General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKiller cops
Per Snopes, police have shot and killed 984 people since April 2020. That is about 2.7 per day. Most of these don't make national news but many are now recorded so we can view what happened.
Three cases I have seen recently
-a boy being chased on foot for possibly shooting at cars. He tosses a gun and turns to show open hands. In less than a second he is shot once and killed.
-a female vet is entering through a window unarmed. Multiple cops are inside. Before even getting inside she is shot once and killed.
-police are called to a possible abuse/fight situation. There is a chaotic altercation. One girl with a knife tries to slash another girl then presses a third against a car and tries to stab her. She is shot four times and dies.
In none of these cases did police try to use less lethal weapons or de- escalation tactics. However in each case events were happening quickly.
Should any of these people be dead or should other attempts been made to subdue the victims?
soothsayer
(38,601 posts)To be fair, they shot her in the shoulder. Bullets do unpredictable things I guess.
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)Of that 'one of these things is not like the others, one of these just doesn't belong' ditty....
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)But as a wordsmith can you articulate why other methods should/ should not have been used
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)There should have been a good deal more gunfire used on that insurrectionist crowd.
In fact, that response ought to have started in Michigan last year, when the dress rehearsals for caliing up the Trump mob commenced.
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)Can you explain the other two cases
-should an officer chasing someone down an alley wait for the shot to be fired to see if the suspect is armed and hope he is alive to respond?
-an office is observing a potentially lethal assault on a person who was a bystander seconds before. Should he risk that person's life to attempt a less lethal action?
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)In the first, he reacted to the speed with which the person turned, without noting the person's hands were empty. He reacted to what he feared, rather than what was there to be seen.
In the second, the officer rolled up to an ongoing fight, and seems to have decided the person with the upper hand at the moment was the problem. I do not know that, and neither did he. The person he shot was the person who called the police for help against a group she felt threatened by.
Two further points.
You ask whether an officer should wait to see if there is a gun in someone's hand before firing. Yes. The chance of being killed or injured is one of the things police work entails. People who will not or cannot face that should find other employment.
Taking a holistic point of view, the rights and wrongs of particular instances are of little importance, weighed against the sheer volume of such incidents. Police here shoot citizens at twenty times the rate police in Germany do. That is a problem, and it needs to be fixed. Now.
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)That we are more in agreement than not in these cases.
While the system and the individual are intertwined it is still two separate issues. It is entirely possible for a good cop in a good department to commit a bad act and a bad cop in a bad department may do something just. Because of that we need to judge an incident on its own merits.
Good and bad trends will show up in the macro. Is it bad that 3 whites are being shot and killed every 2 days- yes. Is it worse that a black person is being killed everyday by cops- yes, because that is three times what is expected by population. We have found a systemic issue.
We can say people are killed often by cops and examine by reviewing the individual incidents. Determine are cops trigger happy or are people extremely violent with cops or both. It may be systemic or not..
However it is far more likely the subject will be killed if they are black. This is a systemic issue and the larger the issue, the greater chance an individual is going to act incorrectly, with fatal results. To truly correct the issue requires acting from the bottom up, scrutinize the individual actions, as well as from the top down, review training, leadership and the culture that is promoted.
Thank you for taking the time to answer what was intended to be a controversial question.
StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)that was the last thing separating her and her fellow marauding insurgents from attacking Members of Congress on the other side, she was warned repeatedly to stop before the shot was fired, she was part of a crowd of people who had broken into the Capitol, beat and badgered police officers, and had attacked several police officers who were desperately trying to keep her and her fellow insurgents from breaking through a door without any use of lethal force.
Why would you include her in this list of police killings?
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)brush
(53,475 posts)"-a female vet is entering through a window unarmed. Multiple cops are inside. Before even getting inside she is shot once and killed."
You do know that she was trying to climb through a window beside the door of Speaker Pelosi's lobby to let in the mob of Capitol invaders who were looking for the Speaker, right?
Unfortunately Babbit got caught up in the mob frenzy, made a bad decision and paid for it.
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)Although I have no issue with the action taken, I am curious if anyone can articulate why different courses of action are demanded in some cases but not others.
Or will the question be avoided as too uncomfortable.
brush
(53,475 posts)So why include her on the list? Do you even know yourself?
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)Because she was a human being. She died doing something illegal.
I know myself very well. Having to care and fairly treat people you were just trying to kill, as week they were trying to kill you, allows one to peer into one's soul. You don't always like what you find there and may decide to change it.
If I am going to demand equality and fairness for my friends I must do the same I view as opponents.
FWIW- I am not a pacifist, I just take human life very seriously. I believe two of the cases were unfortunate but neccessary.
ETA- and I can explain why I believe they were necessary. It is the same reason for both.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Bolowrap
blob:https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/beb910b2-0e8e-4236-a73c-d4e46cf227ed
But, sometimes, gunz are necessary, especially when dealing with folks like this --
?crop=1290%2C1290%2C0%2C158&resize=1290%2C1290&order=crop%2Cresize
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)Haggard Celine
(16,820 posts)are unjustified. Sometimes the police are called and show up at times when quick action is called for and they have very little time to decide how to end the conflict. It's unfortunate to see people getting killed by anyone, much less police, but it's the police's job to keep people safe, including themselves. The cases you mention seem like justified uses of force to me, but we'll see what the investigations say. Most police killings are not murders like George Floyd's death, and not all are worth a protest.
AZProgressive
(29,322 posts)How deep into the Capitol did she get before she was shot? 140 police officers were injured during that event.
I often compare the police response on January 6th to Trump's Bible Photo-op.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_photo_op_at_St._John%27s_Church
I'm a veteran so not impressed with the way you frame her as an "unarmed vet".
sarisataka
(18,220 posts)I find her actions disgraceful and a betrayal. But the description is factually correct.
AZProgressive
(29,322 posts)And I have no idea what she had in her backpack but the police response was very light on January 6th compared to BLM protests where police act like counter-protestors.
moondust
(19,917 posts)Even controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police.
Does military equipment lead police officers to be more violent? We did the research.