laughing dog
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Sigh, in civilized countries with a humane population, police officers are not usually expected to gun down unarmed civilians who pose no threat.
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Stephon Clark killed by Sacramento police - he was in his own family's backyard
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Jimmy Higgins
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Oh goodness... this dead thread is about to get deader.
marc
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ok, so if the police think you are running from them, you are not supposed to stop as they will think you are attacking and therefore shoot you. Instead you should just keep on running, so the police will think you must be guilty of something, and shoot you to prevent you from getting away.
bilby
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coloradoatheist
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Maybe at the time they were the same, but no longer. They get to do stuff that most people can't do. Nobody else would be required to go look for this guy who was breaking into houses and arrest him for it. An ordinary person could possibly face trespassing for going in the grandmother's backyard.
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We are also in a country with high rates of gun ownership, so it's the tradeoff we have for the liberty of gun ownership.
bilby
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That's a really shitty tradeoff, coming from a country that felt that one hypothetical dead child wasn't a worthwhile tradeoff for the liberty of having chocolate eggs with a surprise toy in them.
laughing dog
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There is nothing incompatible in having a civilized country with a humane population that does not expect its police officers to gun down unarmed civilians who pose no threat.
coloradoatheist
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He was breaking into other people's houses and cars that night. That is a threat to people which they were investigating and no idea why he was doing it.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Life is complicated and there are degrees and spectra/continua. On a scale of threat, he was actually pretty low.
Emily Lake
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Warning: this is going to be long. I have a lot to say. And it's probably giong to piss off almost everyone... simply because I'm going to say that nobody in this thread is entirely wrong. Loren and Derec are not wrong. Laughing dog and Jimmy Higgins are not wrong. Nor is anyone not specifically named.
[pause for angry outbursts]
Let's take this case. A vandalism suspect is reported to flee police through backyards. When the police find him, that suspect walks away, then turns back and walks toward the police. The suspect has something in his hand that cannot be identified by the police. The police open fire and kill the suspect.
It's probably true that the cops couldn't tell that the object in the suspect's hand was a phone, not a gun. It's also true that in general, police are predisposed to expect violence from black men regardless of the situation. A black man and a white man in otherwise similar situations are not likely to experience the same outcome. Regardless of what anyone claims to be the causal factor... at the end of the day, police use race and ethnicity to profile suspects, and if that suspect is black, they are primed to perceive the suspect's actions as aggressive, violent, belligerent, and otherwise uncooperative. A white suspect is more likely to be given a longer time to comply with orders, and is likely to be given the benefit of the doubt with respect to their actions.
That is the source of outrage regarding this unarmed person who committed a non-violent crime. There is strong evidence to suggest that had Mr. Clark been white, he would be much less likely to be dead.
https://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-police-racism
It's easy to find arguments for why the police might have been justified in their actions in any specific case. Or if not justified, at least understandable. When all you look at are case-bay-case, one-by-one situations, there's almost always some justification available. That's how bias works: because there's no clearly irrational basis for the reaction, it's easy to find rationalizations for one's actions. But when you start looking at the aggregate patterns involved, a different picture emerges. Just like old school printing: When you look at each dot in the frame, it's clearly black, yellow, cyan, or magenta... so it's easy to conclude that no green dots exist and that each dot is clearly a dot; when you back away from the details, you can see the forest emerge.
The behavior of police toward black suspects has been painting a picture for a long time. Each individual brush stroke might seem understandable - that guy had a thing in his hand that might have been a gun, that kid had a gun that the cops couldn't tell was a toy, that guy seemed as if he might be about to charge the cops. But the disproportionate pattern of police aggression and harm toward black suspects is there. And it's a pattern that many people, myself included, find unacceptable. It's a social bias that needs to be understood and addressed.
[pause for angry outbursts]
Let's take this case. A vandalism suspect is reported to flee police through backyards. When the police find him, that suspect walks away, then turns back and walks toward the police. The suspect has something in his hand that cannot be identified by the police. The police open fire and kill the suspect.
It's probably true that the cops couldn't tell that the object in the suspect's hand was a phone, not a gun. It's also true that in general, police are predisposed to expect violence from black men regardless of the situation. A black man and a white man in otherwise similar situations are not likely to experience the same outcome. Regardless of what anyone claims to be the causal factor... at the end of the day, police use race and ethnicity to profile suspects, and if that suspect is black, they are primed to perceive the suspect's actions as aggressive, violent, belligerent, and otherwise uncooperative. A white suspect is more likely to be given a longer time to comply with orders, and is likely to be given the benefit of the doubt with respect to their actions.
That is the source of outrage regarding this unarmed person who committed a non-violent crime. There is strong evidence to suggest that had Mr. Clark been white, he would be much less likely to be dead.
https://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-police-racism
It's easy to find arguments for why the police might have been justified in their actions in any specific case. Or if not justified, at least understandable. When all you look at are case-bay-case, one-by-one situations, there's almost always some justification available. That's how bias works: because there's no clearly irrational basis for the reaction, it's easy to find rationalizations for one's actions. But when you start looking at the aggregate patterns involved, a different picture emerges. Just like old school printing: When you look at each dot in the frame, it's clearly black, yellow, cyan, or magenta... so it's easy to conclude that no green dots exist and that each dot is clearly a dot; when you back away from the details, you can see the forest emerge.
The behavior of police toward black suspects has been painting a picture for a long time. Each individual brush stroke might seem understandable - that guy had a thing in his hand that might have been a gun, that kid had a gun that the cops couldn't tell was a toy, that guy seemed as if he might be about to charge the cops. But the disproportionate pattern of police aggression and harm toward black suspects is there. And it's a pattern that many people, myself included, find unacceptable. It's a social bias that needs to be understood and addressed.
Jimmy Higgins
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Well, I'm no police detective, but redistribution of wealth is the most likely reason. People don't usually break into empty cars to commit violent crimes.
And gun ownership isn't fucking "liberty".
coloradoatheist
Veteran Member
While I agree, but while you are in the process of breaking into homes you are a threat that's higher than that. In a home they can assume you are there to rob, rape, murder, etc. Where the US differs than other countries is that we protect our homes. And yes, gun ownership is a liberty.
Jimmy Higgins
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He was shot outside of a house, not attempting to break into it.
White collar crime, stock fraud, pee in the sink. But like I said... he wasn't in a house at the time... and no one breaks into empty cars to rape people. It just isn't efficient.
*spit take*
Privilege. The right to vote is liberty. Free speech is liberty. Being able to go across the nation is liberty. Gun ownership is a privilege.
Emily Lake
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I agree that theft would be the most likely reason.
I somewhat disagree - gun ownership is A liberty.
coloradoatheist
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This is a side conversation, but when gun ownership is allowed via the second amendment, that's a right, not a priviledge.
And to investigate why he was breaking into houses they wanted to talk to him, but he ran from the cops when they confronted him. So a guy who was breaking into homes and now running from the cops, he is considered a threat.
Emily Lake
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You are incorrect. It is a liberty in exactly the same sense as the other liberties that you've identified. It's a liberty codified in the constitution. Driving a car, on the other hand, is a privilege - it is not a right guaranteed to the citizens of the nation on the basis of their citizenship.
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Why do you keep framing this as him breaking into houses? Perhaps I missed something, but the discussion and articles I've read refer to him breaking the windows on cars, not houses.
coloradoatheist
Veteran Member
The helicopter crew said they saw him with a toolbar trying to enter a house
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article206267059.html
marc
Veteran Member
Was that ever actually demonstrated? The helicopter footage showed him going through back yards, but I never saw anything showing him actually breaking into anything
coloradoatheist
Veteran Member
I'm not sure either way but minor. The police aren't going to say, "Hey we are chasing a guy that's breaking into things around the neighborhood, there is no way he doesn't have a gun"
laughing dog
Contributor
He was unarmed and no threat to the police at the time of the shooting. Furthermore, at the time, he was a suspect - the police could not KNOW what he had or had not done.
So your response seems a bit odd, unless you are claiming it is okay for the police to gun down unarmed civilians who pose a threat to someone somewhere sometime?
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You seem to be saying it is okay for the police to gun down an unarmed civilian on the mere suspicion he or she might have a weapon. If that is true, that is giving the police carte blanche to execute anyone anytime anywhere on the flimsiest of excuses.