Lords of Death Forums Lords of Death Forums Movie Forum Suicide negotiation w/ front bumper of cruiser

Let me put things in context for you -- this guy stole a gun so he could go home and shoot himself in the head. This individual, suffering from mental illness, then gets run over by the cops. The cops then go back and high-five themselves that they got to run over a mentally ill individual.



That's what we call a false dichotomy. You're trying to tell me that when you took the police academy test, it had the following question:

___________________________________________________________________
Potential suicidal individual is walking down the road armed with a rifle. Do you:
(a) Run him over with your police cruiser?
(b) Get behind a wall and shoot him to death?
(c) Run him over then shoot him.
___________________________________________________________________


No wonder you feel like you always have to use lethal force. It's the only two options you'll allow yourself to consider. Consider: Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, told Cooper the suspect had to be stopped but not with a vehicle running into him.

"I have to question this tactic a bit," he said. "I think setting up a secure perimeter and at least making some attempt to negotiate may have been far more efficient." (http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/14/us/arizona-police-run-over-suspect/)




Is this the part where you speculate wildly to strengthen your argument? Everything I read indicate that no force was used either in the initial theft or later when he walked away from the store. I saw a report that he "pointed" a gun at an officer. Strangely, that part isn't captured on their dash or body cams. And half the time I see those claims, it's either (a) the gun wasn't aimed at someone but pointed in a general direction, as in, i was north of him and held the gun so it pointed north, or (b) total bullshit fabricated to justify the unreasonable use of force. Regardless, at the time this officer comes on scene -- it is not at deadly force level. The video makes that pretty clear. The individual is walking down the street. No persons are being threatened. The gun isn't leveled at anyone. Hell, there aren't even bystanders around.

There is a huge difference between a situation being at a "deadly force" level and simply a situation that has the potential for violence. To justify the use of deadly force there has to be some imminent threat of violence, because almost any situation has the potential for violence. There was no imminent threat in this case -- the guy was walking down the street. There doesn't even appear to be anyone else around.

That's why officers are trained on the escalation of force, starting with something as minor as putting your hand on your baton or service revolver. Or even using your voice to give a command or a raised voice can qualify. Edit: And obviously, more force is warranted than a hand on a baton or a raised voice. The idea raised by the former secret service agent is reasonable however -- you cordon off the area and set up a perimeter. At least attempt to talk to the guy before potentially killing him.



And that's what I'm driving at -- you think it's actually funny that this individual was run over by the police officer. Despite your rationalizaitons, the police did nothing to save this guy. They took a situation that had the potential for violence and escalated. And through sheer, dumb luck this guy wasn't killed or seriously injured by the police cruiser. The fact that you then credit the officers and laugh about it is truly disturbing.



Wait...

A police officer runs someone over, and that's funny, right? I mean, you told me that it's funny when a depressed individual gets bounced off the front hood of a police cruiser because it all worked out. So why should treat it any differently when a cop gets injured but ends up surviving (I'm taking that from the YouTube video)?

You're saying that violence is acceptable, even funny, in one situation. But then you're offended when violence is used on someone that you identify with and suddenly you get holier-than-thou and wrap yourself in the flag? Oh wait -- let me explain -- it's funny to watch the cop get shot and flop around because it all worked out. That's what so damn comical about it! Just ask the mentally ill thief -- his family would totally agree.

The point being: ask yourself if you'd agree with your own logic if it were applied to someone that you cared about and valued.

Hmm it just really depends, everyone feels different on certain things. Sure people can point to all the law mumbo jumbo, but it just simply comes down to the situation and safety.

A dude walking down the street with a gun in hand heading home to kill himself by all means fuck him, let him lol. At the same time if the dude is walking near a school, or kids then sorry bub, put one in between his eyes, problem solved, another retard down. End of story.

We could go for days on this, but to me it sounds like you're arguing for the sake of arguing. You haven't proposed a solution. If you think you're the badass life saver you are why don't you put on the uniform and go tackle the individuals toting an assault rifle? He's shown it's loaded, he's shown he's willing to use it in wanton disregard for public safety by firing it in the air. I get it you don't like the fact that these cops aren't superhuman and were unable to telepathically disarm him of his assault rifle.

There's innocent people walking around the street that don't have an assault rifle and aren't firing it in the air. So "Waiting to see what the guy with a loaded assault rifle" is going to do is stupid. No offense my man but your proposed tactic is stupid. Instead of reading over every single fact and minute detail...take the information that they have in front of them then think about how you'd react:
- I get a call over the radio of an individual that just stole an assault rifle. We confront said subject who puts the gun to his head while making eye contact with me then turns and walks away into a heavily populated area. Based on the way he's walking and acting it appears as if he may be drunk. Based on my training and experience (yes experience, I've had people point guns at my partners and I) my reaction time is just under 3.0 seconds in order to process/get my gun trained on my target/and fire. With the gun pointed to a person's head it takes under 1.0 second to turn the gun on the officer and fire. That means there are 2-3 shots coming your way before you're returning fire. Sounds like a fun time huh?

It is what it is, you're probably never going to change your opinion but try to take a different perspective from time to time. It's easy to say, "He's mentally ill why'd you hurt him." It's not easy after meeting someone for 30 seconds, seeing objective signs and symptoms of someone under the influence of alcohol/holding a loaded assault rifle, that they're mentally ill.

I know it's sad, mental illness is no joke. California closed all of it's state mental institutions and now people exploit the goverment by renting out a 4 bedroom house to 12 mentally ill people for $750 per person. I fight with one every day, do I enjoy it? Hell no. I've been pinned in my car by a paranoid schizophrenic, I've been sucker punched in the back of the head by someone that's bipolar. But I'm not going to get killed because tax payers don't want to pay more for safe housing for these individuals.



If you don't see the difference I won't be able to change your mind so I guess we'll leave it at that. I value people that wear the badge and put their lives on the line to protect others. I value those that put others in life threatening danger less, mentally ill, intoxicated on alcohol, or self medicating with lsd/cocaine. Do I protect them both the same? Yep

I'm not expressing myself well because I'm not trying to talk shit. Sometimes it comes off that way from the way I write -- my use of sarcasm and hyperbole -- but that's not my intention. I almost always agree with what you have to say in regards to these types of situations because I know the type of people law enforcement comes into contact with and how dangerous they are to themselves and others. Hell, we've had multiple attorneys in our office shanked by defendants trying to get mistrials when they think they're losing.

My only real point is to look at that first video and think -- "Hey, here's a guy that was probably considering shooting himself. His life was so fucking bad and/or he was so mentally ill that he actually stole a gun so that he could blow his own brains out. Dude was straight up wandering off to die someplace alone like a sick cat." I mean, imagine if that was your reality. Then when he gets run over, we're laughing about it?

The video I posted was awful -- the officer's face is actually heart breaking because you can see the panic in his face. And can you imagine actually laughing at that? I wouldn't ever find that amusing. I was trying to help people draw (what I thought) was a connection between the two. We wouldn't laugh at the second because we connect with the police officer. We laugh at the first because well... we don't empathize with him at all. And on a related note -- if never empathize with people in situations like this, how do you ever distinguish between the reasonable and unreasonable use of force? I mean, some motherfuckers deserve it when they get shot or run over by the police. Others (IMO) don't. Hell, even if they deserved it does that make it hilarious? If some guy is delusional out of his mind and the cops justifiably shoot and kill him, does that make it a joke? Only if you don't really see him as a person. If we constantly dismiss every person subjected to the use of force then you're never going to have a serious discussion about it.

But I'm not even sure if I'm expressing this clearly, so I'll just STFU. Because like you said,

Are you kidding me? Apples to oranges. Especially since the guy in the video who shot a cop in the head also shot his 1 year old daughter and mother in law. What in the fuck?

The problem here is that you need to use your imagination and play the what-if game to find the imminent threat. They set a trap and played it smart. They did it at a time when there were no civilians around for him to threaten, no chance for him to escape, and no imminent threat to them or himself since he had his back turned. The fact that they played it this way is smart, but it also makes it easy to argue that the use of force itself was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances, because they intentionally set up the circumstances so that he couldn't threaten anyone. The only part you can second guess is the decision to take the guy out, and there's not enough in the video for me to chew on regarding that topic.

As for who is right and the morality of it all, this kind of thing tends to split pretty predictably around whatever your personal/group opinion about cops is. Some Harvard assholes did a study about a famous Supreme Court case with similar facts where they sided with the cops. "Three law professors created an experiment based on the video, showing it to over a thousand subjects and then asking them whether they thought the use of deadly force was reasonable. The study found "[a] fairly substantial majority did interpret the facts the way the Court did. But members of various subcommunities did not." I think that's duckspeak for "the urban market" as Rok calls it, but you get the point.

Your first reaction is jesus that is excessive but then you read about him shooting a 1yr old, how he was still armed, and how close we was to killing more people and realize that cop saved his life and maybe others.

That video was heart breaking because here's an honorable dude putting his life on the line for strangers, and on the other hand you have a child murderer seconds away from killing more people, remove from the gene pool, move on.

Yea pretty much this. That's why I hope all this craziness leads to body cameras for all cops nationwide. In too many of these recent shootings, there's too little factual information leading up to the cop using force. It's been hard for me to really have a serious opinion on most of them because the standard for justifiable homicide for police is so subjective and without true knowledge of the events leading up to lethal force, it's hard not to side with the cop. If he says he felt like he or another was in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death, how can you really argue with that if you cannot see a video of the entire encounter from start to finish? The Michael Brown case is great example of this and that particular case is sad because even though the justice system determined that officer was innocent of wrongdoing, his career in law enforcement is over thanks to the media.

I did see a pretty good bit on the news after one of these shootings (I think it was the Michael Brown one) where a sheriff's office invited some well known guy that was supporting the victim's narrative out to do field training with paint ball guns. They did several scenarios where he pretends to be the cop and comes upon a crime in progress. One that stuck out to me was when he came upon two guys fighting. He orders them to stop and one of them (a guy much larger than him) immediately advances on him in a threatening way. He of course ends up shooting the guy. I thought the scenario was pretty pointedly designed to ultimately lead the trainee to support the police narrative simply because the guy in the scenario was given only one option, lethal force. He did not have a taser or pepper spray. However, I think the key component that made it really effective was that it allowed someone who is inherently anti-police (I hate that label by the way) to step into an officer's shoes for a moment. It was valuable in that way so that the anti-police folks could step of their preconceived ideas and empathize with the officer.

And that is sort of on par with what Sonya is saying. I have a lot of white middle-class people on my facebook. In fact, it's almost exclusively that segment of the population. Inevitably, most of them have been very vocal about supporting the police side of these recent shootings when the facebook arguments ignite. I was trying to figure out why that is and I think it goes back to what Sonya was saying. It's really fucking hard for most people I know to imagine walking a mile in the shoes of most of these victims. A black dude who robs a convenience store for cigars? No. A black guy who runs from police because he thinks he's going to go to jail for not paying child support? No. A Mexican guy who ends a petty crime spree with stealing a rifle and firing it in public in front of police? No. Consequently, if you can't imagine walking a mile in their shoes, it's really hard to empathize with them and almost automatically makes your opinion very biased towards the other side.

That's why for most people (in our demographic) it's funny when dipshit with the rifle gets run over GTA style and not funny at all when that cop gets shot at the scene of a crime.

I'll tell you what I do find funny. Every time our shit-tier news media picks up on a police brutality story and runs it nationally, they never pick up one of the many legit police brutality stories.

It's always some thug shit, and I just sit there waiting for the police department to release the footage of the perpetrator stealing an ice cream cone from a little girl, or beating someone up at a gas station.