Unarmed man flags down LAPD seeking help. They shoot him in the head

I worked for a number of years as a hard rock miner, a job somewhat more dangerous than being a police officer. (In fact, I was a blaster, it was kinda great, being paid mucho dinero to blow things up all day-- the only downside was living in mining towns, which sucked, but I digress).

What they taught us, and what pretty quickly became self-evidently true, was that what was dangerous, was not the working with heavy and very powerful machinery in very cramped spaces, nor the danger of falls or life support failures etc etc, all those could be managed safely with well understood procedures and backups. What could get you killed, what almost certainly would get you killed, if you were killed underground, was human error/idiocy/insanity, possibly your own, more likely one of your co-workers. So we were trained to police each other and watch each other like hawks. Show up for work drunk or smelling too strongly of alcohol from the night before, your coworkers would immediately and guiltlessly rat you out and you were on desk or yard duty that day. If it was known you had been fighting with your girlfriend, you probably didn’t get the key to the explosives shed that day. Act too macho around dynamite, and nobody would partner with you. And so on.

So if cops have such a freakin’ dangerous job, maybe they oughta do the same? Police each other that is. Cuz there evidently ain’t no way they are going to let civilians police them.

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More “bad apples”?

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I live in such a nation. It wouldn’t cross my mind for a moment that flagging down a police car here could result in being shot in the head. A little mockery is way more likely.

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Given the number of people with concealed guns in the US I think it is understandable that police would be paranoid about being shot.

“Understandable”? Aside from that danger being untrue, as smut_clyde pointed out, that still wouldn’t justify shooting first and assessing actual risk later, would it?

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Why is it that the LAPD and a few other police departments, all in cities where legally carried handguns are vanishingly rare (35K permits in a state with 38 million residents, almost none issued to LA residents), account for such a disproportionate number of high-profile shootings of unarmed suspects?

In my state, over 10% of adults have a license to carry, and we have maybe one even remotely questionable shooting by police in any given year. Florida and Pennsylvania each have over a million citizens with carry permits, and each has had one questionable shooting so far this year.

Odd that there are so many states where citizens are very likely to legally have a concealed firearm yet police are unlikely to preemptively murder unarmed suspects. Is there any correlation between legally armed citizens and police shootings?

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The incredible thing is that the Police don’t really have to be this afraid.
Being a policeman is relatively safe.
List of 10 most dangerous professions (Forbes):

Logging workers
Fishers and related fishing workers
Aircraft pilot and flight engineers
Roofers
Structural iron and steel workers
Refuse and recyclable material collectors
Electrical power-line installers and repairers
Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
Construction laborers

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Interesting that Los Angeles, where almost nobody can legally carry a gun (maybe 200 permits, mostly to the rich and famous, in a county with 10 million residents) see so many claims of “I thought he had a gun”. Maybe that explanation needs to be expanded to “I knew there was no way the gun I thought he had could possibly be legal” (because only famous people get permits in LA, and he didn’t look rich) so I shot him just to be safe"?

Yes.

You have a right to free speech, but the police can make you temporarily put down your bullhorn or step away from your computer. Nor do you have a right to live-blog your arrest and booking after they get you for doing something illegal.

What the police can’t do is arbitrarily confiscate the tools needed to exercise your rights, without due process of law, in the absence of an actual criminal act.

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This. That’s a scary, dangerous job. And New Zealand’s logging industry ‘notified serious harm’ rate is an embarrassing running sore.

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Only because NZ loggers aren’t armed so they can’t defend themselves against the trees.

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Well, they are armed. A chainsaw is a pretty powerful thing in close-quarters combat, as anybody who likes horror movies or DOOM can attest to. Without them, the score would be much worse - trees can get pretty aggressive.

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Well, long after the mining companies had deputized the Baldwin-Felts Gang to assassinate their opponents, Sid Hatfield deputized locals at Matewan to ambush the gang… of course, Sid Hatfield would later be assassinated himself… techically that’s law enforcement death squad vs. law enforcement defensive militia…

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The average American is a better-than-average bet for having a gun; but it’s also the case that shooting cops (between the odds of returned fire, the enthusiasm with which their colleagues will treat your case, and the additional legal penalties) is not a good idea. You pretty much have to be in a ‘want to take some of the bastards with me’ state, or acting in a state of particularly limited rationality to make trying sensible.

It’s arguably one of the things that makes the US cops’ enthusiasm for escalation even more self-defeating. Even if someone wasn’t planning on shooting at you, shooting at them certainly gives them a reason to try; which pushes the situation from ‘if this guy is a killer with nothing to lose I might get shot’ to ‘if I don’t hit him before he hits me I might get shot’. The same is true of the penchant for no-knock SWAT raids. Lots of people have guns at home, including some fairly punchy ones; and the number of people who’d shoot at unknown home invaders is way higher than the number who would try shooting their way out if they knew that the cops were here for a chat. Sure, somebody might, gasp horror, flush their stash down the toilet or something; but your escalation vastly increases the number of potential targets who would consider shooting at you a reasonable thing to do.

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Aside from the PR value of having an OMG Dangerous Job!!! when it comes time to either justify your failings or negotiate your salary, people’s perception of risk is radically skewed by its source(or perceived source, cops do a fair amount of driving so even the dead ones are unlikely to be as uniformly ‘killed by menacing criminals’ as is likely to be implied).

Most of the actually-dangerous jobs are almost entirely accidental deaths (and often done by irrelevant poor people…fancy that.); and accidental deaths enjoy lower psychological salience per unit risk than deaths due to hostile action.

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So the first step to reducing the fatality rate for miners, loggers, whatever is to PAY THEM BETTER, and then society will collectively care more that middle-class people are being killed.

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I had a run-in with law enforcement wherein I had a loaded gun in my hands and was actively shooting moments before. I was target shooting, ~100 miles out in the desert on BLM land, perfectly legal to do so there. As the officer came up to me I have to say I was a little nervous of how he would act. But I’m certain my white, male, middle-aged privilege saved me from anything going off the rails.

He did still write me up for littering because I didn’t pick my trash up quickly enough. I figured it was safest not to argue about it.

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Twitterer asks why they handcuff a critically wounded, not-really-a-suspect-regardless-of-what-they-say, person?

I can tell you. All the better chances that he’ll die, to move him around with a critical injury.

And when their spokesperson says “we always do that” … they aren’t even lying.

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no, no. make sure everybody carries a gun and then the cops always have a legal justification to kill anyone they want.

oddly, that is the logical outcome of the nra’s position on gun control and the 2nd amendment.

they believe arming everyone is necessary to protect us from a theoretically violent government. but, arming everyone justifies an actually violent government.

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Has the 2nd Amendment ever actually been used to maintain ‘the security of a free State’?

The War of 1812, perhaps? (although didn’t the US start that one?)

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Also too, the cops need MORE and BETTER guns.
There is a downside to letting arms dealers write your country’s laws.

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interestingly, that was a protest against a california state gun control law promoted by then governor reagan. the law was perceived to be designed to get guns out of the hands of the black panthers.

so far as i understand, the point of the black panthers carrying was to get police (and other whites) to stop killing black men.

did it work? that was what, 1960 something, and where are we today?

i’d argue the 2nd amendment has done little to stop violence against people of color. if anything, it’s enabled people of all colors to make the united states akin to a third world country.

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