Conservatives: The cops had to shoot Ma'Khia Bryant because she had a knife.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

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[quickesst]

1. I saw the video

Would it have been better if she had plunged the knife into the unarmed girl's chest and became a murderer? Different place, different set of circumstances different scenario all together.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

2. From what I saw in the video,

this girl was literally going for the neck, which more than likely would have been fatal.

[ripcord]

5. It is amazing what some people are willing to ignore

[MarineCombatEngineer]

7. Very damning video.

It's my opinion that this was a justified use of deadly force and probably will be ruled as such.

[Skittles]

29. be careful

some people seem to think that means you are "cheering on the cop"

[Raine]

10. The girl with the knife looks much bigger,

she was over powering the girl in pink and looks like she had strong arms to plunge that knife in.

[quickesst]

9. Probably....

....but neck or chest, the girl with the knife would have still been a murderer, and the unarmed girl would have still been dead. No matter how unfair or unjust the Rittenhouse incident was, it was a poor comparison to this event.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

11. +100. nt

[quickesst]

14. Thanks MCE....

Tragic that it had to happen at all, but as far as the policeman's actions, the video seems self evident.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

15. It's definitely a tragedy all around,

a teen girl lost her life, a cop will have to live with this on his conscious.

I lay the blame squarely on the state foster system, they failed her and she lost her life.

[quickesst]

38. I agree

The system has always been flawed and it seems there has been little effort to correct the problems.

[Happy Hoosier]

44. I agree. A shitty foster system allowed this to happen.

[Treefrog]

63. This.

[NH Ethylene]

25. Officer Stands Idle While Black Child Stabbed to Death

That would be the headline if he had paused and thought about how the girl with the knife was so young, etc. I'm actually amazed he could think and act so quickly. Even then it was a very close call.

[Skittles]

30. yup

heck, he was trashed here because he stayed at the scene

[ThunderRoad]

65. FIFY

“White” Officer Stands Idle....

[Nixie]

42. That is horrific to see that woman bracing for the impact

of a knife wound. It doesn’t get much more frightening in life than that.

It’s so bogus to compare a person in the act of stabbing someone to any other situation. It is intellectually dishonest.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

43. +100. nt

[RussBLib]

3. Will we ever learn what the fight was about?

Kinda like we never learn a motive in most of the mass shootings, I fear.

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

37. Would it matter?

Stupid facebook comment

Somebody thought they were disrespectful

Boyfriend drama

Would it change opinions on this incident one way or other? They were out of control whatever lit the match means nothing.

[Hoyt]

4. Not just conservatives, most of the "experts" on CNN at least thought

the officer made a decision within the law and it was reasonable. One even said, if he had done nothing, would he have been criticized for watching two Black girls fight, while one was armed.

If I were a policeman today, I MIGHT consider if it would be better to take my time responding to a call like that. Not sure what I’d actually do, because that doesn’t feel right either.

[Raine]

6. She didn't just have a knife, she was going to use it

on the other girl who probably would've end up murdered.

[RockRaven]

8. I remember when SF cops shot a guy in a wheelchair after a standoff where he had a knife...

because... he threw the knife at an officer 10+ feet away.

So they shot him because he tried to harm someone with a knife....... because of the action which necessarily entailed that he no longer had a knife nor any way to regain it.


Cops kill when they want to, once they have permission. Permission via the "magic words" they can include in their report/testimony to justify killing based on current court precedents (police unions teach classes about what must be said after a shooting to get away with it).

[left-of-center2012]

20. Should the cop have waited to see if she was going to stab the other girl?

Then after she had stabbed the other girl or cut her throat the cop could have shot?

[NH Ethylene]

27. You have to look at each case on its own.

Just because there are bad, racists cops (quite a few, it seems), doesn't mean every cop is wrong every time. And it cheapens the movement for changes in policing when people react to every cop-involved shooting as though it is a murder, with little regard for the facts.

[brush]

28. True. Just as the George Floyd video tells it all, so does this one.

Was the cop supposed to wait to see what happened after the girl with the knife got to the unarmed girl?

No.

This was not a George Floyd/Beonna Taylor situation.

[Groundhawg]

12. sad but good shoot.

[Hoyt]

13. Basically agree, but I abhor phrase "good shoot." Nothing good about it.

[Groundhawg]

21. To me, Its good that the girl she was in the process of stabbing is alive. Good shoot. Innocent life

saved.

[Hoyt]

22. I know. Not really meant to criticize you, but there are few "good shoots."

[sarisataka]

16. I would use the term

justified shooting.

A "good shoot" is one that doesn't happen. Unfortunately sometimes a situation develops that leaves no other choice.

[Hoyt]

23. +1.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

17. Respectfully,

this was a, IMHO, a justified use of deadly force, but not a good shoot in as a teen girl lost her life and a cop will have to live with this on his conscious.

The state foster system failed her.

[Straw Man]

18. Well, it had a lot to do with what she was doing with that knife.

How long would Rittenhouse have lived if he had started popping off rounds in the vicinity of the cops?

[MarineCombatEngineer]

19. Not long I suspect. nt

[Hoyt]

24. Exactly. At time police didn't know he had shot anyone. He was just another rube

openly carrying a rifle at a protest in a state that allows carrying a gun in a crowd.

[Raine]

26. He'd be fired on immediately, I'm sure. nt

[cstanleytech]

31. I am not going to get into an argument over this on the DU however I will simply say

that its a tragic situation.

[Demobrat]

32. I just wish

he could have stopped her with rubber bullets or something like that. I know it’s not realistic. Just ... wish it didn’t have to be life or death.

[uponit7771]

34. It is realistic its just we black people have supper human strength to the point nothing but grenade

... grenades and nuclear bombs and bullets and Iron man will stop us so any "justified" use of force is OK. / sarc.

I'm ... sometimes I want to quit

[ExciteBike66]

36. Do you feel that the girl was justified using deadly force?

[uponit7771]

39. Don't know yet, I don't have the story but most likely not and that doesn't justify the constant

... use of the most lethal force on black people vs white people in America.

We get grenades white folk get cotton candy and some people can't stand to hear that shit

[caber09]

40. Payton Ham 16..killed by trooper..you should read this story

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-04-14/teen-shot-dead-after-aiming-toy-gun-at-maryland-state-police-trooper

In this case in MD and from the video we have seen for Bryant,the action taken by officer was more than justified.

[uponit7771]

46. Please understand "justified" doesn't always mean necessary, that's Maddow's point too

[CatWoman]

45. thank you so much for this

some people just don't fucking get it.

[ExciteBike66]

49. I agree about the general use of force, but this instance involves the cop shooting

someone who was committing a murder.

[uponit7771]

50. The kid in the OP committed murder and had his gun walking down the street, he lived

[ExciteBike66]

51. Do you mean Rittenhouse?

I do not support what Rittenhouse did, but that case is different.

There, the cops were not present when Rittenhouse was committing murder, and of course the cops should not shoot Rittenhouse if Rittenhouse is not making any threatening moves (they should arrest him).

In this case, the girl was in the act of committing murder and the cop was right there with the power to stop it. I know you know the difference between the two cases so please do not conflate them.

[uponit7771]

52. "but that case is different." not in the context of BLM and Maddow's segment last night and

... why black people have been complaining about policing going to 1000 at the slightest bit of 'justification' when it comes to killing black people.

He's the perfect example of disproportionate treatment of blacks during policing seeing he mmurdered people then people witnessed him claiming he murdered people to the police following him down to the cops (so the cops were told he murdered people they still did nothing to him at the scene), able to ride home with his mother, get out on bail, skip out on bail terms

and

he's still breathing.

[ExciteBike66]

55. Please let me know if you think Rittenhouse should have been shot by the police

I don't, because the appropriate response was to arrest him.

Arguments about overall disparate treatment are all well and good, but the facts of the two cases are very different.

[Ms. Toad]

56. Revenge shooting is not lawful.

Defense of one's self or others is lawful.

Had the police seen Rittenhouse pointing his gun at others with his finger on the trigger, it would have been lawful to kill him. I am not aware that any police officer saw him point his gun at others and made the split second choice to let him kill others rather than shoot him.

There is absolutely no doubt the system failed Ma'Khia long before the moment she was actively swinging a knife at the body of another girl. But in that moment, the police had a choice as to whether to allow Ma'Khia to continue to swing the knife into the other girl - or not. While I might wish that had not been the choice - in that split second it was.

Dozens of choices earlier led to that moment - and we must make better choices and fundamentally change things in our society so that no person is ever in the position of having to make a split second choice to kill one black child to save the life of another black child.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

57. Best...Post...Yet.

[uponit7771]

58. Rittenhouse told the police he shot two people and was able to go home breathing

So to shoot him at that time would not have been revenge shooting seeing he posed a threat and still had a gun in his hand

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kenosha-protesters-killed-teen-kyle-rittenhouse-police-report/

[Ms. Toad]

60. To use self-defense,

you have to have an objectively reasonable fear of imminent serious bodily harm or death (for your self or others).

Merely possessing a gun, even coupled with a description of past behavior, does not satisfy that standard - so shooting him **at that point** would have been an unlawful revenge killing. Once the objectively reasonable threat of imminent serous bodily harm or death passes, it is up to the courts to mete out punishment.

The same would have been true for Ma'Khia has she not been actively swinging her arm, knife in hand, inches from the girl in pink. Had she merely been holding it - even holding it while telling the police officer she had just stabbed someone to death - the shooting would have been unlawful.

[uponit7771]

61. No, jus ... don't please, the witness's that came to the cops said it wasn't self defense and

... would a black person carrying a gun be able to tell the cops they shot two people in self defense with a crowd screaming around them that they didn't and go home at all?!

Come on people ... white people are treated better by the cops because of the color of their skin and we need to do something about it

[Ms. Toad]

64. I am not arguing, at all, that white people aren't treated better by the cops

(and pretty much the rest of the world).

But even a broken clock is right once or twice a day.

All I am saying is that - once the police officer arrived in the middle of that knife fight, he was forced to choose between allowing Ma'Khai to stab the girl in pink - or using lethal (or less lethal) force to stop her. Although I wish he would have drawn his taser, rather than his gun, both would have been lawful uses of lethal force in defense of self or other.

The solution isn't to say that Ritenhouse should have been killed (or would have, had his skin been a different color). We need to fix the broken clock, not insist it isn't 12:02 merely becsause this is one of those times that the snapshot of the clock happened to be correct at that precise second.

[uponit7771]

33. K&R, perfect example of justified doesn't mean the right thing to do

[Dr. Strange]

41. Well...

because she had a knife and was about to stab someone.

[uponit7771]

47. Would a taser shot most likely stop a 15 yr old girl ? thx in advance

[Dr. Strange]

54. "Most likely"? I'd say no.

I don't think he's quite close enough to make an "optimal" shot. Tasers have this zone where they're effective. Too close to the target, and the leads might not be far enough apart to incapacitate. Too far from the target, and the leads lose momentum and may not penetrate, or potentially the leads are too far apart for both to hit the target.

I think in this case, the cop is right on the edge of the zone. If he had one more second, then I think he could get the taser and close the distance a little for a better than 50% chance of a successful deployment. But during that second, the victim would have almost certainly been hit by the knife.

[uponit7771]

62. It would and he's close enough, the question was rhetorical

[MarineCombatEngineer]

59. Maybe, maybe not.

When I was an MP in the Marines, we were taught that Tasers were not much use beyond 15 feet and that they don't always work on someone pumped up on adrenaline or drugs.

We were also trained that if someone is assaulting someone else with a knife, we don't engage them physically, we shoot them, I'm just glad I was never put in that situation during my 2 year stint as an MP, and I'm certainly not going fault this officer for taking action against a deadly threat.

[SYFROYH]

48. If a cop witnessed him shooting at someone unarmed and then aiming at someone else unarmed.

He would be dead.

[uponit7771]

53. The crowd following the kid down the street TOLD the cops he just murdered someone but the

... cops in that PD had helped him before and he's white so he gets to go free.

No, Rittenhouse is the PERFECT example of being white in America keeps you breathing more than being black in America when it comes to the cops.

[brooklynite]

66. Liberals: The cops had to shoot Ma'Khia Bryant because she was USING a knife.

[quickesst]

67. Put the hat on that reads "LOGIC" across its face....

.... and try this on.

SPLIT SECOND DECISIONS

If it were plausible to “shoot to wound” law enforcement would be doing it. It’s not plausible.; Action beats reaction; every time.
It’s very easy to analyze things from the safety and security of your keyboard. Until you strap on the gear and put yourself between the threat and the public you won’t know the weight – physical weight of the equipment and the mental weight of what is on the line.

Full article here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/sofrep.com/amp/gear/shoot-to-wound-and-other-misinformed-ideas/