Agreed, but good luck with that, b/c our lawmakers serve the 1% who demand enforcement and protection from the 99% of, effectively, plantation workers.
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it started systemic
not to put to fine a point on it, but the cops are doing exactly what we’ve set them up to do
if i were a cop, i’d be completely mystified by all the protests. cops are doing exactly what they were hired to do. and that includes their random, terroristic violence against black communities
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If you shoot to wound you don’t accomplish the ostensible goal of shooting: To disable a threat. If Jacob Blake were reaching for a gun and had the gun and had the intention and had the training and had the insane idea that this would get the three guns-drawn officers off his back (none of which is anything more than fantasy), then shooting him in the leg would not have disabled the imaginary threat. It would only give him a very good reason for shooting a cop.
To put it more sharply, shooting to wound would only serve one purpose: extrajudicial punishment, just like kicking or tasing a person in custody.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I do have one: external oversight with teeth. The biggest impediment is union agreements that stymie oversight. Laws need to be passed that say it is fine for unions to negotiate salary, benefits, hours, etc. But any clause of a union contract that limits oversight is null and void. DOA.
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German police, like those in many other European countries, are also trained to aim for a limb rather than centre mass, at least initially. It’s become received wisdom in the US (and other Anglosphere countries) that shooting to wound is pointless, but in other places it, and warning shots, seem to be relatively standard practice.
If you look further, it turns out that they fired 36 shots at suspects and 49 warning shots, which is why you also hear about them firing 85 shots in a year.
(They also used 9,000 bullets to kill sick, injured or dangerous animals).
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Seems it is getting even worse
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I asked my social media friends this:
Someone with law enforcement knowledge help me understand - is there a realistic explanation for how shooting an unarmed, noncompliant person in the back might be justifiable from a police officer’s perspective? Is it because he’s entering a car, which might be considered a deadly weapon?
They helpfully responded with two things in particular:
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Holy fucksocks. That video is amongst the least professional things I’ve seen anyone in uniform do. What a couple of reckless, dangerous clowns.
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Not in other countries. It is always potentially lethal, yeah but shooting at the legs is absolutely standard practice elsewhere.
This is just the first article I found on Google:
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Nationality does not affect ballistics. Firing a weapon at a human body, regardless of intention, puts that person’s life in significant danger. In any circumstance not involving law enforcement, it is attempted murder. Allowing thinking like that here (and this is where nationality does come in) just makes it even easier to justify employing deadly force by coloring it “less lethal.” That does not make you less dead, unfortunately.
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I wonder if the RNC still has time to fit the officer in on the Zoom call? And now we have word out of Kenosha (very early still developing) that someone fired into the crowd of protesters.
It affects doctrine and training, though. This is official doctrine in Germany.
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Acknowledged in my post. USian “warrior cops” absolutely do not need anything that makes it easier to deploy deadly force. I hope this is limited to USians, but am unfamiliar with other countries police forces.
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Whether or not shooting at limbs is considered standard practice elsewhere, it’s pretty obvious that most police officers are not skilled enough to do it even when they’re trying. It’s very common for cops in the US to completely empty their gun in the direction of a “suspect” at a range of 20 feet or less and yet only hit them a couple of times, or not at all. In your own example, an officer was hit with gunfire from fellow officers, so maybe not a great example of how aiming for the limbs can be effective. Maybe if the officer is armed with a shotgun and shoots towards the lower half of a knife-wielding, charging subject, but in most cases shooting real moving people in a chaotic situation is much different than aiming for a paper target.
I’m absolutely not excusing police shootings in the US by the way. It’s totally indefensible and in many if not most cases it’s clearly outright murder. In the vast, vast majority of cases there’s no need to shoot at all, but in the rare, rare instance when firing a lethal weapon at a person would be necessary and justified, aiming for the center of the person is often the most we can ask for.
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It’s actually a great example because it raises the question of whether the possibility of an officer getting hurt is worth the life of an assailant. Police in different countries answer that question differently.
I guess I don’t quite follow, at least in respect to this specific example. Are you suggesting that these German police, carefully trying not to kill the suspect by aiming for the leg, were somehow more likely to injure each other that they would have been had they aimed to kill?
Also, for the record, your article never explicitly says that the police were aiming for the leg. Maybe they were, but all it says is that they shot him in the leg. Even in the US where cops are much more trigger-happy, non-lethal shootings are not uncommon, whether they were initially intended to be non-lethal or not.
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As I said, aiming for the legs is doctrine for German police, so it’s very likely that this is where they aimed.
That is the argument usually brought forth by those defending the “if you are going to shoot, always shoot to kill” approach. So yes, I guess I am saying that even if we take it as a given that bystanders are more likely to be hurt when you are aiming at the legs of an assailant, the suspect’s right to life still outweighs an outright kill shot in the eyes of German police (and I am sure police forces elsewhere).
I understand and agree with the notion that not shooting to kill (or not shooting at all) can increase the likelihood that the SUSPECT may harm officers and/or bystanders, and that that risk is deemed acceptable because the suspect’s life has value. I’m not arguing about that at all. What I don’t understand is that, in this specific example, you seem to suggest that taking careful aim at the legs rather than aiming to kill makes it more likely that a POLICE OFFICER will harm another police officer or bystander.
Jacob Blake tries to stop a fight between people and gets shot 8 times while unarmed and handcuffed for “not following police directions”
Meanwhile Ammon Bundy walks into a Statehouse carrying an AK-47, ignores police and gets treated gently
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Meanwhile a right wing militia murderer shot into a crowd of protesters, kills 2 and injures 1 while police did nothing.
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I’m not saying that because I lack the practical experience to judge whether that happens or not. What I am saying is that other people, when arguing for the “shoot to kill” cause, have been telling me exactly that . Presumably because of a higher likelihood of missing altogether and the ensuing ricochets and stray bullets?
To which my answer is that clearly other police forces consider that a risk worth taking.
