The cops who shot a homeless man have been charged with murder

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You can’t get here from the original post. The DISCUSS button bounces you back to the OP.

Good. I saw that video awhile ago and I thought it was a bad shoot.

Also - can we please work on providing - and maybe this isn’t the right word - but asylums for the mentally ill like this?

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I’m glad to see charges, but as the article says, the prosecutors probably have a real battle on their hands. In some of these recent “no indictment” killer cop cases, I have to assume the reason they prosecutor botched the indictment process was because the trial would just be too hard for them, and they are more worried about a “not guilty” verdict having no indictment returned. Best of luck to the prosecutors who are going to need it.

And/or cease to harass those of us who prefer and choose to live outdoors.

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WHAT SOCIALISM? DIE COMMIE DIE!
Seriously though the newspeak employed in naming those institutions, mostly of unintentional torture and negligent death, asylums…
That said my wife’s grandfather did stay at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, famous later for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, though he was in the cancer ward for several years until his death. Back when nurses were minimum wage employees the state actually stepped up to provide medical care of last resort, sometimes better sometimes worse than today.

That video is ridiculous. Three officers, all armed with semi-automatic rifles and body armor (and a dog) shoot a guy holding a knife, apparently as he is already turning to get on the ground per their orders. Plus the cop with the camera is breathing hard as if he is scared to death. Then, after they have shot him several times, they are still scared to walk up and remove the knife as he lies on the ground bleeding, so they beanbag him three times at close range and send the dog over.

Nothing about that video implies the police were ever in any real danger.

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That’s the thing that I keep thinking about every single time I see any of these types of police shooting videos. I know that they’re trained not to assume a suspect is incapacitated just because they’ve been shot, but it seems like there’s a conscious effort in these scenarios to make sure the person is dead even though it’s likely they’re incapacitated and no longer a threat.

It’s as if the working philosophy is, regardless of whether you were actually in danger or not, you shoot to kill and then you let them bleed out and even increase the likelihood of death by cuffing them and ignoring their wounds and not calling an ambulance immediately. I guess it’s easier when the suspect dies so you don’t have to deal with them anymore.

Are all people shot by police suspected of being terminators who can take several shots to the torso and still get up and kill trained and heavily armed/armored cops? I don’t want to suggest that the cops are cowards, but…wait, that’s exactly what I want to do.

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If they are found guilty, will the APD change their criteria for justified shooting? That’s the outcome that matters in the end. Justice is needed for the criminal action but only changing the APD deadly force criteria will reduce repeat occurrences.

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This is something I seriously don’t understand. I was under the impression that if you injure (shoot, stab, punch)someone in self defense you legally have to do everything in your power to keep them alive once they are no longer a threat to you. They just kept shooting him with bean bags and shit. I guess they could argue that they thought he was still a threat but aren’t cops sort of expected to put them selves in harms way. At least kinda sorta. Maybe a little. Sometimes.

I don’t think the criteria are the problem. It’s the wanton disregard.

No… that’s why they don’t do warning shots, nor shoot-to-injure. The idea at least is that this prevents escalation and unnecessary deaths. The cop logic is similar to why one wouldn’t kick a bear in the groin first, and shoot it if this fails. Police are always trained that if they shoot - they only shoot to kill.

This statement may not apply outside the US.

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It is because, during police training, they are shown a video of a man being shot, going down, and then stabbing an officer with a hidden shiv when the officer approaches him to check on his condition. So, remembering the video, they like to make sure their suspect is actually dead before apprehending them.

I certainly hope it doesn’t! I thought about qualifying it, because I was not certain. US police seem terrified of the idea of using non-lethal weapons - as if the public is just waiting to slaughter them all.

That’s easy to say, but as they have been consistently defending this as a ‘good shoot’ they must have some criteria on which to base that defense.

This… what… Oh god. The video made me feel physically sick.

That person was not a threat. He was homeless and mentally ill. He was just picking up his things - is that a reason for killing someone? Just moving a little? How is that a “tense standoff”?

If this had happened in Finland, the police wouldn’t even have their guns out. They’d talk to the suspect first, try to de-escalate the situation if necessary.

In Finland, the police force use a gun a total of 40 times a year (in total, not per person). And that includes just pointing gun at something. Actually shooting at a person happens very rarely, not even once a year. As far as deaths go, the police in Finland have killed three (3) people during the 21st century, so that’s three kills in the last 14 years. Three.

Las year, the police had to use their guns a few times (as in, more than usually), but both times they shot the men in the foot. They survived, obviously, and all was well.

So why can’t American police forces apply the same kind of sane policies? Believe it or not, it’s possible to deal with criminals (or suspects) without automatically killing them.

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They use less-lethal weapons for “pain compliance,” not for anything remotely related to self-defense.

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I think I’ve probably said this in three or four threads already, but I feel compelled to say it every time I see “shoot to kill.” “Shoot to kill”, if justified at all, ought to mean “shoot for center of mass without regard to the danger this poses to the person being shot at.” It seems that a lot of police instead interpret it to mean that if you shoot someone and they go down, you are supposed to go over and make sure you finish the job.

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It’s like they all saw Millers Crossing and took only one thing away from it:

It’s almost as if they are driving the public towards that end.

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