Unrest erupts after man dies in Minneapolis arrest attempt
Source: ABC News
MINNEAPOLIS -- Crowds vandalized buildings and stole from businesses in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood after officials said a man wanted for illegally possessing a gun was fatally shot by authorities who were part of a task force trying to arrest him that included U.S. Marshals.
Following the Thursday afternoon shooting, a small crowd gathered in the neighborhood where the man was shot, shouting expletives at police.
Later in the night, people vandalized “numerous” buildings and looted some, Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said in a email to reporters early Friday. A dumpster was burned and windows were smashed. Arrest totals weren't expected to be available until later Friday.
Little is known about Thursday's shooting. The U.S. Marshals Service said a task force was trying to arrest the man on a state warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/unrest-erupts-man-dies-minneapolis-arrest-attempt-78084243
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lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)It sounds so much prettier than "cops shoot another victim."
unblock
(52,115 posts)"Little is known about the shooting" it says.
Well, clearly very little is known about the looting as well, but they don't say that.
Seems to me the focus of the story should be on the botched arrest and government killing someone, but clearly some property damage is more compelling to an editor, what do I know....
The Magistrate
(95,241 posts)This sort of thing would not happen.
If police routinely told the truth about their violent behavior with citizens, people would be more inclined to credit a police account of such instances.
If police did not so frequently kill people who obviously posed no danger and violated no law, people would be less likely to assume fatal violence by police was unjustified.
If anyone seriously wants incidents of this sort to end, police are going to have to shape up their act, become honest citizens, let go of their 'Punisher' fantasies and understand they are not an occupying power at war with lower castes of the citizenry, and submit to being policed themselves.
For my own part, I am willing to listen to the details of a police use of force with an open mind, and can be convinced their acts were justified, but by now the presumption must be the officers are guilty of abuse, rather than innocent of it. And they have no one to blame for this but themselves.
EX500rider
(10,798 posts)What do you consider "frequently"?
The facts are that out of about a million people arrested a month only about 12 unarmed people are shot. Usually while violently resisting arrest.
That is a .0012% chance of being shot while being arrested unarmed. That sounds more like "unfrequently" to me. YMMV
mahina
(17,613 posts)How many lethal arrests of unarmed people would you find too many?
Some 5367 fatal police shootings were reported by the Washington Post from 2015 to May 2020
The victims were unarmed in 1 in 6 (753;16%) fatal shootings.
753 victims divided by 5 years divided by 12 months gives you: 12
Number of arrests:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191261/number-of-arrests-for-all-offenses-in-the-us-since-1990/
More like 840,400 arrests per month avg lately but not all shootings would have involved a arrest so I round up to a million.
Otherwise you get 840,400/753 is .09% But since most police stops do not involve a arrest unless you have a warrant or or DUI etc the % of shootings per police interaction will be a much smaller % then that. Probably by a factor of 100 which would give you a .0009% chance of being shot while stopped by the police.
I just argued "frequently" wasn't my opinion of a .0009%. ymmv
yagotme
(2,911 posts)the police would expect him to be armed, I would assume. So, if he was in possession, "unarmed lethal arrest" wouldn't apply here.
The Magistrate
(95,241 posts)Police kill about a thousand people a year here.
Total homicides run around twenty thousand yearly.
Police kill three a day, criminals about sixty. That strikes me as awfully frequent. Police in Germany and England manage to get through a typical year killing far fewer people. On a per capita basis, in fact, police here kill about thirty times as many people as German police do, and about sixty times as many as English police.
You may choose to stake some 'American Exceptionalism' claim, that it has to be like that because of peculiar characteristics of our society and culture, but that is pretty much barnyard effluvia. We are not that different. We simply do not discipline abusive police, and have laughably low standards for hiring officers. Who are then trained to imagine every interaction with the public could get them killed on the spot. That hardly makes them special, of course --- every time someone steps into an automobile they hazard their lives, and in a number of jobs workers face greater danger of death at work than do police officers.
EX500rider
(10,798 posts)Vs US?
Of the 1,000 killed here about 850 avg were armed offenders. Point a gun at the Police, don't be surprised when they shoot you.
The facts are the US is just a more violent country then the western European countries although the overall avg homicide rate in Europe is 3.0 per 100,000 and the US is 4.9, not a huge difference when the bad countries have a rate of around 50.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
The Magistrate
(95,241 posts)The proportion remains four or five times the German rate, and twice that of the English. And these are people you acknowledge to be unarmed, remember, while certainly some shot by European police are armed to an American standard.
And police do on occasion stretch the definition of armed a good deal. The figure you give does not establish that eight hundred fifty people 'pointed a gun at police', or even that all the eight hundred fifty offered any effective violence in resistance to police, or presented any actual menace to an officer.
joetheman
(1,450 posts)skyrocket. In the US, the loose and almost criminal availability of assault weapons is the reason for most of the number you spout much of which I do not believe because all sources of info about guns in this country are tainted by uneven and discriminatory reporting by law enforcement and the refusal of our lawmakers to sanction controlled studies and mandatory reporting guidelines WITH strict penalties for reporting false information and for failing to report at all in many cases. Same thing holds true for reporting crimes.
EX500rider
(10,798 posts)Clubs, hands & feet and knifes all kill more people in the US every year then all rifles of which "assault weapons" are only a subset. Pistols kill almost 20 times more people then all rifles.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Dial H For Hero
(2,971 posts)of one's life.
By the by, I've seen you consistently use "gunz" instead of "guns". I'm curious what the intended implication of this misspelling is, since I most confess that it escapes me.
madville
(7,404 posts)Once their sentence and debt to society is satisfied. That includes all Constitutional rights, especially since current SCOTUS precedent is that the right to bear arms is an individual right and just not limited to “militias”.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)EX500rider
(10,798 posts)Can you point to a time in US history when it was not a individual right?
joetheman
(1,450 posts)white privilege is concerned. Show me where it says anywhere that owning a gun is an individual right not limited to well regulated militias.
EX500rider
(10,798 posts)That's easy, in the Bill of Rights, amendment #2.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Notice it says the right of the people, not the right of militia members.
If it was just specific to the militia it would not be in the Bill of Rights but in another section of the Constitution.
Also the Dick Act of 1903 made all males 17 to 45 militia members anyway.
The 1903 act repealed the Militia Acts of 1795 and designated the militia (per Title 10 of the U.S. Code, Section 311) as two classes: the Reserve Militia, which included all able-bodied men between ages 17 and 45, and the Organized Militia, comprising state militia (National Guard) units receiving federal support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Act_of_1903
tiredtoo
(2,949 posts)I still suspect rightwing nuts are responsible for much if not all this activity. We all remember Umbrella man from Minneapolis don't we?
