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Author | Topic: Police Shootings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
This, I think, is a legal and cultural matter. Under UK law, a policeman who shot someone running away would stand a serious risk of being charged with murder (or at least unlawful killing of come kind). The only legal justification to shoot people is defense of yourself or others (and maybe property - don't quite remember). In at least some jurisdictions in the US, running away from the police in and of itself is considered a legitimate legal justification for shooting someone. This I don't understand.
I think there's a bit more to it than this. Here in Czech Republic the police all carry guns, but it's very rare for them to shoot someone. I do not think this is because the police here are more professional or better at their jobs - experience suggests this is clearly not the case. I think it's because, despite the fact that gun laws here are fairly liberal, very few people actually own guns; and even fewer carry them around with them. When police stop a car here, the idea that they risk being shot probably never enters their heads, and this affects the way the approach the situation.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
He is not correct, if you're quoting him accurately. The research on which this claim is ultimately based is here. It's an attempt to estimate the total number of people killed by police in the US. This includes justifiable homicides in the course of duty and people killed by accident. The actual claim of the researchers is that the police are responsible for approximately one third of homicides committed by a stranger. They make no claims about the proportions of murders, manslaughters and justifiable homicides. Edited by Admin, : Fix italic dBCode.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
That paper doesn't say anything about murders by strangers; but that paper is the source of the estimate for how many homicides the police commit in the US on which the subsequent claim is based. Here is a magazine article by one of the authors of the paper describing their research. It's here he points out that.. quote:
And that's not true, or at least unevidenced, as not all homicides are murder.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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It's not a lower figure - it's the same estimate. About 75% killed by someone they know; about 8% killed by police. 8% is approximately a third of the 25% killed by strangers (it ignores the negligible overlap, since the estimate of people killed by police is looking at killings 'on the job' - not cases where a policeman kills his wife at home). You're missing the part I was questioning. I'm not arguing about the number. I'm saying it's not a count of people murdered by police. It's a count of homicides committed by police. The police could commit thousands of homicides without murdering anyone. Homicide is not the same thing as murder. Murder is one type of homicide. We need different data to know how many police homicides are murders.
I don't see this mentioned in the article you linked or on the Mapping Police VIolence website. I think it's more likely to come from the source I already showed you that does explicitly mention the 'one third' estimate, and is the ultimate source cited anywhere I found the claim that bothered to cite a source.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
Jim Scarborough and Gaston Boykin seem to have been real sheriffs in Texas. Regarding Boykin, I did find what purports to be an obituary by an acquaintance saying the claim is accurate and he didn't use a gun. He talks about the younger Jim Scarborough, but funnily enough there was an even younger one. Three generations of Jim Scarborough were sheriff of Kleberg County. The one referred to in the quote appears to be the middle one, and the claim is reported as true in The Texas Sheriff: Lord of the County Line. The book reports he was not unique: quote: The book has a few anecdotes about these unarmed sheriffs. Jim Scarborough is quoted as saying "If I ever had a gun, I probably would have killed somebody, a six-shooter never solved a problem". The book says something about Boykin and guns too, but the relevant pages in the Google Books preview are missing. It also talks about several other trigger-happy sheriffs, though. The very A. J. Spradley mentioned above killed a lot of people, and supposedly had a specially designed holster that allowed him to rotate and fire his pistol without having to draw it. Edited by caffeine, : No reason given. Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
We used to do 'auditing' in my reckless youth when I did a lot of political protesting, but we didn't call it that. It was actually the police who started it (for context, this is the UK I'm talking about) - they would very conspicuously film protestors, so as to remind people who might get carried away that they will be prosecuted if they do something criminal. In response, we started conspicuously filming the police, to make the point that their actions were being recorded too, should they get carried away in the heat of the moment. Most had no issue with this, but you get the odd hothead who would try to stop you from filming (which they had no legal right to do).
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
So I stumbled across a story today from Detroit, which gives a slightly different angle on Percy's trigger-happy cops stories - police shooting dogs
9 year old Elijah was out walking his two dogs, but they got free and ran down the street. He summoned a passing police car to help. The police stopped, apparently decided one of the dogs was dangerous, and shot it in the face. As context, the story on Reason magazine discusses the department's history of shooting dogs (54 in 2017), and some of the law suits the city has been forced to settle as a result. This includes $225,000 paid out to the owners of three dogs shot in their own backyard. The police wanted to be enter the yard in order to sieze marijuana plants growing there, so they killed all the dogs. Drugs raids apparently account for about a third of the doggy death toll at the hands of Detroit PD.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
There's additional video from different angles and earlier in time on the BBC article. It's not complimentary to the police.
Struggling to imagine the build-up to this incident.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
You seem to have this a bit backwards if you're of the opinion that an apparent suicide vest makes shooting him less appropriate. It is, on the contrary, one of those rare occasions where shooting him dead is exactly what the police should be doing.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
Not shooting him presents the risk that the vest would go off by him setting it off. Which leaves no acceptable action for the police. I understand your concerns about police overreacting and shooting people unnecessarily. Indeed, it happened in the UK - we all remember the innocent Brazilian man the police gunned down in paranoid overreaction to the fear of terrorism after September 11th. But this individual was not a suspect, or an escaping felon, or someone who may have been holding something that looked a bit like a weapon. He was an actual murderer actively trying to kill people while the police watched. There is a point at which it's okay to pull the trigger.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
That is, indeed, official policy. British police are authorised to fire only "when absolutely necessary in self-defence or in defence of another when there is an immediate risk to life from unlawful violence".
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
While on the whole I agree that Percy is clutching at straws in a stubborn refusal to accept that a police shooting can be justified, the above is childishly naive. How many British police have been successfully convicted for murdering someone? I'll give you a clue - it's less than one. If you think every shooting in the history of the British police force was A-OK then I have a bridge you might be interested in.
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caffeine Member Posts: 1799 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined: |
I have no qualms about police action in this case, I'm concerned about your belief that if they'd done something wrong that would somehow magically be revealed. Two things seem clear to me: 1. The police in Britain are essentially immune from prosecution for their actions. This one is clear from results; but in fairness could be explained by the police in Britain never abusing their power. However other things are clear to me 2. The police in Britain regularly abuse their power. This is based on personal experience so I don't expect you to believe it, but it's intended more to explain my thinking. Maybe I should try and make this argument better when sober. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix quote box.
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