Man attacks police, shots rifle at them, resists arrest, is taken in alive

[laughing dog]

They didn;'t know that when he pointed and fired. Nor would they necessarily know from the shattered glass. Given the police shoot people holding BB guns ( Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III) and other toy guns (Tamir Rice) that are not pointed at them nor fired, your explanation is less than convincing.

Once again you fail to see the obvious.

When it's not fired the cops don't know if it's real or not and will treat it as real.

And you fail to see that does not mean automatically opening fire.

However, in this case he fired it. Now they know it's not real.

You are literally making stuff up. You have no clue whether they knew it was not real or not. None whatsoever.

I don't know why he wasn't shot as he brought it up and fired

And yet, here you are giving us reasons why he was not shot.

 

[ZiprHead]

The article at least told the truth even though they still pretend the situation is similar. You omitted a critical detail.

Walters pointed an air rifle at the cops, fired it and shattered the glass on the front door of his house

Note "air rifle".

The cops knew it wasn't a real gun.

How do you know the cops didn't think it was a real gun?

 

[RavenSky]

You mean, the same kind of object that got John Crawford III killed even though he never even shot it or pointed it at anyone? The same kind of object that you and Derec and all the usual suspects insisted police could NOT tell the difference between that and a real gun?

THAT "critical detail" that you and Derec insisted didn't matter when a black man was killed by police?

Another person who doesn't get it.

Oh WE get it Loren. We totally understand that you will twist yourself into pretzels to defend a cop shooting a black man

 

[ronburgundy]

The article at least told the truth even though they still pretend the situation is similar. You omitted a critical detail.

Walters pointed an air rifle at the cops, fired it and shattered the glass on the front door of his house

Note "air rifle".

The cops knew it wasn't a real gun.

How do you know the cops didn't think it was a real gun?

He explained it several times. Most air guns sound nothing like real guns when fired (they sound more like a stapler).

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCzpFcZXZgY[/YOUTUBE]

Cops know what real gunfire sounds like, given they all have heard it thousands of times. So, the sound of the air gun being fired is actually evidence given to the cops that the man does not have a real gun. Seeing an air gun fired would make any rational person less afraid than they were when first seeing the gun held.

Pointing this out does not imply anything about whether cops generally are quicker to shoot blacks than whites. It just means that the dogmatists trying to claim that the air gun being fired should have increased the perceived threat have it ass-backwards.

There are far better arguments to be made to support the OP's conclusion. It's just dishonest laziness to denying the obvious fact that the sound of the airgun would likely make any cop aware the gun was not real.

 

[laughing dog]

How do you know the cops didn't think it was a real gun?

He explained it several times. Most air guns sound nothing like real guns when fired (they sound more like a stapler).

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCzpFcZXZgY[/YOUTUBE]

Cops know what real gunfire sounds like, given they all have heard it thousands of times. So, the sound of the air gun being fired is actually evidence given to the cops that the man does not have a real gun. Seeing an air gun fired would make any rational person less afraid than they were when first seeing the gun held.

Pointing this out does not imply anything about whether cops generally are quicker to shoot blacks than whites. It just means that the dogmatists trying to claim that the air gun being fired should have increased the perceived threat have it ass-backwards.

There are far better arguments to be made to support the OP's conclusion. It's just dishonest laziness to denying the obvious fact that the sound of the airgun would likely make any cop aware the gun was not real.

Except that the airgun shot through and shattered a glass door, so it is not clear what the police heard. And, more importantly, according to LP and like-minded defenders of the police, an air gun can be deadly which permits the police (according to that camp) to kill on sight.

The real and obvious point of the OP is that Louisville police did not automatically return fire, but withheld fire until they were surer of their perceptions - even though there was a potential hostage in the house.

 

[Emily Lake]

Air guns can still cause significant injury. At the least, you could put an eye out.

Pretty sure no matter how you parse it, air guns are more dangerous than cell phones.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

While historical air guns have been made specifically for warfare, modern air guns can also be deadly.[13] In medical literature, modern air guns have been noted as the cause of death.[14][15][16] This has been the case for guns of caliber .177 and .22 that are within the legal muzzle energy of air guns in the United Kingdom.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gun

 

[funinspace]

Doesn't most everyone carry a gun that folds up to look like a cellphone?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Mostly that is just poor people who have those. You can tell they are poor because they live with their grandmothers and have expensive headphones.

 

[ZiprHead]

How do you know the cops didn't think it was a real gun?

He explained it several times. Most air guns sound nothing like real guns when fired (they sound more like a stapler).

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCzpFcZXZgY[/YOUTUBE]

Cops know what real gunfire sounds like, given they all have heard it thousands of times. So, the sound of the air gun being fired is actually evidence given to the cops that the man does not have a real gun. Seeing an air gun fired would make any rational person less afraid than they were when first seeing the gun held.

Pointing this out does not imply anything about whether cops generally are quicker to shoot blacks than whites. It just means that the dogmatists trying to claim that the air gun being fired should have increased the perceived threat have it ass-backwards.

There are far better arguments to be made to support the OP's conclusion. It's just dishonest laziness to denying the obvious fact that the sound of the airgun would likely make any cop aware the gun was not real.

I used to plink with 22 shorts. They don't make a lot of sound at all.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And you fail to see that does not mean automatically opening fire.

However, in this case he fired it. Now they know it's not real.

You are literally making stuff up. You have no clue whether they knew it was not real or not. None whatsoever.

I don't know why he wasn't shot as he brought it up and fired

And yet, here you are giving us reasons why he was not shot.

You think that a cop can't tell the difference between hearing an air rifle fired and hearing a real rifle fired?

Or do you not care if what you say makes sense?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You think that a cop can't tell the difference between hearing an air rifle fired and hearing a real rifle fired?

You think a cop can't tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun. So how stupid do you think they are?

 

[ronburgundy]

How do you know the cops didn't think it was a real gun?

He explained it several times. Most air guns sound nothing like real guns when fired (they sound more like a stapler).

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCzpFcZXZgY[/YOUTUBE]

Cops know what real gunfire sounds like, given they all have heard it thousands of times. So, the sound of the air gun being fired is actually evidence given to the cops that the man does not have a real gun. Seeing an air gun fired would make any rational person less afraid than they were when first seeing the gun held.

Pointing this out does not imply anything about whether cops generally are quicker to shoot blacks than whites. It just means that the dogmatists trying to claim that the air gun being fired should have increased the perceived threat have it ass-backwards.

There are far better arguments to be made to support the OP's conclusion. It's just dishonest laziness to denying the obvious fact that the sound of the airgun would likely make any cop aware the gun was not real.

Except that the airgun shot through and shattered a glass door, so it is not clear what the police heard. And, more importantly, according to LP and like-minded defenders of the police, an air gun can be deadly which permits the police (according to that camp) to kill on sight.

The real and obvious point of the OP is that Louisville police did not automatically return fire, but withheld fire until they were surer of their perceptions - even though there was a potential hostage in the house.

The only thing obvious from the OP and its defenders is that dishonest dogamatist love to misrepresent the facts and deny obvious reality and logic to reach their preferred conclusion.

Of course bb guns can break a window, but they are incomparably less dangerous than actual guns, and no one, including police defenders, has ever said otherwise. So, a bb gun being fired would almost always decrease and not increase the perceived risk compared to the same gun before it was fired and thus had a higher probability of being real.

Air guns can still cause significant injury. At the least, you could put an eye out.

Pretty sure no matter how you parse it, air guns are more dangerous than cell phones.

Which has no relevance since the cops are not shooting based on the belief that it's a cell phone. If they think the object might be a real gun, then the threat is greater than a known bb gun.
People are comparing this case to a guy who was holding a bb gun without firing it and thus while it was still thought to be a real gun that the suspect refused to drop.

If you want to argue that cops are more likely to perceive other objects as guns when in the hands of blacks, that is a separate argument than whether this bb guns being fired should have made the suspect a greater perceived threat.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Police also shoot black men laying down with their hands up, black men with small knives or screwdrivers, black men with cellphones, deaf black men in the bathroom, and unarmed naked black men. Therefore, why the focus of your comparison is so narrow when claiming the high ground on "reality" is beyond me.

 

[ronburgundy]

You think that a cop can't tell the difference between hearing an air rifle fired and hearing a real rifle fired?

You think a cop can't tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun. So how stupid do you think they are?

Of course in well lit conditions with each object in full view, they can tell the difference 100% of the time. But that is rarely the context. In the dark, when the suspect is moving and only 20% of the object is visible, and waiting even a second longer can increase the death threat 10 fold, then they react based on the probability that its a gun and a tiny fraction of the time get it wrong. Of the times that cops encounter suspect holding cell phones or other object, almost every time time they do not shoot when the person does not have a gun or other weapon. But a tiny fraction of time, they make an incorrect inference, and all those make the news, leading idiots to make false inferences about the base rates.

Is that acceptable policing? Arguably not, but more cops would certainly be shot if they always waited until having enough information to always be certain that an object is a gun. So, it is a matter of trade offs between the deadly consequences to suspects for false positives vs. deadly consequences to cops and anyone else around for false negatives or delays in waiting to avoid a false positive.

Are cops more likely to make these false positives (and thus shoot when no real gun is present) when the suspect is black? It would not surprising me. I know that my brother is a cop and he is very racist (a lovely quality he acquired while serving in the noble and heroic military). But there is no valid data to test the theory. Anecdotes are not data and the data we have doesn't address that question, because there are countless confounding factors that differ between the contexts where white and black suspects are approached (including what reported crime the cops are responding to, and the prevalence of illegal guns, shootings and violent crime in the area where the encounter occurs).

 

[ronburgundy]

Police also shoot black men laying down with their hands up, black men with small knives or screwdrivers, black men with cellphones, deaf black men in the bathroom, and unarmed naked black men. Therefore, why the focus of your comparison is so narrow when claiming the high ground on "reality" is beyond me.

Try to keep your goalposts within the same hemisphere for more than one post.

My focus is on what is actually relevant to to point I was responding to, which is whether a bb gun being fired would increase or decrease the probable perceived threat compared to the same gun merely being held by a person suspected of violent crime.

If you want to make a completely separate argument that race itself directly determines whether suspects without any kind of gun gets shot by the cops, that is fine. I am not arguing that, but you'd need to have actual evidence, and simply pointing to non-randomly selected incidences where unarmed blacks were shot is not even close being evidence of anything except that cops make errors sometimes and that you don't understand what evidence or a rational argument is.

 

[laughing dog]

And you fail to see that does not mean automatically opening fire.
You are literally making stuff up. You have no clue whether they knew it was not real or not. None whatsoever.
And yet, here you are giving us reasons why he was not shot.

You think that a cop can't tell the difference between hearing an air rifle fired and hearing a real rifle fired?

I think when air gun that shoots through a glass door and shatters it, the police may not be able to tell what was shot. But, since an air gun can be dangerous, according to your well-documented doctrine, the police should be afraid and start blasting away.

Or do you not care if what you say makes sense?

Please do not project your MO onto others.

 

[laughing dog]

The only thing obvious from the OP and its defenders is that dishonest dogamatist love to misrepresent the facts and deny obvious reality and logic to reach their preferred conclusion.

What on earth are you babbling about?

Of course bb guns ...

An air gun is not necessarily a bb gun. So unless you have evidence that the shooter was using a bb gun, please stop confusing your assumptions with facts.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Police also shoot black men laying down with their hands up, black men with small knives or screwdrivers, black men with cellphones, deaf black men in the bathroom, and unarmed naked black men. Therefore, why the focus of your comparison is so narrow when claiming the high ground on "reality" is beyond me.

Try to keep your goalposts within the same hemisphere for more than one post.

My focus is on what is actually relevant to to point I was responding to, which is whether a bb gun being fired would increase or decrease the probable perceived threat compared to the same gun merely being held by a person suspected of violent crime.

If you want to make a completely separate argument that race itself directly determines whether suspects without any kind of gun gets shot by the cops, that is fine. I am not arguing that, but you'd need to have actual evidence, and simply pointing to non-randomly selected incidences where unarmed blacks were shot is not even close being evidence of anything except that cops make errors sometimes and that you don't understand what evidence or a rational argument is.

I am not shifting goalposts. I think you are being too narrow. I mean so what if an average air gun does less harm on average than an average gun. You need to use common sense to look at the broad picture here. Analyses come after you have a question that makes sense, they are not an arbitrary comparison with no meaningful point.