Heh, it certainly had occurred to me. Wonder if it’s gotten any better. I haven’t lived down there in the East County since 1994. I used to visit every single weekend until 2004 or so.
NY Post is a Rupert Murdoch yellow journalism rag, and is completely unreliable since his purchase of it.
Also, you’re blaming the victim for being shot and excusing the police’s actions with the statement supporting the police officers as being primed to shoot him based on a potential previous criminal record. Again, having a criminal record is not a capital offense.
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That’s not really “excusing” their actions. Since the victim was probably identified to the police by his sister (it’s not clear to me whether the three times she called “authorities” to help subdue him included this particular time), it’s not outside the realm of probability that his 2005 gun possession felony conviction came up, which raises the specter of dispatch informing the arriving officers of said conviction. And yeah, that tidbit comes from the AP wire, which appears to be where the Post got it.
So yeah: if the cops knew of a prior gun conviction, they might be predisposed to think whatever he’s pointing at them might be a gun. That would be precisely the reason why such a tidbit might be forwarded to the cops responding, if indeed that’s what happened. That doesn’t at all imply that the cops should have done what they did.
And as far as we know, Officer Hairtrigger just shot him because he’s Officer Hairtrigger. But it’s disingenuous to assume that just because one of us points out that a cop with knowledge of a prior gun conviction might approach this situation with an itchier trigger finger means that such an observation equates to blaming the victim for getting himself shot by a perfectly reasonable cop.
Nuance, you guys.
That’s true as far as it goes. Personally, I’ve gotten to the point where I believe cops should never shoot unless they’ve been shot at first. They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.
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I literally said that it might have figured into the officer’s state of mind, assuming that they knew his identification and history. I am neither blaming nor excusing anyone. It is agreed that he did not have a gun. It is apparently a fact that one officer used a taser at the same time that the other fired his gun. I cannot think of any excuse for that. Any true information that might help us understand the actual events, and the states of mind of those involved, is a positive thing.
I don’t think anyone is claiming in any of these cases that having a record, or a busted tail light, or a bad attitude is or should be a capital offense. It is pretty unlikely that at the morning meeting at the station, the police sergeant passed around a list of those people in the neighborhood with a criminal record, and told the officers on duty to find all the people on the list, and execute them. in most of these cases, there was a call, or some event, and it escalated into an incident of deadly force. Often, the police officers unnecessary cause or add to the escalation.
I absolutely agree that there is a serious problem with police violence. I don’t think we are going to solve it without understanding in detail exactly what keeps going wrong, without letting anyone insert their political narrative into the set of facts.
That being said, lets imagine that you and I were the responding officers. We get a call that a man in his 30s “not acting like himself” and had been walking in traffic, endangering himself and motorists. The caller claimed to be his sister, and stated that he was mentally ill but unarmed. ( I have not seen a transcript, but that is as close as I can get.) I don’t know if they had his name. If they did, the dispatcher probably disclosed his record. Would you, as a responding officer, want to know if the person you were about to deal with has a history of violence? I would. And if you knew that, but did not tell me before I interacted with him, I would be unhappy. At least, I think so. I am not a cop. But anyway, I hope that you and I would be calm, reasonable, and help the family, instead of causing a tragedy. But there was a tragedy. A full accounting of the events leading up to it is the only way to maybe keep it from happening next time.
I have never been a cop, but I have been a Marine. Lets say you were to tell me that I need to take a patrol from village A to village C, passing through village B, and we went on patrol, took fire from village B and lost some men. We get to C, and then I learn that the last three patrols have taken fire from that same site. I would not want you to tell me that you did not give me that info because you did not want me to enter village B with preconceived opinions on the residents there. Now, if you give me the info, and I call in an airstrike on village B before even starting the patrol, I need to be relieved of command. hopefully, I can take the info, and pass village B with caution and utilizing cover, and not need to exchange fire. I don’t know. it might be a crappy analogy. But we all agree that any time an unarmed person is shot by police, someone has screwed up badly.
thus endeth the lesson. Sorry for the wordiness MB
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Did this happen in Mayberry, where the police know every single person in town on sight?
If it occurred in some non-podunk town where the police did NOT actually know who it was, if the police were cool and collected enough to have the time to identify him and get his complete records, then why the BLEEP were they not cool and collected enough to recognize the difference between a vaporizer and those things in their very own holsters hands?
#THREE STRIKES != EXTRA-JUDICIAL EXECUTION
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Local sources have been playing up the fact his sister called 911 for a 5150. The cops knew going in that it was going to be with an unbalanced person. Fuck training though, only white people get sent to a psychiatric facility.
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pfffft
#AMATEUR HOUR
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a man is dead and he was shot by the people who were called out to help him
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And if you’re mentally ill and having a episode, make sure to clear right on up and act rational and properly deferential if you don’t want to be ventilated by a trigger happy cop.
I kind of get the “person acting unpredictably and not complying with orders takes something out and points it at you” line of thinking. If it’s a gun, and you wait, the guy’s got the drop on you, and his first shot may be the last thing you experience. In a stress/crisis moment, properly identifying a small handheld item is not that easy.
That being said, news reports I’ve heard have reported that he was hit by a taser at about the same time that he was hit by bullets. To me that means that there’s a cop out there that thought “non-lethal is appropriate in this situation”, and a gung-ho douchenozzle who only thought lethal force would work…
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Or cruelly bullshitting you, or being weirdly delusional. The thing about shooting a gun is that the police, even at close range, miss most of the time, even shooting at the center of mass. And since, in theory, they’re only shooting because the target represents an immediate threat to life and limb, they want to take them down as quick and hard as possible. So that means sending as many bullets as possible into the target’s body in the shortest time possible. That’s police procedure, and they surely knew that.
I suspect that since most people have a Hollywood notion of how gun violence works, it screws up public conversations about police violence and even influence how readily police use their weapons, even though they know that if they shoot someone, they’re effectively shooting to kill. Those cinematic fantasies are really hard to shake, even for people who should know better (because it’s their job), and that’s when the cops aren’t deliberately spreading disinformation or engaging in weird fantasies.
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Yup, if you are not being shot at, use a tazer. Simple stuff really.
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Priming. Assuming they did recognize him and did remember a previous gun charge, they are primed to see a gun. Anything that looks like a gun can instantly look like a gun in that split second decision on whether they are about to be shot at or not.
Even if they didn’t know the guy, people can be primed to expect danger or guns because the neighborhood is “bad”. Everyone does it. Ever drive through a “bad” part of town? You can be sure you are being extra vigilant for something that seems off.
This, of course, is no excuse. Prior issues does not condone or excuse unnecessary shootings. A bad neighborhood shouldn’t give cops carte blanche to use excessive force or bad tactics. But it does show what I think is one of the problems in policing. They aren’t trained to counter the way our brains work against fear and bias. To be sure I think some cops don’t care; they see the people they serve as beneath them, which includes racism and classism. Other cops can make fatal mistakes and use excessive forces because of various psychological triggers that make all of us behave badly.
I am sure you have all seen the video where the black rights promoter went on one of those life shooting drills with some cops, and saw how hard it was to make the “right” decision. I remember seeing “shoot / no-shoot” scenario training in the 70s and 80s (more or less movies of a scenario, where the action stops when you “shoot”) and it was very tricking some of the scenarios to do the “right” thing.
I really feel we need some real egg-heads on this. Psychologists who know how the brain works (as best as we know) can analyze how police behave, and come up with training that will lead them to make more “right” decisions.
If you are not being actively attacked, put the Taser away and use your goddamned words.
The fact that electronic torture is accepted as a routine compliance tool is in itself a sign of how deeply fucked up American policing has become.
Tasers were supposed to be a less-lethal alternative to firearms, not a solution to police impatience. Force of any sort should be a last-resort option.
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baby steps. one at a time. we will get there.
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As with a lot of American issues, this is a solved problem. Europe, Britain, Australia; we all manage to have adequately effective policing while keeping police shootings to comparatively very low numbers.
You don’t need new research, you just need to stop ignoring the research that has already been done.
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What, specifically, are they doing differently?
Keep in mind, the US is different than Europe, or Australia. Our cultural make up is much broader. You don’t have the same systemic racism that has keep a certain percentage of our people poor with little hope and thus crime being an alternative option (glorified in our music, movies, and games). Our populations are huge in comparison. We don’t have the same social safety nets.
I assume the “gun laws” is how you think you have it all figured out. But the UK/Europe/Australia has never had the high gun crime as the US. Why was that? Certainly the availability was the same, why did the US have more violence even then? Canada has very similar laws (more restrictive than the US, less so than the UK) but their crime rate is much lower. Mexico has extremely restrictive gun laws, more so than most of Europe or the UK, yet there are awash in gun crime.
In short, you aren’t helping. Sitting there smoking a cigar, proud you managed to not touch off a major war in 60 years (which is the first time in European history) and wondering why the rest of the world can’t get their shit together. It is akin to the US attitude towards Iraq, thinking liberation from a dictator and some democracy set up would lead to a democratic oasis in the Middle East. That didn’t work out so well did it.
TL;DR - the problems in the US are different from Europe and Australia that direct comparison isn’t very helpful. Pointing out some specific programs might help, but one has to make sure they address the problems unique to the US.
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No, it’s not the gun laws. If it were just the guns, American cops would be shooting white folks at the same rate as black folks. But they aren’t; American cops can restrain their trigger fingers when they choose to.
I also don’t think that “cultural diversity” is the issue. The USA is not the only immigrant society on the planet; Australian society is heavily multiethnic and multicultural. The local-born at my high school were roughly equal in numbers to the immigrant kids, and a lot of those local-born families had only been here for a generation or two.
In terms of police training, however: a heavy emphasis on deescalation, a strong rejection of the use of weapons as compliance tools, and a vigorous investigation of any use of lethal force. I have never seen a police officer so much as draw their baton, let alone aim a firearm at someone.
This is what passes for a use-of-force scandal in Australia:
Nobody killed, no shots fired, the victim was committing a crime, and yet the officer involved is in deep, deep shit. Rightfully so.
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Doesn’t a shotgun spray shot everywhere? I wouldn’t think it would be good for target shooting, but I’ve never fired one.
It isn’t the diversity per se, it is the long history of racism the US has which is unique to other parts of the world. Even though racism exists all around the world. the US brand is its own flavor. It is not just personal attitudes, but a systemic issue, which in turn, breeds more problems. POVERTY is the leading indicator of crime. When your policies are keeping a certain segment down, don’t be surprised when they feel they have nothing to lose and break the “rules”.
I certainly agree that training is an issue. I think culpability is an even bigger one. For sure there are deescalation techniques being taught, but training isn’t consistent. I have never seen an officer draw a baton or draw a gun either. The most I have seen is a pin and cuff. The problem is that when cops are shown to use excessive force, which is SHOWN more and more with cameras everywhere, nothing happens. If there were consequences we would be weeding out the cops that can’t control themselves, and other cops would be urged to use the proper force lest they suffer the consequences.
A lot of time when it come to police actions, I ask, If I had done that, would I be going to jail? While there is SOME difference (ie. if a mugger ran away from me, I as a citizen can’t chase them), when it comes to lethal force we should have very similar standards.
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It wasn’t so much accurate target shooting as “hitting the thing in front of you”.
