Another unarmed black man shot

quadraginta said:
They don't need to. The likelihood of injury or death is what it is. The occupation is only a way of gauging what that likelihood is.

If someone can't cope with the danger level which is part of the occupation of cop then they should find an occupation that they can handle. Not left to take it out on someone who has the misfortune to be in front of their sights when they lose it.
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Again, a caveat: cops face directly aggressive people regularly, and whether or not they get hurt or killed is more directly related to their own aggressively handling the situation. It could be argued that, as you agreed, there are proportionally few of these incidents out of the millions of cop interactions. This can be viewed as excellent restraint and appropriate response, even in the face of extreme risk (unlike slipping off the trash truck).
 
We might be looking at the wrong numbers for these dangerous jobs. How many people are these roofers and construction workers killing?

It's one thing when a job is dangerous to the employee, another when it's dangerous to me. Is my roofer going to shoot me when I make a furtive movement?
 
Argumemnon said:
First of all, it'd be nice to have a website that doesn't drip clickbait from it. Second, I'm sure there are white supremacists working at Starbucks, too, but is it a significant number?
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If a neo Nazi refuses to serve someone a flat white, it is annoying, but it isn't that severe and there is an obvious recourse. If a group of police officers are in a neo Nazi gang, then they have a lot more scope for malpractice, and there is less chance of catching them.
 
marplots said:
We might be looking at the wrong numbers for these dangerous jobs. How many people are these roofers and construction workers killing?

It's one thing when a job is dangerous to the employee, another when it's dangerous to me. Is my roofer going to shoot me when I make a furtive movement?
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It's a reasonable part of an LEO's job to occasionally engage in violence. Unless you use the same plumber I do, construction guys are not often violent on the job.
 
quadraginta said:
They don't need to. The likelihood of injury or death is what it is. The occupation is only a way of gauging what that likelihood is.

If someone can't cope with the danger level which is part of the occupation of cop then they should find an occupation that they can handle. Not left to take it out on someone who has the misfortune to be in front of their sights when they lose it.
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Exactly, no one is forcing these guys to be cops. If there guys are so "afraid for their lives" that they keep blowing people away so regularly, then it looks like a lot of them need to find a new job.

But do they do that? Nope! They whine and tell us how tough the job is, and how lucky we are that they are saving us from hordes of bad guys. They say anything to avoid addressing the real issue: their cruelty and cowardice.
 
Jules Galen said:
Exactly, no one is forcing these guys to be cops. If there guys are so "afraid for their lives" that they keep blowing people away so regularly, then it looks like a lot of them need to find a new job.

But do they do that? Nope! They whine and tell us how tough the job is, and how lucky we are that they are saving us from hordes of bad guys. They say anything to avoid addressing the real issue: their cruelty and cowardice.
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I know a lot of police and they never whine and talk about how tough the job is. To the best of my knowledge none of them are cowardly and cruel either.
 
quadraginta said:
They don't need to. The likelihood of injury or death is what it is. The occupation is only a way of gauging what that likelihood is.
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You're begging the question somewhat. The death rate of police officers is what it is with the current protocols in place (which you, apparently, think are too biased towards protecting cops at the expense of suspects). But if you change those protocols, the death rate of police officers might spike dramatically. Two things happen at the same time. Police officers become more passive in the middle of an encounter, which probably raises their risk, and suspects learn to expect that passivity, which probably raises the probability of aggressive behavior by a malicious suspect. I have no idea which of the current protocols are justified and which aren't, but I do think that the protocols developed by police with many decades of experience deserve at least some deference.

If someone can't cope with the danger level which is part of the occupation of cop then they should find an occupation that they can handle. Not left to take it out on someone who has the misfortune to be in front of their sights when they lose it.
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You seem to be implying this doesn't happen. I see little evidence of that. There are 750,000 LEOs in this country, by the way. How many bad eggs would you expect to slip through the cracks, and how often would you expect them to do something bad?
 
jimbob said:
If a neo Nazi refuses to serve someone a flat white, it is annoying, but it isn't that severe and there is an obvious recourse. If a group of police officers are in a neo Nazi gang, then they have a lot more scope for malpractice, and there is less chance of catching them.
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That has literally nothing to do with what I wrote.
 
Shiner said:
I was a roofer before my spine had other ideas. I did it for over 10 years. Every day I risked death from obvious means. I never fell off a roof, or ladder. My risks were obvious and predictable.

Humans are anything but.
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That doesn't change the actual risk to police officers, only the perceived risk.

I believe that's a type 1 error. While its frequency in human decision-making is understandable from an evolutionary standpoint, it's not something we should be using as an excuse to dismiss or diminish the problem of unjust killings by police officers (or anyone, really).
 
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Cops have a right to be safe. One way to do that is to evaluate the results of the work they do. If cops are being killed unnecessarily, they need to analyze why and train to prevent that. If cops are killing unarmed people posing no threat, that needs to be analyzed and addressed as well.

It doesn't help anyone to just make excuses for these unnecessary deaths. That's the problem I see with many of the blue lives matter reactions. The deaths in question are deaths that shouldn't have happened. You don't just say, well it's fine the cop overreacted because they have a dangerous job.

No, you say, something went wrong here and it needs to be addressed, not excused.
 
Jules Galen said:
Exactly, no one is forcing these guys to be cops. If there guys are so "afraid for their lives" that they keep blowing people away so regularly, then it looks like a lot of them need to find a new job.

But do they do that? Nope! They whine and tell us how tough the job is, and how lucky we are that they are saving us from hordes of bad guys. They say anything to avoid addressing the real issue: their cruelty and cowardice.
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If they are so awful en masse why does blm not offer scholarships for like minded individuals to become police officers?

You know something that would actually cause positive social change.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Cops have a right to be safe. One way to do that is to evaluate the results of the work they do. If cops are being killed unnecessarily, they need to analyze why and train to prevent that. If cops are killing unarmed people posing no threat, that needs to be analyzed and addressed as well.

It doesn't help anyone to just make excuses for these unnecessary deaths. That's the problem I see with many of the blue lives matter reactions. The deaths in question are deaths that shouldn't have happened. You don't just say, well it's fine the cop overreacted because they have a dangerous job.

No, you say, something went wrong here and it needs to be addressed, not excused.
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This is very good and highlights one of the difficulties - needed change probably comes at the individual department and officer level, rather than as some sweeping policy change broadly applied.

I'd accept what the experts determine, a point of view I rarely see. For example, is it really beneficial to draw your firearm and point it for the slightest reason? That's one step closer to a shooting. If warranted, fine. If not, let's see how that can be reduced. what about deescalation? Is that worth investigating?

In any case, I sure hope the relevant experts - those with sway in policing - can propose, and justify, policies which reduce the mistakes.
 
sadhatter said:
Your point seems to boil down to an eye for an eye, do you really think that justifying behavior that is only going to make matters worse is helping?
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No, my point is there is a reason many of us tend to distrust police. Also, in most high stress situations where cops are involved, cops are the only ones who are trained to keep calm & in control.

If oru problem is how black people are viewed, accepting them acting in a fashion that would confirm this is only going to make matters worse.
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The same goes for the police does it not?

Also, what would you accept as proof?
 
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Fudbucker said:
Yes, it is. Women commit hardly any violent crimes, therefore they're not perceived as a threat and hardly ever are shot by the cops. Same with rich people. The people shot by the cops never seem to be wearing Armani suits and driving Beemers.
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Which is why it is right to shoot the blacks even when one wouldn't shoot a white guy in the same situation. That is simply reality that blacks are far more violent and threatening so they need to be shot at a much lower level of provocation. Simple logic really right?
 
I'm sorry the gentleman was shot but one has to ask this question. Why did he reach in his pocket and pull out a vaping device and get in a shooting pose after the police tried to get him to stop acting erratically?
 
sadhatter said:
You could say the same for any profession, if you don't think doctors protect doctors, lawyers protect lawyers, etc. You don't really understand how things are.

Your statement seems to read that cops are taught to be violent in general, which would not explain the higher percentage of unarmed blacks killed (for the record while I can say there are unjustified shootings, making a qualifier of unarmed seems to be very disingenuous. An unarmed person can still present a major threat , and it is not a police officers fault someone picked a fight they couldn't win), the only other way to read it is that cops are trained specifically to be more violent toward blacks, which doesn't pass the smell test either. 1 how are they hiding this training from black officers, and two we run into the issue of plenty of white unarmed people shot. So either the training isn't being followed right or this isn't the issue.
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Admittedly cops are not held to the high standards of many other professions such as barbers.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/us/jobs-training-police-trnd/
 
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