Cop Shooting Thread

[Nesrie]

@Timex

Absolutely, this is why I said, “he’s a dumbass kid”.

He isn’t a dumbass kid. He isn’t anything anymore. He’s dead. One our babies is dead, and yes he was killed by a cop.

Unlike us, he doesn’t get live to see his brain fully developed in order to make better decisions.

[rowe33]

@Timex

The cop killed someone who turned on him with a loaded firearm

What on earth are you talking about? He did NOT have a gun in his hand when he turned. Why are you fixated on this? And now the cop magically knew it was a loaded gun?

[scottagibson]

@Timex

I mean, sure, you can freeze that one frame, and show it to people and say, “Look, his hands were up!” but in the actual video, it’s a single frame. And in the real world, we aren’t given the chance to pause things on each frame and analyze them when making our actions.

Again, you’re basically saying that there isn’t any way this kid can avoid being shot by the cop except, perhaps, keep running. Anything else and the cop has sufficient justification to kill him. He did actually drop the gun. He did actually show the cop his empty hands, when the cop told him to do that. And he got killed anyway, and then the cops lied about what happened.

@Timex

The cop killed someone who turned on him with a loaded firearm.

That’s the lie the cops told. Why are you repeating it?

[Timex]

@Mark_Weston

I don’t care. We shouldn’t care. If they’re not capable of making that decision correctly the vast majority of the time then they should change tactics.

No, you have to care, because you are judging the cop by an impossible standard.

You are saying that the cop should have recognized that the kid went from armed to unarmed, while the gun passed behind his back, and that he should have magically made this assessment in the literal hundredths of a second when it took place.

That is not a reasonable thing to expect a human brain to do.

@Mark_Weston

This is what changed the police handling of gun crime in the UK. It used to be that uniformed officers with some firearms training were issued weapons when there was a crime in progress that might require an armed response. After a series of messed up police shootings which were essentially the result of poor tactics putting officers in dangerous positions where they had no time to think, the police forces made changes. So almost all armed response these days is handled by specialist armed patrols who have a lot of tactical training as well as firearms training. Despite the stringent gun laws there, there are still several thousand gun crimes a year. But the number of suspects shot by police is in the low single figures.

Several thousand gun crimes is nothing, man. The US has like 40k death salone by gun each year, and that doesn’t scratch the surface of all the crime involving guns.

This is part of the problem right? We have way too many guns on our streets, and that means we have more interactions between cops and armed people. And sadly some portion of those interactions are gonna end like this.

I don’t think the UK solutions are gonna necessarily work in the US, while we have as many guns on our streets as we do currently.

@Mark_Weston

I’m not arguing that the individual officer in question should be crucified, and describing the incident as a murder is objectively wrong. Many or most of the failures were systemic; I’d guess at poor training, bad department culture, racist assumptions built into the response to crimes, and poor tactics. But we’ll never address the systemic or cultural issues if there are always people willing to pipe up with “it was a split-second decision” or “he feared for his life” defences. And fundamentally, that officer should still be held responsible for his own actions. If he’s chasing an armed suspect in the dark and is so concerned about his own safety that the suspect has no way of surrendering, and will still be shot even if he obeys instructions, then maybe the solution is to stop chasing .

I think it’s reasonable to ask the questions you’re asking here, which is “how do we not put the cop in this situation”. But a lot of folks are saying the cop made the wrong move, and I don’t think that’s accurate.

@rowe33

What on earth are you talking about? He did NOT have a gun in his hand when he turned. Why are you fixated on this? And now the cop magically knew it was a loaded gun?

Watch the video yourself, Rowe. He did in fact have that gun in his hand when he turned. You see it go behind him as he starts to turn. And then you get a single frame after he makes the turn, as he gets shot, where you see his hand is empty.

As far as the gun being loaded, any reasonable person would assume the gun was loaded. It had been fired already. (and yes, it was in fact loaded, so trying to suggest that no one should have assumed it was loaded is nonsensical… I don’t think that’s the argument you want to try to make).

[Mark_Weston]

@Timex

No, you have to care, because you are judging the cop by an impossible standard.

I’m judging the cop by the standard of being a public servant acting as an instrument of a democratic government. Which I think means that his training and his personal attitude are required to make the safety of citizens his highest priority. Who you are still excusing for killing a citizen for obeying instructions and surrendering.

@Timex

This is part of the problem right? We have way too many guns on our streets, and that means we have more interactions between cops and armed people. And sadly some portion of those interactions are gonna end like this.

This doesn’t strike me as a good excuse. The opposite really. That gun ownership and gun crime are so high in the US, and US police forces are so well resourced, really implies that they have no excuse for not being ahead of the UK in finding solutions. You’d think this would be a high priority! The reason that they don’t (in general) is the cultural belief that everything they do is justified, and change isn’t necessary. And that cultural belief is the direct source, and the result, of arguments like yours.

[Menzo]

@Mark_Weston

I’m judging the cop by the standard of being a public servant acting as an instrument of a democratic government. Which I think means that his training and his personal attitude are required to make the safety of citizens his highest priority. Who you are still excusing for killing a citizen for obeying instructions and surrendering.

I think we should all appreciate that someone is on here making sure we think of the poor white cops who are scared out of their minds. The NRA has made it clear that these 13-year-old black kids are prowling the streets looking for white cops to murder, so it must be a daily chore just putting on that uniform. They truly are our heroes in blue.

[Telefrog]

I’m not a cop and I’ve never been one, but I have actually shot at people and had people shoot at me, and I’ve patrolled in civilian areas with hostile folks mixed in with that population. I detained folks and chased people that were armed and had demonstrated a willingness to kill.

Maybe my military training was better than a cop’s but we managed to not go all John Wayne on every person we saw with a gun that moved. We shot at people only after they fired on us.

I know that’s a level of risk that our police forces find unacceptable any longer, but I think that needs to change. We gotta stop shooting people just because they’re in the vicinity of a weapon.

[jpinard]

If I were black I would want to run if police were to confront me, because even if totally innocent, police will sometimes frame you:

Baltimore Cops Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, Trial Reveals

[rowe33]

@Timex

As far as the gun being loaded, any reasonable person would assume the gun was loaded. It had been fired already. (and yes, it was in fact loaded, so trying to suggest that no one should have assumed it was loaded is nonsensical… I don’t think that’s the argument you want to try to make).

The facts as I understand them are:

1. Police were summoned to the area based off a gunfire detection system of some kind.
2. The officer arrived to the general area, saw two people, one of which ran away. He immediately gave chase, then shot the kid right after he complied with his orders to stop and show his hands.

I’m not sure how the cop 100% knew that this kid was the one firing the gun detected by the detection system. It could have just been a kid standing there with a pistol for whatever reason, completely unrelated to the detected gunfire. Maybe even someone with a legally concealed weapon that drew it in order to defend themselves against someone else. Maybe someone heard gunshots and thought, hmm I should make sure my family is safe so I’m going to go out in the alley and check, then freaked out when the cops arrived. There are a multitude of situations that could have explained why these two were standing there when the cops arrived. It seems to me that the cop escalated the situation immediately then killed the kid while he was complying with the officer’s orders.

[ReptileHouse]

@Timex

You can fuck yourself all the way up your own ass, thanks.

I don’t know your situation so don’t know why, but you’re clearly having a hard time today, Timex. I’m sorry for that. I hope things get better for you.

[SadleyBradley]

@Telefrog

I know that’s a level of risk that our police forces find unacceptable any longer, but I think that needs to change. We gotta stop shooting people just because they’re in the vicinity of a weapon.

I have no idea how we do this. For a significant portion of the country, policing is no longer about protecting citizens at all costs but instead protecting the police at all costs.

[KevinC]

@Telefrog

I’m not a cop and I’ve never been one, but I have actually shot at people and had people shoot at me, and I’ve patrolled in civilian areas with hostile folks mixed in with that population. I detained folks and chased people that were armed and had demonstrated a willingness to kill.

Maybe my military training was better than a cop’s but we managed to not go all John Wayne on every person we saw with a gun that moved. We shot at people only after they fired on us.

I was going to say, if our military were killing 13 year olds in literal warzones I think that would be frowned upon as well. But cops doing it on our streets, well, it was high stress, dangerous situation, etc. All of which are true, but it doesn’t excuse or justify it.

@Telefrog

We gotta stop shooting people just because they’re in the vicinity of a weapon.

Yup.

[Nesrie]

What did we get out of this again? What societal boon did we as a nation get out of this encounter?

That’s our child we lost. That’s a a baby of the USA put in the ground and for what? I know it’s inconvenient that I keep calling a 13 year old boy a baby, but he was. Keyword here…was. Don’t say is. Don’t downplay the loss. Our baby is dead and for what? What good came out of this tragedy?

[SadleyBradley]

One of the troubling things about getting older is having more kids in my life and mentally replacing child victims of tragedies with kids I know. It’s harrowing.

[Timex]

@rowe33

I’m not sure how the cop 100% knew that this kid was the one firing the gun detected by the detection system. It could have just been a kid standing there with a pistol for whatever reason, completely unrelated to the detected gunfire.

I mean… if you are standing around in Chicago with a pistol out… that’s against the law, man.

@rowe33

Maybe even someone with a legally concealed weapon that drew it in order to defend themselves against someone else. Maybe someone heard gunshots and thought, hmm I should make sure my family is safe so I’m going to go out in the alley and check, then freaked out when the cops arrived. There are a multitude of situations that could have explained why these two were standing there when the cops arrived. It seems to me that the cop escalated the situation immediately then killed the kid while he was complying with the officer’s orders.

None of that stuff was what happened, man. While you can imagine it, it’s not reasonable. There were gun shots, the cops showed up, and they saw a guy with a gun. You stop that guy.

Now, if they had just shot the kid while he was running, that would obviously be wrong. He wouldn’t have been a threat to them, and so it wouldn’t have been justified.

But in this case, it seems reasonable for that cop to think he was facing an immediate, mortal danger, based on all of the video footage I’ve seen.

None of this makes it ok that kid got shot. It doesn’t make it any less tragic. But it means that the cop isn’t the one at fault here.

@ReptileHouse

I don’t know your situation so don’t know why, but you’re clearly having a hard time today, Timex. I’m sorry for that. I hope things get better for you.

Dude, that’s not the case. I told you to fuck off because you were an asshole.

[ReptileHouse]

Shrug. OK. My best wishes that that you have a good day remain.

[Nesrie]

@SadleyBradley

One of the troubling things about getting older is having more kids in my life and mentally replacing child victims of tragedies with kids I know. It’s harrowing.

It is. It’s horrifying. And I honestly don’t understand how people can argue about the death of a 13 year old child like they’re just reviewing some Monday night pass they can’t agree on.

Our baby is dead for no good reason at all. We got nothing, not a goddamn thing from that, from having a society that believes these conflicts have to keep happening.

[Timex]

To be clear, the reason I considered you an asshole, was that you suggested that I somehow lacked empathy.

That’s definitely not the case here. I don’t lack empathy for the kid who died or his family at all.

But that empathy doesn’t blind me to empathy for the cop. The cop is just as human as that kid, and I’m going to look at what he saw, and what would have been reasonable for him to think and feel at that time.

That’s the part that you seem to be entirely incapable of considering at all.

So don’t come at me and say that I’m the one who lacks empathy.

[Mark_Weston]

@Timex

I mean… if you are standing around in Chicago with a pistol out… that’s against the law, man.

And the penalty is death?

[SadleyBradley]

@Timex

The cop is just as human as that kid

Apart from the months/years more training on dealing with stressful situations, an assortment of weaponry, an army of officers as backup, sure.