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The behaviour of US police officers

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ponderingturtle said:
Look SOP is to have the gun in hand when doing traffic stops we hear that all the time, and she simply forgot to put it away and pull the taser, this is the kind of minor mistake that you have to expect to keep the police feeling safe.
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Before this is claimed to be my POV, approaching a car you've pulled over for suspicious behavior has two sides.

One, like this one, is when your suspicions are totally racist and that is not the SOP that I had in mind.

It's a whole different thing from approaching a parked car with a suspect inside that you have a report had just passed a counterfeit bill and the clerk thought the man was high.
 
lomiller said:
If the outstanding warrant was for a violent offence letting him back into the vehicle could have posed a danger because the vehicle itself could be used as a weapon. He could also harm someone accidentally while fleeing in it. Also, as we have seen, picking people up at their homes later doesn't always go as planned either.

If the warrant was for something minor and\or non-violent then yeah even the taser could have been overreaction, but so far as I know we don't have the information to reach that conclusion one way or the other.
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Re the bolded and my point: so why didn't they go to his house and arrest him?
 
JoeMorgue said:
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.
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I don't think that's true. Have you seen the body cam video? She clearly says, repeatedly, "I'll tase you". When she shoots him, she says, "Holy ******" As he's driving away, she turns to the other officer and says, "I just shot that guy."

So I think there is very strong evidence available that her intent was to use her taser. It's unfortunate she wasn't holding a taser when she said it, and it's unfortunate that tasers are made in a form where they can be mistaken for a gun.

(None of this is to say that there's no criminal liability. I think it's manslaughter, but the official judgement of that is the responsibility of the legal system.)


"Sorry thought you were a deer."
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Part of the Minnesota manslaughter law specifically says that if you think you are shooting at a deer, and you end up killing a person, it's manslaughter.

I guess the legislature has its priorities about what they put into the law.

ETA: Huh? Guess the autocensor doesn't count letters, and also censors the trailing exclamation point.
 
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Meadmaker said:
So I think there is very strong evidence available that her intent was to use her taser.
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And my point is "She intended to user her Taser but was so stupid she grabbed her gun" and "She intended to use her gun" are the exact same thing on every practical, moral, and externally provable way, so they should be the same legally.

Again there reaches a point where stupidity and maliciousness merge into the same thing and arguing about which it is becomes pointless at best, pointless with an agenda at worst.

I get the feeling that where "the actual reality of what happened and the consequences thereof" overshadows my give a crap about was going on in someone's "heart of hearts" a lot quicker then most people.

I have a very results based view of the world, and the includes morality. If you put a gun in your hand you take on the responsibility to make stupid mistakes with it.
 
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Elagabalus said:
OK, maybe this is a "chick" thing? I remember back in the day, E-Baum's World had a video of several LEO's with a suspect on the ground (can't remember if he was handcuffed) and a Female Officer almost shooting him in the head when her sidearm accidentally discharged as she was pulling the gun out of the holster. And then Amber Guyger. And now this incident! Well, that's three!
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Why would it be a 'chick thing'?

What is a 'chick thing'?
 
JoeMorgue said:
And my point is "She intended to user her Taser but was so stupid she grabbed her gun" and "She intended to use her gun" are the exact same thing on every practical, moral, and externally provable way, so they should be the same legally.
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I think they are very different on a moral level, and I think in this case even on an externally provable way.

On a practical level, though, I agree.

There is a reason that manslaughter and murder are two different crimes. If you think you are shooting at a deer, and you actually shoot a human, most people would judge that that is a lesser crime than deliberately killing a human.
 
quadraginta said:
Her lawyers are going to argue that there was insufficient evidence to convict her of murder,
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Wasn't she found guilty by a jury?

How can anyone claim that there is "insufficient evidence to convict her of murder" when there was a trial where evidence was presented and the jury found her guilty?

She was convicted by a jury of her peers. That is the only evidence we need to determine that there was sufficient evidence to convict her.
 
acbytesla said:
That's once a year.

I grant you I don't buy it either. I'm just thinking it through.
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Same as in the Military, everybody had to qualify with their M 16 once a year regardless of your actual job. in fact, the Infanty were the ones who probably did not need it, since they got plenty of firearms training just in the course of what the infantry does. The qualification was pretty much for those who did not handle firearms in their jobs;just to remind them they were soldiers and expected to be able to fight in a emergency.
The Marines were much more gung ho on this with their "every Marine Is First Of All An Rifleman" philosophy They require all Marines to not just qualify wiht their rifles, but undergo infantry training once as year, no matter what their job. Even the Marine Air Jet Pilots have to do that.
 
Meadmaker said:
There is a reason that manslaughter and murder are two different crimes. If you think you are shooting at a deer, and you actually shoot a human, most people would judge that that is a lesser crime than deliberately killing a human.
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Yeah the problem is we start off at "Okay we accept that shooting a person and shooting a person you mistook for a deer are morally distinct acts and the law should reflect this" and about a week later we're stuck at "Okay but how do we define the exact amount of brown body hair per square foot of skin a person has to have in order to mistaken for a deer if the overall light levels in the forest are X..."

As with almost everything I no longer trust the nuance being introduced here, not because I don't recognize it as a valid concept, but because I no longer trust the "We must leave no hair unsplit" fetishist to not turn it into a self destructive horrible version of its own validity.

And, I'm sorry I know people will disagree with me here but "I forgot which apartment is mine" and "I forgot what type of weapon was in my hand" is past that point. Well past it.
 
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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 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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It was only ever available to fit a specialised shotgun.

Forgotten Weapons did a piece on the Taser X12 Shotgun. It was given a special proprietary bolt face which would not function with regular 12ga ammunition only the XREP cartridges, regular rounds would not chamber and go in to battery.

It was discontinued as the project was a commercial failure, primarily because of the cost of the cartridges around $125 each, they were nearly five times the cost of regular Taser ammunition.
The projectile has to be a complete taser unit fitted in to a shotgun shell size.

 
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Bikewer said:
This is not unprecedented, I can think of at least two cases where the officer believed they were grabbing the Taser and instead shot the person.

Most departments require the officer to carry the Taser on the “weak” side, in a cross-draw holster. The new models are all bright yellow and must be manually turned on before firing.

But there are still plenty of the (cheaper) older black models out there, and some departments still have the Taser on the “strong” side, usually in a leg holster.

Shouting “Taser, Taser, Taser” before firing is standard procedure, and tells other officers to back away from the suspect.
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For those of us in Northern California, this is in many ways the Fruitvale Bart Station shooting all over again.
 
Taser history and demonstration by InRange

Taser is an acronym of Tom A. Swift Electric Rifle from the novel 'Tom Swift And His Electric Rifle published in 1911

 
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Dr.Sid said:
Yeah .. street thugs against police thugs .. USA in a nutshell.
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I think we are dealing with another "Internet Revolutionary" here. i thinks he wants some kind of mass violence in the streets because that will create the proper "Revolutionary Crisis" and we can have the glorious People's Revolution...
 
Meadmaker said:
:eye-poppi

Did those ever actually reach the market? That is a very, very, bad idea.
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Seem my previous post.

They were only ever for use in a specialised gun that would only chamber the taser cartridges.
they were discontinued as the rounds were too expensive.
 
lomiller said:
It's not a matter of confusing them, it's about muscle memory and performing a familiar action. If you stop and think about it of course you can tell them apart, but if you want to perform an action in the fastest possible way you train until you do it without thinking about it.

IMO this isn't a degree of reaction time police really need nor is desirable. Outside of military use, everyone should be thinking when they fire a gun, thinking about why, thinking about what they are shooting at and thinking about what could be behind or around the target. This applies to police most of all.



You certainly didn't see me doing anything of the sort, just the opposite in fact. There are enough real cases of police misconduct that I think it's a mistake to focus on something that for the present looks like an accident. In this case re-evaluation policy and training seems to be more important.
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Not so much speaking of anybody here but what I see on ohter sites. A lot of the TRumpers who are huge defenders of police shootings when they involve blacks are outratged at the shooting of the "innocent, patriotic Women" who was trying to storm the barricade in the Capitol building on Jan 6th.
 
Ziggurat said:
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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Police shotguns are usually loaded with bird shot, they are considered a 'less lethal' option than a handgun for use against crowds.

Forgotten Weapons has a couple of videos on adaptations to modify shot spread to 'squeeze' the vertical distribution of the shot pattern and spread it wider horizontally for crowd control use.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Re the bolded and my point: so why didn't they go to his house and arrest him?
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Apparently the warrant was for a misdemeanor not evne a felony.
But I think your point is mistaken. They could have arrested him on the spot except it was handled very incompetanly. THey should have moved him AWAY from the car door after they had him get out of the car. That is SOP in this situation so the person cannot jump back into the seat.
I think the guy's resisitng the cops was stupid, but that does not justify them shooting him.
 
JoeMorgue said:
//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.
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Rules of engagement and weapons drill in Star Trek is none existent.
 
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