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The behaviour of US police officers

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The whole purpose of a legal system to prevent certain things from happening, not to create rule categorizations that trap you forever in Bob-esque mental vapor lock.

If you drop a water balloon on a car once or twice causing an accident the criminal-philosophy majors can talk about whether it is this crime or that crime.

If someone drops a water balloon on a car causing a crash over and over and over, you write a new law to cover it and stop worrying about whether it is champagne or sparkling wine.
 
JoeMorgue said:
And that ground is getting a little too littered with dead black people is the point.

I can find firm cases of LEOs "mistaking" their pistols for their tasers 4 times. Every time it there was a black person on the wrong end of the gun barrel. 3 times the black person didn't live to see the end of the altercation. My benefit of the doubt meter is falling rapidly.
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It's happened to white victims too, and it's happened a lot more than 4 times. For example, Officer Jason Shuck shot Eric Butts, a white man, with a gun while thinking it was a taser.
https://www.news-leader.com/story/n...officer-charged-shooting-panhandler/12475553/

Tasers need to be redesigned. It may be that only incompetent cops make this mistake, but incompetent cops exist. Engineer around incompetence whenever possible.
 
Meadmaker said:
I posted the manslaughter statute earlier. There is no requirement that any other crime is involved.

It requires "culpable negligience", which was clearly present, and "consciously taking chances of causing death or great bodily harm", which is arguable.
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See my previous post. Culpable negligence seems to be a very high bar. It doesn't seem like it would have been met in this case
Meadmaker said:
For example, an occasional story you hear about is some brilliant prankster decides to drop something off an overpass onto a passing car. Let's say it's a water balloon. The startled driver loses control of the vehicle, causes an accident, and someone is killed. Is the prankster guilty of manslaughter? The act he committed had the potential of death or great bodily harm. He committed the act consciously. However, he hadn't thought through the possibilities of how death could be caused by his actions. So, he consciously committed an act that could cause death, but he was not conscious of the possibility of death. Is it manslaughter? I don't know, but I think it is.


One thing that is important to realize is that the fact that dropping a water balloon on a car is a crime is not relevant. As noted, the presence of a separate crime is not required for an act to be manslaughter.
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My interpretation would be something like this:
Dropping the balloon is reckless so if they did it deliberately and consciously and someone was harmed manslaughter would apply. If they were taking an armful of balloons to the other side of the overpass to have a water fight with their friends and one fell accidentally and had evidence this was the case than manslaughter charges wouldn't apply but wrongful death charges may.

If there were a law against having water balloons up there than manslaughter charges may apply anyway because they were doing something illegal.

In either case, though, there needed to be some intent before you could have a criminal charge. Either the intent to drop the balloon or the intent to take it someplace the law didn't allow. (knowledge of that law becomes irrelevant)

In this shooting we have fairly compelling evidence that there was no intent to shoot the man nor was there any intent to do anything that violated regulations\training so I can't see how you can end up with a criminal charge against the officer. As I said, civil charges like wrongful death may still apply.
 
Ziggurat said:
Tasers need to be redesigned. It may be that only incompetent cops make this mistake, but incompetent cops exist. Engineer around incompetence whenever possible.
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Agreed. It's crazy to me to think that tasers have pistol grips. That's not just an accident waiting to happen, it's an accident that has already happened, apparently multiple times. They shouldn't be shaped like guns, and they shouldn't be fired like guns. That's pretty nuts. Have a different grip, and maybe fire them with a thumb button. The details can be figured out by the engineers, but it shouldn't be possible to mistake the two.
 
lomiller said:
See my previous post. Culpable negligence seems to be a very high bar. It doesn't seem like it would have been met in this case


My interpretation would be something like this:
Dropping the balloon is reckless so if they did it deliberately and consciously and someone was harmed manslaughter would apply. If they were taking an armful of balloons to the other side of the overpass to have a water fight with their friends and one fell accidentally and had evidence this was the case than manslaughter charges wouldn't apply but wrongful death charges may.

If there were a law against having water balloons up there than manslaughter charges may apply anyway because they were doing something illegal.

In either case, though, there needed to be some intent before you could have a criminal charge. Either the intent to drop the balloon or the intent to take it someplace the law didn't allow. (knowledge of that law becomes irrelevant)

In this shooting we have fairly compelling evidence that there was no intent to shoot the man nor was there any intent to do anything that violated regulations\training so I can't see how you can end up with a criminal charge against the officer. As I said, civil charges like wrongful death may still apply.
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Clearly we need to revist the whole George Weller Santa Monica Farmers Market crash and if it really was manslaughter to kill 10 and wound 70 because he mistook the gas for the break. Anyone could have done that.
 
A few years back Taser announced a line of actual taser shotgun shells, like actual mini-tasers you loaded into a regular shotgun and could fire. IIRC it came in two versions, one that could only be fired from a specially modified Mossberg shotgun (the shotgun had bright yellow foregrips and stocks) and another version that could fire from any self feeding (so most all full and semi-automatic) shotguns.

While... impressive from a technological standpoint that was just a disaster waiting to happen.
 
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lomiller said:
In either case, though, there needed to be some intent before you could have a criminal charge. Either the intent to drop the balloon or the intent to take it someplace the law didn't allow. (knowledge of that law becomes irrelevant)

In this shooting we have fairly compelling evidence that there was no intent to shoot the man nor was there any intent to do anything that violated regulations\training so I can't see how you can end up with a criminal charge against the officer. As I said, civil charges like wrongful death may still apply.
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What we have in this case is a clear intent to use a taser on someone, but her botched execution of that task resulted in death to the target. If you intend to tase someone, and you totally screw up the task so badly that someone dies, is it manslaughter?

Lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and juries will have to sort out the details.



Note to JoeMorgue: In this case, the "champagne versus sparkling wine" actually does matter to the jury. Of such things are legal arguments made, and it matters. The fine points of the law really are what matter. As one of Heinlein's characters said in a bygone era, "That's why lawyer's wives wear mink coats." Sorting out the exact meaning of such things really is important, and it isn't always easy.


When it comes to the moral culpability, not so much. The officer got a bit jumpy, and a man ended up dead, and this seems to happen an awful lot, and more often to black people than to white people. We don't need to split the hairs to figure out that something bad is happening.
 
JoeMorgue said:
A few years back Taser announced a line of actual taser shotgun shells, like actual mini-tasers you loaded into a regular shotgun and could fire. IIRC it came in two versions, one that could only be fired from a specially modified Mossberg shotgun (the shotgun had bright yellow foregrips and stocks) and another version that could fire from any self feeding (so must all full and semi-automatic) shotguns.
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:eye-poppi

Did those ever actually reach the market? That is a very, very, bad idea.
 
Meadmaker said:
:eye-poppi

Did those ever actually reach the market? That is a very, very, bad idea.
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Data is hard to come by.

They did in some capacity because every once in a great while one of the modified shotguns pops up for sale* as a collector's item but the ammo, either for the modified shotgun or for general shotgun ammo, is almost vaporware in how how elusive hard information about it is.

I've heard rumors that the obvious safety concerns, the high cost (100-300 dollars a round, much higher than a normal Taser setup or traditional shotgun "bean bag" round), and reliability problems with the ammo killed the project very quickly, but I can find almost nothing firm or concrete on it.

*https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsupers...aser-x12-less-lethal-platform-police-trade-in
 
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JoeMorgue said:
A few years back Taser announced a line of actual taser shotgun shells, like actual mini-tasers you loaded into a regular shotgun and could fire. IIRC it came in two versions, one that could only be fired from a specially modified Mossberg shotgun (the shotgun had bright yellow foregrips and stocks) and another version that could fire from any self feeding (so must all full and semi-automatic) shotguns.

While... impressive from a technological standpoint that was just a disaster waiting to happen.
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ETA 2: I'm putting this on top because it sort of blows up everything else. Apparently mistaking lethal rounds for beanbag rounds is a thing, as one of the wikipedia sources cites two cases. That's a lot less than the taser/handgun mixup, but on the other hand cops carry shotguns much less than tasers/handguns (being in their car doesn't count). So... yeah. Probably a bad idea. I'll leave the rest of my post unaltered.

I thought that too at first, but further consideration makes me think maybe not.

Police don't use shotguns as a spur of the moment action. Picking up a shotgun is a deliberate, calculated process which is generally not done under extreme time pressure. And by default they're not going to be loaded with taser rounds. So this is probably going to be a high-tech version of those bean bag rounds.

And that's really what makes me think maybe it's not a problem: I don't hear about cops shooting people with shotguns and then claiming that they thought it was a bean bag round. That doesn't seem to be a thing.

Now maybe that's just because there a lot more cops with tasers than bean bag rounds. Maybe a taser shell would be popular enough to drive up the numbers and reveal a problem. But maybe not. Maybe shotgun usage scenarios are sufficiently different than tasers/handgun usage scenarios that attentional blindness isn't going to be as big a problem with shotguns as it is with tasers/handguns.

ETA: but if I was running a police department, I still wouldn't risk buying taser shotgun rounds. Doesn't seem worth the risk.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Data is hard to come by.

They did in some capacity because every once in a great while one of the modified shotguns pops up for sale* as a collector's item but the ammo, either for the modified shotgun or for general shotgun ammo, is almost vaporware in how how elusive hard information about it is.

I've rumors that the obvious safety concerns, the high cost (much higher than a normal Taser or traditional "bean bag" rounds), and reliability problems with the ammo killed the project very quickly, but I can find almost nothing firm on it.

*https://www.sportsmansoutdoorsupers...aser-x12-less-lethal-platform-police-trade-in
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Reminds me of a police firearm of the later 1800s in europe. I believe it was designed to fire a blank, then a tear gas round then lethal rounds.
 
//Total hijack//

That's why I thought it was stupid on Star Trek they their primary weapon had both a "Stun" and "Kill" setting. The person you're pointing the weapon at not knowing if you were going to kill them or stun them doesn't seem like the sort of variable that would make for calm situations.

There's even an in-canon scene where O'Brien shares a story of being a battle, someone tosses him a phaser, he shoots an attacking Cardassian and he's horrified that the Cardassian basically disintegrates because the Phaser had been set to maximum.
 
Meadmaker said:
Note to JoeMorgue: In this case, the "champagne versus sparkling wine" actually does matter to the jury. Of such things are legal arguments made, and it matters. The fine points of the law really are what matter. As one of Heinlein's characters said in a bygone era, "That's why lawyer's wives wear mink coats." Sorting out the exact meaning of such things really is important, and it isn't always easy.
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My point is we shouldn't let some horrible just happen because we can't decide which side of an arbitrary line it falls on.

If we can't prosecute cops who just can't seem to arrest black people without killing them over and over because we're stuck at Buridan's Assing between "murder" and "manslaughter" then we need to make a law to cover it so we won't (or more importantly can't) do that anymore.
 
JoeMorgue said:
My point is we shouldn't let some horrible just happen because we can't decide which side of an arbitrary line it falls on.

If we can't prosecute cops who just can't seem to arrest black people without killing them over and over because we're stuck at Buridan's Assing between "murder" and "manslaughter" then we need to make a law to cover it so we won't (or more importantly can't) do that anymore.
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Ok. That makes sense.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Clearly we need to revist the whole George Weller Santa Monica Farmers Market crash and if it really was manslaughter to kill 10 and wound 70 because he mistook the gas for the break. Anyone could have done that.
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Weller lacked the clear-cut evidence we have here that it was accidental, some people feel it wasn't. Weller had showed a lack of remorse which would argue against it being an accident. There are also other actions he could have taken to reduce the harm he caused like steering away from people instead of towards them. Finally you could argue that him being behind the wheel in the first place was reckless.
 
lomiller said:
I don't agree. Intent is a key concept in criminal law, you can't just discard it without wide ranging consequences. Nor do you need to since civil law and things like wrongful death already cover situations where there is no intent.
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Criminal negligence is a valid concept. Some jurisdictions have negligent homicide.
 
Then, again as with the Guyver case, we're functionally reduced to turning murder over to the honor system, asking people "Did you know what you were doing when you killed them and did you mean to do it?" and just having to take their word on it. It's reduced murder trials to giving them a piece of paper that says "Do you want to be a murderer? Check yes or no. (P.S. No lying)" just more verbosely and with theatrics.

I asked this question in the Guyver clustertruck thread. I don't think Amber Guyver just up and decided to walk into Jean's apartment and murder him and make up a story later... but what would be functionally different from any outside, objective, provable and/or falsifiable criteria if she had? Like in a... double blind how would you differentiate "Mistake Guyver" from "Murder Guyver?" You can't. And at that point, what's the point?

Same thing here. Outside of her unverifiable opinions that we have to take on faith about her state of mind there's nothing here that the same actions she would have taken if it was was murder. It's like that Family Guy sketch where Dick Chaney walks up to Peter, clearly looks at him for several seconds, then slowly raises his gun and shoots him multiple times and after several moments of silence goes "Sorry thought you were a deer."

So I'm not saying that Guyver and Weller and Potter intended to kill Jean, the people on the Santa Monica pier, or Wright. I'm asking what would have changed if they did?

If your stupidity is functionally identical to murder in every place that's outside your head... again as I said at that point what's the point? It's a philosophical question at best and I don't mean that as a positive.

There's "making a mistake" and there's making a mistake in a way that's exactly step by step identical as just doing it intentionally. It's the difference between accidently stubbing your toe and accidently building a bookcase.
 
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The officer involved in the death of Daunte Wright has resigned (breaking news alert, link as soon as I get one)
 
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