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Another cop murders a suspect

Babbylonian said:
Everything in your post seems pretty irrelevant. Why? Because the point (as I read it) wasn't that US police officers shouldn't be armed. It was that the officers in nations where police don't routinely carry firearms, given the exact same situation otherwise, would obviously do something other than pull a gun.

Do you think that police officers in the US are trained to draw, let alone fire, their gun at someone attempting to drive away from a routine traffic stop? Should they be so trained?
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I know what RandFan and the article he linked are getting at. Let me rephrase: There are only a handful of countries in the world where police do not routinely have firearms on their person or at least in their patrol car. More relevant is how police officers in nearly every single other developed country in the world show far more restraint in shooting people, even though they are also armed. Would this shooting have occurred in Germany, or Canada, or France? I very highly doubt it.

I don't know the ends and outs of how police in the US are trained, and I'm sure it varies by jurisdiction. However this isn't even the first time this decade that a cop shooting an unarmed suspect in a traffic stop has made national news:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/cops-heart-sank-realizing-shots-fired-minivan-full/story?id=21567684

We very obviously have an endemic problem with policing in the US. Given that police think they can deal out extrajudicial beatings as they see fit (Baltimore), or think they can arrest someone for being rude (Texas), or shoot someone in walmart idly holding an air rifle (still the most blatantly bad police shooting ive ever seen filmed).

I can't quite put my finger on the root cause: hero-worshipping of LEO's since 9/11, or DA's afraid they'll lose the support of police if they prosecute, and the weirdest thing is most conservatives always side with the police even when they're completely anti-authoritative/government in every other respect.
 
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lobosrul said:
I know what RandFan and the article he linked are getting at. Let me rephrase: There are only a handful of countries in the world where police do not routinely have firearms on their person or at least in their patrol car. More relevant is how police officers in nearly every single other developed country in the world show far more restraint in shooting people, even though they are also armed. Would this shooting have occurred in Germany, or Canada, or France? I very highly doubt it.
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Fair enough, and I agree.
 
Z said:
I was told by a Cincinnati officer that the proper procedure is to let him run, and catch him up later. Hearsay, I admit...
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That's certainly the situation in Australia. Police here have guns, but almost all finish their careers without firing a shot. The amount of police stupidity I am regularly seeing in the US points to hopelessly inadequate training.
 
lionking said:
That's certainly the situation in Australia. Police here have guns, but almost all finish their careers without firing a shot. The amount of police stupidity I am regularly seeing in the US points to hopelessly inadequate training.
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I lean toward bad hiring practices, too. And inadequate filtering of potentially dangerous mental issues.
 
RandFan said:
Not all officers throughout the world carry guns. Tell me, how do you think they react to such situations? I know what I would do, get the hell out of the way. What would you do in that situation if you didn't have a gun?

5 countries where police officers do not carry firearms — and it works well
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I think it's more about training and the individual character of the police officer. I posted this link in another thread not long ago, but I'll offer it again. It's a video from a police stop by a Maine state trooper from 1992, citing the driver for speeding. In spite of the driver's reaction and outbursts, the trooper keeps his cool throughout the encounter, and doesn't respond to any of the provocations. Note how almost immediately into the interaction the driver aggressively grabbed the clipboard from the officer's hands; do you think such an action would be so calmly tolerated by most police officers nowadays?

 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
There was no entanglement! Having your arm inside a window is not evidence said arm was entangled in anything.

You see the gun kickback, you see a guy shot point blank in the head fall over. At no point during that is said officer moving in a dragged or entangled manner.
Even if the car took off a fraction of a second before the kill shot, there was no dragging in evidence. Just a cop with a gun pointed at an open window. Even if said cop was 'entangled' :rolleyes: and we couldn't see it, he would have needed the reflexes of a mantis shrimp to react that fast to recognizing his 'entangled' left arm and shooting to save his life.

It's ludicrous.
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Seems unlikely he was actually entangled because after shooting his arm comes out right away. This doesn't mean he didn't think he was entangled or that he wasn't pulled ("dragged") while his arm was in the car though. I don't see this as a clear cut "he shot the guy for fleeing" situation. The video makes it seem like he panicked when the engine was turned on and the car started to move.
 
Corsair 115 said:
I think it's more about training and the individual character of the police officer. I posted this link in another thread not long ago, but I'll offer it again. It's a video from a police stop by a Maine state trooper from 1992, citing the driver for speeding. In spite of the driver's reaction and outbursts, the trooper keeps his cool throughout the encounter, and doesn't respond to any of the provocations. Note how almost immediately into the interaction the driver aggressively grabbed the clipboard from the officer's hands; do you think such an action would be so calmly tolerated by most police officers nowadays?

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Yes.
 
Corsair 115 said:
I think it's more about training and the individual character of the police officer. I posted this link in another thread not long ago, but I'll offer it again. It's a video from a police stop by a Maine state trooper from 1992, citing the driver for speeding. In spite of the driver's reaction and outbursts, the trooper keeps his cool throughout the encounter, and doesn't respond to any of the provocations. Note how almost immediately into the interaction the driver aggressively grabbed the clipboard from the officer's hands; do you think such an action would be so calmly tolerated by most police officers nowadays?

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That Maine State trooper should be the benchmark for all LEOs. He was so awesome!
 
Monketi Ghost said:
No apology needed!

I found this but it's pretty devoid of info.

"After Tensing asks him if his license is suspended, a short scuffle ensues. A few seconds later, Dubose is shot in the head while still behind the wheel of a car."

Why the scuffle?
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If the cops shot everyone they had a scuffle with there would be a lot of dead people around.
 
ThunderChunky said:
.... This doesn't mean he didn't think he was entangled or that he wasn't pulled ("dragged") while his arm was in the car though. ...
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First, he wasn't dragged. You can see the time from the key turning in the ignition until the kill shot, no dragging. Seriously at least people should get over the beyond beyond beyond the shadow of a doubt nonsense.

Second, the position that all an officer has to do is claim they thought they were at risk is seriously flawed. It means no officer ever is responsible for killing unarmed suspects stopped for the most minor traffic offenses. That's an unacceptable standard. You might has well give cops the right to abuse their power anytime they feel like it, there are no consequences.

You can see the guy was not at risk. If that's not enough to prove beyond doubt the cop is lying, then pray tell, what evidence would prove it?
 
lobosrul said:
.... Would this shooting have occurred in Germany, or Canada, or France? I very highly doubt it.

I don't know the ends and outs of how police in the US are trained, and I'm sure it varies by jurisdiction.
...
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In many western countries, police receive much more extensive training and are more closely supervised. In Germany they get three years; in Japan, two years. In some countries, pretty much all police are part of a single national or regional force, answering to the highest levels of government. In the U.S., there are something like 12,000 individual city, county and state police departments of varying sizes with their own hiring and training standards, but training is rarely more than a few months.

It is also a problem that U.S. cops aren't hired for their smarts. In the U.S., a college degree is required for almost any entry-level professional job, but police are often hired with just high school diplomas or GEDs. Few departments require degrees. So police are expected to make split-second life-and-death decisions interpreting complex statutes and court decisions with less formal education than the average barista. In Washington, D.C., a felony conviction is not necessarily a disqualification. Better training and tougher standards would have to make a big difference.

http://www.dw.com/en/why-german-police-officers-rarely-reach-for-their-guns/a-17884779
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...an-police-fired-just-85-bullets-total-in-2011
http://prospect.org/article/expert-us-police-training-use-deadly-force-woefully-inadequate
 
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Bob001 said:
In many western countries, police receive much more extensive training and are more closely supervised. In Germany they get three years; in Japan, two years. In some countries, pretty much all police are part of a single national or regional force, answering to the highest levels of government. In the U.S., there are something like 12,000 individual city, county and state police departments of varying sizes with their own hiring and training standards, but training is rarely more than a few months.
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To become a police officer in Norway requires a university bachelor degree.
 
BenBurch said:
Here we require that they have an IQ of ~ 110 or less. Seriously.
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There was a recent thread about a guy who sued a local police department. They had rejected him because he did too well on the exam.

Steve S
 
ThunderChunky said:
Seems unlikely he was actually entangled because after shooting his arm comes out right away. This doesn't mean he didn't think he was entangled or that he wasn't pulled ("dragged") while his arm was in the car though. I don't see this as a clear cut "he shot the guy for fleeing" situation. The video makes it seem like he panicked when the engine was turned on and the car started to move.
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That is how I feel on the situation as well.
 
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