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The family problem with criminals

“They try to justify what they do, but it’s not right, my nephew got killed and we got to live with that,” Ellen Roberts, William’s great aunt says.

“A police officer, I believe they could take a knife cut to the arm or something just to wrestle somebody down,” Marckus White, another family member said.

So what exactly is the family problem with criminals again? Families don't like it when their criminal family members end up dead instead of in custody?

Even dirty scumbags about whom we already have 100% certainty of guilt do not deserve to be killed by arresting officers. The police are using lethal force and as such I expect them to use it with a high degree of discretion.

I think the family member Marcus White who made that comment was expressing his belief that the events could have transpired a different way. The article you posted doesn't offer us enough details to know if the nephew is correct in his belief, but he is entitled to it.

Note that I do not endorse police officers endangering themselves by falling onto knives. There are two ways to read that quote above and I think I read it differently than LP did the first time I read it. When I read that quote I thought the boy was admitting the dangers and difficult situations that police officers face when arresting a suspect. This interpretation coincides with the article headline "we got to deal with that."

The other way to interpret it is as a suggestion that police officers should be willing to sacrifices serious injury to themselves in the course of their work in order to reduce the number of fatalities they inflict upon their suspects. No officer should be asked to sacrifice their fingers for a suspect, but rarely is acquiring a suspect worth an officer's fingers. If you can't safely apprehend a suspect but you can safely prevent that suspect from fleeing or hurting another person (as seems to be the situation in this case) then the option of waiting for the circumstances for apprehension to improve should always be considered.
 
A kitchen knife is still a knife. I really wish people stopped using crappy cases like that.
 
Nobody thinks a police officer has to take a cut to the arm, but situations can be deescalated and calm negotiations can begin if a person is not an immediate danger to anybody except people trying to grab hold of him.

The taser didn't work?

Not possible.

There are not people with super muscles that don't react to electricity.
 
Part of the police officer's job is to willingly put his or her life in danger in order to protect the public. Part of the public are suspects. So the police do not have absolute immunity to shoot people, even bad people. Was this particular instance a righteous shooting? Don't know. Was the suspect a bad man? His record says yes. Could things have been handled differently and therefore have been a different outcome? Quite possibly but we don't know for sure and now we can't know.

So if the point of this was prove that police have to right to shoot suspects without question, FAIL. If the point was to prove that this particular individual was deserving of death with no other alternative possible, again fail. If the point is that family members of people we may not like should just shut the hell up and accept that their loved one was killed and killed rightly for no other reason than it was the police doing the killing, EPIC FAIL!!!
 
Nobody except our Bilie Holiday apparently.
Part of the police officer's job is to willingly put his or her life in danger in order to protect the public. Part of the public are suspects.

It is disingenous to clip the rest of a post that clearly rebuts your claim. And it is stupid to do it right after the post.
 
It is disingenous to clip the rest of a post that clearly rebuts your claim. And it is stupid to do it right after the post.
I quoted the relevant part which refuted untermensche's assertion.
Omitting "Part of the public are suspects. So the police do not have absolute immunity to shoot people, even bad people. Was this particular instance a righteous shooting? Don't know." indicates that your claim is false.
 
Omitting "Part of the public are suspects. So the police do not have absolute immunity to shoot people, even bad people. Was this particular instance a righteous shooting? Don't know." indicates that your claim is false.
She did say that cops should put themselves in extra danger to avoid hurting dangerous suspects.
 
Omitting "Part of the public are suspects. So the police do not have absolute immunity to shoot people, even bad people. Was this particular instance a righteous shooting? Don't know." indicates that your claim is false.
She did say that cops should put themselves in extra danger to avoid hurting dangerous suspects.
There is no sentence or phrase in her post that says that.
 
“They try to justify what they do, but it’s not right, my nephew got killed and we got to live with that,” Ellen Roberts, William’s great aunt says.

“A police officer, I believe they could take a knife cut to the arm or something just to wrestle somebody down,” Marckus White, another family member said.

So what exactly is the family problem with criminals again? Families don't like it when their criminal family members end up dead instead of in custody?

Even dirty scumbags about whom we already have 100% certainty of guilt do not deserve to be killed by arresting officers.


Yes, such a person does deserve to die. The issue is that from a pragmatic standpoint of preserving procedures for when we are not 100% certain, we don't wan't cops killing suspects unless they or others are in danger. In this case, they were, so good riddance. He both deserved to die and the cops were in the right to shoot him.


The police are using lethal force and as such I expect them to use it with a high degree of discretion.
They did use discretion. This known criminal, previously convicted of assaulting an officer, and now suspected of rape and armed with a deadly weapon, refused orders to drop the weapon, and was not deterred by a taser. The fact that 4 cops would likely have overpowered him is irrelevant, because at least one cop could easily be seriously or lethalally stabbed with the knife in the process. Cops are and should be allowed to shoot attacking suspects.

I think the family member Marcus White who made that comment was expressing his belief that the events could have transpired a different way. The article you posted doesn't offer us enough details to know if the nephew is correct in his belief, but he is entitled to it.

Yes, people are entitled to hold idiotic beliefs, no matter how irrational and immoral. That doesn't make those beliefs non-problematic for those of us that care about actual justice, protection for violent criminals like this man, and the reasonable enforcement of the law. The idiocy of the family member is heightened by them arguing the knife being a "kitchen knife" made it less of a threat. That means the blade was probably 6+ inches and 1+ inches wide, making a single stab easily lethal.
But unreasonable families with direct emotion ties to the individual are more understandable and less problematic than blind ideologues who share their irrational attack on the cops, no matter how clearly reasonable and warranted and protective of innocent lives their actions are.


The other way to interpret it is as a suggestion that police officers should be willing to sacrifices serious injury to themselves in the course of their work in order to reduce the number of fatalities they inflict upon their suspects.

That is the only way to rationally interpret it. It is the logically inherent to what was said. And it is absurd nonsense. If a suspect arms himself against the cops, it shows clear will and intent to inflict serious injury if not death on the cops. They made multiple efforts to talk to him, commanded him to drop it before and after being tased, and he refused and attacked them as was his clear intention when he armed himself in the first place. The family does not dispute any of the facts. They simply claim the cops should have engaged him in hand to hand (actually hand to knife) combat, even if they got injured doing so. That absurdly rationalize this position by denying the fact that an officer could get seriously maimed or killed in that situation, even if in the end they were successful. The fact that this person was a proven violent criminal suspected (and fleeing from) a rape suspicion makes deadly force all the more justified, even if he was fleeing rather than attacking. Fewer people will be victimized due to these cops actions.
 
Part of the police officer's job is to willingly put his or her life in danger in order to protect the public. Part of the public are suspects.

Cops do not forfeit any part of their right to self-defense. Cops are also part of the public, and have a duty to protect themselves and other cops from being victimized by criminal actions. The moment a suspect arms themselves and/or attacks cops who are requesting they surrender for arrest they are no longer merely suspects but actively engaged in committing a violent crime and the cops have a duty to stop them before someone (including themselves or other cops) get hurt.
 
So what exactly is the family problem with criminals again? Families don't like it when their criminal family members end up dead instead of in custody?

Even dirty scumbags about whom we already have 100% certainty of guilt do not deserve to be killed by arresting officers.


Yes, such a person does deserve to die.
No, they do not. That does not serve the cause of justice to have police executions in the streets.
The issue is that from a pragmatic standpoint of preserving procedures for when we are not 100% certain, we don't wan't cops killing suspects unless they or others are in danger. In this case, they were, so good riddance. He both deserved to die and the cops were in the right to shoot him.
The man was hiding under a bed in a room with 4 officers. He posed no real threat to anyone but himself and he was not going anywhere. It is easy to imagine that if a little bit of patience and negotiation were applied he could have surrendered peacefully.
The police are using lethal force and as such I expect them to use it with a high degree of discretion.
They did use discretion. This known criminal, previously convicted of assaulting an officer, and now suspected of rape and armed with a deadly weapon, refused orders to drop the weapon, and was not deterred by a taser. The fact that 4 cops would likely have overpowered him is irrelevant, because at least one cop could easily be seriously or lethalally stabbed with the knife in the process. Cops are and should be allowed to shoot attacking suspects.
He wasn't attacking anyone. He was hiding under a bed.

I think the family member Marcus White who made that comment was expressing his belief that the events could have transpired a different way. The article you posted doesn't offer us enough details to know if the nephew is correct in his belief, but he is entitled to it.

Yes, people are entitled to hold idiotic beliefs, no matter how irrational and immoral. That doesn't make those beliefs non-problematic for those of us that care about actual justice,
"Actual justice" involves police executions in the streets? disgusting.
protection for violent criminals like this man, and the reasonable enforcement of the law. The idiocy of the family member is heightened by them arguing the knife being a "kitchen knife" made it less of a threat. That means the blade was probably 6+ inches and 1+ inches wide, making a single stab easily lethal.
But unreasonable families with direct emotion ties to the individual are more understandable and less problematic than blind ideologues who share their irrational attack on the cops, no matter how clearly reasonable and warranted and protective of innocent lives their actions are.
I don't know what you are talking about here.
The other way to interpret it is as a suggestion that police officers should be willing to sacrifices serious injury to themselves in the course of their work in order to reduce the number of fatalities they inflict upon their suspects.

That is the only way to rationally interpret it.
No, there is another way to interpret it as I said. You are not a mind reader and the article doesn't give enough context for us to know for sure.
It is the logically inherent to what was said. And it is absurd nonsense. If a suspect arms himself against the cops, it shows clear will and intent to inflict serious injury if not death on the cops.
That is only as true as the statement that armed cops show clear will and intent to inflict serious injury or death upon suspects. In other words it is false. Weapons have more than one use and since we aren't mind readers we can't know with certainty the precise motives of others.
They made multiple efforts to talk to him, commanded him to drop it before and after being tased, and he refused and attacked them as was his clear intention when he armed himself in the first place. The family does not dispute any of the facts. They simply claim the cops should have engaged him in hand to hand (actually hand to knife) combat, even if they got injured doing so. That absurdly rationalize this position by denying the fact that an officer could get seriously maimed or killed in that situation, even if in the end they were successful. The fact that this person was a proven violent criminal suspected (and fleeing from) a rape suspicion makes deadly force all the more justified,

No, this statement is ridiculous. The use of lethal force is only permitted by the police for the purpose of defense and safety.. Not for the purpose of destroying threats to society.

even if he was fleeing rather than attacking. Fewer people will be victimized due to these cops actions.

The job police officers have is to identify and aprehend criminals. Their job is not to prevent future crimes that have not and may never occur by terminating people they think are dangerous.

We do not live in the universe of Judge Dredd. Thank goodness.
 
Nobody except our Bilie Holiday apparently.
Part of the police officer's job is to willingly put his or her life in danger in order to protect the public. Part of the public are suspects.

Did I say something untrue? I did not. I also didn't say police officers should allow people to cut their arms.

Although thank you for the twenty. I had a side bet with a friend of mine who reads this forum as to who would quote mine me first. Predictability, your name is Derec.
 
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