The Somewhat Serious Discussion Thread

GreatWhiteNorth said:
Did you even watch the video?
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Yes. I assume you're talking about whatever movement the kid does with his right hand as the car pulls up? Perhaps to a trained professional that's enough justification to shoot someone dead with less than a second of deliberation about it, but to my eyes it seems awfully fast.

And really, that's my issue with most of these police shootings. It's that the force escalation model currently used in American policing seemingly leads to at least some cops for whom shooting becomes close to a first reaction, not a last resort. "He made some movement that I interpreted as a threat so I shot him." And frankly, it's getting harder to give officers the benefit of the doubt now that the sunshine thrown by a million cell phone cameras has shown repeatedly how abruptly and capriciously some cops are willing to beat the shlt out of people. I know perfectly well that the overwhelming majority cops are good cops, but I've also seen a depressingly high pile of evidence that there are also lots of terrible ones.

To an extent, police shootings are just an inevitable byproduct of America's obsession with guns. A heavily armed citizenry means that police in turn need to be heavily armed, and that every routine interaction is a potentially fatal encounter, and that means people are going to get needleessly shot. There's no way to change that basic dynamic without getting rid of the guns, which is impossible. The racial angle, unfortunately, is something else entirely.
 
Vercingetorix said:
Yes. I assume you're talking about whatever movement the kid does with his right hand as the car pulls up? Perhaps to a trained professional that's enough justification to shoot someone dead with less than a second of deliberation about it, but to my eyes it seems awfully fast.

And really, that's my issue with most of these police shootings. It's that the force escalation model currently used in American policing seemingly leads to at least some cops for whom shooting becomes close to a first reaction, not a last resort. "He made some movement that I interpreted as a threat so I shot him." And frankly, it's getting harder to give officers the benefit of the doubt now that the sunshine thrown by a million cell phone cameras has shown repeatedly how abruptly and capriciously some cops are willing to beat the shlt out of people. I know perfectly well that the overwhelming majority cops are good cops, but I've also seen a depressingly high pile of evidence that there are also lots of terrible ones.

To an extent, police shootings are just an inevitable byproduct of America's obsession with guns. A heavily armed citizenry means that police in turn need to be heavily armed, and that every routine interaction is a potentially fatal encounter, and that means people are going to get needleessly shot. There's no way to change that basic dynamic without getting rid of the guns, which is impossible. The racial angle, unfortunately, is something else entirely.
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That's exactly what I'm referring to. These officers are responding to a call of a subject pointing a gun at random people. When they pull up, that subject immediately reaches for an object in his waistband. A reasonable officer can articulate that, based on his/her training and experience, that movement in particular is consistent with a subject reaching for a weapon. The Supreme Court has upheld this. At that time, the officer used deadly force and it was completely justified in my eyes. The Supreme Court has also ruled that an officer is not required to gamble with his/her life in giving warnings or commands when deadly force is already justifiable. That is the case with this particular instance in Cleveland. As ugly as this scenario is, the officer was completely justified in his application of the Use of Force model. I would go so far as to say that he would have been negligent NOT to have shot the subject in this instance, putting his own life and the life of his partner in jeopardy.

I'm not sure exactly what you want to see in a Use of Force matrix for police. This job is one of the most dangerous ones on the planet. To us, it is not about a "first option" or "last resort"...it's about applying the appropriate amount of force needed for the situation at hand, regardless of whether that's using verbal commands, less than lethal force, or deadly force. Sometimes there is no escalation or de-escalation of force options...I think this situation specifically is a good example of that.

You and I have consistently disagreed on gun control policy, so I won't really touch on that. I will say that it is my opinion that America's culture leading to more police shootings has a lot less to do with the availability of guns than it does with a larger individual character and youth subculture problem.

There are a lot of bad cops out there. I won't begin to debate that. I see candidates here at our academy every day that I don't feel deserve to be LEOs. It is incredibly difficult to get a candidate written out of our program, though...and to me, that's one of the biggest issues in law enforcement today. Agencies are so desparate for bodies that they push candidates through that sometimes shouldn't be. I hope that I can be in a position to influence change in that area for my agency in the future.
 
I don't doubt that the officer was legally justified to shoot. I guess my issue is this: the 911 caller reported that the suspect was probably juvenile and that the gun might well be fake. The cops (presumably) knew this driving up. The kid appeared to be off by himself in the gazebo thing, not directly threatening anyone at the moment the officers arrived. But the way they barreled in there, driving up on the grass, ready to shoot him dead the second he made one false move seems stupidly aggressive given the transcript of the original call. I would like to think that cops are well trained pros whose first instinct is to try to defuse situations like this, and lots of times they just aren't. [1]

As far as American police shootings in general.....well, American police kill hundreds of civilians every year. Police in the rest of the Western world kill only a handful combined. Other countries have poor disaffected minorities too, but their police don't kill them. Only here. I can't see how character/subculture is a bigger factor than the rather more obvious difference that our police are the only ones who have to walk around armed all the time.

And I'm not making an ideological statement about gun control, except perhaps insofar as discussing guns as anything other than inert objects of sport would be considered ideological by some people [2]. I just think it seems pretty clear that our hundreds of millions of civilian-owned guns is probably the biggest reason why policing in America is different from everywhere else. That's why their jobs are so dangerous. Being a policeman in England is probably less dangerous than working in the average factory.



[1] Unless the suspect is white, of course. Is there any doubt that Tamir Rice would be alive today if he'd been a white kid?

[2] Speaking of which, my brother in law is not actually wearing his gun around his mother's house today, but he did go for an NRA shirt with two guns blazing out of his chest as his Thanksgiving table attire. Probably his form of silent protest.
 
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Their tactics leading up to the shooting may very well be questionable...without knowing the information they had received beforehand, it's hard to say. I will say that driving all the way up to the gazebo Dukes of Hazzard style appears to be a bit reckless in my eyes, but again, who knows what the officers knew at that point. I'm obviously biased, but I'd give them the benefit of the doubt at this point. Obviously, many of the American people would not.

As far as the information in the 911 call about him being a juvenile and the gun probably fake...firstly, I don't care if he's a juvenile or 80 years old. That doesn't change a single thing in my eyes. Columbine perfectly illustrates that point. As for the gun being potentially fake...are we as LEOs supposed to wait and try to figure that out before using force? "Well, the caller said it might be fake, so let me give him the benefit of the doubt and just see and..." BANG. Now my head's a canoe. Again, I'm not required to nor do I intend to gamble with my life because some idiot kid was foolish enough to attempt to brandish what very well may be a firearm at me, even if it does turn out to be fake.

As far as your Footnote 1, I may be the only one, but my belief is that this kid would be dead regardless of color.
 
I would also add...some audio from the video would probably shed quite a bit of light on the situation. Unfortunately that probably doesn't exist.
 
I certainly wouldn't expect them to go in with their guard down based on anything the 911 caller had said, but I don't think it's asking too much to expect it to influence how they approach the situation to begin with. The Dukes of Hazzard-style entrance, as you so aptly put it, obviously didn't help.

I agree that audio might help. They didn't really have time to interact with the kid at all, but it might be helpful to know what they were saying to each other as they drove up. What they saw that might have led them to barrel in like that.

I dunno; all I am is an average middle-aged, middle-class white guy, which means it's highly unlikely to ever be my own ass on the line, which means it's a little high and mighty for me to sit here (literally) in my mother in law's basement and judge these guys up in Cleveland who put their lives at risk every time they go to work. But I do have a son who's almost this kid's age. If a cop shot him dead less than two seconds after pulling up in his car I can't imagine how I'd react.
 
I give you that. It's easy to second-guess and armchair this thing to death.

I'd like to hear the audio to know what, if anything, they were saying to the kid as they pulled up.
 
I just hope these departments take the time to look at the scenarios and see if something can be improved through training, hiring, officer attitudes to perhaps change future outcomes.

They don't have to do this in public view, because I know the departments will want to stay behind its officers and not give reason to pile on to an already-disastrous headline. But I really hope they don't (internally) just stick their heads in the sand and resign themselves to thinking NOTHING can be done to change the outcome of a similar situation in the future.

If/when those in the department just defiantly say that there's no way it could have been handled differently, any problem that exists isn't going to go away.
 
And now the NY cop who strangled a guy to death on camera walks free without being indicted. What the hell is going on here?
 
Vercingetorix said:
And now the NY cop who strangled a guy to death on camera walks free without being indicted. What the hell is going on here?
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I don't know anything more than what I've read in the media about this case, but I don't see any defensible position with this one. The ONLY time I would attempt to justify using any type of choke hold is in a deadly force situation, which this clearly was not. I would say that the total time the choke was applied was around 12-15 seconds, which should not have been long enough to kill the man. He's clearly saying "I can't breathe" after the hold has been released...which would also lead me to believe that the man probably had some sort of pre-existing medical condition which likely contributed to his death.

Either way, the officer was in the wrong for applying the hold. It was unnecessary in this instance. He's not guilty of homicide, but manslaughter is possible.
 
The killings are bad enough...the reaction to them that people are tweeting is hard for me to fathom.
 
I've lived in NYC, NYPD are the best. Really tough beat. This **** is heartbreaking and people actually want to celebrate it? Backwards pathetic society.
 
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