I just stepped through it again, and you're spinning like crazy. He doesn't extend that knife. He doesn't face the police until after he takes a bullet in his side. He never got within knife range. He never approached the police.
He did not have to be killed. You're really telling me that we can't ask for three more seconds to let him drop the knife or actually approach an officer with it?
And that's the problem with this logic. You want to allow absolute hair trigger aggression by police officers. And when you allow that, you get innocent people killed. Because the cops can't make that decision correctly every time, and if you train them to shoot first, they will.
This guy didn't have to die. I don't know what was in his head, but I know he didn't have to die.
The only thing the man could've pulled was a pistol from his waistband. The police were across the streets behind cars already aiming guns at the guy. They should be trained to wait until the person actually raises the pistol to fire before discharging. At that distance and with the cover they had I don't see how the guy could fire a shot and hit a cop before they could. I don't see how anyone can argue the cop was in any danger even if the guy had a pistol. Unfortunately, the cop only has to say he felt threatened and he thought the guy had a gun and he'll get off on any charges.
I think the biggest problem is with the way he was approached in the first place.
Most places with unarmed police, more officers would have been sent, and the first step would have been to tell passers by to step away, while officers would have kept their distance from the suspect.
Once he is attacking the first officer I agree the shot was probably justified, but that police officer should not have approached someone who was wielding a weapon that way in the first place.
A deadly weapon is only deadly if you allow officers to get into range without adequate protection.
I think this is a large part of the problem with weapons use for US police: They have a lethal weapon as easy backup, so they're taking risks that would be downright stupid and against every instruction for someone who has to go back to their car to unlock a sealed box to get at their firearm, or call for backup from a specialist firearms squad (depending on country).
The guy was holed up with a rifle and had just been using it to kill people. He was refusing to surrender. Why would the police think that no one was in imminent danger? At any moment he could have started firing at police again. And granted it was unlikely they would be hit before killing him, but should they have to take that risk? Most people would answer no, the police shouldn't have to take that risk.
By this argument, police would have to stand there and watch a person get stabbed before doing anything, rather than grabbing the guy running and shouting with a knife.
rcurry is right if the knife wielder is within 20 feet AND the gun holder has their gun holstered, uncocked, with the safety still on.
Why not also do a test where the officer has to front-load the powder into their musket and put a bullet in and arm the gun? Have you seen those videos? The policemen are the ones who approach the knife wielder, not the other way around! They have the power to set the distance and to prepare themselves if they're going to close the distance! They're not hapless policemen standing idly by, suddenly assaulted by a knife wielder who surprise-jumps out of a doorway within 20 feet. That's a totally different situation.
What's more likely to be happening in a real situation, based again on all those countless snuff films floating around the internet, is that the officers have the safety off, have their hand on the gun, or even have the gun out of the holster in their hand, long before the 20-feet distance is reached.
That reduces the dangerous distance pretty significantly I would think.
So again, my point totally stands: unless the victim (I refuse to call them an attacker when they're clearly the one who always dies in practice when these scenarios happen, especially if they're black) is actually actively moving towards the policeman, there is no reason for the policeman to shoot their gun at a victim that's standing 20 feet away. If they feel the victim is a threat, then unholster the gun, take off the safety, cock the gun, and be ready to shoot, but maintain your distance.
It totally refuse that the only reasonable course of action after you deliberately approach a knife wielder is to shoot them when you get them within your 20-foot radius. That's murder, pure and simple.
Citing the Mario Woods shooting does nothing for your case. For those who haven't been following along, Woods had just stabbed a total stranger on the street and police showed up to apprehend him. He would not drop his knife after repeated orders and use of less lethal force like pepper spray and bean bag rounds. After a few minutes, he tried to break through the perimeter the cops had set up around him. At that point, the police could have either let a dangerous man escape, they could put themselves in great peril by physically stopping a charging man with a knife, or they could shoot him and end the threat to the public and themselves.
I'm not saying that the police couldn't have handled this better, but characterizing this incident as "shoot first and ask questions later" is mendacious.
Edit: And Ian Murdock? What evidence is there that police killed him?
Those citizens didn't just enter a violent confrontation with a police officer or anyone else for that matter, steal a weapon from who they were struggling with, then book it.
He didn't get shot for having a weapon in his possession; he got shot because of how the weapon ended up in his possession. I'm not saying it should be endorsed as standard operating procedure mind. However, the reaction is far from unreasonable. There seems to be a belief that there is the luxury of extensive time during which one can reason in these types of encounters, and the fact is there isn't. You react and operate on training and protocol.
It is the very reason why protocol does exist; you rehearse it ahead of time so it comes naturally without thinking. When your training involves an effective level of operant conditioning to save your life in the event you have to resort to lethal force, protocol isn't just there for the Officer's protection, but also the suspect's. If it is a mistake, it can be (or should be) resolvable afterward. If the Justice system weren't such a bureaucratic nightmare, it may not even be that big a deal. Once you depart from that protocol though, that cop is going to do exactly what they are trained to do. A) (Hopefully) Protect the Public B)Protect themselves C)Neutalize the threat as quickly as possible. Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily in a way you and I like or approve of, but IF they follow the book, we tend to grant them the benefit of a doubt. That happened. The officer's tried a peaceful arrest, the suspect escalated, stole the Tazer, Officers realized the suspect was now armed, public nearby, suspect is unresponsive and was hostile. It isn't an unreasonable escalation path at all.
You're mad if you think it's at all reasonable to give an armed, violent assailant the chance to retreat and prepare an ambush, or take a hostage. As I stated earlier, Isympathizewith the suspect for running or being afraid in the current environment. But after he lifted that Tazer, he shifted the operational calculus of the situation, knowingly or (most likely), not. Further, based on previous decisions by the DA, the precedent of a Tazerbeing a lethal weapon was well on it's way to being enshrined, so you really can't even fall back on the whole non-lethal aspect.
I watched the video. I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment.
What I saw was two officers crossing the street in normal foot traffic. As they got close to the attacker, who was standing there non-threatening in the crowd, he lunged at them with a weapon that was likely difficult to see from their perspective or was hidden. The man attacked one officer repeatedly spilling out into the street. The other officer shot him.
That's about as clean a shoot you can get.
There was no way that situation was going to be deescalated by talking him down. He attacked them before anything had escalated in the first place.
What would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do was for the second officer to engage the attacker by physical means instead of drawing his weapon and shooting him. An incredibly stupid thing that you seem to suggest should have been done. Or maybe you mean the second officer should have deescalated the situation before falling back on drawing his weapon even though the situation was the attacker beating his partner to death in the street right in front of him.
I will never, ever be able to accept that it is ok for the police to shoot a person who they do not see carrying a weapon. There is no circumstance in which you can say you feared for your life if you did not see a weapon. And if you legitimately did fear for your life when you didn't see a weapon then maybe you shouldn't be a police officer.
I'm generally pretty biased against police shooting someone with a knife. Until one time I saw a video of one guy with a knife stabbing 5 police officers, with their guns drawn, before any of them fired a shot. Sometimes your intuitive sense of what is possible is actually quite wrong.
The fact that cops are trained is precisely why they shoot people who try and charge them or others with knives. The correct first-line strategy for dealing with a knife attack is not allowing the attacker to close enough distance with you to use the knife, because once they do, regardless of how well trained you are how untrained they are there's still a high chance you'll end up seriously injured or dead. It's that imminent danger that justifies the use of deadly force. As I understand it, every self defence course worth its salt teaches this - even the ones focused on bare-handed fighting. Any tactics for dealing with attackers who do close that gap are just a high-risk last resort for situations where that fails.
It's not clear at all that he posed a non-imminent threat. He had a weapon, had just been using it to kill people, and at any moment could have started trying to kill people again. The cops shouldn't have to risk their lives in this situation.
Police are supposed to serve the public, not kill them indiscriminately without cause and without repercussions. If you can't handle getting shot at or any other risks involved, maybe you shouldn't be a cop with a loaded gun and power over others.
In this case, it's worth remembering that the victim was reported, in a 911 call, to have been carrying a pistol. Not a taser. The police came to the park to confront an armed subject. Upon finding him, they told him to show his hands. He refused, and then pulled out his weapon.
The police would have had just moments to decide what to do. You can imagine the level of adrenaline they were dealing with was such that they could probably taste it.
The police obviously made the wrong decision. But they were set up, by circumstances and by a system that forces police to make split-second life-or-death decisions like this routinely.
One problem among many is that US police are both allowed and trained to use deadly force very quickly, when under any kind of threat. German police will often (successfully!) shoot to disable, not to kill, even when confronted by someone armed with a knife.
It's a common American meme that when police fire a gun, the only rational decision is to shoot to kill, but it's just not true.
> If it's clear that someone presents an immediate mortal danger to others
Yeah, and that's where your argument hits a brick wall. Yes, if someone presents an immediate mortal danger, then force can be justified. If you see that video, he is reaching for the waistband of his pajamas and following directions.
Even in the event that he had a pistol stashed in the elastic of his pajamas, you have multiple officers who already are in the drawn position, ready to fire, whereas he has to pull it out, aim, etc.
You have a far lower bar for "clear presentation of immediate mortal danger" than most people here - and you seem to believe that's our failing, not yours.
> People must do exactly as they're told when dealing with the police to minimize uncertainty and confusion.
You mean like the multiple incidents where we see two police officers yelling contradictory statements? "Hands behind your head, turn around!" "Get on your stomach!" and one of the officers believes he is in mortal danger because the suspect is, in effect, obeying the other officers instruction, and not his?
This is one of the most important points to me, and I rarely see it discussed. Defenders of killings by police usually point to the officer's feelings of safety and right to defend themselves using what seem to be the same standards as any average civilian. If you gave me a gun and put me in a dangerous situation I might pull the trigger when I didn't absolutely need to out of fear, and it might be totally reasonable for me to do that. That's why I'm not a police officer. We have a profession where part of the job description involves the possibility of shooting civilians to death, and we are somehow unable or unwilling to get tough and establish a bar of professionalism commensurate with such an extraordinary job description.
He did not have to be killed. You're really telling me that we can't ask for three more seconds to let him drop the knife or actually approach an officer with it?
And that's the problem with this logic. You want to allow absolute hair trigger aggression by police officers. And when you allow that, you get innocent people killed. Because the cops can't make that decision correctly every time, and if you train them to shoot first, they will.
This guy didn't have to die. I don't know what was in his head, but I know he didn't have to die.
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