Elsewhere reported to be “flash bang grenades”.
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The video has black bars on it. That means it was redacted.
I’m not saying they played hanky-panky with the editing. I’m saying that there should be zero editing, ever, of any police videos, and that the videos should be routinely released immediately following any police fatality, not days later after agencies have had the opportunity to edit them.
Everyone knows this man was armed, generally speaking. His Second Amendment Rights were very dear to him. He insisted he would not be taken alive. He claimed that his personal Freedom was more important than anything else. He did everything you would expect of a man who says these things and puts himself in this situation, and that’s how he died. Now his dearest friends and supporters are insisting that instead of being a man of his word, he was an unarmed man executed while meekly surrendering.
I understand skepticism of the government, but why would they be skeptical of people whose ideology they share? Wouldn’t they prefer one of their leaders to live up to his ideals and die asserting his beliefs?
The idiot Bundys. They take up arms and rally others to their utterly self-serving causes, then act surprised when someone gets shot. They’re the worst kind of people. Finicum was at least a fool, and probably a lot of other bad things, but at least this wasn’t just a publicity stunt for him.
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This was a civilian traffic stop, not a spec-ops strike. There were no hostages, no bombs, not even any endangered bystanders. On a scale of 1 - Crazy Car Chase this was pretty tame.
This is why I was so critical of labeling these folks as terrorists. Everyone was like “we’re just using it to highlight hypocrisy”, and now days later we’re using that same label to explain why it was reasonable to meet them with military force rather than civilian policing.
In Germany, at that point I would expect pretty much the same. The days before would have played out differently because the passivity displayed by law enforcement would have been flat out illegal.
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Known armed terrorist who has publicly proclaimed that he’d rather die than face prison attempts vehicular manslaughter, shows signs of surrender, and then appears to reach for his weapon.
I’m not the first to sympathize with law enforcement, but he didn’t appear to have left them much choice.
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Of that I have no doubt. Their narrative started with stories of Finicum being dragged from the car… no matter what information comes out, they’ll want to paint him in the best light.
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When all you have to work with are guns, every life and death situation looks like a justifiable homicide.
I think the other countries would have dealt with this on like day 3, and probably gotten everyone out alive. Given the track record of the police forces and how many deaths per year cops are responsible for in those countries.
I know… I know… You’re like… How?! How would they?!
Probably by making sure no one dying is priority #1
US police kill 400-600 a year officially. Not every police precinct reports. Credible estimates are 1200 a year.
UK, France, Etc… Its like 2 or 3 or 5 a year deaths by law enforcement a year. Single digit numbers.
But… Do remember that US law enforcement has a long history of figuring out how to use non lethal weapons lethally. Shooting people in the head with rubber bullets or tear gas. Using tear gas known to cause fires in flammable buildings to get people out.
So maybe with all this focus on making nonlethal weapons more lethal, it just didn’t occur to them to use them as intended?
Or maybe… Its perfectly acceptable to expect some deaths in a situation like this. Its fine. Only one is good!
Plus the one they shot sucked.
Old white grandpa. Yakety sax.
He deserved it. Had it coming. He was reaching for pockets and acting like a dipshit.
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You’re sincerely suggesting that what was shown in the video is accurately characterized as “military force”? I’m not a big fan of heavily-armed police response, but on a scale of 1 - Massive SWAT Op this was pretty tame.
Edit: Like I said, I’m not a fan of massive SWAT ops. But hyperbole (“military force”) doesn’t serve anyone.
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Well, I’m in favor of ditching the word terrorist. It doesn’t mean anything. But this wasn’t a simple traffic stop gone wrong. A traffic stop is when someone drives too fast and a state trooper pulls them over and writes a ticket. This was a federally organized interception of persons known to be armed. The guy had just tried to run a roadblock and nearly ran over a law enforcement officer. The FBI and local authorities tried to deescalate and negotiate an end to this for weeks before this happened. Except for this guy and his buddy, everyone else was taken into custody peacefully.
Though the average British policeman may be unarmed, when they know they’re likely to encounter persons carrying firearms, the British police put on armor and carry guns. As do the police of every country.
Commentary about militarized police is extremely relevant to modern American life, but not in this particular instance.
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He started out so well in that exchange…and then shifted into honor culture weirdness. Damned sad and so easily preventable. Cliched, but true: You live by the sword, you die by the sword. He made his choices, badly, selfishly, and now his wife and daughter have to suffer the consequences of those poor decisions.
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true, that part’s not clear
The police had every reason to believe he was armed, he was fleeing the police, he’d effectively stated he’d shoot if caught, jumped out of the car, then flailed around a bit while repeatedly reaching for something in his jacket. If I were a LEO there’s no way I’d think anything other than armed and dangerous suspect reaching for a weapon.
They had a warrant. They waited weeks. The militants were creating chaos for the community and interfering with work at the center. They were not a harmless nuisance. At some point they were going to arrest the guys they had warrants for, at some point it was going to be a confrontation. This was a increasingly pressing necessity esp., given the reality of the problems they were causing and the reality of lawless armed extremists threatening violence against law enforcement.
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Someone was shot to death because they ran into an ambush / armed confrontation which was planned out in advance (notice cops come from all different directions once the car stops). Maybe not the battle of the century, but when someone is killed, it feels like a big deal to me.
When you set a scene like that, there are only two possible outcomes: immediate and perfect surrender or death. To me that’s closer to the logic of the battlefield than the logic of civil policing.
I think we can all agree that the moral of this story is: Don’t take your guns to town, son; leave your guns at home, Bill; don’t take your guns to town.
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0: Going on publicly, for weeks beforehand, about your willingness to use violence, and how they’ll never take you alive.
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I think you’re arguing for widescale revamping of policing principles in this country. Which would be a fine discussion to have, but I still don’t see that it justifies characterizing this particular stop, taken in context of how policing has been practiced for quite a long time, as a military operation.
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No. I’m sorry, but rational people know better than to pull out and then throw away their firearm to show they aren’t a threat. That’s ridiculous, especially for someone who had spent their lifetime around guns and gun culture. In getting out of his vehicle, he should’ve dropped to the ground with his arms and hands away from his body, and once LEOs got close enough, he could communicate with that more-than-effective weapon, his voice, to tell them that he had a loaded (and likely chambered) 9mm in his left jacket pocket. I have no doubt that’s what everybody in that area was yelling to him.
As for the idea (not yours, mind) that he moved his hands the way he did to break his fall in the snow? That one belongs right next to “I was using a wide stance in the bathroom stall”, ala ex-senator Craig.
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None of the problems they caused were worth anywhere near a human life.
Order must be preserved, because otherwise there would be disorder!
Now, I’m no discordian, but the impulse to punish people for transgressing the law itself - as opposed to causing actual harm - strikes me as inherently fascist. The response to this militia should have been proportional to the actual harm they were doing - and that harm was decidedly un-epic (and actually kind of pathetic) in scale.
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Yeah, I’m not arguing it was literally a military operation, I’m just saying that police in the US in general tend to approach their job with an overly militaristic mentality. That leads to situations like this where people die, and we should recognize that as a contributing factor, rather than putting all the blame on when and where he reached.
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FTFY
Only a hypocrite can tell you that, and the orders of hypocrites are not worth respecting. There is more to it than a desire for self-preservation, such as social responsibility to everybody else.
