New blockade in Minneapolis

[Derec]

Lol. No. Sounds like you’ve never been hunting. It’s not like on tv or those places where they put disabled people in blinds on a deer farm and let them shoot deer grazing.

Many people hunt from blinds. It helps conceal you both visually and olfactorily, esp. if elevated. And hunters usually shoot at deer while the deer are stationary.
Now, if a buck were to directly charge at you, you may miss a few shots too and would wish for semiautomatic action.

 

[Derec]

Backing off need not require literally moving backward.

What does it mean? What would officer laughing dog do in this situation concretely?
Mind you, the perp is closing at you at the rate of 3.3 m (~10 ft) every second, and is armed with a deadly weapon.

And still managed to mostly miss him.

Could you do better under similar circumstances? And what are you arguing here? That they should not have shot him, or that they should have shot him more?

Perhaps you should write “The Etiquette of Protest”.

Those rioters prefer stuff like "The Rules for Radicals" and "The Anarchist Cookbook" for their beach reading, no doubt.

Your response is internally inconsistent. The only attack with a deadly weapon was done by the police

A knife is a deadly weapon. He was attacking. My response is not inconsistent, but your lacks basic reasoning, and/or is evidence of ignorance of what common words mean.

Given the police’s lousy shooting, they were lucky no one else was killed.

Whether or not their shooting was lousy under the circumstances is completely unrelated to the fact that they have the right to self-defense and that the shooting was 100% justified.

 

[Derec]

Guns are not defensive in nature; A gun is the means to attack or counterattack, not the means to defend yourself.

The best defense is a good offense. A counterattack is a good defensive tactic.

...or you could fall into a lazy rationalisation that invokes a wide range of possible disasters none of which are likely to befall trained officers.

What level of added risk do you want officers to take on by denying them the right to effective self-defense?

Your "defensive" fire could hit a colleague or a bystander, causing death or serious injury. By drawing a gun, you risk shooting yourself, for that matter.

What are the odds of that vs. odds of getting stabbed if you just run away (and leave your back exposed to the maniac)? You are not being realistic.

 

[bilby]

What level of added risk do you want officers to take on

A fair bit, given that it's their fucking JOB.

by denying them the right to effective self-defense?

What level of response do you expect to get by asking heavily loaded questions?

I don't accept your premise that denying police ready access to lethal force is the same as denying them the right to effective self defence.

And you know this, but still built it into your question as though we already agreed on it.

Don't do that; It's dishonest.

 

[Derec]

Until a cop mistakes your sandwich for a deadly weapon.

Did you even read the article?

Protests erupted near the site of Myers’ death — recalling the August demonstrations in nearby Ferguson that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed teen — but according to St. Louis police, Myers fired at least three shots in the direction of the officer, and a gun was recovered at the scene.

Btw, we have discussed the Vonderitt Myers case at length on here when it happened.
What really happened: Vonderitt did buy a sandwich that night, but presumably he had consumed it by the time of the deadly encounter. He also had a gun, which he shot at police. He also was awaiting trial for weapons possession.
St. Louis Teen Vonderrit Myers Killed by Cop Faced Trial for Gun Charge
The family kept insisting that he had a "sandwich, not a gun", but that was a lie. Just like it was a lie that Keith Lamont Scott "had a book, not a gun" - he had had a gun, and a matching ankle holster too.

Now, police sometimes make tragic mistakes. They are not infallible. Like the teenager who got shot while holding a wii controller. He was white btw.
But some of the cases in this article do not even fit the headline. Like the umbrella. That was reported as a gun by somebody on campus and police responded (but nobody was shot). Should they not respond to such reports?

Other cases like the "pizza" one are misreported by Grio. The case is a somewhat infamous one, but it's not really about pizza. It's about two idiots who led police on a chase and had a car that backfired - that was mistaken for a gunshot by police.
Six Cleveland Officers Fired for Role in Killing of Couple
Not sure where Grio got anything about any pizza.

I do not think Grio is a particularly trustworthy source.

 

[Derec]

How about using deadly force when not attacked at all, but fearful that a benign non-weapon object might be a gun (which in principle would not be unlawful to have anyway)?

You'd do well not to trust what you read in fucking Grio, although, of course, mistakes happen. Nothing in life is 100%.

In this particular case, though, police officers were being attacked with a deadly weapon. And you still insist that they should not have defended themselves.

 

[Derec]

In countries where cops don't routinely kill people, suicide by cop isn't possible.

It's still possible, just a bit more difficult. Of course, a trip to Switzerland would be a bit more reliable. Not to mention pleasant.

 

[Derec]

Precisely. What should distinguish law enforcement from common criminals is their strategic and discerning approach to apprehending individuals.

There are about ~10 million arrests per year in the US, and ~1000 killings. So vast majority of time, police manage to apprehend individuals just fine. Sometimes that is not feasible, like when being charged by a knife-wielding perp.

However, what I observe is Black people (who, based on per capita figures, commit more crimes) being used as convenient targets.

At least you acknowledge the differences in crime rates. I disagree about "convenient targets" though. These days, police face far more scrutiny when they kill somebody black vs. somebody white. The police officer who merely watched George Floyd getting killed (Tou Thao) got the same sentence (five years) as the officer (Mohammed Noor) who murdered the innocent white woman Justine Damond.

 

[Derec]

That’s not how my family hunted.

How did your family hunt? However it was, I doubt it was at all like having somebody charge at you with a deadly weapon. Which is why I am still not sure why you brought up hunting, or compared shooting accuracy between hunting and getting attacked by an armed criminal?

Yes, for most human beings, shooting another human being is difficult.

Of course it is.

But I gotta give it to ‘em: Put some dark skin on a person and cops seem to have no trouble overcoming their aversion.

Why do you leftists always have to make it about race, even when there is no indication, much less evidence, that race played any role whatsoever?

 

[Derec]

A fair bit, given that it's their fucking JOB.

It's not their job to take on excessive risk by not being able to defend themselves when attacked.

What level of response do you expect to get by asking heavily loaded questions?
I don't accept your premise that denying police ready access to lethal force is the same as denying them the right to effective self defence.

Of course it is. When attacked with lethal force police should be able to defend themselves using lethal force.
Your response is that they should turn tail and run. How is saying that not denying them the right to self-defense?

And you know this, but still built it into your question as though we already agreed on it.
Don't do that; It's dishonest.

It is not dishonest. It follows from your radical statements about what police should be allowed to do when attacked with lethal force.

 

[laughing dog]

Backing off need not require literally moving backward.

What does it mean? What would officer laughing dog do in this situation concretely?
Mind you, the perp is closing at you at the rate of 3.3 m (~10 ft) every second, and is armed with a deadly weapon.

Use my training and attempt to disarm him unless it was clear he was attacking me.

Could you do better under similar circumstances? And what are you arguing here? That they should not have shot him, or that they should have shot him more?

You illogically keep comparing possible reactions from civilians to those of supposedly well trained professionals who voluntarily and knowingly accept their job with its risks. It is as if you are grasping for rationales to defend your bloodlust.

Those rioters prefer stuff like "The Rules for Radicals" and "The Anarchist Cookbook" for their beach reading, no doubt.

You’re the one with the idiosyncratic standard of proper protest. Given your complaints about the lack of an appropriate response by authority, those in positions of power need guidance.

A knife is a deadly weapon. He was attacking. My response is not inconsistent, but your lacks basic reasoning, and/or is evidence of ignorance of what common words mean.

Anything is a deadly weapon. So your response logically means the police can immediately kill anyone whenever they feel threatened.

Whether or not their shooting was lousy under the circumstances is completely unrelated to the fact that they have the right to self-defense and that the shooting was 100% justified.

You’re the one who brought up no others were injured, not me. Just pointing out how lucky they were using that standard of “ no one else injured”. For example, the police in the Brionna Taylor tragedy were not that lucky not to mention Ms Taylor.

 

[Toni]

Here’s an article about the militarization of police in the USA.

How 9/11 helped to militarize American law enforcement

Rashawn Ray writes that in light of 9/11 and America's overseas wars, policy makers should critically re-evaluate the benefits or costs (financial and human costs) associated with military equipment programs for law enforcement.

www.brookings.edu

1. It is not needed to quote my entire post, esp. not just to post a link to an article.
2. What are your actual thoughts, other than just posting to an article?

That said, this was written by Rashawn Ray, who is a anti-police left-wing activist. Second, he mentions "military equipment" a lot in his screed, but never bothers to define what he means by it or give some examples. That's because the term "military equipment" sounds much more ominous than the actual equipment covered by these programs actually is.

As to the case from this thread, what equipment used by the police would you classify as "military"? Do you think police should not have access to it, and why?

1. Short on time and with an old computer and a phone, sometimes makes it tedious to snip out what isn’t needed. More tedious than it needs to be.

2. Here’s a link to a wiki about the military’s zafiin of the police: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil... to 2014,gear, among other military equipment.

Data from 2006 to 2014 shows that local and state police departments obtained aircraft, helicopters, bayonets, knives, night-vision sniper scopes, tactical armored vehicles or MRAP's, rifles and weapons including grenade launchers, watercraft, and camouflage gear, among other military equipment.

However, a 2017 study showed that police forces which received military equipment were more likely to have violent encounters with the public, regardless of local crime rates.[17] A 2018 study found that militarized police units in the United States were more frequently deployed to communities with large shares of African-Americans, even after controlling for local crime rates.[18]

I’ve mentioned at various times that multiple members of my family have been victims of armed home robberies—off the top of my head, I can think of 3 separate instances, two of them being at very modest rural farmhouses. The other, in a densely populated urban area, just a few hundred yards outside the city limits of a major midwestern city, involved a hostage situation and rescue by a SWAT team. Actually, I believe multiple SWAT teams. In any case, the criminals were apprehended without injury to anyone except, perhaps dignity. My relative was outraged to be referred to in press accounts as ‘elderly. She was 80. I take her point.

Now the relatives who were rescued by the SWAT team lived in an extremely nice ( very expensive) and also very white neighborhood, which likely accounts for the restraint of the SWAT team and I am extremely grateful that no one was hurt.

Obviously I can see the utility of a SWAT team and can very much appreciate how effective they can be when using a lot of restraint. No shots were fired. No one was hurt. The home was not damaged. No bystander injuries or damaged property. An ideal outcome. If this sort of careful restrain we’re always used, I don’t think many of us would be complaining about police brutality or the overmilitarization of police.

It’s also easy to see how say, helicopters can aid in traffic control and in disasters and other rescue types of situations.

But training police with military equipment also trains police to behave as occupying forces, not members of the community they are sworn to serve and protect. And of course, there is the propensity to wear sh to use whatever fancy, expensive equipment you have laying about. And to treat the people you are sworn to serve and protect as problems to be controlled.

 

[Toni]

That’s not how my family hunted.

How did your family hunt? However it was, I doubt it was at all like having somebody charge at you with a deadly weapon. Which is why I am still not sure why you brought up hunting, or compared shooting accuracy between hunting and getting attacked by an armed criminal?

Yes, for most human beings, shooting another human being is difficult.

Of course it is.

But I gotta give it to ‘em: Put some dark skin on a person and cops seem to have no trouble overcoming their aversion.

Why do you leftists always have to make it about race, even when there is no indication, much less evidence, that race played any role whatsoever?

Actual hunting involves patience, self restraint, the ability to be very quiet and to know your target—and to very quickly take your shot at a target that is likely moving very rapidly and is much, much smaller than a human being—and to to able to fire with great accuracy. My family mostly hunted everything from deer to squirrels and rabbits, quail, grouse, pheasants, and when necessary, fox ( bad to have around chickens) and woodchucks ( bad to have in a pasture).

 

[Toni]

Yes, we all know that if anyone says anything that does not dump on the dead black victim of a police shooting, they are portraying him as a saint.

News outlets should report on events critically. That means not taking what is told by the perp's family and friends uncritically. That also means reporting accurately on things that do not portray the shootee in a good light even if anti-police people like you think that's "dumping" or that it should not be allowed if the person is black.

BTW, the St. Louis paper is the Post-Dispatch.

My bad.

News outlets include what is known as ‘ human interest’ elements in much of their reporting.

Apparently it is insufficient to convince people like you that the victims of gun violence are actually human beings whose lives have value and who are loved and cared for and who may be mothers or fathers or sisters or brothers and certainly are sons abd daughters.

Of course, that does interfere with your narrative that they are simply violent criminals and police have no choice except to kill them.
Never mind that police also kill children on the playground, women sleeping in their own beds, old people standing on their own porches, people driving their family home from Target, etc.

And yet, if they are actually concerned about people who are currently being victimized by armed criminals, and the neighborhood and neighbors, police are capable of safely ending a very dangerous situation without harm to person or property—indeed, with no shots fired.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's not their job to take on excessive risk by not being able to defend themselves when attacked.

Where you draw the line at what "excessive" means is different from where someone we would call a hero would draw the line. A hero is a person who takes some risks, makes some personal sacrifices, shows courage in the face of that risk because of the value they place on something, such as for example, the lives of others. One example of a hero would be a person who saves another person from drowning while putting themselves at least some risk of drowning from the same environmental conditions. Another example of a hero would be a police officer who breaks the silence of the Blue Wall and goes up against his or her fellow officers because of the value of the public, duty, truth or lives of civilians. They'd be giving up long-standing friendships, career options, and making other personal sacrifices for the common good. But time and time again, what we observe from you is the protection of cowardly behavior and even murder as in the case of Derek Chauvin. So, excuse us if we don't take your assessment of risk as unbiased and objectively defined or consistent with the purported duties and nobility of police officers. From my perspective, the duty of police officers is to protect and serve the public and part of that job includes the mental and physical capacity to help mentally ill people, even when those people are making terrible decisions that comes with the territory. It is certainly the job of police to try to rise above treating mentally ill civilians as dangerous criminals and thereby systemically as second-class citizens.

 

[laughing dog]

Precisely. What should distinguish law enforcement from common criminals is their strategic and discerning approach to apprehending individuals.

There are about ~10 million arrests per year in the US, and ~1000 killings. So vast majority of time, police manage to apprehend individuals just fine. Sometimes that is not feasible, like when being charged by a knife-wielding perp.

However, what I observe is Black people (who, based on per capita figures, commit more crimes) being used as convenient targets.

At least you acknowledge the differences in crime rates. I disagree about "convenient targets" though. These days, police face far more scrutiny when they kill somebody black vs. somebody white. The police officer who merely watched George Floyd getting killed (Tou Thao) got the same sentence (five years) as the officer (Mohammed Noor) who murdered the innocent white woman Justine Damond.

Why are you bringing up race when there is no one tube to suggest race had anything to do with the two very different cases?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In countries where cops don't routinely kill people, suicide by cop isn't possible.

It's still possible, just a bit more difficult. Of course, a trip to Switzerland would be a bit more reliable. Not to mention pleasant.

My understanding is they only do so for documented medical reasons and it's certainly not something that can be done quickly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Backing off need not require literally moving backward.

What does it mean? What would officer laughing dog do in this situation concretely?
Mind you, the perp is closing at you at the rate of 3.3 m (~10 ft) every second, and is armed with a deadly weapon.

Use my training and attempt to disarm him unless it was clear he was attacking me.

Where did you go, superhero school? Because this isn't within the realm of reasonable combat training. Yes, at a sufficiently high level there is training for unarmed vs knife--but it's a last resort thing, not something to choose.

Could you do better under similar circumstances? And what are you arguing here? That they should not have shot him, or that they should have shot him more?

You illogically keep comparing possible reactions from civilians to those of supposedly well trained professionals who voluntarily and knowingly accept their job with its risks. It is as if you are grasping for rationales to defend your bloodlust.

You're grasping for rationales for not shooting.

 

[Derec]

However, what I observe is Black people (who, based on per capita figures, commit more crimes) being used as convenient targets.

Why are you bringing up race when there is no one tube to suggest race had anything to do with the two very different cases?

I was directly responding to Gospel, who brought up race.

Please try to read the context before running your fingers across the keyboard prematurely.

 

[Toni]

Backing off need not require literally moving backward.

What does it mean? What would officer laughing dog do in this situation concretely?
Mind you, the perp is closing at you at the rate of 3.3 m (~10 ft) every second, and is armed with a deadly weapon.

Use my training and attempt to disarm him unless it was clear he was attacking me.

Where did you go, superhero school? Because this isn't within the realm of reasonable combat training. Yes, at a sufficiently high level there is training for unarmed vs knife--but it's a last resort thing, not something to choose.

Could you do better under similar circumstances? And what are you arguing here? That they should not have shot him, or that they should have shot him more?

You illogically keep comparing possible reactions from civilians to those of supposedly well trained professionals who voluntarily and knowingly accept their job with its risks. It is as if you are grasping for rationales to defend your bloodlust.

You're grasping for rationales for not shooting.

So let me understand you: shooting someone is NOT a last resort thing?