If the shooter gets nothing (and he basically just blew away someone who answered the door), that gives SWAT cart blanche’ to just shoot anyone for any reason during a raid. That’s evil.
Yes. Sending the SWATer away for 20 years and letting the police officer off without anything seems even worse to me. I’m not really saying that the SWATer doesn’t deserve to go to jail for that long, I’m just saying that if he does deserve it then the shooter has some culpability too. But that’s a rant for another thread.
…Having paused to read the district attorney’s report on why the shooter wasn’t charged, Jesus wept. Guy steps out his door to see what’s going on, has multiple people shouting conflicting things at him, gets shot and killed because the officer thought he had a gun which is entirely legal. Total time outside his house: less than 10 seconds.
I wonder how many people on QT3 know any police officers or have family that are police officers.
Most people in any job do not go to work thinking I wonder how many clients and customers I can mess up today. The officers I have known do not get up in the morning and say I wonder how many people I will kill today.
My sister is a county sheriff. There is no excuse for this “I thought his finger was a gun” crap (which is what this boils down to).
And there are a lot of cops who do want to pull the trigger, just like there’s a lot of very, very racist police officers out there.
It depends on the mindset. Are you an officer to protect and serve? Or are you an officer of kill them all and let God sort them out?
At any rate police officer is only the 15th most deadly job. Construction workers, electrical line workers are more deadly per capita. Loggers and arborists are way more dangerous than them all.
I know the guys from my high school class who wound up as cops. I’ll just say that if I were anything but the straight white-passing dude I am, I’d step real damn careful in my hometown. Not even a brakelight out, just in case.
edit: my two crazy cousins who were both briefly cops at different times don’t exactly help my personal anecdata column :(
I certainly have empathy for police, because every pullover for a broken tail light could be a desperate criminal ready to shoot rather than surrender, and they know that.
But too many unarmed people are dying from police gunfire. Something is wrong. Something needs to get fixed.
I think the current attitude among police that
is actually a huge part of the problem. If you approach every situation as though it’s likely to turn violent, sort or later you’ll mistake an innocent move as a violent one.
Maybe I’m completely wrong about this, but I suspect the focus on “officer safety is paramount” training is the major driver of police shootings of unarmed people without much improvement in actual officer safety. I’ve never actually seen research about the number of police officers shot before and after that style of training became prevalent, though, so maybe it really does keep officers safer.
Without looking up statistics, I’d guess the deadliest are doctors.
You’ve all been warned!
I will make one comment, to this specific statement
[quote=“Wyndwraith, post:477, topic:75450”]
I’ve never actually seen research about the number of police officers shot before and after that style of training became prevalent, though, so maybe it really does keep officers safer[/quote]
As this topic inherently is P&R (as sad as police shootings and safety are P&R is, I can’t change that fact as it stands).
The number of police who die in the line of duty is low, historically so. Not just in ratio, but absolute numbers. Despite more police being employed today than at any other time, the number of officers killed in the line of duty has consistently dropped for decades.
We’re talking in the neighborhood of 120, about half of which are traffic related in any given year. Police work is inherently less dangerous than many other professions such as commercial fisherman, garbage truck driver, and firefighter.
Anyhow my point is simply that the statistic you are looking for is going to be inherently very noisy and of low value. Too many factors will make direct analysis useless. If there is only a single officer injured or killed in an entire county, and the next year they implement changes and there are three? Zero? Did the change work, not work?
Basically justifying this type of extreme reaction based on perceived danger of the job, when the reality shows this reaction is not justified, isn’t the correct response. And as someone whose father was a firefighter and grandfathers were a firefighter and a police officer, it is personally offensive to me. It is antithetical to what those jobs once stood for, and what they, as public employees, should be.
Serve and protect was the motto. It should be again.
Well said.
We need to arm the loggers!
Was he part of the SWAT unit? I haven’t seen read anything that specifically mentioned it. I know the term is ‘swatting,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean SWAT unit members are the ones (or the only ones) to respond.
The report says that he was a responding patrol officer authorized to use a rifle. He was stationed as “long cover” for the rest of the responding officers during the raid. That may actually be worse, because he doesn’t do it day in and day out.
I’ll just say this, because i don’t know…
Is policing safer because of police militarization or despite militarization? We can’t very well say policing is safer than being a construction worker and then advocate getting rid of all the military style hardware, when it is the military style hardware and policing tactics that has made it safer. (Setting aside the social effects of militarization of the police as a separate issue).
I’ll say this, the current trend to decreased police mortality and injury far extends beyond the current trend towards increased militarization, by decades. This despite large increases in the number of officers.
So, clearly, the police militarization is not the cause.
I will also note that the number of deaths had a jump in 2016, but dropped back in 2017.
As a workers’ comp attorney: I’ll add this: don’t ignore the fact that a hefty chunk of all police deaths in any year are not from violence confrontations with suspects but from traffic accidents and as the general rate of auto-accident deaths has declined, so has the police death rate.
Between that and the overall decline in violent crime I think those factors are much more likely to be the cause of the decline in police deaths than the increase in training police to be confrontational and aggressive. (I no longer use the term “police militarization” b/c I feel our current military is actually much more disciplined and professional than our current police forces. I can only wish our police were as well trained/well disciplined as our military.)
On top of that I personally feel like the change to training police to be confrontational and aggressive actually increases the danger to police: by getting right up on top of suspects shouting with guns drawn I feel like they are putting themselves right under the guns of our overly-armed society. I consider the current trend in police culture to be a toxic mess of Fox-style fear/hatred-exaggeration, plus for whatever reason an apparent increase in both machismo and insecurity by the police.
I actually feel like training the police to scout situations better ahead of time, de-escalate the conflicts that can be de-escalated, and handle people with mental problems better, will not just make citizens safer, but will also make police safer.
Edit: moderators, is it maybe time to move this thread to P&R? When I finished typing I went to P&R to look for my post and was like “oh wait, this is in Games”. This thread has really shifted over to a P&R thread IMO.
Yes, it’s tough, and the reality is it is hard to have any substantive discussion to the questions brought up by Wyndwraith and others without going into P&R.
Please move this to P&R!
We need remotely operated or automated police response units - totally apathetic to race and quite happy to confirm being shot at before returning fire.
It would be interesting if the topic of police shooting unarmed people, or police sitting on people and suffocating them, had been explored in an old Western film or show.