Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/21/police-fetch-high-powered-rifl.html
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sigh
Why? What’s wrong with this person?
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one major point of the cause is probably the long-standing justification based on “feelings”
officers have every right to shoot [..] if they feel in danger
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This I see really double and cynical and disturbing.
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It’s the AMERICAN WAY!
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Whe shouldn’t say a thing about it.
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This is always what gets me in these kinds of stories, the lack of basic humanity. Do police not realize that just sincerely saying sorry goes a long ways? But they can’t even manage that.
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The third rule is that if you ever feel in the least bit threatened, whether there’s any reason to or not, you’re entitled to kill whatever you perceive as the threat. Again, it doesn’t matter if the threat is real, only that you feel fear. By this logic, I would have made a great cop; I’m afraid of lot’s of things; I could just go around shooting people, animals, whatever, all over the place.
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Yeah but admitting fault will be used against you in court.
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Imagine if most, or even several, of your interactions with police were like this. That level of respect for what the police do would probably go down significantly.
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And I think it would be surprising how often a (sincere, not bullshit) apology might prevent it from going to court at all. Despite our lawsuit happy culture I think a lot of people simply want to be shown respect as a fellow human and citizen and aren’t always out to extract a pound of flesh.
Or maybe I’m just an optimist. My dad had a botched surgery that almost killed him and he ended up in the hospital for 30 days. They treated him well, as he put it “they weren’t stupid enough to send me a bill”, and he was assured that doctor wouldn’t be operating again (it was something like the third time he’d screwed up). He didn’t sue. If you make it right, people tend to be reasonable.
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he entered their gated, fenced property searching for someone who had not lived there in a decade.
Well he was only ten years late, that’s not so bad…
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You may express sorrow and/or sympathy without admitting a mistake. It’s not terribly useful but it’s better than nothing.
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I think police officers feel more threatened lately with all the anti-police rhetoric going around in the dog community… the other day, I heard one of them say, “woof, woof… growl… woof, woof, bark” … I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!
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This happens so often it is a meme in some circles.
“Someone broke into my car and I called the cops to fill out a report.”
“Hide your dog.”
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Family dogs get shot by cops all the time.
Reading this article made me wonder how postal workers fare, given that they go in and out of people’s yards constantly. Roughly 6000 postal workers are bit every year, and there are occasional fatalities. Yet they don’t feel the need to carry guns. Police, on the other hand, are never killed by dogs.
I wonder when the exact year was when the police’s tolerance for risk dropped below postal workers. Or maybe it’s just when the only tool you have is a gun, every problem is a target.
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Any word on what colour the dog was?
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Oh, they have other tools. The trouble is, it can take forever for animal control to arrive, the department doesn’t have money for that, and why should the cop waste time convincing the family to get control of their dog, the perp might get away and doesn’t that cop deserve the kudos for a righteous bust back at the precinct?
After all, his identity as a cop, and thus his motivation as a person is riding on getting those numbers up and fighting the criminals.
Criminals who insist on using dogs as weapons against him everywhere he goes.
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