> I was specifically asking if there are examples of people being killed by police for refusing a search without a warrant
No, you weren't. You asked:
"Can you cite any examples of *this* happening? I’m a pretty big policing reform person and follow this stuff closely and can’t think of a single case *like this*." [Emphasis added]
The semantics of that question turn entirely on the antecedent of "this", which is pretty ambiguous in this (!) context.
So I'll revise my criticism of your original remark: you need to be clearer about the scope of what you are asking about. Personally, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to extrapolate the circumstances of the GF case to the potential for the same thing to happen during a border search, but I suppose reasonable people could disagree.
It seems clear when you selectively edit the transcript the way you did. But add a little more context:
> Right, same as a police officer who asks if they can "look around" or "ask a few questions". ...But in general you'd be a fool to do so, and you also may say "no"
So? Just because one person professes to have no trouble understanding something doesn't mean it was clear. Maybe you have unusual powers of comprehension. Maybe you understood it because the tacit assumptions happened to align with your prejudices. Maybe you are rewriting the past [1] to save face. Your testimony in this regard doesn't really inform the discussion.
I thought it was clear what I meant, but could see how there might be ambiguity.
To be perfectly clear I do not think qualified immunity should exist and that courts are too quick to rubber stamp warrants. Also most non-violent crimes shouldn’t be crimes IMO. That said, in many year of following the topic I don’t know of anyone being killed while refusing a search in a Terry Stop or an officer requesting entry to a home. Most police killings conform to a few narrow sets of common circumstances, that deserve a LOT of scrutiny but never seem to involve a warrantless search.
The prejudice that it's unlikely that an HN poster doesn't know George Floyd's story? Not only should you have that prejudice too, but simply assuming good faith would have helped you as well.
My prejudice is that if ch4c3 had noticed that the parent comment did provide an example (and it did) he would have said something like: the example you gave is not applicable because… do you have any other examples that are more on point?
> Hassan Shibly, chief executive director of CAIR Florida, tells The Verge that most people who are shown the form giving CBP authority to search their device believe that they have an obligation to help the agents. “They’re not obligated to unlock the phone,” she says.
Which he follows up with:
> Right, same as a police officer who asks if they can "look around" or "ask a few questions". They may certainly ask that. You may choose to cooperate. But in general you'd be a fool to do so, and you also may say "no". If they arrest you they were almost certainly going to do so anyway but now they have less to go on and with more avenues to challenge it, and if they arrest you over exercising your rights you have a strong cause of action right there. CBP agents may well ask people this sort of thing all the time, but that doesn't mean citizens must comply.
Note that the scope of the discussion has been broadened here. /u/xoa is comparing phone searches at border stops to 'police officer[s] who [ask] if they can "look around" or "ask a few questions"'. And it's pretty clear that this list of police actions is not meant to be exhaustive, just illustrative. There are other unspecified things that an officer could do or say that would be within the scope of what /u/xoa is talking about.
So at this point in the conversation the scope is both broad and ambiguous.
The next step is /u/xnyan quoting /u/xoa:
> Right, same as a police officer who asks if they can "look around" or "ask a few questions". ...But in general you'd be a fool to do so, and you also may say "no"
and following up with:
> This is not only a very naive take, its a dangerous one - people have been killed by law enforcement for doing what you are suggesting. Law Enforcement Officers in the US has what is known as qualified immunity. In practice qualified immunity means as long as the LEO says they believed they were following rules (even if they were not), then they can do anything they want to you (including kill you) with little to no personal consequences.
> In other words, you can say "No officer, you can't look around without a warrant", to which they can say "I see an object that may be a gun, and you're moving your hand in the direction of your pocket. Stop. I'm afraid for my life, I need to break your car windows and throw you on the street"
The scope of the discussion has now been broadened yet again. And again, the specific details of the hypothetical scenario described by /u/xnyan are obviously intended to be illustrative and not exhaustive. An officer could say different words under different circumstances and still be within the scope of what /u/xnyan is talking about. And again, the full extent of the scope is ambiguous because /u/xnyan has not said how far he intended his example to be extrapolated.
But the next thing that /u/xnyan does is give an example of what he is talking about in order to support the point he is trying to make:
> It's common enough that a LEO can publicly and slowly strangle George Floyd on the street, recorded and in front of others, and the only notable/unusual aspect is that the police officer was convicted of a crime.
And finally:
> Your rights don't mean shit to cops.
All this allows us to infer that /u/xnyan intended the scope of his comment to be very broad indeed. He is basically saying that the police in the U.S. can, if they choose, do anything they want to you at any time under any circumstances, up to and including taking your life, and there is nothing you can do about it.
This is the point at which you asked:
> > people have been killed by law enforcement for doing what you are suggesting.
> Can you cite any examples of this happening?
Well, yes, he can. And he did.
I understand that it was not your intention to ask about the "unrelated" example, but in context, that is the most reasonable interpretation of the words that you actually wrote because you didn't say what you meant by "this". In the absence of clarification, the antecedent for "this" in English is usually the most recent reasonable reference, which is to say, the circumstances being described by /u/xnyan in the comment you were responding to, which were very broad, and which included an example as part of the description.
I don't know how you're improving your case here at all.
>> people have been killed by law enforcement for doing what you are suggesting.
> Can you cite any examples of this happening? I’m a pretty big policing reform person and follow this stuff closely and can’t think of a single case like this.
And at this point, you decided to react with snark. Here's why that was wrong:
1. George Floyd is an example of what happened to George Floyd, so why would he ask for an example of what happened to George Floyd? Is that arguing in good faith?
2. Did you honestly think a "pretty big policing reform person" wouldn't be aware of George Floyd? This is why his question was clear to everyone.
3. George Floyd's case was actually irrelevant to the thrust of the discussion, which was the perils of refusing to allow a search of property at a border.
> Did you honestly think a "pretty big policing reform person" wouldn't be aware of George Floyd?
It seemed improbable, but profound ignorance is not exactly unheard of on the internet.
In any case, it seemed manifestly true that /u/ch4s3 had either not seen or chosen to ignore the example that /u/xnyan provided because he didn't refer to it at all. "Can you provide an example?" is what you say when you think no example has been provided. It is not what you say when you are aware that an example has been provided but you think the example is deficient. What you say in that case is something like: "The example you provided is deficient because... Can you provide a better one?"
> Here's why that was wrong:
Here is why you are wrong: if you give someone an example and they respond by saying "Can you give me an example?" you should not be surprised when you leave your interlocutor somewhat nonplussed, and you should be equally unsurprised when they, being human, respond with a certain amount of frustration at your inability to communicate your intentions more clearly. It's like if you gave a homeless person a pizza and they respond by saying, "Can you give me a pizza?" Dude, I just gave you a pizza, what more do you want? Oh, this is a ham-and-pineapple pizza. I wanted pepperoni! If you think a snarky response is inappropriate in a situation like that, well, we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
If he didn't know what happened to George Floyd, he wouldn't have asked "for an example". He would have asked "who is George Floyd?"
People don't ask for examples of proper nouns.
This is why fluent English speakers understood clearly that he wasn't asking for an example of George Floyd, and therefore was asking for an example of something else, an example that had not been provided.
No, you weren't. You asked:
"Can you cite any examples of *this* happening? I’m a pretty big policing reform person and follow this stuff closely and can’t think of a single case *like this*." [Emphasis added]
The semantics of that question turn entirely on the antecedent of "this", which is pretty ambiguous in this (!) context.
So I'll revise my criticism of your original remark: you need to be clearer about the scope of what you are asking about. Personally, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to extrapolate the circumstances of the GF case to the potential for the same thing to happen during a border search, but I suppose reasonable people could disagree.