How far will the excuses to shoot go?

[Nessie]

Hey Nessie, this is why officers keep their distance from a suspect, and carry leathal weapons at all times.


This woman was beaten so severely that (IIRC) she spent quite some time in the hospital, and months recovering.

THIS is the biggest reason why police officers should not willingly place themselves too close to a suspect. All it takes is one punch.

Yes, I know this is a woman, and I know the suspect is quite large, but this matters none.

So how are the police to arrest anyone? There comes a point where you have to get up close and cuff them. How else are the police to affect an arrest?

 

[Nessie]

All the female cops in the UK could go toe to toe with that guy, according to Nessie. That video just proves that she is incompetent and should never have been a police officer.

So how should she have arrested him?

 

[Nessie]

I'm waiting for that.....

Obviously an incompetent officer. Demand her badge and gun immediately!!

So how should she have arrested him?

 

[Nessie]

This was a "routine" traffic stop. All it took was one sucker punch from a suspect, and the officer damn near lost her life. Just as common as a drunk college student.

Nessie has claimed that a fight should be considered part of the job, and a risk you take, and one you should take before using deadly force.

Sorry, but I disagree, 100%.

WRT your previous post, yes, there are bad shootings. Are they often? No. Common? Not even close. Rare? Yes. In fact, I cannot think of an officer involved shooting in Florida where it was determined that the officer was not justified in shooting.

So how should she have arrested him?

So you say it is right others must die so not cop gets even a graze?

 

[Nessie]

IF it worked. Remember, people who are high are often unaffected by pain.

What is your experience of that?

How should such people be arrested?

 

[commandlinegamer]

I don't think it's terribly helpful comparing UK-US policing tactics, given the cultural difference when it comes to guns.

Although we had that terrible incident in Manchester recently with the ambushing of two unarmed officers, I reckon the likelihood of any specific call the police have to deal with in Britain involving firearms is pretty low.

In the US, given the ubiquity of guns, it strikes me that law-enforcement have to have the attitude that any confrontation has the potential to involve such weapons. I don't think it's desirable but I can't really see how anything other than a seismic shift in cultural attitudes to firearms will change that requirement.

 

[Nessie]

This is a rather stupid thread, for that matter. As for blame, I'm not the one sitting around declaring "that man is a coward!" based on third-hand (at best) accounts in the news.

And this thread was never a "discussion of which public policy results in the least harm", it's always been a "guns bad, Americans bad" thread.

It is about the lame excuses put forward for killing. That the examples so far all come from the USA is noteworthy, but incidental.

The thread has also shown that going with only a gun as an option to arrest can be bad.

 

[Nessie]

I don't think that many people are saying that the cop was definitely justified (or that there are no such things as bad/incompetant cops). Just that he may well have been justified. (And that Nessie's judgement of the cop being definitely at fault is a premature rush to judgement).

From what I am reading people are saying the cop was justified in shooting as he was supposedly facing a deadly threat. But so far none have shown that shooting is the only option when faced with someone high on drugs.

That cop went for his gun only, straight to lethal force to deal with a kid on drugs. Are people here saying that shooting people on drugs is the only option?

In any case the lame excuse is the real issue.

 

[Nessie]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/1...teacher-in-pittsburgh-alley/ ?test=latestnews

Smaller teen...

So how would you now go about arresting that teen, knowing he can do a sucker punch?

 

[Nessie]

I don't think it's terribly helpful comparing UK-US policing tactics, given the cultural difference when it comes to guns.

Although we had that terrible incident in Manchester recently with the ambushing of two unarmed officers, I reckon the likelihood of any specific call the police have to deal with in Britain involving firearms is pretty low.

In the US, given the ubiquity of guns, it strikes me that law-enforcement have to have the attitude that any confrontation has the potential to involve such weapons. I don't think it's desirable but I can't really see how anything other than a seismic shift in cultural attitudes to firearms will change that requirement.

I think if anything the most obvious means of preventing the shootings here would be to ensure all officers on patrol or leaving their office to respond to an incident must also have cuffs, baton and maybe a tazer as well. They should also be trained to respond by the most appropriate means and not just go for their gun.

 

[WildCat]

Well he's supposed to have known that the guy was a "strong and skilled" and "Highly Trained Martial Artist", which is justification for considering him to be a lethally dangerous threat. So why wouldn't he know he was a student too?

He was obviously strong, I never claiamed the cop would know those other things.

 

[ponderingturtle]

So he went for his gun rather than go and get his baton. There is a theme here, make sure you have a gun, the other means of affecting an arrest are optional. In Scotland you are not allowed out of the office unless you have all your equipment. The USA should have a similar rule, it would save lives as cops can use non lethal tactics first.

Wasn't the officer in the office at the start. Now I know that in scottland officers will clearly wait around getting ready when some EDP is at the door attacking people to make sure they have everything before helping, but not everyone is quite like that.

 

[WildCat]

So he went for his gun rather than go and get his baton. There is a theme here, make sure you have a gun, the other means of affecting an arrest are optional. In Scotland you are not allowed out of the office unless you have all your equipment. The USA should have a similar rule, it would save lives as cops can use non lethal tactics first.

I am speculating in that I am going by the press releases and lame excuses that are the theme of this thread.

As has been repeated over and over, this cop wasn't out on patrol. He was responding to an incident directly outside the station. Perhaps he felt there was no time to run to wherever his baton and pepper spray was being kept.

The evidence re 27 seconds is in the link to that incident. It also details the time the cop had to take the children out of the car if he was that fearful for their safety. Instead he left them in the car, waited for the father to get in the car and then shot him in front of the children.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the incident in the OP.

 

[TragicMonkey]

On reflection I've concluded that yes, I like living in a country where people expect attacking a cop will be likely to get themselves killed. I think its better for public order that way, as opposed to people thinking it'll be safe and fun to attack a cop because the cop won't hit back hard, and will rush to nuture any scraped knees with bandaids and Bactine. The point of police is to preserve order, not to grant happy endings to the criminally idiotic and idiotically criminal antics of people who are deliberately disrupting that order.

 

[richardm]

He was obviously strong, I never claiamed the cop would know those other things.

No, you didn't. But plenty of other people in this thread have used it as a justification for shooting him. In reality if he knew that he was a wrestler he'd also know that he was a student; but given that we have been told that students there regularly get drunk and strip off it would probably be a reasonable guess anyway.

Although I suppose it doesn't really matter either way, come to think of it

 

[fuelair]

I've never heard/read that LSD makes one dangerous except maybe behind the wheel. And I've never seen anyone tripping that was aggressive.

Alcohol is certainly known to make people aggressive. But they are also sloppy. A drunk man can beat a smaller female, but rarely does a smaller drunk man win a fight with a larger sober man.

The bottom line, a competent cop should have been able to handle this situation without killing the kid.

The point I was making (at least twice)( and by at least one other)(plus suggested in one of the reports) is that the student was reported as having taken LSD BUT his actions were not those of a person on LSD. That's why I noted that there was a good chance that either he took something thinking it was LSD and it wasn't OR it was LSD but with one or more other drugs mixed in (not at all unheard of.........). autopsy should clear that up.

 

[fuelair]

So he went for his gun rather than go and get his baton. There is a theme here, make sure you have a gun, the other means of affecting an arrest are optional. In Scotland you are not allowed out of the office unless you have all your equipment. The USA should have a similar rule, it would save lives as cops can use non lethal tactics first.

I am speculating in that I am going by the press releases and lame excuses that are the theme of this thread.

The evidence re 27 seconds is in the link to that incident. It also details the time the cop had to take the children out of the car if he was that fearful for their safety. Instead he left them in the car, waited for the father to get in the car and then shot him in front of the children.

Nessie, just a friendly, the USA will likely never have such a rule, nor will the individual states. Outside of very basic requirements for someone as to background and training to be a policeperson/peace officer, police departments/sherriffs departments set up their policies all on their own. These departments are not in any way nationalized - we do not have a national unified police force. Partly because we do not have all universal laws in the US (federal law is universal, but state law is state by state).

 

[LTC8K6]

So how would you now go about arresting that teen, knowing he can do a sucker punch?

Anyone can sucker punch you if you let them approach you too closely and you have a can of mace in one hand and a microphone in the other.

I'm not a cop.

I would have to make a citizen's arrest upon seeing him assault the victim.

But the point is that "small and unarmed" does not equal "not dangerous".

Hypothetical:

If this kid had continued to beat this victim after he was down, the victim could legally pull a concealed gun and shoot the kid, in most US states.

And, in the states where the victim might not be allowed to shoot his attacker, I doubt a jury would convict if they see the video.

 

[Bikewer]

Here's something else we have to consider when dealing with people like this. Folks who are into using a lot of drugs are often at risk for other "risky lifestyle" conditions like hepatitis and AIDs.
Getting involved in a down-and-dirty rasslin' match with these folks often involves getting cut, scratched, or bitten. (I have scars...) This generally means a considerable period of time worrying about the chances of infection, testing, and worrying as well about one's family.
Without any particular evidence, I'm convinced to this day that's what motivated much of the Rodney King thing... He would not comply and the officers didn't want to lay hands on him.
Only a few years earlier, I don't think the officers would have hesitated to just "swarm" the guy and wrestle into cuffing position. That incident, as I recall, was during the height of the initial AIDS panic...

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I am a big fan of the police, they have saved my life on one occasion. However, when an unarmed man is shot dead at a traffic stop just five weeks after another unarmed man was also killed by a cop while fleeing an abduction, there is something seriously wrong.

That's about my position too. I don't have much by way of a remedy to offer, and I'm generally a fan of the police, but there does seem to be a problem.


I wonder if the problem isn't that there aren't enough guns out there?

After all, it's reasonable for police to fear for their own safety because they don't know that unarmed men they shoot are unarmed. If they were all armed, then all these shootings would be justified!