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Since when is it acceptable to shoot an unarmed person? There isn't even any doubt in this case as to whether or not he had a weapon.

by pmorici 11y ago

nordsieck 11y ago
The most common times are when there is a size or numbers disadvantage, but all it takes is a reasonable fear of imminent grave bodily harm or death. Those are the rules for private citizens (the details vary from state to state). Official security probably has more latitude to take action because they are responsible for the safety of everyone in the area.
- huac 11y ago
  > Official security probably has more latitude to take action because they are responsible for the safety of everyone in the area. probably, but they should have less latitude because of their training in other, non-violent methods to remove the threat. negotiation can help defuse most situations better than a taser or gunshot would. (was this sarcastic? or just hopeful?)
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Just hopeful, I'm afraid. It's easy to assume from the distance of many miles and a computer screen that every single situation can be addressed safely and easily by a soft word or three. Abstractly, that may be true, if you free yourself of certain constraints imposed by reality. For one, you have to assume that every single person in every single situation is open to negotiation. Second, you have to assume that nuanced and complex communication of the sort that enables negotiation is readily possible. Third, you have to assume that entering into negotiation will remove any threat the subject may pose to other people nearby. Fourth, you have to assume that trained negotiators arrive sufficiently fast for their magic stop-all-threats-to-everyone powers to engage in time. In reality, some or all of these can fail. I read about an incident in my city in the past few months where a mentally ill man was reported to police as wandering the streets, carrying a chain. The police arrived. An officer approached the man, attempting to speak with him. She wanted to find out if anything was wrong and see if there was a problem that needed addressing. He proceeded to beat her with the aforementioned chain. If memory serves, the situation was resolved when the armed, actively violent, mentally ill man was shot dead. And this is a scenario where presumably everyone speaks English! Where in there was she supposed to negotiate with him to solve all the problems at hand? What non-violent methods do you expect to bring a rapid halt to someone actively beating a police officer with a weapon that will be remotely as fast as lethal force? What happens if you have no shared languages, someone deep in the grips of hallucinations, and actively shooting people nearby? Do you expect negotiating police to defuse that problem by negotiating with someone incapable of recognizing them as people who want to negotiate?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > It's easy to assume from the distance of many miles and a computer screen that every single situation can be addressed safely and easily by a soft word or three. It's easy to assume for me because I've seen the vast amounts of work currently happening around "behaviour seen as challenging" in people with mental illness or learning disability[1] or brain injury. Here shooting people is absolutely not possible in the vast majority of cases of behaviour seen as challenging. Tasering people is also absolutely not acceptable. Rapid tranquillisation is common, but not acceptable because of the amount of restraint needed immediately prior to the injection. Various methods of restraint are common, but are not acceptable because of the risk of injury or death. A lot of money is being spent on better training on de-escalation, diversion, prevention, etc. It's fucking baffling to me that people think it's okay to kill someone in distress just because the people doing the shooting are so lacking in skills that they have no other option. To me it's clearly a failure of everyone involved (and the departments they work for). In your example with the chain: you seem to think this is a situation where a violent response is undeniably the right thing. I see that and I think how fucking clueless the woman was, and how fucking clueless the people who shot the man were. There are plenty of Youtube videos comparing UK and US police responses to these situations. [1] UK definition.
      - Kalium 11y ago
        In the scenario I described, what do you think that the right non-violent solution was? I should also add that the PD had no way to know ahead of time that they were responding to a situation with a victim of mental illness in a time of distress who would exhibit behavior seen as challenging. Incidentally, this was not a situation where there were a half-dozen officers on hand to swarm the guy. Should officers always move in groups of six or more, so that any sudden violence can be handled with grappling? Seems expensive, at the very least. How do you propose that a single officer being actively beaten about the head with a chain de-escalate the situation? I'm deeply curious how you think that could be reasonably accomplished. Maybe saying please? What would an officer in the UK do in the situation I described when being actively beat about the head with a chain? How would it be totally different and reliably yield an ideal outcome? Another detail of relevance: the incident did not provide the officer with an opportunity to speak to the victim of mental illness in a time of distress. The victim attacked immediately upon the officer exiting her vehicle. If any and all forms of violence are ruled out, with de-escalation and negotiation being the order of the day, how should this officer have reacted to being beaten with a chain? What peaceful, non-violent, resolution skills are available to someone subject to such immediate violence?
  - ipsin 11y ago
    When your officers carry guns, there's an implicit duty to never lose control of that weapon in a situation, and that necessitates a certain distance, often "enforced" with a gun. You don't want to end up grappling with someone who might actually be much better at it.
- pmorici 11y ago
  Maybe, and in this case it was _two_ security officers vs one patient so they can't even claim they were at a numerical disadvantage.
tomjen3 11y ago
I am 5'3. A large, tall person could easily completely overpower me. If he came rushing at me I would have to shoot him to defend myself.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  I am also 5'3. I don't carry a gun, so I never 'have to' shoot anyone. The article described a situation in which two people with police training used a taser and a gun to restrain a naked man. It was two against one. Did they really need the taser? Even if they did, did they really need to shoot him with a gun, too?
- slantedview 11y ago
  If you're a hospital worker, then you deal with the individual in the story exactly as the other hospital workers did before the police arrived, as they always do, and nobody gets killed. If you give people guns, empower them to use them, and protect them from the legal ramifications, then stories like this are the obvious outcome.
davak 11y ago
Imagine you are in a small hospital room and unable to get out. A 300 pound 6'2 dude is yelling that he's going to kill you. His brain is so scrambled that the tazor did nothing. You are backed into a corner and he's walking toward you.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  In an age where such places have surveillance video you would think we don't need hypothetical scenarios. We'd have video of someone taking a solid hit from a Tazer and continuing an attack. But let's try this hypothetical: Imagine you are in a country without armed private security and only a subset of police are armed. Where are all the people who've been killed by 300 lbs crazed people?
  - tamana 11y ago
    They are in the imagination of armed officers, which is all the the law requires :-(
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    It's not that hard to find instances of crazed people committing murder or other serious acts of violence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356115/Alabama-man-murdered-three-friends-meth-fueled-killing-spree-sexually-assaulted-witness-hunt-roadkill-deer.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356115/Alabama-man-... http://mtstandard.com/crime-and-courts/missoula-motel-murder-suspect-says-meth-fueled-attacks-accomplice-provides/article_8e558f4d-9aa3-5336-acc8-3b510fdaf9ae.html http://mtstandard.com/crime-and-courts/missoula-motel-murder... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arizona-man-meth-set-bed-fire-murder-panic-article-1.2493720 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arizona-man-meth-se... http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/04/fort_payne_man_now_charged_wit.html http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/04/fort_pay... http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/compensation-for-mother-of-woman-murdered-by-crazed-hammerwielding-motherinlaw-20160204-gmmcz4.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/compensation-for-mother-of... http://somd.com/news/headlines/2016/20355.php http://somd.com/news/headlines/2016/20355.php European nations will likely have fewer such problems than we do - our population is much more violent. As Scott Alexander once quipped, "Who'd have thought populating half a country with the descendants of a group of people called "Border Reavers" would cause so much trouble?" https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex/status/672540086932779009 https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex/status/672540086932779009 I'm not trying to say that the police were justified in this incident - note that I'm a huge critic of American policing. I'm merely pointing out that the threat is quite real.
EliRivers 11y ago
It's not about whether the other guy is armed or not. While I can't speak for other jurisdictions, in the UK it's about what's reasonable in the circumstances (with allowance made for the fact that someone in that situation does not have the time to make a full objective assessment of the situation). Sure, if the person attacking me is unarmed and I'm bigger, stronger, wearing armour and carrying a baton, shooting them might be considered unreasonable (but might be considered reasonable). If I'm in fear of my life and all I have is a handgun, shooting them is very reasonable. Of course, in the UK, the next question from the police would be "What's with the handgun?" :) All that said, in the case of Alan Pean in the article, I could well believe that the two off-duty police officers moonlighting as security guards were basically incompetent amateurs with weaponry, believing their own hype.
BurningFrog 11y ago
Fists and shoes are deadly weapons. They're far deadlier than movies have let you think. Very few people are actually unarmed.

Since when is it acceptable to shoot an unarmed person? There isn't even any doubt in this case as to whether or not he had a weapon.

by pmorici 11y ago

Since when is it acceptable to shoot an unarmed person? There isn't even any doubt in this case as to whether or not he had a weapon.

nordsieck 11y ago

The most common times are when there is a size or numbers disadvantage, but all it takes is a reasonable fear of imminent grave bodily harm or death. Those are the rules for private citizens (the details vary from state to state). Official security probably has more latitude to take action because they are responsible for the safety of everyone in the area.

huac 11y ago
> Official security probably has more latitude to take action because they are responsible for the safety of everyone in the area. probably, but they should have less latitude because of their training in other, non-violent methods to remove the threat. negotiation can help defuse most situations better than a taser or gunshot would. (was this sarcastic? or just hopeful?)
- Kalium 11y ago
  Just hopeful, I'm afraid. It's easy to assume from the distance of many miles and a computer screen that every single situation can be addressed safely and easily by a soft word or three. Abstractly, that may be true, if you free yourself of certain constraints imposed by reality. For one, you have to assume that every single person in every single situation is open to negotiation. Second, you have to assume that nuanced and complex communication of the sort that enables negotiation is readily possible. Third, you have to assume that entering into negotiation will remove any threat the subject may pose to other people nearby. Fourth, you have to assume that trained negotiators arrive sufficiently fast for their magic stop-all-threats-to-everyone powers to engage in time. In reality, some or all of these can fail. I read about an incident in my city in the past few months where a mentally ill man was reported to police as wandering the streets, carrying a chain. The police arrived. An officer approached the man, attempting to speak with him. She wanted to find out if anything was wrong and see if there was a problem that needed addressing. He proceeded to beat her with the aforementioned chain. If memory serves, the situation was resolved when the armed, actively violent, mentally ill man was shot dead. And this is a scenario where presumably everyone speaks English! Where in there was she supposed to negotiate with him to solve all the problems at hand? What non-violent methods do you expect to bring a rapid halt to someone actively beating a police officer with a weapon that will be remotely as fast as lethal force? What happens if you have no shared languages, someone deep in the grips of hallucinations, and actively shooting people nearby? Do you expect negotiating police to defuse that problem by negotiating with someone incapable of recognizing them as people who want to negotiate?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > It's easy to assume from the distance of many miles and a computer screen that every single situation can be addressed safely and easily by a soft word or three. It's easy to assume for me because I've seen the vast amounts of work currently happening around "behaviour seen as challenging" in people with mental illness or learning disability[1] or brain injury. Here shooting people is absolutely not possible in the vast majority of cases of behaviour seen as challenging. Tasering people is also absolutely not acceptable. Rapid tranquillisation is common, but not acceptable because of the amount of restraint needed immediately prior to the injection. Various methods of restraint are common, but are not acceptable because of the risk of injury or death. A lot of money is being spent on better training on de-escalation, diversion, prevention, etc. It's fucking baffling to me that people think it's okay to kill someone in distress just because the people doing the shooting are so lacking in skills that they have no other option. To me it's clearly a failure of everyone involved (and the departments they work for). In your example with the chain: you seem to think this is a situation where a violent response is undeniably the right thing. I see that and I think how fucking clueless the woman was, and how fucking clueless the people who shot the man were. There are plenty of Youtube videos comparing UK and US police responses to these situations. [1] UK definition.
    - Kalium 11y ago
      In the scenario I described, what do you think that the right non-violent solution was? I should also add that the PD had no way to know ahead of time that they were responding to a situation with a victim of mental illness in a time of distress who would exhibit behavior seen as challenging. Incidentally, this was not a situation where there were a half-dozen officers on hand to swarm the guy. Should officers always move in groups of six or more, so that any sudden violence can be handled with grappling? Seems expensive, at the very least. How do you propose that a single officer being actively beaten about the head with a chain de-escalate the situation? I'm deeply curious how you think that could be reasonably accomplished. Maybe saying please? What would an officer in the UK do in the situation I described when being actively beat about the head with a chain? How would it be totally different and reliably yield an ideal outcome? Another detail of relevance: the incident did not provide the officer with an opportunity to speak to the victim of mental illness in a time of distress. The victim attacked immediately upon the officer exiting her vehicle. If any and all forms of violence are ruled out, with de-escalation and negotiation being the order of the day, how should this officer have reacted to being beaten with a chain? What peaceful, non-violent, resolution skills are available to someone subject to such immediate violence?
- ipsin 11y ago
  When your officers carry guns, there's an implicit duty to never lose control of that weapon in a situation, and that necessitates a certain distance, often "enforced" with a gun. You don't want to end up grappling with someone who might actually be much better at it.
pmorici 11y ago
Maybe, and in this case it was _two_ security officers vs one patient so they can't even claim they were at a numerical disadvantage.

tomjen3 11y ago

I am 5'3. A large, tall person could easily completely overpower me. If he came rushing at me I would have to shoot him to defend myself.

rahimnathwani 11y ago
I am also 5'3. I don't carry a gun, so I never 'have to' shoot anyone. The article described a situation in which two people with police training used a taser and a gun to restrain a naked man. It was two against one. Did they really need the taser? Even if they did, did they really need to shoot him with a gun, too?
slantedview 11y ago
If you're a hospital worker, then you deal with the individual in the story exactly as the other hospital workers did before the police arrived, as they always do, and nobody gets killed. If you give people guns, empower them to use them, and protect them from the legal ramifications, then stories like this are the obvious outcome.

davak 11y ago

Imagine you are in a small hospital room and unable to get out. A 300 pound 6'2 dude is yelling that he's going to kill you. His brain is so scrambled that the tazor did nothing. You are backed into a corner and he's walking toward you.

Zigurd 11y ago
In an age where such places have surveillance video you would think we don't need hypothetical scenarios. We'd have video of someone taking a solid hit from a Tazer and continuing an attack. But let's try this hypothetical: Imagine you are in a country without armed private security and only a subset of police are armed. Where are all the people who've been killed by 300 lbs crazed people?
- tamana 11y ago
  They are in the imagination of armed officers, which is all the the law requires :-(
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It's not that hard to find instances of crazed people committing murder or other serious acts of violence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356115/Alabama-man-murdered-three-friends-meth-fueled-killing-spree-sexually-assaulted-witness-hunt-roadkill-deer.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356115/Alabama-man-... http://mtstandard.com/crime-and-courts/missoula-motel-murder-suspect-says-meth-fueled-attacks-accomplice-provides/article_8e558f4d-9aa3-5336-acc8-3b510fdaf9ae.html http://mtstandard.com/crime-and-courts/missoula-motel-murder... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arizona-man-meth-set-bed-fire-murder-panic-article-1.2493720 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/arizona-man-meth-se... http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/04/fort_payne_man_now_charged_wit.html http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/04/fort_pay... http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/compensation-for-mother-of-woman-murdered-by-crazed-hammerwielding-motherinlaw-20160204-gmmcz4.html http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/compensation-for-mother-of... http://somd.com/news/headlines/2016/20355.php http://somd.com/news/headlines/2016/20355.php European nations will likely have fewer such problems than we do - our population is much more violent. As Scott Alexander once quipped, "Who'd have thought populating half a country with the descendants of a group of people called "Border Reavers" would cause so much trouble?" https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex/status/672540086932779009 https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex/status/672540086932779009 I'm not trying to say that the police were justified in this incident - note that I'm a huge critic of American policing. I'm merely pointing out that the threat is quite real.

EliRivers 11y ago

It's not about whether the other guy is armed or not. While I can't speak for other jurisdictions, in the UK it's about what's reasonable in the circumstances (with allowance made for the fact that someone in that situation does not have the time to make a full objective assessment of the situation). Sure, if the person attacking me is unarmed and I'm bigger, stronger, wearing armour and carrying a baton, shooting them might be considered unreasonable (but might be considered reasonable). If I'm in fear of my life and all I have is a handgun, shooting them is very reasonable. Of course, in the UK, the next question from the police would be "What's with the handgun?" :) All that said, in the case of Alan Pean in the article, I could well believe that the two off-duty police officers moonlighting as security guards were basically incompetent amateurs with weaponry, believing their own hype.

BurningFrog 11y ago

Fists and shoes are deadly weapons. They're far deadlier than movies have let you think. Very few people are actually unarmed.