more likely to kill you.
In fact, I remember having a really interesting conversation with a friend about this stuff a few years ago. We were talking about the statistic that black people are shot by police at twice the rate white people are. And yet some black people are so afraid of police in a traffic stop, they freak out if they haven't adequately prepared for it, and white people are so unafraid that they're shocked it's perceived as anything other than paperwork by the officer and nothing about it seems even potentially dangerous. I said - the difference between those two views isn't 2x. Black people don't think cops are twice as dangerous as white people... more like infinity x. And I said, either cops are way more dangerous than I was raised to believe, or way less dangerous than you were raised to believe, or both.
Well - I think it's both. I think if you are afraid of police in every encounter, a good reality check is to look up the absolute number of people killed by police anually and figure out how dangerous that really makes them compared to, I don't know, lawnmowers or something. And on the flip side, I think if you think police are really safe, a good reality check is to look at some of the training they do, some of the threats they face, understand how very fast a peaceful situation can turn violent and how easy it is to look like a threat, and understand that you have to be thoughtful and deliberate about everything you do around a cop, particularly in the situations that are most dangerous to them.
I agree completely, and I have had nothing but pleasant encounters with the police. Even when I was pulled over going 25 miles over the speed limit in Mississippi and I didn't have proof of insurance and had an out of state license.
He gave me two tickets - one for speeding and one for no insurance. I paid the speeding ticket by phone when I got home and faxed them my insurance card and they dropped the other one.
I can't walk around with a chip on my shoulder expecting the worse out of people when I live in a county where when I show up to
my sons school for the first time they immediately know who my stepson is even though we look nothing alike.
But I still tell my son if he's stopped put both hands on the top of the steering wheel, make no sudden movements and always tell the policeman what he is about to do - if he is reaching to grab his wallet, etc. if it's night, turn the inside lights on in the car before he stops and if he is wearing a hoodie because it's cold, take it off.
I think it is really smart that you are not excessively afraid of police, but train your children to be safe around them in practical and effective ways. Everyone should do that! Good for you! :)
I wish I could take credit for it, but it was a messed up quote from the first Supergirl/Flash crossover.
Cat = Calista Flockhart playing Cat Grant.
Cat: All four of you standing there doing nothing. You look like the attractive yet non-threatening, racially diverse cast of a CW show. Who are you?
Oh just like that hotel shooting where the cops told the guy to crawl forward with his hands behind his head (or something like that) and kept giving him conflicting tasks before opening fire?
I don't see anyone here asking this: how many people are police killing who are not 100% innocent bystanders like in this case, but still didn't need to be killed? I mean, we're all outraged because they shot "some dude in his PJs" but doesn't that imply they must be shooting 10, 100x as many folks where we'd be thinking "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand" or "he shouldn't have been high"?
Where I live, small town in the middle of the US, to my knowledge the cops have killed at least two people who were no real threat to them in the past few years. If that death density is consistent across the country there must be hundreds of events like this every year.
I get the impression somehow we've been brain washed into seeing this like unlucky folks being hit by a drunk driver.
> "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand"
Right. German cops, for example, are trained to shoot people in the leg in that scenario. It happens quite frequently and successfully.
American cops seem like they're all on a hair trigger to kill at the slightest hint of danger, rather than as a last resort when they're truly threatened.
As others have said, police in the US are trained to shoot for center mass, and even then they don't have a great track record for accuracy. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but the book 'On Combat' describes several cases where police empty their clips and mainly hit air. Adrenaline is a bitch, but most cops also have (in)famously little actual weapons training and a more robust regimen would undoubtedly help - including but not limited to helping them not discharge their weapons in the first place.
I remember a tidbit from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive loading screen saying that the federal GSG-9 group only has fired shots on five missions throughout their existence. Wikipedia seems to back this up with some reportedly true information[1].
American police and military are trained to shoot for the largest target area, center of mass, as this is the least likely area to have unintentional results.
Some examples of unintentional results are:
1) Missing.
2) Hitting another person.
3) Maming, or otherwise causing grievous injury such as shooting in the leg and hitting an artery on accident when you didn't intend to kill the target.
The probability of killing someone when you hit them in the center of mass seems a lot higher than that of accidental hits to the femoral artery.
Also, surely you've noticed that when American cops shoot someone they usually go on to cuff them but don't make any attempt to administer first aid, so that quite a few people die from bleeding out. At least if you get shot in the leg you've got some chance of stemming the blood flow, plus it's a lot easier to put a tourniquet on that.
> The probability of killing someone when you hit them in the center of mass seems a lot higher than that of accidental hits to the femoral artery.
It is, but American cops are not trained to shoot to incapacitate or warn. If they shoot it is to kill and that is why the target is the center of mass.
> Some examples of unintentional results are: 1) Missing. 2) Hitting another person. 3) Maming, or otherwise causing grievous injury such as shooting in the leg and hitting an artery on accident when you didn't intend to kill the target.
And these are common in the US, because the number of uses of weapons by police is so high.
My wife's family house was mistaken for a drug house years ago, it was around the block.
Police came in cuffing them and shot the family dog when it got aggressive trying to protect the yard, and noone in family being able to restrain him as they were in cuffs
This was in Canada.
This happened ~15 years ago, my wife still traumatized and never leaves pets outdoors.
Their family has quite the disdain for police overall since..
Over use of police force happens everywhere, and just more known in these communication real-time times.
The guy who requested to take the "hit" out, definitely the guy who made the call, and I doubt but also the officer most of all should all be charged.
Hope they make an example of the guy making the false reports as he has history of doing it, and blew off the consequences of his joke.
I can't believe the police didn't verify the situation before escalating.
Even if it was a real situation, the guy who had his life stolen could have been the hostage.
Police have made these mistakes without false information... I put the biggest blame on them, also important to not label all police officers the same as some are very upstanding citizens.
I couldn't agree more, and I'm sorry to hear about your wife's family.
Your thesis statement:
> Police have made these mistakes without false information... I put the biggest blame on them, also important to not label all police officers the same as some are very upstanding citizens.
Is exactly what I wish more people on this forum would read. There's so many people painting every cop with the brush of evil, or either excusing their mistakes/transgressions. The truth is always in between, and our tendency as humans to have knee-jerk reactions is not helpful at all to making real progress.
Except that because of the 'Blue Shield', police are rarely ever charged with any misdoing. A cop is never wrong, unless there is more than a mountain of evidence against them, and that makes me see all police as complicit.
Those 'very upstanding citizens' are the same ones who sit by silently as hundreds of unarmed Americans are shot each year by police.
If I was mugged by a person of a particular race, and some people of that same race didn't speak out, would I be justified in seeing all members of that race as complicit?
I always grew up thinking that police had to wait until somebody shot at them to shoot back.
It seems like "we thought he had a gun and he motioned towards his waist" has now replaced "he shot at us".
I really wish that the police had to adhere to the same laws as anybody else does. They are civilians after all.
If had a gun (I don't) and pointed it at somebody to intimidate them, even if they were trying to break into my house, I could get in trouble for "brandishing". Yet civilian police pull their guns out and point them at people all the time.
The can't believe that we allow these people can put themselves into a position where they're deciding if they're going to kill you or not, and the mere press of a small lever on their hand KILLS YOU and that this is just considered okay...
When it comes to the use of deadly force, the same laws apply to police as everyone else. There has to be a reasonable belief that there is an imminent threat of death or gross bodily injury. If someone is pointing a gun at you, you don't have to let them shoot you first before you can defend yourself.
Police are not you or I in the context of social roles. They fulfill a particular function in society while on duty that you and I don't. They tend to deal with dangerous people.
People must do exactly as they're told when dealing with the police to minimize uncertainty and confusion.
An officer pulling a gun on someone is not equivalent in any way to a civilian doing the same thing. Officers are empowered by society to enforce the law so we don't have to. That necessitates displaying - and sometimes using - force.
If it's clear that someone presents an immediate mortal danger to others and refuses to comply with orders given to them then the police are justified in acting with force.
> If it's clear that someone presents an immediate mortal danger to others
Yeah, and that's where your argument hits a brick wall. Yes, if someone presents an immediate mortal danger, then force can be justified. If you see that video, he is reaching for the waistband of his pajamas and following directions.
Even in the event that he had a pistol stashed in the elastic of his pajamas, you have multiple officers who already are in the drawn position, ready to fire, whereas he has to pull it out, aim, etc.
You have a far lower bar for "clear presentation of immediate mortal danger" than most people here - and you seem to believe that's our failing, not yours.
> People must do exactly as they're told when dealing with the police to minimize uncertainty and confusion.
You mean like the multiple incidents where we see two police officers yelling contradictory statements? "Hands behind your head, turn around!" "Get on your stomach!" and one of the officers believes he is in mortal danger because the suspect is, in effect, obeying the other officers instruction, and not his?
Is the policeman who killed an unarmed man at his house going to be charged? Ideally this wouldn't be a rhetorical question.
How long until the police give themselves the right to kill someone annoying by anonymously phoning in a warning then making sure they're amongst the ones who turn up?
This was my immediate reaction. My guess is that the blame and punishment will all be laser focused on the caller, in an attempt to avoid a public outcry for the actual shooter’s head. That cop shouldn’t be on administrative leave, he should be in jail for murder.
I do think the caller should be convicted of murder. I'm not sure exactly which charge would be most appropriate for someone who deliberately created a situation in which someone could be killed, and they were. Ah — from the Wikipedia page [0] it looks like felony murder is the right charge. It's certainly at least involuntary manslaughter.
I do agree with you, though, that a close look should be taken at the shooter and the situation with an eye toward possibly charging the shooter. I do think that in general, police in many parts of the US are too insulated from the consequences of such decisions. I'm not completely sure, though, based on this article, that I would consider the officer culpable. Police are trained to react quickly and to protect one another. The description here does leave me with the sense, however, that the one who fired may not have had a particularly good view of what the victim was doing. Arguably there is a systemic problem that when there are many officers, all with different and incomplete views of the situation, the odds of one thinking that something is going on that justifies opening fire get to be unacceptably high.
Anyway I do hope you're not suggesting that the shooter's responsibility somehow mitigates that of the caller.
ETA: Ah, I didn't know there was body cam footage we could see [1]. Okay, I have to agree with you, this looks pretty damning. There were no officers within easy target range of the victim; the shot was taken from well across the street. Even if the victim had been pulling out a gun, unless he's a Clint Eastwood character, he's going to have to take a second or two to aim it to have any chance of hitting anyone at that distance. It was not necessary to fire that quickly. I have to qualify this by saying I'm no firearms expert, but that's how it looks to me.
>I'm not completely sure, though, based on this article, that I would consider the officer culpable. Police are trained to react quickly and to protect one another.
If being trained to “react quickly” involves shooting people when they are not 100% sure the person has a weapon, then they are being trained to commit murder. That will likely be an aspect of the inevitable lawsuit against the police in this incident. But the mere fact that they were trained to commit murder does not absolve individual officers of criminal responsibility when they actually murder someone.
>Anyway I do hope you're not suggesting that the shooter's responsibility somehow mitigates that of the caller.
> the mere fact that they were trained to commit murder does not absolve individual officers of criminal responsibility when they actually murder someone
I don't think I can agree with this. Police departments have policies for when officers should and should not shoot at people. In cases where the policy was followed, I think we have to say that relieves the individual of responsibility.
In this instance, of course I don't know whether the shooting was according to policy. And of course I hope, and expect, that it wasn't. But if it was, then it's the policy that has to change first.
But the mere fact that they were trained to commit murder does not absolve individual officers of criminal responsibility when they actually murder someone.
It also has psychological repercussions, where anybody who's not cop nor family is expendable by default. What is it like for a cop trained in this way to visit a mall?
The information available is that the victim was unarmed and not moving towards any of the officers. He raised and lowered his hands a few times. Not one account, even the officer who shot the person, indicates the man was behaving violently towards anyone. If it weren't a police officer that did it odds are the shooter would be in jail pending some charge related to homicide but not whatever that district's version of pre-meditated murder is. The only difference in this case is it is an officer, and they get special treatment in the US because our justice system is garbage.
I know, why even bother with a trial? We've all read the news accounts, let's string him up! /s
So due process is one concern here, but also, my concern here is more about the fucked up system we have. Is it reasonable to create a broken system, heavily arm cops, train them poorly, get them hyped up, and send them off with bad intel into (what they believe is) an incredibly high-stakes / high-stress environment, and then when one of them makes a human mistake that anyone could make in that situation, toss them in jail and throw away the key?
>I know, why even bother with a trial? We've all read the news accounts, let's string him up!
They have the weapon he fired, police body cam footage, the bullet, and the fact that there was no weapon on the victim, which means the cop did not see a weapon. So he just fired because the guy put his hands down and then obeyed commands to put them back up, which last I heard was not on the list of causes for justifiable homicide. This wasn’t a “mistake that anyone could make”. You don’t shoot guns at people unless they have a gun and are about to shoot at you, even if you happen to wear a badge.
So yes, tossing him in jail and for a long time seems like the appropriate outcome in light of the evidence.
Yeah, that’s not how due process works. You don’t know what happened or what the evidence is. And from your responses, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you have no law enforcement experience or training. Sorry, but the outrage you feel upon reading a few news stories online is vastly insufficient to imprison another human.
You’re talking about simple mob justice, that’s all.
It's too bad you can't work up this level of sanctimony on behalf of the innocent dead guy.
We have quite a lot of information and evidence already, and while our conclusions must necessarily be tentative we are absolutely entitled to form a preliminary impression.
The issue is that the officer is not facing a trial. No chance for due process because the people are not bringing a case, so it doesn't matter what the evidence is.
These poor helpless cops! Next you'll be asking them to exercise the same level of reason and common sense as civilians! OK, I get that you're saying they're sort of pre-emptively traumatized by their training and socialization and I partly agree, but in saying that you're implicitly also saying they have less responsibility than civilians with no training, which is an inherently self-defeating position.
Look, in this situation they're armed, covered, and have a strong numerical advantage etc. etc. etc. and you're offering a panic defense. If I was to rely on my anxiety level to govern my conduct I'd have killed 30 or 40 people by now.
Should cops have to wait until they are actually being gunned down before they can use force to protect themselves? What happened was an absolute tragedy, and every measure should be taken to avoid anything like that ever happening again. The shooting was not justified, and cops need better training, non-lethal options must be expanded, penalties for this kind of "prank" must be made harsher. Everyone agrees on that. But to call the cop a murderer, as if he had executed someone he knew was innocent, just for fun, that's not right either. Cops face actual murdering psychos on a daily basis, and must be able to respond to how the situation looks at the time. Again, not trying to justify the shooting, but trying to encourage a more nuanced perspective.
Isn't it like that in many countries? Do not fire unless fired upon? It's also a common rule of engagement for many militaries deployed in Afganistan, Iraq or other 'dangerous places'.
Statistically, policing is nowhere near top dangerous occupations in USA. And most causalities are from traffic accidents. It is safer and safer every year. So maybe they could give some of that safety to public too.
There is such a thing as exaggerating risks and you are doing that now.
Non trained members of public are expected to keep perfect calm and control. It makes Bo sense that expectations on random Johny are higher then those on trained cops.
> Should cops have to wait until they are actually being gunned down before they can use force to protect themselves?
If the only information you are operating off is an unconfirmed civilian report, I don't think that's entirely unreasonable. At the very least, they should be 100% certain that the suspect has a weapon - the police should act at a far higher standard than "feared the male pulled a weapon from his waistband".
IMO, the police should be there for the protection of society as a whole, but _sometimes_ (far from all of the time) act as if they are just protecting themselves over and above that/at all costs.
yes, they should see a weapon produced and in the process of being aimed for firing. they are already pointing their arms at the "suspect" and all that is required to complete the firing process is to pull the trigger.
In America, due a culture of police impunity, (the cop rarely goes to jail or even faces trial, and is often even acquitted in cut-n-dried cases like Shaver.) the police officer has been trained to value their lives as higher than the lives of civilians.
this is wrong.
yes, i completely expect to see an actual weapon produced before a shooter commences.
this is the standard most millitary forces follow IN ACTUAL WARZONES, so no, I think it is 100% reasonable to ask the police to follow the same standard.
The gamer knowingly made a statement inciting violence at the victim. I would say that's more of the problem and should be categorized as the murderer. Being a shithead troll gamer shouldn't mean you are insulated from conviction over the officer.
If you read the reports, he didn't kill anybody, he "discharged his firearm." It's like blowing your nose, really. Or an excited puppy relieving itself.
Having unfortunately seen a police body cam video of an obviously unarmed man being shot, and having read about this one, it seems to be a case of men hitching their trousers up because they aren’t wearing a belt, being mistaken for reaching for a gun.
This is a normal thing, it’s an unconscious thing, we do it without thinking so can’t stop when told not to do it. People should not die because they’re wearing loose fitting trousers.
Americans need to be doing more about their fellow citizens being murdered by the people supposed to protect them.
Promote the view that you do not deserve to get instantly killed just because you are a criminal, even if you are violent. Because many people believe this is fine, they seem to accept "mistakes" where a non-criminal is killed as collateral damage. But neither is reasonable in a civilized society.
People should still be able to own guns, but they should need a valid reason (such as hunting or farming). Shooting people (this includes self defence) should not qualify as a valid reason.
This is how it works in most developed nations with sometimes quite high rates of gun ownership (0.2+ per capita) but without the endemic gun violence of the US. It's worth noting that these sorts of restrictions effectively rule out ownership of handguns - and concealed handguns (real or imagined) seem to play a major role in most police shootings of innocent people in the US.
Agreed. If there were far fewer guns, Police wouldn't be assuming a concealed weapon anywhere near as much as they do now.
I think Police training needs to be changed significantly as well though. Training Police to de-escalate situations, and to deal with normal people who are scared, in danger, and unpredictable but not malicious - this is the significant majority.
Police in America seem to act like soldiers, and forget that the people in front of them deserve protection as much as everyone else, not least because they are innocent until proven guilty in a court.
I'm glad this person is an adult located in the U.S. Hopefully this makes for swift and severe justice.
I'm sad to learn the victim was the father of two children.
And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening.
I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position where police are pointing guns at me and shouting instructions, I expect I will be shot. I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that.
>" I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that."
Watching the video of the shooting in the hotel hallway a few days ago, I think that the answer is just go to the floor with your hands visible and don't move, never mind what they say.
I think there is a training problem. For instance, in that video, they control the situation using fear, that it's, I think, the correct thing to do. But then, when they guy is trying to comply with everything, almost crying and obviously confused, instead of trying to calm him, they keep scaring him.
When they shoot, they shoot five times, five times in a hotel hallway. It's like they are trained for war or even video-games instead of police action.
That video, among all that I've had the misfortune of viewing, is the one that has most resonated - and scared - me, because it's one I can so easily see myself being in. White. Drunk. In a hotel. Throughly confused and scared. That's me.
Yes, I can get on the floor and not move. But I have absolutely no faith that "do nothing" won't also get me killed for, as the other person mentioned, disobeying orders.
> But then, when they guy is trying to comply with everything, almost crying and obviously confused, instead of trying to calm him, they keep scaring him.
This is partially why one of the emphases of British policing is de-escalation (even backing away if you have to), which I will grant is _far_ easier when neither side is likely to have firearms (though the same principles are used by firearms officers). Backing your suspect into a corner, or unduly pressuring them, helps neither side.
> Watching the video of the shooting in the hotel hallway a few days ago, I think that the answer is just go to the floor with your hands visible and don't move, never mind what they say.
> I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that.
Nothing, it seems. If you find yourself in that situation, it's a roll of the dice whether you're getting a jumpy or stressed-out cop who'll end up shooting you no matter what, and having no hearing issues probably won't help as stumbling, twitching or otherwise being confused by contradictory orders will get you shot anyway.
In the long term, probably fighting for the demilitarisation of your local precinct and the shutdown of all these bullshit "SWAT units", in the short term… wearing a bulletproof vest when answering the door?
Sad as it is, the suggestion was serious, and one of the things I considered if I ever had to live in the US.
> Of course, the vest is probably visible and would be perceived as a threat.
There are concealable vests (for undercover officers) which are significantly less noticeable than the classic "tactical" vest. I don't know how easy it is to access them without being an undercover LEO though, they need to be measured and fitted to your body specs.
Most people shot in the US are already involved in a problem beforehand. You're not at much risk as a stranger. Death by driving or overeating are more realistic risks in the US. It's like worrying about terrorism. It really does only happen to other people.
As a person with good hearing I’m wondering what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this to avoid getting killed.
Anyone know of any stats on the military service experiences of these shooter cops? Possible ptsd? Is this fear the officer had just the result of police training or was he dodging IEDs in Iraq? I’m just curious. And WTF is it with “gamers?”
I wonder why you are being down voted? Many military guys have served in way more dangerous places while observing in many situation rules like do not fire unless fired upon etc.
I wondered the same thing! But didn't bring it up since complaining about votes is frowned upon. But I really was puzzled. Is it that controversial of a statement/question? I don't see it.
> Perhaps one answer here is to require military service before becoming a police officer.
People will protest even more loudly over "police militarization" and not without some justification. Beyond that, it reduces the supply of police officers to people willing to serve in the military and then become police officers afterward instead of some other career.
> And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening.
I can understand that, but I recommend caution when it comes to judgement. Combat is every bit as technical as system architecture, and I think it requires related experience to judge fairly. Movies prepare you to critique a fighter about as well as they prepare you to critique a system security posture. Which is to say, not at all.
The best way to understand why police react the way they do is get a little experience with the real thing: watch footage of actual confrontations. Here are some examples:
Combat is fast. When someone makes a sudden move, you have to react immediately or you will lose.
I'm mad that this went down the way it did, too, but from the description, it is very understandable. It is tragic that people with no combat background just don't understand what looks threatening and why. You'd no doubt consider it foolhardy to point an airsoft pistol at a policeman, but probably don't understand that a movement that could be a fast concealed weapon draw is just as threatening.
I do a little martial arts, and we train that if someone is hiding their hand, assume it contains a knife or gun. If you have your hand behind you or in your pocket and move it fast, I have to react as if it's an attack, as that's the only way to avoid it. It takes too long to identify a weapon.
Look at some videos of knife attacks, for example:
They are fast and sudden. The only way you can hope to defend them is to assume a hand you don't see is about to hit you with a knife.
Which is why police are jumpy. This is the environment they work in and what they train for. If your day to day life involves no violence, your ideas about what's reasonable in that context don't come from applicable experience.
> I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position where police are pointing guns at me and shouting instructions, I expect I will be shot. I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that.
Move slowly. Keep your hands very visible and very obviously empty. Even if you can't hear the officer's commands, moving slowly and keeping your hands visible will keep you from appearing suddenly threatening, which should let you get the situation sorted out.
I can't help you if you run into a policeman who is a bully, but most of these tragedies are misunderstandings between good people. The very best way to avoid that is to do everything slowly and deliberately. Don't panic. Just move slowly and carefully. Pretend the cop is a dinosaur or something and sudden movement will provoke him.
This is true, if you think in terms of "behavior required to win in a fight against someone who ambushes you with intent to kill." Action beats reaction. And there's no way to maintain both your behavior and the situation of every encounter, all tens of thousands of them per officer across every officer in the country in such a way that you're safe against someone like the attackers in those videos. It can't happen.
Most people don't have combat background. They come in a range of IQs, a range of behavioral disorders, of intoxication of various means, of absurd beliefs and paranoias and irrationalities and mental health disorders. They are unpredictable and unreliable and don't use their turn signals let alone follow spot-on perfect form in an unexpected situation with adrenaline pumping.
As a result, almost everyone shot by police will have done something to "justify" it by the standard of behavior you have here. Since police usually are called on someone who is engaged in somewhat unsavory behavior (usually drug related,) it's really easy to paint the shooter in a negative light. A lot of people respond to a shooting incident with - "another lowlife, gangbanger, or meth-head, who cares?"
With cops on a hair trigger primed with videos of trained killers ambushing fellow police, any incident where a police officer gets scared for any reason could lead to your death.
What this video and incident shows is that this is still true for your average Joe with no drugs and no reason to be connected to the police in any way. This is no less true for many people who were shot and killed as the result of a traffic stop or a drug bust - they didn't necessarily deserve to be killed, their death is no less tragic - it's just less evident.
Movies prepare you to critique a fighter about as well as [..]
That's a pretty patronizing assumption to make about the many and various people you're discussing this with. I've been in a lot of violent situations, including armed ones, and I think your rationalizations are facile, to put it mildly.
I do a little martial arts
OK...
Look at some videos of knife attacks, for example:
In the first one the guy was astonished to be attacked at all, and it's obvious that he knew his attacker, who was equally obviously not a professional criminal. It's not relevant to this context. I could talk about defensibility against his physical attack too but I think it's sort of pointless to write text descriptions for a general audience.
The behavior in the second video is suspicious, defensible, relies on a distraction tactic, and it's notable that the soldier actually deflects the attack successfully. It's hard to tell whether the attacked was subsequently shot by one of the other soldiers or stabbed with his own weapon by the soldier who took him to the ground, but I think this actually showcases the difference between being prepared to handle violence and being jumpy, which means you're not well-prepared.
I realize you're trying to make a positive contribution but would urge you to take your own advice about not overestimating your insight.
No, this makes no sense at all. This is a skit from Dwight of The Office.
The guy is standing fully exposed in the open, blinded by light while a bunch of cops have taken cover behind their cars and are aiming their guns at him. What kind of gun is he going to pull out, aim and shoot and have any chance of hitting anything but a tree.
This. The burden should be on the few police to be trained well enough to recognize body language, not on the mass population to train how to avoid being shot.
I don't entirely agree. There are lots of situations you have to learn how to navigate safely in society. How to use a crosswalk. How to address a judge. How to prevent house fires.
I think putting the burden of citizen safety 100% on police is like putting the burden of pedestrian safety 100% on cars. Yeah, the driver has greater responsibility and is held to a higher standard of caution... but this sort of thing really is a lot more practical if people know to stay on sidewalks.
I for one want to have police in society, and I want them to be able to deal with very dangerous and violent people as safely as they can. I think needing to know how to safely surrender to them if they mistake me for a dangerous person is a reasonable price to pay.
I don't understand this whole "I shouldn't need to know" perspective. Of course you need to know. Police are part of society, and so we need to understand how to be around them.
>I think putting the burden of citizen safety 100% on police is like putting the burden of pedestrian safety 100% on cars. Yeah, the driver has greater responsibility and is held to a higher standard of caution... but this sort of thing really is a lot more practical if people know to stay on sidewalks.
This doesn't make any sense. Many pedestrians are drivers at other points in time. They have some idea of what to expect when they're on the other side of the coin. It's not a good analogy.
>don't understand this whole "I shouldn't need to know" perspective. Of course you need to know. Police are part of society, and so we need to understand how to be around them.
Of course one should know that it is a good idea to obey instructions from a police officer. Beyond that, it is difficult for the average person to figure out how to act appropriately in a stressful situation that could possibly end in death if some gesture is interpreted in an unexpected fashion by a trained officer. You cannot train the general populace to tackle something like this! At least not at any reasonable scale, especially when different police officers have different standards for what constitutes dangerous behavior. It is incumbent on authorities to make sure that they train their officers appropriately to behave in a way that deescalates interactions with the civilian population.
Your points are valid, but don't apply to this scenario, where the police had his home surrounded and were safe behind their barriers. If he reached for something, they could have remained behind those barriers and observed with a video camera to monitor compliance.
except that you, and 6 colleagues, have your service arms drawn and aimed, requiring only a trigger-pull to kill a person- and are well out of reach of a knife.
then there is the notion that the LEO chose to take a job with an oath to protect and serve US, the society, the people. and here this person is putting their own lifes value so much higher than others that they are unwilling to even wait to visually identify an arm prior to shooting. that is wrong. that is wrong on so many levels.
the onus is always on the police officers to manage the situation, and what we have here is a culture of police violence encourage by IMPUNITY. The cop get's acquitted or never goes to trial, getting paid administrative leave or whatever... the family loses a person, never to roam the earth again, and all due to some shitty training and false premises being taught.
I have had it up to here with the notion that the civilian populace, including deaf and blind people, are supposed to accomodate a police force that will shoot them so casually for, and in fact are even unable to stay alive when complying with orders, as in the case of several recent high profile cases.
Make no mistake, the "swatter" has committed a crime of violence and should do hard time, but it's high time we stood up against this culture of police WICKEDNESS and reformed it.
> most of these tragedies are misunderstandings between good people
In many of these cases, including but definitely not limited the hallway video, the "good person" with the gun failed to communicate with their terrified victim, and failed to handle the situation responsibly. They have the gun, they have the badge, they supposedly have the training, and they have the goddamn responsibility.
Until police - yes, police - get their shit together they will continue to murder civilians across the country, all while apologists who've taken a karate class come in and start lecturing the general public about the nature of violence.
At what point does the average citizen look at "SWAT death as an option for what could happen to me today" and think, 'well .. this is okay'?
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but there has to be real moment of respect for the fact that Americans are living in a "dial-a-death" state of existence.
This is something that many, many social commentators have warned us of, over the decades: the signs of a Police State.
Sure, American. Most likely you are aware of the nature of law enforcement.
But for those of us observing things from places where such actions as this are a real, honest, facet of the past history: this shit is scary.
Like, come on. A rational society allows this?
Please fork, reboot, and continuously deploy these notions of freedom under the protection of violent force. This is a paradox which is delivering injustice, broad and wide, instead of narrow and thin. A moment of disgrace.
In what kind of society does someone call 911, pretending to be homocidal, telling them they are pointing a gun at their wife and child, that they poured gasoline throughout the house, and are going to burn it down?
The fact is there are people that really do this and someone needs to respond.
The other fact is that other people think it’s funny, or a good way to get revenge on someone, by calling in a police force to invade their home.
Every society has assholes, monsters and others with perverted senses of humor. One very simple objective of a civilized society is to ensure that such people cannot exploit state sponsored violence to hurt people they don't like. The problem here is that the US system is seriously flawed.
I think there are plenty of societies which would not have responded to this incident with violent force, and would have checked themselves before they wrecked themselves as a consequence of normal, functioning, day-to-day job responsibilities.
The officers failed because the event horizon for each and every one of them was set way, way too high. Before you assume the caller was right, you verify. This thing of "arming for the absolute worst that could happen" is a direct consequence of the rest of society, being allowed to actually procure and apply the weapons of mayhem and crime, to other "innocent citizens".
A kid died tonight. It was because there was a tool of violence in the hands of another kid.
> At what point does the average citizen look at "SWAT death as an option for what could happen to me today" and think, 'well .. this is okay'?
The average citizen saw 20 1st-graders being shot 5 years and 2 weeks ago and decided it was OK with that. Citizens weaponising police (I have a hard time calling that law enforcement) against other citizens barely even ranks.
So you are saying the event horizon for police brutality is closer than that of the citizens willingness to move the goalpost for how violent things should/could/can be?
Yeah, the point is, we are really, really beyond the point where something legitimately real, and not just apathetic, should be done about this shit.
Citizens need to start asking for disarmament: of themselves, and others. We do not need a society which puts the implements of death and destruction above .. well .. themselves.
Nothing we can do on HN will change this. But wouldn't it be an interesting thought experiment to find some real, rational, applicable means of reducing these kinds of incidents?
To me, as a technologist, this is a problem that can be solved, "can" being the key word.
> So you are saying the event horizon for police brutality is closer than that of the citizens willingness to move the goalpost for how violent things should/could/can be?
I would say so yes, if you mean that I put the "police brutality" bar lower than the "citizen on citizen" brutality (assuming levels go up).
> To me, as a technologist, this is a problem that can be solved, "can" being the key word.
Of course it can, other countries have done so in the past, the issue has never been about ability, always will. And in the US specifically, the ability to shoot other people has always been a privilege, only to be relinquished if the "wrong" people move towards accessing it.
Every time that subject comes up, I wonder whether the fastest way to get nationwide gun buyback & control in the US would be to have a program massively train and (legally) arm black communities. After all, that's pretty much how gun control passed in Cali, authored by a republican, with support of the NRA, signed by a republican governor who stated
> no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons
and that guns were a
> ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.
The principal issue is: why was an unarmed
man shot on his doorstep by the police.
This focus conveniently absolves the police
of wrong doing; e.g. "if someone didn't call
in a problem, no one would be dead".
The excuse used in this case what that it looked like he was pulling a gun from his waistband. It is conveniently difficult to disprove this unless his hands are already high in the air. So basically he was shot on sight.
Having seen the video, it looked more like he was trying to shield his eyes from the light the police was shining directly at him _from across the street_. I don't know why this isn't reported more accurately, they shot the guy from what looks like a good 20-30 meters away.
Yea, they wouldn't say that, because obviously it's not acceptable to shoot someone for moving their hands further up, but these days up is often down.
Right, I said "ostensibly" above, but the cynic in me thinks, "the police got ahead of the narrative by saying he moved first". I don't really know what happened (other than a person got shot by the police when they absolutely should not have).
"When confronted by a police officer,
you must keep your hands up or on the drivers
wheel at all times."
This seems to be the new reflex we must learn
and practice? Perhaps the rule should be
codified so that officers know they can't
ask you to do anything else with your hands.
People have been shot while complying with
a request, ie, getting car registration from
the glove compartment or moving closer to the
officer by crawling. Just because one officer
gives a command does not mean that another
officer heard it.
Since this is a life or death sort of reflex,
perhaps we must be teaching/practicing in elementary
school and refreshers as part of drivers training.
You're totally right, however, things get really difficult when the police are barking difficult to follow orders at you. Just watch the Daniel Shaver video. The guy tried his best to comply and then was murdered for no reason.
This is actually a conversation many parents have with their kids. They teach to always be polite to police, no matter what they are saying to you, and to always, always, make sure they can see your hands.
One thing with all of this which puzzles me as a non-American, how does the "acceptance" of people getting killed by the police fit together with the whole anti-gorvernment thing which seems fairly common in the US as well?
One would think that if one does not like the government, one would be extremely upset about the gouvernment randomly killing people. But for some reason this does not seem to be the case.
I guess similar things could be said about gun ownership/self-defence argument etc. I guess if one decides to shoot back at the police one is truly screwed?
One thing with all of this which puzzles me as a non-American, how does the "acceptance" of people getting killed by the police fit together with the whole anti-gorvernment thing which seems fairly common in the US as well?
One would think that if one does not like the government, one would be extremely upset about the gouvernment randomly killing people. But for some reason this does not seem to be the case.
It's a good question. As a half-American with something of a background in political science, let me offer the following.
The free market liberal ideas, mixed with a sort of pioneer spirit that historically existed here (and still in much of the rural areas of the U.S.), carry with it an arguably consistent ideology:
- Independence from government in the realm of strong market regulations, price controls and so forth, particularly property rights.
- A government whose role is to minimize taxation but to protect said property rights.
It's a logical fact that you can't protect property rights without violence, due to the unequal nature of property ownership and the class system that comes from it. Historically, police start to make an appearance in such societies, as it makes more sense to have the State perform this activity than have each individual hire or join their own private militias or pay protection money to some organization.
That's the best way I can think to explain this discrepancy, which to a European sounds totally contradictory. You say you don't like the State's influence, but when the State does the worst it can do, kill citizens, you do nothing?
It has to do with free market capitalism not existing without a state having basic functions: protection from external threats at the national level, and enforcement of property rights via a legal system and an enforcer of this legal system. I.e. Police.
I have long pondered this also. I don't have a great answer for you, sadly. I have come to decide that there are many factors involved:
1. People want to feel safe, and for a long time (and still in many small towns) police were/are viewed as protectors and people that will help you when you've been wronged by another. Because of this they are willing to give benefit of the doubt, even when it isn't justified. I've seen some of these people starting to come around actually, especially after that nurse at the hospital in Utah.
2. Many people aren't actually all that anti-government. I've come to believe that only about 10% of the population here actually is. A surprising number of people vote for and continue to vote for politicians that just continue to grow the size and power of government. They support government control over things as long as it doesn't affect them. They also like to stick their nose in other's business, and then using the government to force that person to live the way they think they should.
Those are some random thoughts, and could be completely wrong, so take with a heap of salt :-)
As partially libertarian, I am appalled at the police for this. Even though police is necessary to enforce private property, life and liberty, that doesn't mean they get to do whatever. They have to be responsible. Cops are citizens employees, they are servants for the general public.
In an intuitive sense, the cops can be improved if politicians worked on legal reform for cops. But instead, they squabble over israel, buying new military planes, government shutdown, elections, etc etc etc. The more things the government does, the worse it does all of them.
It makes sense if you realize that actual voices in our so-called-democracy are drowned out by people who have power/money and extremists (who are often funded by the former).
In an oligarchy, your opinion doesn't count unless you have money.
Most of the comments have to do with the police interaction. My question is, what can be done to discourage swatting?
My reflex reaction is to give everyone involved long prison sentences, and some aggressive prosecution of other incidents, so that people tempted to engage in swatting are discouraged by some realistic chance of doing real prison time for doing something so reckless and stupid.
The guy who made the call was fairly unconcerned about the prospect of real punishment when he was interviewed a few hours before he was arrested.[1] His voice tone during the call was also fairly flat.[2]
Normally I'd agree but the US already has the largest prison population in the world. By far. We are obsessed with long and lengthy prison sentences even for the most minuscule non-victim offenses i.e. 20 years for pot possession (meanwhile armed robbers get 3-5 years). Terms like "mandatory minimum" and "zero tolerance" get thrown around by politicians like it's candy to get themselves elected, with little to no regard from the general public on the monetary and psychological costs (although the private prison industry and the cottage industries around it stand to make big bucks).
A solution to all of this is to eliminate victimless crimes, hold police accountable when they mess up, and switch to more of a house arrest model for crimes like this. Force the prankster to pay restitution to the victim's family. Make him work it off with 1000s of hours of community service if needed. But let's quit crowding prisons at taxpayer expense.
What restitution can there be in this case? Nothing can compensate this person for the loss of their life, or the two children who will grow up without a father. The guy who made the false report had done so previously with a bomb threat, and showed no remorse. How can this person ever be trusted to rejoin society? How can the victims be restored by the justice system? Neither is realistic. Short of a death penalty, the only outcome is to put the guy in jail for a long time.
The point is that "jail" shouldn't be the default punishment for every criminal act. There are lots of ways you can punish people. Take away his ability to game for 20 years and make him pay one million to the family, worked off over a number of years. America is locking up people at an alarming rate, when alternative more cost-effective punishments are available.
I will never, ever be able to accept that it is ok for the police to shoot a person who they do not see carrying a weapon. There is no circumstance in which you can say you feared for your life if you did not see a weapon. And if you legitimately did fear for your life when you didn't see a weapon then maybe you shouldn't be a police officer.
It doesn't take a weapon to kill someone. A rather infamous example in recent years is the death of Eric Gardner. Deadly force is deadly force—regardless of the form it comes in.
Stories like this is going to make every encounter with a cop a lot more frightening for me.
As a teenager I was once yelled out by undercover cops that came out of no where. They yelled at me to "not put your hands in my pocket" or "put my hands up"... I really do not recall the exact words. I instinctively put my hands in my pocket. I couldn't help it, I do not think I even processed what they said. Luckily they didn't shoot but they were mad and warned that I could have been shot. I really do not understand how they expect people to understand them when they are yelling and surprise the sh!t out of you.
One of two times I've had police point their guns at me I was pulled over while driving my father's car. I opened the glove box when asked for license and registration and unbeknownst to me there was a Swiss army knife in there. Both officers unholstered their guns and the one at my window told me to slowly remove the knife from the glove box, but as soon as I touched it the other officer on the passenger side immediately yelled at me to "drop it!" Fortunately there were only two of them and after that they managed to get on the same page and avoid shooting me. The other time I was smoking marijuana from a pipe immediately after surviving a serious collision, I assume the guns were because they were mad they wouldn't be able to prove I was high during the accident (I wasn't).
The victim really does make a fairly unfortunate movement right before he's shot. Still I'm hardly in a position to say how far this mitigates the shooter.
The only thing the man could've pulled was a pistol from his waistband. The police were across the streets behind cars already aiming guns at the guy. They should be trained to wait until the person actually raises the pistol to fire before discharging. At that distance and with the cover they had I don't see how the guy could fire a shot and hit a cop before they could. I don't see how anyone can argue the cop was in any danger even if the guy had a pistol. Unfortunately, the cop only has to say he felt threatened and he thought the guy had a gun and he'll get off on any charges.
Couple things are clear:
1. Police took shelter behind cars, outside of handgun range, but within the range of their own rifles.
2. The victim clearly didn't carry a rifle, or any weapon with a range that can threaten the police
3. The police didn't know if the victim, who was being shouted at and shined at with high beam and confused, was the supposed hostage or hostage taker, and shot him anyways.
It's a fuckup, and the police should serve better.
What if person who made a call is outside of US? Or we are unable to track it? Who are we going to blame then?
The "911" seems like an open line for terrorists or some other nation to kill anybody they want... Or terrorize anybody they want...
I wonder how it can be fixed. Some things seem to be going in the right direction, for example gun ownership is on the decline (from 47 % of households owning gun in 1971 to 31% in 2014 http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun... ) .
However the number of guns keeps increasing, so it looks like some people are stockpiling. Nonetheless if gun ownership continues to decrease they will be marginalized.
At the same time, police is very violent and its militarization is a sad, messed up, joke.
And violent deaths in the USA are still an order of magnitude higher than those of other developed countries.
Americans are all about freedom and equality, but having a police force who can almost arbitrarily kill you and with little consequence sounds like neither. In fact, it's not very different from how the Chinese government can disappear or jail you without retribution if you criticize the CCP, although Americans will undoubtedly loathe the comparison. The Chinese system sounds worse because it's lawful evil if you will, but at least there's a simple if degrading mechanism to avoid being a casualty, while the chaotic evilness of the US system means you could be dead tomorrow by no fault of your own just like the father of two—no, sorry, the "male", better term to convey aggression and justify the shooting—in this story.
As you said, this is part of the American culture, and part of a circle of violence that includes NRA lobbying, widespread gun ownership, mass incarceration, macho cop culture, politically motivated toughness on crime, the War on Drugs, etc. This will take decades to unravel at best, so I'm not holding my breath, just like I'm not holding my breath for the CCP to allow free speech anytime soon.
And what would that make the US police forces look like? To me, as an European, it makes them look like a weapon, which you can conjure by a simple phone-call. It doesn't have to be like this.
It is a weapon effectively. Psychopaths and criminals will not hesitate to use it. During Communist times in Soviet Union same thing could happen if a neighbor denounced you for spreading anti-government propaganda, while say in reality they just didn't like your sheep grazing too close to the fence. Families ended up disappearing overnight because of it.
It is basically using the irrationality of a power structure as leverage.
(As another European) it's hard to see any alternative for regular people whose profession just happens to put their life at almost permanent risk, thanks to the attitude toward guns over there.
I'm not sure if in Europe we'd react any different -- if you called the police to report an in-progress shooting, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar trigger-happy result emerged
As a guy originally from Ukraine that as you can imagine has a fairly big problem with availability of weapons at the moment that police officer would go to jail. Having much stricter rules on when and how weapons can be used looks like a good thing.
The risk of gun violence against police is completely blown out of proportion. Of the reported police gun deaths each year, the overwhelming majority are suicides. The biggest real risk to police in the US is vehicle accidents from driving recklessly. Being a police officer isn’t even in the top 10 most dangerous professions. On the other hand, over a thousand people are killed by police in the US each year without due process.
WTF is wrong with a full-grown 25-year-old man, who thinks it's funny to waste scarce taxpayer funded resources for his own amusement, because he had a petty argument with a virtual stranger when playing an online game?
Of course I'm not defending excessive use of police force, and the officer who fired the shot should be investigated too, but we need harsher penalties for swatting. The fact we have 400 cases per year [1] is unacceptable, and I hope these criminals go to jail for a long time.
He should got to jail but if any random idiot can get any random person killed by the police that is a Police problem as we can have different training and screening procedures for police officers but we sure as hell can not guarantee that there are no idiots with access to phones.
My point is: idiots with access to phones that do idiotic things should pay for the consequences of their acts -- regardless of how good or bad the police force is. In this case, an idiot caused the murder of an innocent man, and should pay for it, full stop. There's no ifs or buts.
Of course this doesn't precludes police from making honest mistakes - or also doing idiotic things - but hopefully will remove the incentives from idiots-with-phones and their 400 potentially-deadly pranks per year.
One thing does not exclude the other. But we can sure as hell eliminate the root cause by making an example of cases like this.
That's not the root cause. The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone. There are always going to be reasons for the police (or SWAT) to show up, especially with the war on drugs. And with the current environment, that means people dying. Of course, since most of the time it wasn't a SWAT call, and the person in question probably did have drugs, it's easier to totally blame the victim.
> The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone.
So how do you reduce the number of times the police shows up randomly at your doorstep? Four hundred times per year, more precisely?
That's the definition of "root cause".
I get it, this is HN after all, and most here feel outraged by police brutality, particularly in the US - myself included. But instead of putting the blame on police officers - who are trying to decide in a fraction of a second if their lives is at risk or it's just another stupid case of CoD gamers pranking each other - to me the blame should go squarely to the idiots causing it.
Why do you think blame has to be singular? both the Swatter and the officer who fired can be criminally liable. You can't 'pay' for something like this because you can't buy someone's life back after they're dead. You can make the Swatter suffer as a disincentive to others, but that won't eliminate the behavior any more than harsh penalties for other crimes can be shown to substantially lower crime. Many countries have far less severe penal regimens than the US and also lower levels of crime.
Swatting is easier and more popular in the US because police in this country are much more willing to rush into things.
As I said above: one thing does not exclude the other. They're BOTH liable for their acts.
Folks claiming "cops are murderers" without equally blaming the 400 idiots who did this intentionally to harm someone are letting their political bias cloud their judgement.
For context, here's the guy that (allegedly) caused it all [1]:
"Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks’ worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter — meaning he has claimed responsibility for a number of other recent false reports to the police."
"Among the recent hoaxes he’s taken credit for include a false report of a bomb threat at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that disrupted a high-profile public meeting on the net neutrality debate. Swautistic also has claimed responsibility for a hoax bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the Dallas Convention Center, and another bomb threat at a high school in Panama City, Fla, among others."
"Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he wrote. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.”
--
Lovely, isn't it?
Btw, Krebs' article [1] is excellent; wish it had being linked in the OP, instead of the local newspaper.
None is questioning that idiots have to be punished. But the problem is Idiots can be a) mentally ill b) From countries outside of US reach e.g. Russia, Iran etc. So having tough laws will have 0 deterrence in those cases. Considering we are on HN the current system is basically similar to having a website with no authentication that has a kill button that will result in death of any US person when pressed. Would you consider that an acceptable system?
He caused government to waste resourecs, not a murder, jesus. Are you so biased that you cant blame the police?
Lets say for the sake of argument he is conviced for ordering a murder. Who was the murderer in this case? This person should not be able to be convicted of murder unless the shooting cop is convicted of murder.
Literally nobody is saying the swatter is in any way justified so I don't know who you think you're arguing with. Harsher penalties for swatting aren't going to make the behavior go away because it's not that hard to do, or conceal, and the people who think it's fun aren't likely to be impressed by the rational incentives.
You can not change the world to get rid of idiots you sure as hell can screen police officers for psychological fitness and train them to apply force in much more reserved fashion.
The SWAT team should never be the first line of defense, unless pre-authorized by a warrant. They should only be involved after escalation from a normal police patrol, and should never be involved due to an anonymous tip.
The immediate reaction seems to be that the police are too militarized or not disciplined enough, but it's not clear to me that these claims apply in this situation.
Police militarization is a real problem when it happens for non-violent crimes. But this was thought to be a serious hostage situation, and I'm not sure there were a lot of good options here.
It seems like the police is trying to shift the blame 100% on the caller. He might be a terrible human being who deserves punishment, but indeed the sole responsibility lies with the police who pulled the trigger.
But yeah, instead of training for more people skills, let us give them more military-grade weapons.
To clarify, the arrested individual sells a swatting "service" [1]. One of the CoD players hired him to swat the other over a twitter argument. The other CoD player taunted the swatter and gave him a random address [2]. The police showed up at the address and killed an unrelated person.
Swatting should be considered domestic terrorism and not a prank. Just listening to the video describing the events and how many lies the caller provided to convince the police there was a hostage situation is sickening.
What when ISIS figure out this is the easiest way to terrorize people in US? What are we going to do then?
Luckily the ISIS followers are not so smart... But North Korean intelligence might pull something like this on a much larger scale. And target specific individuals.
If you want to solve the issue of over-militarization of civilian police and SWAT, replace their guns with something safer but still effective at quickly subduing threats.
Carfentanil gas smart bullets with auto & manual per-shot dose control (handled by the launcher/gun device) could be equally effective and slightly less dangerous.
I imagine that the decrease in medical costs would vastly outweigh the increase in weaponry costs.
I think of a lot of the replies here miss the point of why the police are in "such a hurry". Usually, they believe that the person has hostages that are in imminent danger. I'm sure there is a big component of macho gun buzz, but the fact that they're in a rush is an understandable component of the situation. That's why they don't sit in the car and try to have a chat with the "hostage taker".
Obviously, the fact that a random person can essentially order a taxpayer-funded death squad to an arbitrary home is a huge problem, and the people actually making those calls are only a small part of the problem.
The fact that these death squads are on the payroll sitting around bored waiting for "action" is an issue too.
However, I don't think it's as clear-cut as "don't kill anyone". I'd hate to be the guy with my life threatened while they cautiously announce their presence to my attacker.
What's missing is some basic "is there really a hostage situation going on here" step that I don't have the law enforcement knowledge to define.
> but the fact that they're in a rush is an understandable component of the situation
Eh. If I'm taking my engine company to a structure fire, we walk, we don't run. If it's a rescue situation, I still do a 360 around the structure to identify additional hazards (while my crew is setting up). That's a situation with people in verified imminent threat to life danger.
We work a patient in cardiac arrest. We have checklists. Even with this imminent threat to the patient's life, we will still at pertinent times, stop, and review those lists.
Charging in gung ho causes more problems than it solves.
If the hostage (if they existed) is going to be dead 10 seconds later, they're probably going to be dead the first time the suspect hears SWAT enter.
Similar to a fire or MVA - "you getting there 10 seconds or 30 seconds earlier is going to save a life on so few occasions, if ever, for a much greater risk".
Great take. So, I'm a relatively smart guy who tries to be fair to all parties. I think it's unlikely that I'm the only person who has this misunderstanding about these situations. I wonder how you make this dialog scale?
Also, I wonder how much the "another man is the enemy" component adds to it? I wonder if you take the type of person drawn to law enforcement (or even worse, SWAT) and add the lizard brain fuel of "this is a life or death competition with another man", how many of these outcomes are even the result of conscious decisions.
How much of the wisdom from those restrictive high speed pursuit laws could be re-applied here? They seem to have figured out that the officer will choose the competitive course in the moment instead of the right course, at too high a cost.
The video of the shooting was released, and you can tell from the video that, with the amount of interaction the police had with the victim, they can't really tell if he's the supposed hostage or the hostage taker. So even in the interest of rescue, the police fucked up big time.
This is a good point. In the interest of a constructive way to go forward, I think a "how can we make this better" process will save more lives than outrage. It's the outrage that the unions are so skilled at skirting.
This isn't exactly the first time this has happened, is it? We already have many review processes in train and it doesn't seem to be making a whole lot of difference, which is why people are outraged.
Here's the problem: you want to draft even more procedures and guidelines and checks and balances (even though we're already neck-deep in bureaucracy), while SWAT teams are guided by a philosophy of 'move fast and break things.'
Here's some actionable suggestions we can use right off the bat:
* ban police unions
* automatic trials for all homicides
* police shooters are isolate din protective custody
* SWAT team leaders are automatically retired from active duty whenever an innocent person is injured or killed
Really I think it's a bit insulting to innocent victims to be 'let's all calm down and have a review process' as if we haven't been through these questions hundreds o times already.
That's why they don't sit in the car and try to have a chat with the "hostage taker".
I dunno, it seems to work pretty well in a lot of other contexts. Interestingly enough, in a context where they're very sure about the danger/loss of life, police are just as likely to slow things down. When a terrorist shot up the Pulse Nightclub in Florida and killed a bunch of people police showed up and exchanged fire with him, but then when SWAT arrived they turned it into a hostage situation and spent >3 hours and carried on 3 phone calls with the guy, along with a number of failed entry attempts. Realistically several of the ~50 victims probably died while waiting on the police (I'd have to check all the autopsy reports to be sure, but it'd be pretty unlikely for them all to have died instantly at the time they were shot).
You construct a baseless premise that rushing things up is somehow going to result in a better outcome.
If anything taking things slowly, establishing communication and negotiating would have better chances. And that seems to be the standard procedure around the world.
- By contrast (to the US), national standards in most European countries conform to the European Convention on Human Rights, which impels its 47 signatories to permit only deadly force that is “absolutely necessary” to achieve a lawful purpose.
- Killings excused under America’s “reasonable belief” standards often violate Europe’s “absolute necessity” standards.
- In Europe, killing is considered unnecessary if alternatives exist. For example, national guidelines in Spain would have prescribed that Wilson incrementally pursue verbal warnings, warning shots, and shots at nonvital parts of the body before resorting to deadly force.
- In the US, only eight states require verbal warnings (when possible), while warning and leg shots are typically prohibited.
When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.
His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.
What I don't understand is (or rather do understand) - I know that it is freaking hard to hit anything with a handgun even at best conditions at 25m range, with two hand hold, preparation etc. Here there people are hidden behind cars, with hand rests for steady shooting, very big range for a handgun, in a dark and suspect is blinded with torches and not even in a shooting stance. Police of all people would know that they are 99.99% safe from any shooting he may do. This is pure bullshit from police side and clear abuse of power and it must be prosecuted accordingly.
PS: swatter is also an a55hole and a criminal of course (since he admitted doing it already).
In the video, police shouted from across the street while the man peeked out from the side of his doorway. It is unclear whether he knew the commands were for him. And did the yeller have lawful authority to order him out of the house?
I think I posted it here the last time some poor guy got gunned down by a swat team by mistake, but Radley Balko wrote a really good book about the history of how this kind of thing became commonplace in the states; Rise of the Warrior Cop. Fascinating read.
Do the police have to shoot to kill? Is it possible to aim somewhere else? Or shoot into the air? Also, I think in my country they are obligated to shout out "stop, I will shoot" or something to that effect.
Police don't shoot to kill. They shoot to stop the threat. That means aiming center mass (the chest) as it is the biggest target and the easiest to hit. Sometimes that means the person dies, but that's not the objective.
As someone who is very well versed in shooting, it would be insane to expect someone to hit a leg or arm of a suspect; especially with a pistol. That would lead to many stray rounds which stay lethal for up to a mile and can easily penetrate walls killing someone you did not intend to shoot.
Firearms are deadly force. The decision to use them is the decision to use deadly force. People can disagree with the use of deadly force. If deadly force is allowed, it still makes sense to make its application as precise and limited in scope as possible. Hollow points, compared with full metal jacketed bullets, reduce penetration, reducing shoot-throughs and the potential of injuring those who are not the target. They also increase the likelihood that a lower number of rounds will be needed to be effective. Limiting the number of rounds limits the time of the encounter and the number of rounds that potentially going to be off-target.
To be clear, there's a lot that should go into the decision to use deadly force, and it's one that should not be considered likely. People can disagree with when the decision is correctly made. Once it's made however, hollow-points are more effective than fully-jacketed rounds.
Then why do the militaries still use ball-ammunition?
Here's what I was told when I was in the service. The goal is to incapacitate the target, not to kill. From a military standpoint, incapacitation of targets causes additional burden to their sqaud-mates. It also demoralizes the enemy.
Weapons are used for many things, not just deadly force. They act as intimidation (warning shot), deterrence (visual presence) as well.
It seems that full metal jacket (ball) ammunition was adopted for technical reasons. The 1899 Hague Convention prohibited ammunition that flattened or expanded on impact, but did not require jacketing. [1]
You're right that firearms (weapons) can be used for many things. In the context of police work (or self defense), they are used for deadly force. The reason militaries use ball ammunition is (among other reasons such as those you mention) due to international conventions. For what it's worth, there are fully-jacketed rounds made to abide by these conventions yet still have many of the characteristics of hallow-point rounds. And you're right about incapacitation on the field of battle. You've pointed out a distinct difference between police work and self defense, and (some) military tactics.
Considerations like additional burden and demoralization are battle-field considerations: they're different from what police are typically involved in, where you want to remove an imminent or active threat to the public. (Just to reiterate, there are a lot of decisions that people can disagree about leading up to the decision to use deadly force in police work and whether that use was justified in any particular situation. That's not the discussion at hand here.)
Your examples of intimidation and deterrence are both indications that deadly force is available and willing to be applied. From the standpoint of brandishing, it doesn't matter what types of rounds are used. I'm not clear as to how often police actually fire warning shots, but if this is this case, they would be also be interested in ensuring the shot does not shoot through the intended target. (Shooting into the air is incredibly reckless and I can't imagine that's something police would be trained to do.)
Hollow points are designed to stay in the person you're shooting and stop the threat without over penetrating and hitting an innocent person behind the target. I understand they sound scary to people not familiar with guns but they are the safest option for everyone else around the person you are shooting.
Not using hollow points for defensive/police purposes would be insane.
I know nothing about bullets other than what one might deduce from elementary Newtonian physics, so this may be a stupid question.
To make a bullet not over penetrate you have to make it so all of its energy is spent in the target (or at least so much is spent in the target that if it does go all the way through it does not have enough left to cause serious injury to whatever it hits on the other side).
Hollow points do this by expanding in the target, so that they transfer energy much better than does a regular bullet that enters the target with the same energy.
Would it not be possible instead do design a gun and bullet system that shoots regular bullets, but at lower energy, so they don't need to be as effective at energy transfer as a hollow point in order to stop in the target?
Lower energy would mean either lower velocity, or lower mass, or both. Lower velocity means shorter range. So does lower mass [1]. Thus, lower energy bullets would have reduced range, but I would expect that would be acceptable in almost all police situations.
One drawback I see for lower energy bullets is that bullet resistant material would be more effective, and so in places where criminal wear such things they may need high energy bullets to allow for that (and so need solutions like hollow point to keep them from over penetrating when they use them on someone who is not wearing such material).
[1] because of air resistance. Think of trying to throw a ping pong ball and a steel ball bearing of the same size, at the same velocity...the ball bearing will go much farther.
The energy transfer into the target is roughly its "stopping power". The goal is to remove an imminent or active threat. Your newtonian physics intuition is correct: lower velocity and/or lower mass is going to lower the energy of the round. If the goal is to stop the individual, you want to be able to deliver as much energy as possible into the target. Lower velocity/lower mass rounds aren't going to be as effective in stopping the target.
If a bullet passes through an individual, it hasn't delivered all of its energy to the individual. It's still going, so this is inefficient and dangerous: you're less likely to have stopped the target, and you're more likely to hit something unintended.
I am pretty cynical about humanity, but I don't understand why there aren't hundreds or thousands of swatting incidents per day, given the availability of anonymous communications, payment, and surplus of bad people in the world.
It seems like it would be trivial to set up a dark web service to SWAT on demand. For 0.1 Monero or whatever, place a credible spoofed SWAT call. Maybe hold payment in escrow and follow police radio or blotter to confirm they were deployed and then release payment, or just do a reputational system.
I see a lot of idealistic opinions about how it should be in regards to police violence but what can we actually do? Is there anything that people of this country can do to change this or is it just a waiting game to see where it's all headed?
Why isn't there an EFF for this sort of thing? I know there is the ACLU but at this point I feel like we need something solely for police violence.
You can join/support a radical organization (and you should) but the basic reason there isn't something like an EFF is money. Sure, the EFF goes to bat for consumers against government and giant corporations, but there really aren't that many of them.
In contrast, there are a lot of law enforcement agencies, because there are 300 countries, many towns, most college campuses have their own police, most transit system s in cities have their own police, many federal agencies have their own police. The total is estimated to be about 18,000. If you use a narrower definition the total is still about 15,000.
That's a huge number for any single organization to keep track of or to hold accountable. Even if you just follow up on every single death with a law enforcement angle that's ~1000 homicides by police annually and ~4000 deaths in jails and prisons. That's a huge amount of data to collect and organize before you even begin to evaluate questions of avoidability or accountability.
Say it takes an hour just to receive information of a death, establish the identity of the person involved and the data and location and create a database record or standardized wiki page that can act as a stub for document submission and information collection. With ~100 deaths a week that's a full-time job for 3 people just to produce a barebones list, and I'm being really optimistic with the time estimates. Realistically it's probably 2 or 3 times as much.
I'd like to know what the facts on the ground were that led to have an roe of shoot to kill. Something did go wrong with the process leading up to this clusterfuck. I hope it's identified and fixed. There _might_ be some change in wichita, but I'm not hopeful nationally.
When tasers were introduced, isn’t this the exact problem they were here to solve? You use them instead of shooting to disable the suspect to de-escalate the same situations?
I think a machine learning assisted scene assessment could be more accurate in this scenario.
Considering AI is better at image processing than humans, finding whether the subject in the view point is carrying a weapon should be able to give the officers a second opinion when needed under these circumstances.
Not trying to show any wit here. Considering that a mistake in identifying whether a weapon is held by a person ended in tragedy and that modern force are equipped with displays on their rifles; I asked whether ML based solutions can help.
Not to mention that the wrong dosage, or an interaction with something else in their system, makes a tranquilizer gun potentially as lethal as a regular handgun or a taser.
I'd also add there's the complicating factor of tolerance depending on the agent used (even if it took effect fast enough). Opiates would be a good choice (due to being relatively easily reversible by naloxone), but obviously would have diminished/unpredictable effects on a heavy opiate user. Likewise, benzodiazepines can have a huge range of active doses - a few hundred milligrams of, say, Temazepam could be bad news for a non-user (especially if they've been drinking), but I'm aware of people who have been awake and active despite having double that in their system.
Because you're gonna get killed if you use them against someone who has a gun?
No force was called for here. Had force been called for, i.e. if the story about a murder and an armed hostage situation were true, running in with just tranquilizers would have been insufficient and would have led to dead cops.
I'm very sad and ashamed to voice such an evil idea but I think the only way to change US police into something resembling first world country law enforcement agency is to have mass anonymous random swatting campaign with dozens, perhaps hundreds of causalities.
Terrorism-as-object-lesson doesn't work and if anything is likely to have the opposite of the intended effect. Check out Erica Chenoweth's book on the subject (there's a link to the statistical data on this page): http://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw/
Now I don't actually agree with her in terms of nonviolence-as-optimal-political method because I feel it fails to account for social cost and essentially encourages organizing around martyrdom which leads to the most vulnerable members of society being used as a punching bag to effect political changes whose primary benefits will flow elsewhere, but that's getting into the weeds. It's still an important work in this field that should be studied carefully.
> Los Angeles police have arrested a 25-year-old man on suspicion of making the swatting call that ended with a Wichita man being killed by police.
What crime are they charging him with? I don't think we have the right crime on the books for this at present.
The guy who phoned this in is a scumbag, no doubt.
But Andrew Finch's death is 100% on the cops who showed up. As we've seen time and time again, their selection process and training lead them to be hyper-aggressive.
Look at stories from just the last year where the cops show up and shoot someone's dog, or shoot the random lady in a nightgown, or shoot the guy running away, or shoot the guy who says he's not armed, or shoot the guy for not getting down on the pavement fast enough, or shoot the guy...
It's disturbing that in each of these cases the system protects the cops. At some point, and my preference would be soon, we need to work to dismantle and rebuild this system.
> What crime are they charging him with? I don't think we have the right crime on the books for this at present.
As I read somewhere, the worst case scenario for him is murder under the rule of transferred intent, since making a false representation of this sort to the police (or other relevant authority) in Kansas is a felony.
You are a cop with 5+ other cops.
You all pull your guns.
Someone comes to the door, groggy in the middle of the night. They may or may not understand you are police. They may or may not believe you are the police.
They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence.
We now begin the dice rolling process.
Since every police officer with a gun drawn is now a DECIDER they get a dice roll.
Every single millisecond, all these dice are rolled simultaneously for the entire arrest process as the "suspect" is ordered around like they haven't been since grade school gym class.
This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.