Police in Utah gun down black cosplayer

[Loren Pechtel]

One would think that a trained police officer would be able to distinguish between fear of potential threat and an actual threat. If the victim was not within swords length, then the shooting was "premature".

And you have a magic gun that instantly stops someone?

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I've seen no reasonable explanation of his post other than as an indication of suicide by cop.

A joke. There, done. After a summer of us seeing videos of cops strangling black guys for supposedly selling looseys, beating women for walking down the street, pepperspraying a black guy because a shirtless white guy yelled slurs at him, shooting Levar Jones for moving too fast and John Crawford for moving too slow, and on and on and on, amazingly, people are starting to make jokes about how violently out of control the police are in the US.

Quite a coincidence. How many other posts do you see about people saying they're going to get shot by police?

 

[laughing dog]

And you have a magic gun that instantly stops someone?

Would you please give a cogent rationale to make that koan appear remotely relevant instead of stupid?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Quite a coincidence. How many other posts do you see about people saying they're going to get shot by police?

Try googling for 'i'm going to get shot' and 'i'm going to get gunned down' and 'they're going to kill me.'
And any other similar phrases.

Are they all in earnest?

 

[Mumbles]

Quite a coincidence. How many other posts do you see about people saying they're going to get shot by police?

Personally, I see it all the time. I see it on Twitter, I see it in forums for black people, I see it on facebook on the few occasions that I actually use it, I hear it in podcasts. It's a very common comment, made either in jest or entirely serious.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And you have a magic gun that instantly stops someone?

Would you please give a cogent rationale to make that koan appear remotely relevant instead of stupid?

If you're going to wait to shoot until the guy is actually in range and swinging you need something that stops the guy mid-swing. We have no such weapon.

 

[RavenSky]

If you're going to wait to shoot until the guy is actually in range and swinging you need something that stops the guy mid-swing. We have no such weapon.

Same could be said about Rico Gray for Marissa Alexander... but of course you won't.

 

[laughing dog]

Would you please give a cogent rationale to make that koan appear remotely relevant instead of stupid?

If you're going to wait to shoot until the guy is actually in range and swinging you need something that stops the guy mid-swing. We have no such weapon.

It is simply not possible to shoot someone when they are out of range. So please try again to make a cogent rationale for your koan.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you're going to wait to shoot until the guy is actually in range and swinging you need something that stops the guy mid-swing. We have no such weapon.

It is simply not possible to shoot someone when they are out of range. So please try again to make a cogent rationale for your koan.

Can you at least try to understand the conversation?

It should be obvious that "in range" refers to someone being in range of his sword, not the cop's gun.

 

[laughing dog]

It is simply not possible to shoot someone when they are out of range. So please try again to make a cogent rationale for your koan.

Can you at least try to understand the conversation?

It should be obvious that "in range" refers to someone being in range of his sword, not the cop's gun.

It should be obvious that shooting to kill means shooting someone dead thereby stopping any dangerous movements, yet that did not stop your inane "magic gun" response.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Can you at least try to understand the conversation?

It should be obvious that "in range" refers to someone being in range of his sword, not the cop's gun.

It should be obvious that shooting to kill means shooting someone dead thereby stopping any dangerous movements, yet that did not stop your inane "magic gun" response.

That's not a rebuttal.

 

[doubtingt]

Quite a coincidence. How many other posts do you see about people saying they're going to get shot by police?

Try googling for 'i'm going to get shot' and 'i'm going to get gunned down' and 'they're going to kill me.'
And any other similar phrases.

Are they all in earnest?

But after you figure the % of black men who make such posts per day (.00001%?), then figure the number of black men per day shot by the police even though they objectively did nothing to threaten anyone's safety (.00001%?). Now, calculate the random probability of those two things occurring to the exact same person on the same day.
That probability of around 1 in a 100,000,000,000,000 is the liklihood that this guy posted it purely as a joke, then without intentionally acting to impact its likelihood was in fact shot. IOW, it would border on a supernatural miracle. IOW, it didn't happen. IOW, this mentally ill person who said he was going to go get shot, deliberately increased his otherwise minuscule probability, which is an explanation millions of times more probable than the coincidence required for his post to have been purely in jest.

 

[laughing dog]

It should be obvious that shooting to kill means shooting someone dead thereby stopping any dangerous movements, yet that did not stop your inane "magic gun" response.

That's not a rebuttal.

I agree, because there was nothing of substance to rebut. The real problem is that you are under the delusion that your responses are relevant and on point.

 

[+or-1]

Over the last decade or so police in the US have killed, on average, two black men per week according to anecdotal evidence. There is no official accounting of who or why the police kill. Let's just say I question the sincerity of the current level of self-righteous outrage here in the Fascist States of Amerika.

 

[Nexus]

Over the last decade or so police in the US have killed, on average, two black men per week according to anecdotal evidence. There is no official accounting of who or why the police kill. Let's just say I question the sincerity of the current level of self-righteous outrage here in the Fascist States of Amerika.

Your number sounded low to me so I did a cursory look. Aside from the needless racial aspect you mention here's a better number I found. Over 1,000 people are shot in the US by police and 2/3 are fatal.

Criminal justice experts note that, while the federal government and national research groups keep scads of data and statistics— on topics ranging from how many people were victims of unprovoked shark attacks (53 in 2013) to the number of hogs and pigs living on farms in the U.S. (upwards of 64,000,000 according to 2010 numbers) — there is no reliable national data on how many people are shot by police officers each year.

The government does, however, keep a database of how many officers are killed in the line of duty. In 2012, the most recent year for which FBI data is available, it was 48 – 44 of them killed with firearms.

But how many people in the United States were shot, or killed, by law enforcement officers during that year? No one knows.

The most detailed analysis of police shootings to date was conducted by Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and criminal justice professor who now authors true crime books.

“I was rather surprised to find there are no statistics,” Fisher said. “The answer to me is pretty obvious: the government just doesn’t want us to know how many people are shot by the police every year.”

In 2011, he scoured the Internet several times a day every day, compiling a database of every officer-involved shooting he could find. Ultimately, he tracked 1,146 shootings by police officers, 607 of them fatal shootings.

Link

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's not a rebuttal.

I agree, because there was nothing of substance to rebut. The real problem is that you are under the delusion that your responses are relevant and on point.

The indicate the problem with the original post, don't derail.

 

[laughing dog]

I agree, because there was nothing of substance to rebut. The real problem is that you are under the delusion that your responses are relevant and on point.

The indicate the problem with the original post, don't derail.

I didn't derail, you have with your koans.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Try googling for 'i'm going to get shot' and 'i'm going to get gunned down' and 'they're going to kill me.'
And any other similar phrases.

Are they all in earnest?

But after you figure the % of black men who make such posts per day (.00001%?), .

I'm going to have to ignore your math because:
1) It looks to me like you're pulling the numbers out of your ass.
2) It kinda reminds me of creationists trying to disprove evolution by throwing out numbers as if long shots NEVER come in.
3) The actual odds don't matter unless you can show that there's ZERO chance he was trying to be funny.

My point was that people are treating the statement as meaning ONLY an intention to attack the cops while in costume and get shot. However small you want to make the odds that it was all a coincidence, it's still not going to be zero. We would need more information to determine if he seriously intended to get shot or was speaking ironically.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But after you figure the % of black men who make such posts per day (.00001%?), .

I'm going to have to ignore your math because:
1) It looks to me like you're pulling the numbers out of your ass.
2) It kinda reminds me of creationists trying to disprove evolution by throwing out numbers as if long shots NEVER come in.
3) The actual odds don't matter unless you can show that there's ZERO chance he was trying to be funny.

No. If the odds of it being non-random are higher than the odds of him trying to be funny our first assumption should be suicide by cop.

 

[Mumbles]

I'm going to have to ignore your math because:
1) It looks to me like you're pulling the numbers out of your ass.
2) It kinda reminds me of creationists trying to disprove evolution by throwing out numbers as if long shots NEVER come in.
3) The actual odds don't matter unless you can show that there's ZERO chance he was trying to be funny.

No. If the odds of it being non-random are higher than the odds of him trying to be funny our first assumption should be suicide by cop.

There's actually a much larger hole in this theory - we have no reason to believe that he thought he would encounter police in the first place. He didn't place a call himself, he didn't attack anyone, he's in a state where it's legal to carry a sword. Simply put, he had no reason to think that cops would show up at all, and yet you are claiming that "suicide by cop" is the natural conclusion about his actions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No. If the odds of it being non-random are higher than the odds of him trying to be funny our first assumption should be suicide by cop.

There's actually a much larger hole in this theory - we have no reason to believe that he thought he would encounter police in the first place. He didn't place a call himself, he didn't attack anyone, he's in a state where it's legal to carry a sword. Simply put, he had no reason to think that cops would show up at all, and yet you are claiming that "suicide by cop" is the natural conclusion about his actions.

Cosplay normally implies a convention--a large number of people. There tend to be cops were there are large numbers of people.