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Author Topic:   Police Shootings
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 147 of 670 (839611)
09-11-2018 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 144 by Hyroglyphx
09-10-2018 5:44 PM


Re: "ER" Actress Dies in ER
Hyroglyphx writes:
I would suggest not killing them.
I can only assume then you find it perfectly acceptable that they kill the police officer then.
That assumption would ignore things I've already said. These police were obviously inadequately trained and prepared to handle a wellness check, which obviously would include suicidal people who can be expected to possess the lethal means of causing their own demise. If the only response police have to a suicidal person with a gun is to shoot them, then clearly police are the last people one should call for a wellness check
Sometimes there really are situations in life where it is kill or be killed with no middle ground.
No one's disputing that. But Vanessa Marquez didn't walk up to police with a gun. The police approached her, a known despondent person, in her apartment. The police put themselves into a situation where they felt so threatened they felt lethal force was necessary. Adequately trained and prepared police wouldn't do that.
It is not "casting all kinds of aspersions" to say that the police should never wellness check someone to death.
But that's not the goal in mind. People dictate the outcome; police simply facilitate. If they reach for a weapon then the choice has been made by them.
Ah, blame the decedent. Good show.
More details have come out, if you're interested you can read about them here: NEW INFORMATION: Witnesses, Police Provide Details into the Shooting Death of Actress Vanessa Marquez
The gist of the new information is that officers thought Marquez appeared to be "gravely ill", was experiencing seizures, and "She looked like she was dead." After 30 minutes of polite discussion a mental health clinician arrived and discussion continued. Fire rescue was called to take Marquez to the hospital. Tensions quickly escalated when Marquez refused to go voluntarily and pulled a gun (a BB gun, but they didn't know that). The officers and the health clinician fled the apartment. Why hadn't they checked her for weapons?
A short while later two other officers responding to reports of a person with a gun arrived in an unmarked car. They marched into the apartment, confronted Marquez, and shot her to death. A witness says it was 19 shots, the police deny it was that many.
Sounds to me like the officers who were already there were handling the situation in a way that respected life, then two other officers responded to a report of someone with a gun and without consulting with the officers and mental health clinician unnecessarily escalated the situation into a confrontation. If Marquez has family willing to pursue this, I think the police are in a lot of trouble.
More evidence of the attitude making clear why police shouldn't have guns.
What is fundamentally unreasonable about self-defense? What exactly is just so patently egregious about that?
What is fundamentally reasonable about police lethally defending themselves in a situation they themselves caused?
So why did you conclude justifiable homicide instead of questioning why the officer didn't employ his Taser, bean bag rounds, pepper spray, tear gas or other means?
I don't know all the facts and circumstances for this particular case.
We still don't have "all the facts," but the article I cited above has a great many more details.
I'm speaking in generalities.
I'm speaking in specifics. Vanessa Marquez should still be alive. She should not have been wellness checked to death.
There is such a thing as justifiable homicide...
Granted.
...and there are less-lethal options.
Gosh, ya think?
But the circumstances may not always be appropriate to employ those options and each instance needs to be evaluated on their own merits and circumstances.
I think we have more than enough information about the Vanessa Marquez homicide to raise serious questions about police methods and actions. Also, police departments should not be making their own determinations of what constitutes a justifiable "kill". When police all across the country rule that 90% of "kills" are justified, something is wrong.
The Washington Post ran an article about police shootings a few years ago (On duty, under fire), but they accepted police departments' own accounts. Police shootings should be investigated by an independent and appropriately adversarial body.
If someone linked to a Salon article, I didn't see it. My views are neither preconceived nor knee jerk. They derive from the many news reports of unjustifiable police shootings, particularly of people of color. I think you may be too close to your profession to be objective, and that you've become inured to the possibility that perhaps improvements are possible.
My proximity to the profession allows me to see things the way they actually are versus what spin some columnist far removed selects to confirm a preconceived bias.
Your "proximity to the profession" has colored your judgment.
Also, Caucasians killed by police is twice or three times higher than any other racial subset in the United States which, statistically, makes a lot of sense since per capita they still outnumber all other racial subsets.
Uh, yes, of course, by mathematical necessity. Why mention this? So that I can bring up that blacks are shot by police at a rate several times higher than their proportion of the population?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-10-2018 5:44 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 148 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-12-2018 3:08 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 149 of 670 (839694)
09-13-2018 11:08 AM
Reply to: Message 148 by Hyroglyphx
09-12-2018 3:08 AM


Re: "ER" Actress Dies in ER
Hyroglyphx writes:
That assumption would ignore things I've already said. These police were obviously inadequately trained and prepared to handle a wellness check
That may be the case, but what is it evidenced by, the sole fact that someone died while on a Check Welfare call?
*Someone* died, you say? Who was that someone? Was it a police officer? I think not. It was the person being wellness checked. There's no other way to look at this other than a police wellness check gone horribly wrong.
Vanessa Marquez didn't walk up to police with a gun. The police approached her, a known despondent person, in her apartment. The police put themselves into a situation where they felt so threatened they felt lethal force was necessary.
Immaterial. Police are required to respond to every single call for service, regardless of how obviously it may be a civil matter and totally outside of the purview of police. Nobody forced Ms. Marquez to reach for a weapon. While tragic and unfortunate, that shouldn't automatically be viewed as a failure on the part of the police.
Now you're ignoring the additional information I supplied from the article NEW INFORMATION: Witnesses, Police Provide Details into the Shooting Death of Actress Vanessa Marquez. Repeating what I just said in the very message you're replying to, when Marquez reached for a gun the police and mental health counselor exited the apartment. This was good. But then two more officers arrived in an unmarked car after hearing a report of a person with a gun, entered the apartment and confronted Marquez, then shot her to death. However many shots were fired, it was enough to require extensive repairs to the wallboard and woodwork. Marquez's gun turned out to be a BB gun.
Adequately trained and prepared police wouldn't do that.
Adequately trained and prepared police neutralize a threat if one presents itself. What is your metric?
My metric? How about not wellness checking someone to death.
Ah, blame the decedent. Good show.
Again, your only other option is to just allow someone to murder you. How can I be expected to take this inquiry seriously?
You're already not taking it seriously, by continuing to ignore the information supplied in the article NEW INFORMATION: Witnesses, Police Provide Details into the Shooting Death of Actress Vanessa Marquez. Two officers heard a report of someone with a gun, drove to the site, parted their car, entered the apartment, confronted that person, and shot her to death. How about at least standing outside on the sidewalk with a bullhorn for a while and trying to talk the person down. It isn't like there wasn't a mental health professional present. This was a pretty big screw up.
Tensions quickly escalated when Marquez refused to go voluntarily and pulled a gun (a BB gun, but they didn't know that). The officers and the health clinician fled the apartment. Why hadn't they checked her for weapons?
Usually it takes some articulable facts or circumstances for frisking someone. You don't ordinarily just randomly frisk someone, especially on a welfare check, for no apparent reason. Also, ordinarily a person can always refuse EMS. There are limitations though. One, if she demonstrated an altered consciousness, she would be taken in under Implied Consent. The other reason would be if she was placed on an Emergency Detention because she exhibited either suicidal or homicidal ideations. I don't know if either of those were the case on that day.
Police whose policy is to shoot anyone who produces a weapon are hugely derelict if they don't first check for weapons during a wellness check of someone despondent or who displays symptoms of being mentally disturbed, both of which were the case in the Marquez murder.
Sounds to me like the officers who were already there were handling the situation in a way that respected life, then two other officers responded to a report of someone with a gun and without consulting with the officers and mental health clinician unnecessarily escalated the situation into a confrontation. If Marquez has family willing to pursue this, I think the police are in a lot of trouble.
It's always possible that an officer created a tense situation that was otherwise calm. That can and does happen with impatient officers, and if Internal Affairs sees some improprieties in the case, they'll handle that. But even in that case, it will come down to whether or not they appropriately used deadly force. If she reached for the gun, then there's no dispute. BUT, how a situation arrives to its conclusion is important. I'd like to see the final verdict... unfortunately this can take months.
News reports are that the police department is working with the DA's office to produce a report within the next six to twelve months. The involved officers are on administrative leave for now.
More evidence of the attitude making clear why police shouldn't have guns.
You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater and painting with too broad of strokes.
It isn't me painting with "too broad of strokes." Events themselves are painting a painfully clear picture: human beings cannot be trusted to safely wield incredibly dangerous weapons like guns, and police are human beings.
What is fundamentally reasonable about police lethally defending themselves in a situation they themselves caused?
So they deserved to die because a third party asked them to check on her welfare and chose to reach for a gun?
You're again ignoring the information from the article NEW INFORMATION: Witnesses, Police Provide Details into the Shooting Death of Actress Vanessa Marquez, which I clearly summarized. After the officers conducting the wellness check exited the apartment, two more officers arrived, entered the apartment, confronted Marquez, and shot her to death in a hail of bullets.
Whenever you look at a case, you cannot view it in hindsight with perfect 20/20 vision... as SCOTUS has termed it. To determine what is Objectively Reasonable, you have to view it in that moment and whether or not officer with the same training and experience would approach the exact same circumstances and in a similar manner.
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable standard, and the particulars of this case say that the officers did not act in an objectively reasonable way.
So why did you conclude justifiable homicide instead of questioning why the officer didn't employ his Taser, bean bag rounds, pepper spray, tear gas or other means?
I didn't conclude that.
You didn't conclude justifiable homicide? Gee, I'm sorry, however did I get this so wrong? Oh, wait, I know, it's because you keep saying things like this from Message 144:
Hyglyphx in Message 144 writes:
But that's not the goal in mind. People dictate the outcome; police simply facilitate. If they reach for a weapon then the choice has been made by them.
Back to your current message:
I have no conclusions whatsoever about this case.
You keep saying that, and that you're speaking in generalities, and you keep stating conclusions.
All I am defending is whether, prima facie, it is reasonable to shoot someone who is reaching for a weapon.
Again (and again and again), the officers making the wellness check did not shoot Marquez. They exited the apartment. That seems pretty reasonable.
In almost every instance imaginable, the answer will be "yes."
Except that, again, the the officers making the wellness check did not shoot Marquez. They exited the apartment. So obviously it is not true that, "In almost every instance imaginable, the answer will be 'yes.'".
Could there be some extenuating circumstances? There's always that possibility. But as standard practice goes, you just can't reach for a weapon.
If standard police practice is to murder anyone who reaches for a gun then police shouldn't have guns. I suggest better training for such situations.
And her annoyance at police presence isn't a justified reason to kill them, as you seem to be implying.
You're calling it annoyance when it was clearly mental illness.
I'm speaking in specifics. Vanessa Marquez should still be alive. She should not have been wellness checked to death.
If she should be alive then she should not have forced their hand.
So you're saying that mentally ill people should be held responsible for the their actions, and that murdering them is okay if in the police's view their hand is being forced, even if they initiated the confrontation?
It's not like anyone set out to terminate her life at the beginning of the day.
Regarding premeditation, I think the two officers who marched into the apartment to confront Marquez (who they thought was armed with a gun) could be said to have pretty clear intent: "If she threatens us we will shoot her."
Things evolve rapidly.
Things evolving rapidly seem pretty likely when one marches into an apartment to confront someone who supposedly has a gun. Could I suggest not marching into the apartment? Bullhorn on the sidewalk, perhaps? Of from behind one of the police vehicles?
The big take away is 'don't reach for guns in the presence of the police.'
Oh, yeah, sure, that's the answer. The mentally ill can really be expected to behave rationally.
I think we have more than enough information about the Vanessa Marquez homicide to raise serious questions about police methods and actions. Also, police departments should not be making their own determinations of what constitutes a justifiable "kill". When police all across the country rule that 90% of "kills" are justified, something is wrong.
Of course they should, and those decisions have to be made in milliseconds. That's what they're trained to do.
Murdering the public is not what police are trained to do.
The Washington Post ran an article about police shootings a few years ago (On duty, under fire), but they accepted police departments' own accounts. Police shootings should be investigated by an independent and appropriately adversarial body.
You mean... like a Grand Jury... which is standard practice?
You're misinformed. Taking police shootings to grand juries is not common practice. In this particular case the police department is working with the DA's office to conduct an investigation. The results of that investigation will determine whether anything is presented to a grand jury.
Your "proximity to the profession" has colored your judgment.
And your complete lack of knowledge on the profession, the rule of law, and common tactical standards has colored yours.
My lack of knowledge is nowhere as complete as you claim, but what I'm really doing is insisting on standards for the police that include not murdering the public they're supposed to be protecting. If police policies, procedures and training are so great, why does my probability of being shot go up when a policeman is nearby?
Uh, yes, of course, by mathematical necessity. Why mention this? So that I can bring up that blacks are shot by police at a rate several times higher than their proportion of the population?
I didn't bring it up, you brought that up. I was correcting your misnomer.
You didn't identify any misnomer, and you *did* bring it up out of the blue. What I said was:
Percy in Message 141 writes:
If someone linked to a Salon article, I didn't see it. My views are neither preconceived nor knee jerk. They derive from the many news reports of unjustifiable police shootings, particularly of people of color. I think you may be too close to your profession to be objective, and that you've become inured to the possibility that perhaps improvements are possible.
Where is the misnomer in that? You replied, in part, "Also, Caucasians killed by police is twice or three times higher than any other racial subset in the United States which, statistically, makes a lot of sense since per capita they still outnumber all other racial subsets."
One obvious response is what I already said, that blacks are shot by police at a rate several times higher than their proportion of the population. How could that be unless police attitudes, policies, procedures and training are inadequate.
Of course, take away their guns and the problem goes away. I know your reply is that that invites anarchy, but I've already said several times that I don't mean that no police should have guns, only that the rank and file police should not have guns. Obviously there need to be special units that have guns.
Citizens shouldn't have guns, either. If we truly value human life, guns are far too dangerous to be wielded by mere humans.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 148 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-12-2018 3:08 AM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 150 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-14-2018 3:11 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 151 of 670 (839770)
09-15-2018 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 150 by Hyroglyphx
09-14-2018 3:11 PM


Re: "ER" Actress Dies in ER
Hyroglyphx writes:
There's no other way to look at this other than a police wellness check gone horribly wrong.
No one disputes that it went wrong. The looming question was whether the outcome was produced maliciously, carelessly, or whether it was the appropriate response.
We agree that the wellness check went horribly wrong and that it wasn't out of malice.
About whether carelessness was involved, that isn't the term I'd choose. There were two groups that interacted with Marquez. The first group consisting of two cops and a mental health clinician was cautious. The second group, arriving later after the first group had exited the building, appears to be part of a different chain of command, because they didn't consult with the first group but merely entered the building and confronted Marquez, treating her as a potentially dangerous armed civilian instead of as a mentally ill person. I would call this a gross lack of coordination, not carelessness.
when Marquez reached for a gun the police and mental health counselor exited the apartment. This was good. But then two more officers arrived in an unmarked car after hearing a report of a person with a gun, entered the apartment and confronted Marquez, then shot her to death.
Assuming any details in the article are accurate,...
Always a concern. The details may change. I understand that new details that emerge will impact my interpretations. I'm curious about this "swoosh" that gets mentioned as an indication that a BB gun was fired. Have BB guns changed that much since I was a kid? They used to make a click.
...none of that sounds outside the bounds of an appropriate response, except to say that the police left the room when they saw a gun.
What do you mean that the exception to the "appropriate response" was to leave the room when they saw a gun? I hope you don't mean they should have shot her then and there.
As I suspected, she was being placed on an Emergency Detention, or as they refer to it in California, a "5150 Hold."
Right. Here's the first section of that act:
quote:
ARTICLE 1. Detention of Mentally Disordered Persons for Evaluation and Treatment [5150 - 5155] ( Heading of Article 1 amended by Stats. 1969, Ch. 1472. )
5150. (a) When a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled, a peace officer, professional person in charge of a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment, member of the attending staff, as defined by regulation, of a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment, designated members of a mobile crisis team, or professional person designated by the county may, upon probable cause, take, or cause to be taken, the person into custody for a period of up to 72 hours for assessment, evaluation, and crisis intervention, or placement for evaluation and treatment in a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment and approved by the State Department of Health Care Services. At a minimum, assessment, as defined in Section 5150.4, and evaluation, as defined in subdivision (a) of Section 5008, shall be conducted and provided on an ongoing basis. Crisis intervention, as defined in subdivision (e) of Section 5008, may be provided concurrently with assessment, evaluation, or any other service.
This section describes taking a mentally ill person into custody for a period of evaluation. From what we know so far, the first group of cops treated this like a 5150 situation, and the second group did not.
Police whose policy is to shoot anyone who produces a weapon are hugely derelict if they don't first check for weapons during a wellness check of someone despondent or who displays symptoms of being mentally disturbed, both of which were the case in the Marquez murder.
Hugely derelict? This seems like a very odd statement coming from someone as liberally-minded as you;...
I'm not a liberal. That I am not ignoring the inherent dangers of firearms and the misbehaviors of police as continually made obvious by events reported in the press does not make me a liberal. It makes me a "see problem, want to solve problem" type of person. The problem is those who see no problem and respond with mindless slogans like, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
...almost as if you are criminalizing mental illness.
It appears you didn't understand what I said, so let me say it again, at greater length and so hopefully more clearly. If police policy is to immediately murder anyone who produces a gun, then especially for a wellness check of a despondent person who can reasonably be expected to possess the means of causing their own demise, such as a gun or knife, it is incumbent upon the police to first check that there is no gun or knife on the person's person or in the immediate vicinity, because murdering the person being wellness checked would be wholly inconsistent with the goals of a wellness check. The first group of cops appeared to understand that murdering the person being wellness checked was a bad thing.
It's not against the law to be mentally ill.
It's not only not against the law, being mentally ill is supposed to gain you special treatment, such as the presence of a mental health clinician as was the case here. I'm going to keep saying this because you're not getting it: a despondent mentally ill person can reasonably be expected to possess the means of causing their own demise. If that gun or knife becomes apparent to the police they have to have strategies available beyond just pulling out their guns and murdering the person. Again, the first group of cops appeared to understand this.
And the fact that it was in a home...
It was a multi-family dwelling.
...is even less reason to begin an encounter with a frisk without some articulable reason to do so.
I'm going to say this again because you're not getting it. There is a very obvious and very articulable (obviously, since I've articulated it numerous times) reason to make sure a despondent (i.e., potentially suicidal) person would possess the means of causing their own demise, such as a gun or knife. If the polices's only response to the mentally ill person producing a gun or knife is to murder them, which is what you are arguing, then it is incumbent upon the police to first check if the person has such as weapon on their person or if one is present in the vicinity.
Realistically, the only time a frisk would be done was once she was taken into detention - reason being, if the first thing you do is detain her and immediately frisk her, it produces a greater chance that she will view it as hostile.
Sure she could view a frisk as hostile - but if the police's only response is to wellness check the person to death if they produce a gun or knife, which is what you are arguing, then in order to prevent this murderous outcome they have to first check if the person has any weapons available.
The idea is to always resolve any conflict at the lowest level. Unless she was continuously reaching around in a bag or on her person, it's not justification for a frisk.
If police are going to immediately murder her if a gun is produced, then it is incumbent upon the police to first make sure there is no gun.
It isn't me painting with "too broad of strokes." Events themselves are painting a painfully clear picture: human beings cannot be trusted to safely wield incredibly dangerous weapons like guns, and police are human beings.
Then you don't believe in the necessity of a standing army.
That doesn't follow from anything I've said, but as long as you mention it, there have been mass shootings on military bases, and just send a military unit into a war zone and watch the atrocities mount up. Mi Lai is one of the Vietnam atrocities we know about (and also the most egregious), but we can be sure there were many that never came to light. Or consider Blackwater's misdeeds in Iraq - we can be sure the ones we know about aren't the only ones that happened.
Your bizarrely irrational fear of guns don't supersede reality.
You're contradicting yourself. By your own admission police regard guns as so incredibly dangerous that merely reaching for one is justification for the them to unleash a hail of bullets, but you call my fear of guns "bizarrely irrational." You have to make up your mind which way it is. Are guns so incredibly dangerous that it is rational for the police to murder someone who merely reaches for a gun, or are guns so incredibly safe that fearing them is "bizarrely irrational."
Guns kill over 30,000 people a year. Fearing them is rational, or more accurately, fearing a gun in the hands of a human being is incredibly rational.
After the officers conducting the wellness check exited the apartment, two more officers arrived, entered the apartment, confronted Marquez, and shot her to death in a hail of bullets.
And? She was being placed in Emergency Detention. They don't just go away because now she has a gun. Now she is that dangerous, mentally unstable person, who apparently has nothing to lose, that you were referring to earlier.
I think you may be putting words in my mouth. I don't recall ever characterizing Marquez in this way. I believe I usually refer to her as a despondent person, or as mentally ill.
You didn't conclude justifiable homicide? Gee, I'm sorry, however did I get this so wrong? Oh, wait, I know, it's because you keep saying things like this from Message 144
Right, I did NOT conclude that,...
Wrong, you *did* conclude that, as evidenced by the part you chopped from your Message 144:
Hyglyphx in Message 144 writes:
But that's not the goal in mind. People dictate the outcome; police simply facilitate. If they reach for a weapon then the choice has been made by them.
Back to your current message:
...as evidenced from your own source:
quote:
I don't know all the facts and circumstances for this particular case. I'm speaking in generalities. There is such a thing as justifiable homicide and there are less-lethal options. But the circumstances may not always be appropriate to employ those options and each instance needs to be evaluated on their own merits and circumstances.
Why are you calling this my own source? Those are your words, and I rebutted them in Message 147, basically saying that we have more than enough information to know that this is a wellness check gone horribly wrong, as you have already conceded. Where we differ is that you want to place the blame on the despondent mentally ill person, while I want to blame police policies, procedures and training.
You keep saying that, and that you're speaking in generalities, and you keep stating conclusions.
I'm explaining common procedural steps that you may not be aware of and the logical reasons why those procedures are in place.
And I've explained the illogic in your arguments.
The fundamental premise is whether or not police should have weapons. You are hinging your response on a SINGLE incident that neither you nor I have all the answers to.
A single incident? Have you read this thread? It's full of incidents. Would you like to expand this sub-discussion to include other incidents, like where a police officer mistakenly entered the wrong apartment and murdered the resident, or where police used a Taser on an 87-year old woman, or where police shot a man three times who they were supposedly wellness checking, or where a swat team called under false pretenses murdered the person who answered the door, or where a dancing FBI agent accidentally shot someone, or about the nurse arrested in the ER for following the law about when blood can be drawn (no gun involved, just an example of a police officer losing it), or the shooting of Tamir Rice, or where NYPD cops murdered a black man waving a pipe, or where East Pittsburgh police murdered a suspect running away from them.
So yeah, right, a single incident, sure. The reality is that the news is full of police misbehavior involving their guns. I don't even post most of the news reports I come across, just the most egregious ones.
That's a red herring, because you apparently can't defend your own suppositions.
Then what are you responding to if not my defenses of my "suppositions"?
And, as stated before, none of it is relevant.
Incidents reported in the news of police malfeasance involving guns is not relevant? Are you joking?
If she reached for a gun without the reasonable expectation of saving her own life and was therefore shot subsequent to her own actions, then that's all the deliberation that is required.
So in your view the police are justified in murdering the mentally ill person being wellness checked when she reaches for a gun. Again, obviously the police are the last people you should call for a wellness check of someone who is potentially suicidal since such person can reasonably be expected to possess the means of carrying out their own demise.
Anything less is tacit admission that you think that people should be able to pull guns on cops without the slightest recourse.
Well now you're just posturing. I've never said anything of the sort, and we've already discussed other recourses, some of which you've mentioned yourself, such as Tasers and bean bag bullets, and I've mentioned bullhorns, etc.
If you follow the train of logic, what else can be deduced?
In the case of your logic, I would say garbage in, garbage out.
You didn't identify any misnomer, and you *did* bring it up out of the blue. What I said was
Oh, did I?
quote:
They derive from the many news reports of unjustifiable police shootings, particularly of people of color.
- Message 141
In any event, you brought it up.... out of the clear blue.
I still have no idea what misnomer you're talking about. Do you even know what a misnomer is? If I somewhere used the wrong term, what was it and where was it.
Of course, take away their guns and the problem goes away. I know your reply is that that invites anarchy, but I've already said several times that I don't mean that no police should have guns, only that the rank and file police should not have guns. Obviously there need to be special units that have guns.
So let's flesh that out in light of the case that you obviously want to perform an autopsy on postmortem. So lets assume every detail in the article is accurate since we have no other sources that have been released to the public. They check on her, she produces a gun, they "run" away...
Now instead of the 2 officers going inside the apartment, lets assume no cops instead of SWAT has them. What is the appropriate response for SWAT? I can think of a few scenarios:
1. Just let her go... she wants to die anyway.
2. We have to save her from herself... she's not thinking rationally. Lets talk to her from a bullhorn. Assuming she relents, she walks out peacefully.
3. Assuming she never relents, at some point someone has to go in. If she produces a weapon, she's going to be shot and the same scenario will play itself out.
Obviously number 2 is the desired outcome. But if Number 2 has been tried and exhausted ad nauseum, then which outcome is the next best option?
You want to call in a SWAT team? For a despondent mentally ill person with a gun? That's not what SWAT teams are called for. I think your judgment has gone far off the rails.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 150 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-14-2018 3:11 PM Hyroglyphx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 152 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-16-2018 1:47 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 153 of 670 (839795)
09-16-2018 9:53 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by Hyroglyphx
09-16-2018 1:47 AM


Re: "ER" Actress Dies in ER
Hyroglyphx writes:
All I do know is that if you reach for a gun you're going to die.
Well, that's a problem, and that you refuse to acknowledge it makes you part of the problem. You seem to be shifting toward a less flexible position. What happened to alternative course of actions like Tasers, bean bag bullets, bullhorns, strategic retreat and negotiation, etc.
Police whose policy is to shoot anyone who produces a weapon are hugely derelict if they don't first check for weapons during a wellness check of someone despondent or who displays symptoms of being mentally disturbed, both of which were the case in the Marquez murder.
It sounds as if she may have hid it under her pillow based on her previous statements. A frisk within lungeable distances can be done, but again, just being despondent and mentally ill isn't necessarily reason in itself. I'd also have to see what Pasadena PD's policy. My policy is pretty liberal in the sense that they want articulation so as to not create an impression of criminalizing the mentally ill.
You're still missing the point. If the police's only way of dealing with someone who produces a gun is to murder them, then it is incumbent upon the police, especially during a wellness check of someone despondent who is likely to possess the means of causing their own demise such as a gun, to make sure no gun is present.
But if the police have other means available, such as Tasers, bean bag bullets, strategic retreat (which the first group of cops did), negotiation, etc., then checking for a gun isn't essential (though it still seems advisable to me).
Is that clear now? It all depends upon the alternatives police have available for dealing with a despondent person. If when a gun is produced they can only respond by murdering the person, then they're derelict if they don't first check for a gun. If they have other non-lethal means at their disposal then checking for a gun becomes a less essential priority.
I'm not a liberal. That I am not ignoring the inherent dangers of firearms and the misbehaviors of police as continually made obvious by events reported in the press does not make me a liberal. It makes me a "see problem, want to solve problem" type of person. The problem is those who see no problem and respond with mindless slogans like, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
Well, that's actually a truism, conservative or liberal.
What, you're endorsing "Guns don't kill people. People kill people"? That's just "sweep the problem under the rug" sloganeering.
None of that invalidates the inherent right to self-preservation.
If police don't have the right to insure they're not placing themselves in lethal danger, then this "inherent right to self-preservation" that you cite means they should refuse to enter the room.
Assuming they frisked her person and she had it hiding in the nightstand, which is protected by her 4th Amendment right, would it really matter?
The court defines a number of exceptions to the Fourth Amendment - I'm sure cops are allowed to make sure a despondent person has no lethal weapons within reach.
You can't pull a gun on someone aside from imminent deadly force.
Cops pull their weapons all the time when there's no threat of imminent deadly force. How do you think unarmed people get shot by police?
So then I can suppose that had they checked her person for weapons and she ran into a bathroom and produced the gun, then you would find inherent self-protection to be justified? Because you never seem to answer when you find it acceptable for someone to shoot another person that is demonstrating intent to shoot them.
Of course there are situations where lethal force is justified, but that wasn't the case with the Marquez murder.
Is your qualm that they neglected to frisk her (which we aren't even clear whether or not that happened)?
Clearly they either didn't check for weapons or did it very poorly.
If police are going to immediately murder her if a gun is produced, then it is incumbent upon the police to first make sure there is no gun.
That's not always possible, Percy.
Granted, but we're talking about the Marquez case. When police entered her apartment she appeared very sick and to be suffering seizures. Checking for guns would have been easy.
And sometimes in the process of attempting to do that very thing is when the deed goes down. I don't know what to tell you. It's a job where literally anything can happen and sometimes it takes a fraction of a fraction of a second to deliberate... and you can't ever get it wrong.
And yet they did get it wrong - lethally wrong.
You can embed YouTube videos in messages by saying [utube=snkaeOP4vHM]. I'll watch your YouTube video when you make your point in the message and only provide the video as a supporting reference. I rarely watch videos, they're painfully, achingly slow, i can read far, far faster.
You're quibbling about details that, in the grand scheme, are irrelevant. Can you expect to be shot if you point a gun at an officer? Yes. Even if police procedurally could have done something better, it doesn't erase the subject's behavior.
You're avoiding the subject again and blaming the despondent mentally ill decedent for causing a "murder by cop" situation.
human beings cannot be trusted to safely wield incredibly dangerous weapons like guns, and police are human beings.
Short of the uninvention of the gun, we're just going to have accept and deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be.
England didn't uninvent the gun, they mostly don't have guns, and England is reality. Isn't that amazing.
So then, again, human beings are so stupid that they should be incapable of wielding arms responsibly. So you then necessarily don't believe standing armies should exist either if what you say is so self-evidently true.
You're again putting words in my mouth. You're misstating my argument and then rebutting the misstated argument. I have in fact argued the opposite. Human beings are not stupid, just imperfect, which is why there are so many accidental discharges of firearms. Flipping a light switch is an incredibly simple and easy thing to do, yet how many times have you failed to flip the switch on the first try? Plenty of times, right? And it isn't because you're stupid or uncoordinated or careless, you're just imperfect. It's goes with being human.
This imperfectness is just as much present with firearms, but the effects can be lethal. You thought there was no bullet in the chamber, but there was. You thought you unloaded the gun but you didn't. You thought you locked the firearm away, but you didn't. You thought the safety was on, but it wasn't. The list of possible mistakes just goes on and on.
You're contradicting yourself. By your own admission police regard guns as so incredibly dangerous that merely reaching for one is justification for the them to unleash a hail of bullets, but you call my fear of guns "bizarrely irrational."
LOL, no one disputes that guns are dangerous - that's what they are intentionally designed to be. Your argument is that guns are incredibly dangerous, so much so, that NO ONE should be allowed to handle them because apparently just possessing one makes everyone go full-retard.
You're again putting words in my mouth. You should try rebutting the arguments I actually make instead of the ones you make up.
I did not argue that "just possessing one makes everyone go full-retard." I argued that human beings are not perfect and cannot be trusted with so lethal an instrument. The number of accidental gun deaths every year, around 500, makes this clear. The number of unjustified police shootings also makes this perfectly clear (I know almost all police shootings are ruled justified, but that's too absurd for anyone to believe).
You have to make up your mind which way it is. Are guns so incredibly dangerous that it is rational for the police to murder someone who merely reaches for a gun, or are guns so incredibly safe that fearing them is "bizarrely irrational."
"Merely reaches for a gun," you can't be serious... Merely. There's nothing mere about it. And that is the epitome of a rational and normative regard for them. The "bizarrely irrational" regard I am referring for you is that you seem to think handling them is akin to tampering with a sensitive trip wire packed with explosives.
The analogy of handling a gun as "akin to tampering with a sensitive trip wire packed with explosives" is your analogy, not mine. I have used facts. Guns kill more than 30,000 people a year. Police fear them, I fear them. There is nothing "bizarrely irrational" about fearing guns.
Guns kill over 30,000 people a year. Fearing them is rational, or more accurately, fearing a gun in the hands of a human being is incredibly rational.
Motor vehicle deaths produce similar lethality rates in this country.
You're confusing rates with numerical quantities. The more than 30,000 deaths per year by guns and motor vehicles are not rates, they're quantities. Motor vehicle death rates are stated as deaths per 100 million miles traveled, around 1.25. There is no equivalent rate for guns. There is also no pressure to make guns safer as there is for motor vehicles.
Just like a gun, I am able to appreciate the potential lethality of a vehicle without losing my mind.
Human beings are notoriously bad at estimating relative dangers. Here's the reality in the form of the odds of being killed by various means (Source: Your chances of dying from a plane crash, a shark attack or lightning strike):
  • Motor vehicle accident: 1 in 112
  • Firearm death: 1 in 358
  • Place crash: 1 in 8015
  • Poisonous animal or plant: 1 in 42,120
  • Lightning: 1 in 164,968
  • Shark attack: 1 in 3,700,000
How about that, firearms are second on the list.
There is a distinction between a healthy respect versus an irrational fear.
I see. When police fear firearms so greatly that they respond to a firearm with a hail of bullets they have a rational healthy respect, but when I fear firearms I have an "irrational fear." I think you need to go back to the drawing board.
You keep saying that, and that you're speaking in generalities, and you keep stating conclusions.
Why are you quoting something I said two messages ago as if I just said it?
The sole conclusion I am making is that 999 times out of 1,000, there's no dispute that if you reach for a gun in the presence of an officer that the officer has the legal right to stop the threat.
And the police have clearly demonstrated that they do not deserve this right. It's a license for murder.
As it pertains to the very specific case that you want to hang your entire thesis on, is still unclear.
As just stated in the very message you're replying to, this thread is full of cases. Why don't we switch to the Tamir Rice case, which the police handled so wonderfully and responsibly that the City of Cleveland settled for $6 million.
You are focusing on every detail BESIDES the obvious one. Imagine that... When I watch the body cam footage, read all the reports, the autopsy results, etc then I'll give my final verdict on this very specific case. What I am telling you, repeatedly, is *IF* she reached or pointed a firearm, then in a general sense it MORE THAN LIKELY appears, on the surface level, to be justified. But I would always allow the possibility for some extenuating circumstance that may be relevant. Is that clear enough as to how I am able to distinguish generalities from specifics? The problem is, I don't have all the specifics. So why are you demanding that I reach a verdict here and now?
Reserve judgment all you like. If Marquez's family brings a civil lawsuit it is highly likely that the city of South Pasadena will be paying out millions. Want to lay odds?
A single incident? Have you read this thread? It's full of incidents. Would you like to expand this sub-discussion to include other incidents,...
No, because then I'd have to produce the infinitely greater number of specific instances demonstrating that they get it right far greater than it goes wrong. And that's just more work than is necessary to determine a fundamental right.
What a surprise - of course you don't want to examine other cases.
The police do not have a fundamental right to murder. That the laws and courts are stacked against plaintiffs in such cases doesn't change what is actually true.
The bottom line is that I'm not gonna change your mind... you won't change mind. And we'll be quibbling about this 'til Rapture. What's the point?
The point is that guns are too dangerous for most people to have. Including the police.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-16-2018 1:47 AM Hyroglyphx has replied

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 Message 154 by Hyroglyphx, posted 09-16-2018 3:49 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 155 of 670 (839899)
09-18-2018 9:32 AM


It is possible to not mistake a cellphone for a gun
Juan David Ortiz, the Border Patrol agent who killed four women in Texas, tried and failed to commit "suicide by cop". This is from Border Patrol agent implicated in 4 murders tried to commit ‘suicide by cop,’ authorities say:
quote:
Juan David Ortiz, fleeing police after a series of killings in Laredo, Tex., wanted to die, authorities said.
He positioned himself in a hotel parking garage as a SWAT team closed in early Saturday morning. He had left a firearm behind earlier.
But he had a cellphone, authorities said, that he wanted to look like a gun.
It didn’t work. Ortiz, 35, a Border Patrol agent, was arrested without incident in the slayings of four women in a two-week period, including two women who were killed after another woman escaped his truck Friday night and alerted police, authorities said.
Ortiz, an officer trained in firearms, was trying to make the SWAT team members think his cellphone was a gun. He wanted the SWAT team to think he was pointing a gun at them. He wanted the SWAT team to kill him. It didn't work. Apparently there are effective and non-lethal means of dealing with potentially lethal threats - a hail of bullets isn't necessary.
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 156 of 670 (840977)
10-06-2018 8:36 AM


On October 20, 2014, 17-year old and black Laquan McDonald failed to follow police instructions to drop the knife he was carrying while walking down South Pulaski Road in Chicago. Police officer Jason Van Dyke fired all 16 bullets of his 9mm semi-automatic pistol into McDonald, killing him.
Based upon police reports the department initially ruled the McDonald homicide justifiable and the case received little national attention for over a year until a court ordered release of Officer Van Dyke's dashboard video which showed a different sequence of events. It showed McDonald walking erratically away from Van Dyke, who advanced upon McDonald and began firing. Van Dyke was arrested and charged with murder.
Yesterday in a Chicago courtroom Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second degree murder, which is good news but not the end of the story. Three other Chicago police officers have been charged with covering up what really happened on South Pulaski Road. Eight police vehicles were at the scene, and while no charges will likely result, three of their eight dashboard videos are missing.
The story of the release of the key video is a story in itself involving an anonymous witness, inconsistencies in police reports, a whistleblower, 15 Chicago Police Department denials to release the video, and finally a court order.
The Laquan McDonald tragedy tells us once again that police are more likely to shoot blacks, that police officers lie to protect themselves and their own, and that police departments tenaciously withhold information to protect their officers. That police departments are permitted to decide whether a homicide is justifiable is reprehensible and unacceptable.
That police lying and withholding of information is so universal tells us that we're not seeing some strange grouping of the dishonest into police departments. We're seeing human nature in action, the instinct for self-preservation. What it means is that police departments cannot police themselves. They must be policed by an independent and fair but adversarial department, perhaps on offshoot of the prosecutor's office.
Sources:
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 157 of 670 (841391)
10-12-2018 8:14 AM


Why am I not surprised?
Today's Chicago Tribune (note the city - see a pattern here?) reports that Officer Brandon Ternand is innocent of any wrongdoing in the murder, oops, excuse me, justifiable homicide of Dakota Bright, who was shot in the back of the head while running from Officer Ternand: Chicago Police Board clears cop in controversial fatal shooting of 15-year-old boy
What a surprise, the Chicago Police Board clearing one of their own, and just a year after the city's police watchdog agency (Civilian Office of Police Accountability aka Independent Police Review Authority) found Officer Ternand at fault and recommended his firing. The city has already paid out about a million dollars to Bright's family.
The facts of the case are straightforward. Bright was on the street and not breaking any laws when Officer Ternand tried to stop him. Possibly because he had been beaten by the police before, Bright ran away. Officer Ternand gave chase and shot Bright in the back of the head from 50 feet away, killing him.
A .22-caliber gun was found in the front yard of a house nearby. Bright's fingerprints were not found on the gun as far as I have been able to determine. Officer Ternand claimed that Bright had turned his head and was reaching toward his left pocket when he fired. Nothing was found in Bright's left pocket.
Office Ternand's account has additional details that seem unlikely. Though Bright was walking from a friend's house to his grandmother's home, Officer Ternand said he encountered Bright in an alley holding a gun. Bright fled while trying to stick the gun in his waistband. The pursuit involved jumping fences and running through backyards.
The accounts of other police at the scene support Officer Ternand's account, but the Independent Police Review Authority charged collusion, saying they were not just coworkers but friends who socialized together. They had ample time and opportunity to coordinate their stories. They testified that while running Bright was holding his side in the way perpetrators do when trying to prevent a gun from falling out of their waistband. How they observed this after Bright put considerable distance between he and them while jumping fences and crossing backyards isn't explained. Since no gun was found on his person, why Bright would have made a gesture toward a non-existent gun is also unexplained.
This is the same story we've heard time and again. A cop shoots a civilian and invents testimony to clear himself. In this case, as in so many others, the cop is white, the other cops on his team are white, they're all friends, and the decedent is black. Officer Ternand has been named in a half dozen lawsuits that have cost Chicago taxpayers $1.1 million so far. He has opened fire while on duty on at least two other occasions.
Had there been bodycam footage Officer Ternand would undoubtedly have been found to be lying. I don't say this because of hard evidence but because whenever there's video footage the police are invariably found to be lying. Bright was light and wiry and undoubtedly fast. Officer Ternand realized that Bright would easily escape, so he fired his weapon. Walking up to the fallen Bright and realizing he might possibly have killed him, he carefully removed a small .22-caliber pistol from his pocket that he carried for just this eventuality, taking care to put no fingerprints on it, and tossed it into a nearby front yard. Or perhaps one of the other cops at the scene did this.
Officer Ternand is not a bad egg. Under the bell shaped curve of Chicago police officers (who operate in a very dangerous environment) he is undoubtedly toward the more aggressive end, but statistically if you give a group a lot of guns in a town with a lot of crime and tell them it's their job to prevent crime, inevitably people will be shot and some will be killed. The Chicago cops, by and large, should not have guns. Most cops should not have guns.
Speaking statistically again, the vast majority of crime does not take place in front of cops. It largely takes place out of sight of cops. Catching criminals in the act is rare, so rare that it cannot serve as justification for handing cops guns.
Reported crimes must be investigated, but cops investigating crimes don't need guns either. The perpetrator isn't there anymore. As an example, I reported a stolen car 40 years ago. Four hours later two cops showed up at my door, took down information, and told me the chances of recovering my car were very slim. Very few stolen cars were ever recovered. We could have had that conversation over the phone. Both cops had guns, totally unnecessary
Some crime scenes are dangerous or still active. Special armed squads can investigate those scenes.
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 158 of 670 (843089)
11-13-2018 9:23 AM


In Town Near Chicago, Police Murder Again
Outside a bar in tiny Robbins near Chicago 26-year old black security guard Jemel Roberson, armed and in uniform and wearing his hat emblazoned with the word "security," had already subdued an assailant who had fired a gun. The assailant was facedown on the ground, and Jemel was on his back pointing his licensed weapon at him.
Two police officers from neighboring Midlothian arrived and fatally shot Jemel for committing the crime of carrying out his security responsibilities with high competence, bravery and valor while black. Jemel was the father of a nine-month old son, a musician at local churches, and planned on soon beginning the training to become a police officer.
The assailant was one of a group of drunken men who had been asked to leave the bar but returned later and began shooting. The assailant was the only one of the group captured. I assume he can be charged as an accessory to murder.
The police officer who murdered Jemel has not been identified. He will no doubt go through the standard process of alternative assignment while an investigation is performed that exonerates him and finds fault with Jemel. There will be community outrage and a wrongful death court case, and the state attorney general will be called in to investigate. Eventually the police officer will be fired, brought up on charges, tried for murder, convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, and sentenced to five to ten years in prison. Jemel's family will be awarded around a million dollars. It'll be a few years before we know the accuracy of this prediction. But whether it comes true or not is not the point. The point is the number of lives destroyed by guns.
Police officers out there should think on this: Do you really want to be placed in situations where you have to instantly decide whether you've correctly assessed the situation and should you fire your weapon? More and more often you'll be wearing body cams that will greatly constrain your ability to contrive alternative but believable accounts (e.g., it appeared that Jemel was turning to aim his weapon at the officers). Do you really want to risk years meeting with attorneys, sitting in courtrooms, miserable days at home wondering what's going to happen to you and your family, followed by years in prison? You signed up to help people, not engage in shootouts, and certainly not to murder people. Why are you carrying that deadly weapon? Do you think that defines you as a police officer? I realize you can't refuse to carry your weapon, but maybe police officer isn't the job you thought it was, at least not in this country.
Only specially trained police units should be permitted to respond to shooter situations.
[ABE]:
The New York Times has a better article: Black Security Guard Responding to Shooting Is Killed by Police
Additional details mentioned in the article:
  • Officers from several police departments responded, not just Midlothian's.
  • Five people were shot before police arrived. All but the man detailed by Jemel fled before police arrived.
  • Jemel's mother, Beatrice Roberson, has already filed a federal lawsuit against the officer and the village of Midlothian.
  • The murder of Jemel is being investigate by the Illinois State Police.
[/ABE]
Sources:
Policing is a dangerous job. Here are the states with the highest death rates for police officers (from Police Officer Fatality Rates by State):
StateAvg. Annual Rate
per 50K officers
South Dakota11.5
Montana10.8
Alabama8.5
Mississippi8.2
North Dakota7.3
Oklahoma7.2
Georgia6.8
Arkansas6.8
Louisiana6.7
Maine6.2
South Dakota and Montana top the list. So much for the theory that high murder rates are a product of urban environments rampant with gangs. What states like these have in common is large numbers of guns and gun nuts. The only reason the carnage isn't incredibly obvious and evident and nationwide news is because of their small populations. The populations of South Dakota and Montana are 870 thousand and one million respectively. Only four states have smaller populations than South Dakota, and one of them, Vermont, is only because of its tiny size.
It's way past time to take away the guns.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : AbE.

Replies to this message:
 Message 159 by Percy, posted 11-14-2018 7:33 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 159 of 670 (843215)
11-14-2018 7:33 PM
Reply to: Message 158 by Percy
11-13-2018 9:23 AM


Re: In Town Near Chicago, Police Murder Again
The murder of security guard Jemel Roberson has been elevated to the national stage. On NPR this morning it was reported, as was predicted in my previous message, that an investigation is underway, and the police officer has been put on administrative leave. In a statement the Midlothian police department said it was a tragic event that could not have been prevented - no surprise there.
According to NPR, eyewitnesses give a different account. Jemel was wearing his hat and a phosphorescent orange vest. He was ordered by police to put his gun down and get off the still struggling assailant he had captured and was holding down. Onlookers screamed at police that Jemel was a security guard. Suddenly another police officer burst out of the bar, shouted "Get on the ground," then began firing.
The Washington Post also ran an article the agrees with some parts of the NPR report and differs with other parts: Police chief ‘saddened’ after officer killed armed guard ‘a brave man who was doing his best’.
Let me first comment on the police chief's comment. He said Jemel was just "doing his best," implying it just unfortunately wasn't good enough to prevent his murder - too bad he couldn't have done better. The police chief is speaking nonsense. Jemel's murder had nothing to do with his own actions and everything to do with the actions of a Midlothian police officer.
In the coming months we'll be treated to fairy tales about everything Jemel supposedly did wrong. He turned this way or that, he didn't obey orders quickly enough, he appeared menacing, whatever. The police will pow-wow and contrive whatever stories they think will play best before public opinion. Later the stories will change as they meet with lawyers and are told what will play best in court.
The preliminary report by the Illinois State Police differs from what onlookers told reporters, though it, too, cites witnesses. Supposedly the police officer ordered Jemel to drop the gun multiple times.
There's another important point to make. Jemel was a good guy with a gun, so I ask you idiot advocates of the "good guy with a gun" argument, what do you think now of what might happen were you to chance across a crime in progress where you use your weapon to capture and hold the perpetrator until police arrive, only to see you with a gun? Are tendrils of reality beginning to creep into your gun soddened head?
The same Illinois State Police that issued the preliminary report will conduct the investigation. This is wrong. The investigation should be carried out by an independent agency that never becomes chummy with the police.
840 people have been shot and killed by police so far in 2018. 22% were black, but only 13% of the US population is black.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 158 by Percy, posted 11-13-2018 9:23 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 160 of 670 (844019)
11-24-2018 8:50 AM


Police Murder Fleeing Man at Alabama Mall
Shots rang out at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday night, critically wounding an 18-year old man and injuring a 12-year girl. The Hoover Police Department already had additional police patrolling the mall, and so police were at the scene in seconds. One policeman either a) shot a fleeing and armed Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.; or b) confronted an armed Emantic Fitzgeral Bradford Jr.; shooting and killing him. The policeman has been placed on administrative leave.
Police say that the deceased 21-year-old Bradford, an Army Veteran may have been part of the altercation but did not fire any shots. The actual shooter is believed to be at large. Here's an image of Bradford in happier and alive times:
Oh, gee, what do you know, Bradford is black. What a surprise.
One account said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a weapon, another said Bradford was waving a weapon around, but these are the things police always say after a police shooting. Just looking back on the record of police tells us that we have to consider all the possibilities from he had no weapon to he had a weapon and was pointing it at police.
But whatever he was doing when he was killed, what do you open or concealed carry people think of pulling out your weapon during an altercation like this? For you open carry people, even if you do nothing but stand there, perhaps move behind a pillar, do you really want to be seen with a gun on your person after shots have been fired and the police show up? And what if you see another open carry person? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Does he have good judgement or bad judgment? Is he going to see your gun and think you're a good guy or a bad guy? Hey, let's arm everyone open carry, then when shots ring out you can all pull your weapons and shoot each other. Should be great fun.
Sources:
And here's a news report that expresses a proper degree of skepticism about the police account:
AbE:
And here's a report from the highly reliable Breitbart News, who didn't even bother to update their story after it was revealed that Bradford was not the shooter: Good Guy with a Gun Kills Mall Shooter ‘Within Seconds’ of Shots Being Fired
Yeah, well, the "good guy with a gun" just committed murder.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : AbE.

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 Message 162 by Percy, posted 11-30-2018 8:38 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 161 of 670 (844325)
11-28-2018 8:46 AM


Trevor Noah Speaks Out
Trevor Noah spoke about police shootings of black people, here's the video:
Here's a transcript:
quote:
There was a shooting at a mall in Alabama where two people were shot. I think one died and one was severely injured. And the police came in and they said they shot the gunman before anyone else could get hurt.
At least that was the first report that came out, and then this is what came out afterwards [breaks to a news report]:
quote:
Police in Alabama admit they made a mistake after officers shot and killed a man they thought opened fire at a mall on Black Friday. Police killed Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford after they say he was seen fleeing the scene and brandishing a weapon, but now police in Hoover say they may have killed the wrong person and the shooter may still be at large. His father, Emantic Bradford Sr., is a police officer himself: "I know my son always respected the police, and if you gave a command when you came around that corner, say 'Freeze, drop your weapon'", he'da complied with your order."
So the question I ask myself is, how does this shit keep happening? Cops are called in to a situation, they see a black person, and then immediately they shoot. That's what they did here. They ran in, they shot the guy, and then they were like, "We got him."
What's wild about the story for me is, even if we work within a world where the police truly believe he was the shooter, how many times have we seen a shooter who is white and a man get talked down. You know what I mean? Like the shooting that happened in Aurora, the Batman movie, the guy went in with an arsenal, he didn't just have one gun. The policed talked him down. They didn't kill him.
The shooting in Charleston. Kid went into the church, shot the congregation of black people, the police talked him down. They didn't kill him.
In fact, a lot of the killers that did die killed themselves, when you look at American mass shootings. You look at Vegas. Person shot themselves. You look at Thousand Oaks. The person killed themselves.
But in so many instances we see the police talk the person down. But there was a black guy, they go, black guy, mass shooter, shoot immediately, ask questions later.
And there are so many things that bug me about this story, because by the looks of it this was a good guy with a gun. That's what they always say, right, that a good guy with a gun always stops the crime. But if the good guy with a gun happens to be a black good guy with a gun, they don't get any of the benefits.
And what blows my mind is that there's no profiling. Police profile all the time. Driving through New York they be like, "You, black guy, search. You, you look like you're selling drugs." But then in the mall why don't they do profiling there. "Black guy, probably not you. Skinny white guy with the trenchcoat, get against the wall."
And what's crazy about the story is that you read it and you find out that multiple people had guns out, because it's Alabama. A lot of people heard gunshots, they pulled out their guns, but then the only one shot by police is a black guy? And then afterwards they're like, "Yeah, we made a mistake." And what was funny is the initial statement was, "We got the guy. We're proud. We got him. The police got him." And then afterwards when the story came out they're like, "You guys said you got him, right?" "No, well, we didn't get him, what happened was he was involved in a police shooting that may have involved him." "Wait, you said you shot." "No, well, there was a shooting, and it happened to involve us as police."
At this point you realize that the 2nd amendment is not intended for black people. It's an uncomfortable thing to say, but it's the truth. Like people would be like, "The right to bear arms." Yes, the right to bear arms, if you are not a black man. If you're a black man you have no business bearing arms at all.
This is not the first time this has happened. There was that uniformed security guard about a month and a half ago, same thing happened. He was stopping a criminal, the police shot up and shot him. He's in uniform. What else you want the black person to do? Because here you can be like...but this guys in uniform.
There's another minute and a half, but that captures what he's basically saying. If you're black in this country you don't get the benefit of the doubt, and especially not if you're carrying a gun.
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 162 of 670 (844451)
11-30-2018 8:38 AM
Reply to: Message 160 by Percy
11-24-2018 8:50 AM


Re: Police Murder Fleeing Man at Alabama Mall
So there's more on the mall murder of Ematic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. at the hands of the Hoover police in this New York Times article: An Alabama Mall Shooting, a Black Man’s Death, and a Debate Over Race and Guns.
After gunshots rang out at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, Bradford pulled out the gun he was licensed to carry and steered frightened shoppers to safety. Ashlyn McMillen, for one, considered him a hero, recalling him saying, "Get down, go in the store."
But in Alabama, the 8th highest gun-owning state in the union by percentage where licenses to carry guns are common and where others had also pulled out their guns, to a Hoover police officer Bradford was a black man brandishing a weapon, and he shot him dead.
As I've asked before, what do you "The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" nuts say now? Do those of you who are white say, "Oh, I'm white, they won't shoot me," identifying yourself as not only a gun nut but a racist? Do those of you who are non-white say, "Oh, this is just an isolated incident, I'm still safe carrying my weapon," identifying yourself as not only a gun nut but a fool, though that's redundant.
The gun nut lobbying for arming the population as a solution to crime (crime has been steadily declining in western nations for at least a couple decades) meets its obvious idiocy when the police show up where shots have been fired and try to identify the true perpetrator(s). The idiocy is also present before the police show up where everyone who has pulled out a gun tries to figure out who else with a gun is the bad guy.
The guns have to be taken off the streets, taken away altogether, even from police with the exception of specially trained forces. If you hunt you can have a rifle. All firearms must be registered in a national registry, and anyone carrying a gun must be licensed, again in a national registry. Yes, we want to take your guns away. You'll be the safer for it.
There was another police shooting yesterday, this time of a New Hampshire man: Merrimack man killed in officer-involved shooting in Old Town, Maine. Initial reports have Adrian Bunker, 37, of Merrimack getting into an armed confrontation with a police officer after a traffic stop. I have no idea who was at fault, there's no information as yet, but the police office had only just graduated from police school this past May, second in his class. I'll go out on a limb here (an exceptionally sturdy limb if the past is any guide) and say that training and lack of experience were a factor. I'll try to stay abreast of developments, if I'm wrong I'll say so, but does anyone want to give odds that I'll have to?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 160 by Percy, posted 11-24-2018 8:50 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 163 by Phat, posted 11-30-2018 11:47 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 166 of 670 (844485)
11-30-2018 9:09 PM
Reply to: Message 163 by Phat
11-30-2018 11:47 AM


Re: Police Murder Fleeing Man at Alabama Mall
Phat writes:
The guns have to be taken off the streets, taken away altogether, even from police with the exception of specially trained forces.
How would we make sure there was no black market or that some were hiding weapons? In other words, how specifically could all guns be accounted for should we vote to take them all away?
Yeah, you're right, I see your point. And despite years of car registrations, driver licensing and training, and increasingly strict safety requirements we still have car thefts, accidents and deaths, so I guess we don't need those, either.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 163 by Phat, posted 11-30-2018 11:47 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 168 by Percy, posted 02-06-2019 7:25 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(2)
Message 167 of 670 (847797)
01-27-2019 6:55 AM


A Police Shooting of a Special Kind
St. Louis Metropolitan Police officer Katlyn Alix was shot and killed early Thursday morning. Naturally the homicide of a police officer, one of those dedicated to preserving and protecting public order, is a tragic event, and the perpetrator must be arrested and prosecuted.
Fortunately the perpetrator has already been arrested. He is Nathaniel Hendren. What kind of scoundrel is Nathaniel Hendren? He's one of St. Louis's finest, another member of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police. Nathaniel and Katlyn were playing Russian Roulette.
Rank and file police should not have guns.
I know the objection will be that they were just a couple of bad apples who should never have been on the police force, or that there was inadequate training, or some other excuse, but police across the US, numbering approximately one million, are just a representative subset of the American people. If you seek the elite of the elite then you'll find a Navy SEAL or an Army Ranger or a Green Beret. If you seek a police officer then you'll find an underpaid public servant and an average Joe.
In quality the US police population is a bell shaped curve, just like all large populations. At the opposite tails of the curve you have the very best and the very worst. Statistics and human nature tell us that it isn't possible to chop off that lower tail.
Rank and file police should not have guns.
Source (among many): https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/policewoman-shot-dead-by-fellow-officer-during-russian-roulette-game-police
--Percy

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 168 of 670 (848470)
02-06-2019 7:25 AM
Reply to: Message 166 by Percy
11-30-2018 9:09 PM


Re: Police Murder Fleeing Man at Alabama Mall
There's more on the police mall murder on November 24th of last year: Alabama Police Officer Will Not Be Charged In Fatal Shooting Of Mistaken Gunman. I'll let beginning of the article tell the story:
quote:
An Alabama police officer who shot and killed a man he mistook for the gunman in a mall shooting will not be charged with a crime, the state's attorney general announced Tuesday.
Emantic "EJ" Bradford Jr., 21, was killed by an officer whose name has not been released and is only identified as "Officer 1" on Thanksgiving night inside the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Ala. The officer, who was responding to an earlier shooting at the mall, mistook Bradford for the gunman.
Minutes before, another man, Erron Brown, shot and wounded 18-year-old Brian Wilson twice.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released a 26-page report concluding that the officer was "justified and not criminal" in fatally shooting Bradford "who was running toward the initial shooter and victim with a firearm visibly in hand."
The report says "Officer 1's mistaken belief does not render his actions unreasonable."
"A reasonable person could have assumed that the only person with a gun who was running toward the victim of a shooting that occurred just three seconds earlier fired the shots," the report concludes.
Oh, what a surprise, a state conducted investigation (that had to rely upon police resources) of a police murder exonerates the police.
Bradford was an Army veteran with a license to carry and a great deal of firearm training. He was trying to render assistance. Here is a YouTube video of his murder. It is labeled graphic, so you have to be logged into a Google account to view it. There are two side by side videos from surveillance cameras that have been synchronized:
The left video was taken from within what might be a shoe store that looks out on the mall walkways. Bradford can be seen in the upper left at about 7 seconds wearing light pants and a dark shirt. He at first backs up to the right away from the shots, then pulls his gun and begins running to the left toward the shots. The police are right behind him and shoot him immediately.
The right video was taken from a position further to the left of the left video. The front of the shoe store from the left video is in the upper right. It is very difficult to make much out other than that someone falls down and is then is approached by two people who are the policemen. I believe this is the victim of the original shooting.
But this page has higher quality video from the same cameras: Surveillance Video of Shooting at the Riverchase Galleria mall. It appears that the right video captures the victim being shot, and that in the left video the victim is just out of view to the left. In the right video Bradford can barely be made out being shot and falling - what the blur means is only clear from viewing the left video.
So come on all you carry people out there, open or otherwise, why the silence? Explain to me how wonderfully safe carrying a weapon makes us all. Seems to me like pulling a weapon makes you a target for anyone else with a weapon looking for a perpetrator, and the more we arm the American public the more likely it is that someone else in the crowd will have a gun to pull out and shoot you. And if you don't get shot but instead murder an innocent person who just like yourself was just trying to help, maybe the police will exonerate you, too.
Obviously people should not be carrying guns, and police are people, too. Only special units should have guns.
The family has hired a lawyer and it's a pretty safe bet that within a year or so Hoover, Alabama, will be paying out millions.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 166 by Percy, posted 11-30-2018 9:09 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 169 by Coragyps, posted 02-06-2019 12:06 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
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