> and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response
Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no threat to the EMTs and b) could have been easily addressed without violence. I don't think police SOP should be "1) make demand, 2) attack civilian that hesitates due to objections with demand." Some situations allow time for rational conversation, this was one of them, and the police rejected that possibility (which had a lower likelihood of resulting in bodies flying into the EMT's workspace) in favor of using force.
Sgt. Espinoza used Woosley's passive insistence on getting his phone back, which explicitly did not interfere with the wellbeing of the patient or the actions of the EMTs, as a justification for employing violent compliance techniques. If Sgt E doubted W's ability to get his phone back without interfering (not unreasonable), he should have volunteered to do it on W's behalf rather than violently subduing him for what to me looks like entirely reasonable hesitation (reasonable in the moral sense, not in the maximize-probability-of-avoiding-arrest sense).
Partensky's case is more difficult to assess without a video recording. It's conceivable that P's hesitation justified violent escalation (as opposed to a more rational but slower approach with higher P(success)) but I doubt it.
> This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work.
It took two to tangle, and I believe the police were unambiguously in the wrong, whatever you think of W and P.
> Giving a huge benefit of doubt, that barely explains their initial behavior. The guy had two hands full when he was shoved. We can see that in the video.
What does it matter whether he was carrying something in his hands?
> The officers continued to get closer and closer to the man. They were approaching him. They could have kept their distance and instructed him.
He was walking towards them, as well. Even if they stopped dead in their tracks, he would have walked into them.
> But let's assume their only option was to shove him for some reason that repeated examination of the video for sure does not reveal. Now explain why they just continued walking past him, watching him bleed on the ground. Once they were safe, what is their excuse for not immediately helping the person they just injured? In fact you can clearly see that one of the police started to bend down to do something - we could assume to help the guy - and the other officer stopped him.
Because the USA is extremely litigious, and if they touched him, they could get sued. You can also see them immediately radioing for a medic. If they are so heartless and cruel, why would they have done that?
> What's the excuse for lying about the man tripping? If their actions are defensible, why did they lie at first?
There is no excuse for that, but it is understandable. Cops, heck, anybody who does anything physical to someone else, often has to face enormous consequences. Because a split second decision, the police officer was possibly facing losing his job, being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even jail time.
> Let's do the Devils advocate. You are the cop standing there. You are almost certain he will pull a gun on you or your colleague. What would you do?
-Fair question. IMHO there will be situations where the police are justified in firing on suspects. I just think that bar is currently (apparently) way too low - and that much can be done BEFORE a situation goes as far as the one in the parent story.
I would expect that SOP at 911 dispatch when receiving a call like the one triggering this death would be to seek more information as the team dispatched; why didn't they call the neighbours? Why didn't they call the house the call supposedly originated from? Why didn't they floodlight the entrance to the house as they ordered the victim to come out? He wouldn't see a thing with a couple of lights in his face, and it wouldn't matter one iota whether he had a gun or not.
My point isn't that police never are justified in exerting violence on us; my point is that they could do a lot more to avoid ending up in situations where deadly force is the only apparent solution in the first place.
> Can someone point me to what exactly did police officers do wrong in this story?
Preparing to draw their guns was probably the first thing. If you want to make someone afraid for their life, prepare the tool you can use to end it.
The second is probably the corralling of the gentleman by multiple officers.
We know that Police officers are told that their primary goal is to "get home at night". We know that they regarded this gentleman as a threat; his intelligent handling of the situation when frightened for his life is probably the one thing that saved him. "May I reach for my id" instead of just grabbing for it. Removing his hands from his pockets... it's not hard to see how this could have gone very, very wrong.
> How about focussing more on teaching police officers to learn how to be calm and composed as much as possible instead of going on the offensive too quickly.
Most police departments do. In the area I work as a paramedic, they certainly are trained in de-escalation.
I also know that some of them just... don't... care.
I've been dealing with mental health patients, got them calmed down, got a plan for dealing with their issues. And then had a cop march back over (who was on scene, saw the initial incident, the de-escalation), and start shouting at the patient over the destruction of property. The patient's property. "Who the fuck do you expect to clean up that broken glass? Selfish asshole. I should make _you_ get on your knees and clean it".
End result? The patient who was compliant and willing to go for evaluation in the back of my ambulance needed to be sedated and narrowly avoided being tased. In the grand scheme of things, worse things have happened. But this was a situation actively under control. And a situation this officer, and only this officer, actively worked to make worse.
That incident resulted in a complaint, though I have no idea what the resolution was.
I concur. There seems to be a lack of thinking and willingness to wait things out or backoff. Rather than backoff or retreat the police seem too trigger happy. The Baton Rouge shooting the police didn't want to wait for the suspect so they got aggressive and tried tackling him leading to a scuffle. The MN shooting, if the officer felt threatened he could have slowly backed up to his vehicle until backup arrives and only shoot if/when the suspect actually makes a truly life threatening move. (I know, easier said than done. But we need to de-escalate and disarm regular beat cops [slim chance of that happening now I suppose].)
> In your doctrine, can you ask someone else for help with response to the violence?
Of course.
> Can that someone make his response not the same moment, but when he actually meets the guy who threatened you and yours?
Well, it would be kind of dumb if they responded to violence when the violence isn't even there.
> Because these two things seem rational, and cops are exactly what you get with them.
No, not even close. For one, police are not altruistic; they are doing a (government) job and earning a (government) paycheck. Second, as mentioned elsewhere, police do a whole hell of a lot more instigating violence against non-violent people than they do responding to violence with equal force.
> No. The guy was an optometrist with a local business, your suggestion that he was some undercover cop-murderer waiting for the slightest provocation is absurd and insulting. He had every incentive to maintain civility in his neighborhood/town. There is very little reason to believe that he would have reacted violently to any of the following alternative tactics:
Hindsight is 20/20. I will probably agree with you that if the police force did proper research on the suspect, then they would have chosen a different approach. However, I don't understand why they didn't so I can say very little about it. Perhaps it requires a structural change within the police force to accomplish this.
> How can you defend SWAT as a valid way to make an unlawful arrest? Have I misunderstood you?
You misunderstand me. Unlawful arrests are not good, but they happen anyway. The fact that the arrest is unlawful is not always known to the officers performing the arrest, so at that point in time and space, the legality of the arrest has become irrelevant.
I work as a paramedic-firefighter. I've had multiple instances where police "are not our friends". There's far more egregious examples, but even smaller things.
Get called to an obviously mentally disturbed person who is agitated and such. Successfully talk to him over a period of time, calm him down, start a plan for getting him some assistance. There's a couple of police on scene, but they're hanging back. No crime has been committed and this is a medical issue, not a law enforcement issue. Really just there "for our safety". So far so good.
Until along comes another cop, who sees a broken glass in the gutter nearby our patient (who has a couple of minor lacerations on his hand), and comes barreling over to us and shouting and gesticulating at him for breaking the glass, littering, danger to people and potential damage to cars driving/parking there, etc., and asks "why shouldn't I take you to jail after they're done with you?"
Thanks, cop, now my patient is all agitated again and you've undone 20 minutes of my effort trying to help him.
And while the cops hanging back aren't contributing (directly) to the situation, they're obviously visible to said patient, and they definitely have no intention of trying to shut down their fellow officer.
> I largely agree, but to act as a devil's advocate, what about cases when a police officer needs to resort to more heavy-handed methods when their life is in danger?
In those cases the safest thing for the police to do is to withdraw to a safe location and wait for backup, which is what they're supposed to do. Engaging in the sort of aggressive behavior that could be "mischaracterized" as police brutality in response to a potentially dangerous situation only serves to escalate the situation and make it even more dangerous.
>> Do you suppose maybe the officers' intent was to protect the person who called them?
The officer's stated intent was to go home to his family that night. That's what's bothering me. He didn't try to explain his actions in terms of protecting the public from a potentially dangerous individual, he put it in terms of protecting himself.
So what's going to happen if you give a man a gun, tell them "protect yourself first" and send them in a situation where someone might put their life in danger? I think it's obvious- they'll shoot the person putting them in danger. To protect themselves.
> The police officer is 100% at fault here. The paramedic has medical equipment. The cop has weapons.
This is not a zero-sum game. They can be (and, I think, are) 100% at fault.
The paramedic has a medical responsibility to ensure the medical safety of the patient. He abandoned his job because he got afraid / didn't know better. These are not valid excuses.
> Personal safety is the #1 priority of any emergency worker.
They created a dangerous situation that required guns drawn by not contacting the building's management with an ex-military guy that might have reacted violently.
How the fuck are you going to argue that meshes with personal safety is #1?
> By all means, question police methods. But to snidely chide them for putting their personal safety first suggests that you don't really understand their job at all.
Or, I am capable of thinking beyond talking points and realizing the police actively create a dangerous situation by not even bothering to contact the building's management.
I'm sorry but its ridiculous that they didn't even bother to confirm with the property owner that someone was trespassing.
> he initiated the violence by hitting the officer with it, and the officer responded.
Alternative perspective: the officer initiated violence by being there threatening a crowd advocating for the right to self determination. He came with lethal armament with the obvious goal of dispersing the gathering. That's why he was there, and the video shows it.
You see militarized police as normal, so this doesn't shock you. I refuse to accept that.
You can accuse me of acting in bad faith but I don't see how I could be more honest about my intentions or characterizations. You aren't even really refuting them, it seems you agree that militarized police presence should be normalized in our considerations. I'm not so sure. No good comes of it.
> Maybe the public were better behaved when they being filmed.
This is very much the case. I'm a paramedic, and the police agency in the area got body cameras a few years back. It is extremely common (in my first-hand experience) for folks who have been treated completely respectfully to threaten a complaint. Once it's pointed out the whole incident was on camera, it's amazing how often they drop it right there...
I have very serious concerns about policing in this country. I think they are trained to jump to lethal force far too quickly, and the militarization we have seen over the past decades has led to an 'us vs them' mentality for many officers.
But you're absolutely right that a large chunk of the drop in complaints is almost certainly folks who don't bother pressing an issue once they find out there is video evidence of what happened.
> My actual opinion, which you have completely ignored, is that when police make the correct call and correctly identify that a suspect is not dangerous despite the fact that the suspect is holding a gun, police should not be punished for doing the right thing.
Well in that case, addressing this point directly, I would argue that defying standard training/protocol in a real life situation is among the few incontestably red flag behaviors one can observe with respect to cops and that is precisely when you should fire someone, before his behavior can result in tragedy for himself, his fellow officers, or an innocent bystander. The officer did the right thing at the expense of good situational judgment. We as observers have difficulty stomaching it, of course. But a cop's career spans a much wider breadth than a single encounter with an armed, suicidal individual. This is why good judgment is so important: you have to weigh this across all such encounters with armed persons, which then has a bearing on a highly relevant random variable (cop survives his career).
Sure, we all do but if they violate your rights anyway, it does not give you the right to resist, ignore orders or even defend yourself... yes that a hard one to swallow for many people egos but that's how it is.
If there would be a way around this problem I'm sure we would have found out. But you just can't fight someone with a state given authority/power who most likely has the monopoly on force in the given situation. You have to take the legal way and to get a chance to do this you better comply with orders. Whether or not your rights where violated is decided by a judge not by arguing with a cop.
>and just because they routinely abuse those powers without consequence doesn't mean that we should be okay with it.
I doubt this is as routinely as people think it is and that there are no consequences but either way, whats your proposed solution? Do you think defunding the police would help? Or should people just open fire if a cop is abusing his power? I'm sure you can see that this would go nowhere. Complying isn't an option its the only option and the law clearly states that you have to comply. Then fight back the legal way if you can and impose the desired consequences on bad cops. Which BTW you cant do if you resisted even if you rights were violated, the moment you violate your duty the legal way will not favor you.
Everyone should act like they would want their loved ones to act if they have a police encounter.
> If the crime involved is not violent and the suspect has no history of assaulting police officers (or perhaps any history of violent acts), it should basically be a criminal act for the police to initiate the use of force during the apprehension.
I think I agree.
> You are making a huge leap from the presence of weapons to the use of violence against other people.
I think police officers has to put their lives on the line. I'm not saying that SWAT teams have to use violence, I'm only saying that police officers should come prepared with semi-automatic firearms and body armor if there is a suspicion that the suspect will be armed.
Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no threat to the EMTs and b) could have been easily addressed without violence. I don't think police SOP should be "1) make demand, 2) attack civilian that hesitates due to objections with demand." Some situations allow time for rational conversation, this was one of them, and the police rejected that possibility (which had a lower likelihood of resulting in bodies flying into the EMT's workspace) in favor of using force.
Sgt. Espinoza used Woosley's passive insistence on getting his phone back, which explicitly did not interfere with the wellbeing of the patient or the actions of the EMTs, as a justification for employing violent compliance techniques. If Sgt E doubted W's ability to get his phone back without interfering (not unreasonable), he should have volunteered to do it on W's behalf rather than violently subduing him for what to me looks like entirely reasonable hesitation (reasonable in the moral sense, not in the maximize-probability-of-avoiding-arrest sense).
Partensky's case is more difficult to assess without a video recording. It's conceivable that P's hesitation justified violent escalation (as opposed to a more rational but slower approach with higher P(success)) but I doubt it.
> This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work.
It took two to tangle, and I believe the police were unambiguously in the wrong, whatever you think of W and P.
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