12 ms·

Policeman fired for not killing a suicidal man

sp527 10y ago
Suicidal man had a gun. Nothing to see here.
- helthanatos 10y ago
  A relatively bad situation
- pdabbadabba 10y ago
  This might be a decent justification if he had shot the man. (Which, sadly, other officers arriving on the scene did.) But firing an officer for not killing him? That seems nuts. Can it really be police policy that an officer must kill any armed suspect that he or she encounters? I'm not sure I'd want to live in a place where that was the rule.
  - sp527 10y ago
    I would have thought this was obvious but the down votes suggest otherwise. Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy. The chief made the tough but ultimately correct call in this case. Once an officer has proven himself incapable of acting with deadly force in a threatening situation, you don't keep him around to endanger the lives of the officers he works with. Civilians can't empathize with the context, but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work.
    - imagist 10y ago
      > Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable is a credible threat that places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy. I'm going to have to disagree with you here. If shooting someone is the only solution you have to a dangerous situation, then you have the emotional maturity of a neanderthal and you are the unstable person with a gun. > Civilians can't empathize with this context but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work. Like hell civilians can't empathize. Cops don't have the monopoly on dangerous situations. If this is a cardinal sin in police work, then police work is fundamentally broken.
      - sp527 10y ago
        You sound like the perfect candidate for police work since you clearly place a low value on your own life. Asking people to endanger themselves on the off chance a person with a gun isn't going to shoot is nothing short of insane.
        mildbow 10y ago
        Well, if cops want to be lauded as heroes, maybe they need to act like it? I respect EMTs. I respect firefighters. Interactions with any of them has been a warm and human one. They truly are heroes. They save lives with little regard for personal sacrifice. Interactions with cops? Dehumanizing: a glaring symptom of the imbalance of power. We have forgotten, to our own peril, an old adage: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
        sp527 10y ago
        I think resorting to our own anecdata coupled with what the media presents us is a tempting fallacy. It's likely that most cops are good people trying to do the right thing. You might be hard-pressed to find even staunch BLM supporters who would disagree with that assertion. Where I think policing could stand to be improved is in the realm of situations involving obviously non-threatening individuals (particularly unarmed Black males). In general, our focus should be drawn to cases at the margin and not those in which decisionmaking is straightforward (e.g. armed and unstable people).
        mildbow 10y ago
        Of course. Whenever one relates personal experience in a public fora, esp. one with pretentions of logical thinking, the default reaction's to relegate it to an anecdote. The self reported intellectuals cry: "It's an anecdote so it doesn't count!" Ok. But I'm not writing a paper. I'm merely relating my experiences and subsequent thoughts. Surely many black people went through the same experience when talking about their "anomalous" and "anecdotal" interactions. Having a cop threaten me with a gun because I had the effrontery to claim a headache is an anecdote. But, it's one that indubitably influences how I approach subsequent interactions and -- moreover -- my whole stance on exactly how the power-balance in any citizen-to-cop interaction works. Yeah, plural of anecdote isn't data, but I'm not waiting for a scientific paper before I start forming my own opinions of the world.
    - jellicle 10y ago
      And yet, the police forces of every other advanced nation on earth manage to deal with armed people every day without shooting nearly as many of them as the United States does. How do you think they manage that?
      - sp527 10y ago
        It would be very hard to get apples to apples numbers to make that determination. Let me be clear that the recent spate of high profile executions (and believe me when I say that's how I feel about many of these cases) of various unarmed black men at the hands of cops across the country constitutes an altogether different problem. This particular case, involving an armed suicidal man who was presumably affecting an unstable demeanor, is comparatively cut and dry.
    - polotics 10y ago
      Do you realize how much time it would have taken for the suicidal dude to put himself and his lowered gun in any kind of stance that would have been a danger to the cop behind him if his gun had actually been loaded? At least half a second I'd say. How much time would it have taken for the cop to squeeze his trigger in that worst case scenario? What cardinal sin do you refer to, the one that says you shall not kill?
      - sp527 10y ago
        Oh you're ignoring a lot of essential practical aspects of using a gun, the most relevant of which are (1) you can miss and (2) the target may not be immediately incapacitated. Guns don't work in real life like they do in the movies.
        polotics 10y ago
        oh I am sorry, my military training was like in 1994 and I stopped shooting guns a very long time ago, I agree to disagree.
    - joesmo 10y ago
      I'm not sure you realize you're defending a murder here.
      - sp527 10y ago
        I'm defending statistics. If a cop has say a 10% chance of being shot by an armed opponent, then this will occur within 10 such encounters, in expectation. This is ultimately why cops are trained not to gamble. I didn't say 'innocent' people don't get killed. I am saying cops aren't martyrs.
        erelde 10y ago
        Does "trained not to gamble" means "SHOOT ON SIGHT" in your mind? Because that's what it sounds like. If in every situation the cop has to not gamble, that means he has to shoot everytime. That doesn't sound right to me. It _shouldn't_ sound right to you.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        joesmo 10y ago
        They could and should be trained otherwise and better. It's definitely done in many places throughout the world. This does not excuse murder. Murder is murder. Especially when they knew the guy was suicidal. But then they wouldn't have such stupid excuses for murdering innocent people, I suppose.
    - erelde 10y ago
      Ideally police should be about helping old ladies cross the road. As the name implies. If someone hesitates to kill doesn't that prove they're a better person than someone who James Bond his way through? James Bond is fun but he doesn't really kill people, it's actors. Killing a real person should be the absolute last resort used by military officers or if your jurisdiction still allows for it (for some barbaric rhetoric reason), a court of law. Not police officers in the heat of the moment. Another argument that might be only truish in France: police officers are not qualified, I'm sorry to say that, but the foot soldiers do not have the education, they didn't go to college, some didn't finish high school, it's fine as long they only regulate the city/polis, but once it gets philosophically tricky... They're not qualified. I've seen many police officers who just can't read without mouthing silently or even aloud. I don't trust the quick judgement of someone who can't read. Maybe I'm an elitist libertarian. I'm ok with that if it means I'm against killing people.
  - simbalion 10y ago
    You are right. It's wrong. Those responsible are completely insane.
- SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
  I agree that it isn't an obvious case as it was with a pre-teen with a toy gun (Tamir Rice) or unarmed cigarette vendor without a license (Eric Garner). Here, the man was armed with a gun (albeit unloaded). He was unstable enough for his girlfriend to put the police on suicide watch during her 911 call. If the police had to take classes on handling various situations, this particular scenario would be a final exam question. Moreover, I'm afraid that a majority of our policemen would have flunked this question. Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. Each police officer working on duty is not only serving as the enforcer but also as a judge. He judges whether a subject should be let go, detained, or - shocking as it may seem - be put to death. A well functioning civil society founded on the idea of some social contract is bound to provide its citizens with some rights and protection. The prospect of summary execution at the any sign of threat to its law enforcers appears to fall short of this requirement in my eyes. The officer in question in the topic being discussed, Stephen Mader, acted ahead of his time. He demonstrated the form of policing possible in our society with further sophistication of the minds of our officers. He took decisions that prioritized the right (to life) of his citizens. He was fired for doing so. I am sure he would have shot Mr. Williams, having had his gun trained on him, had he chosen to make any threatening move. It is a fine line, I admit. But is this not what progress is based on? Have we not advanced our civilization by continuing to investigate finer and finer still of dimensions? Why do we continue to rely on such crude measures when it comes to law enforcement? Are we incapable of serving our citizenry with increased space for preservation of their rights?
  - skissane 10y ago
    > Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. While I certainly agree that society would benefit from imposing more demanding recruitment standards on police, I think you are taking things too far. We can't expect police officers to be philosophers, and frankly, a philosopher isn't guaranteed to do any better a job at policing than anyone else. Most debates in philosophy have no relevance to policing–knowledge of debates around the existence of God, the problem of universals, the relationship between mind and body, the nature of personal identity, the philosophy of science, etc., are unlikely to make you a better cop. Even those parts of philosophy which might have some relevance – in particular ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law – there are such a wide range of views that we couldn't presume any particular practical benefits from a philosophical education. Even if you believe that accepting certain philosophical views (maybe say Rawlsian liberalism) might make police behave better, to truly have a sophisticated knowledge of philosophy you have to be aware of diametrically opposed views also, and once you teach people both sides of the argument they might adopt the opposite position from you. Conceivably, exposure to some philosophical viewpoints might even have a deleterious effect on law enforcement (e.g. some philosophers have defended extremist political positions, such as Gentile's support for fascism, Heidegger's support for Nazism, Nozick's support for legalising slavery). As far as law goes, certainly police need a basic understanding of the parts of the law relevant to their job, especially criminal law, criminal procedure, laws of evidence, civil rights, etc. However, I don't think "sophisticated knowledge" is required or would in most cases add any value. Sophisticated knowledge of the law is what we have lawyers for, and while most police could likely benefit from some greater education in the law, demanding every cop have a law degree would just be a massive waste of resources; plus, a person with a law degree driving around in a patrol car arresting petty criminals and handing out speeding tickets might get bored rather quickly.
- imagist 10y ago
  No there's something really important to see here. When a cop shoots a suspect, there's often little investigation or transparency. The argument against these things is that cops are putting their lives at risk to do their jobs, and can't do their jobs effectively if they have the public always looking over their shoulder. But this incident shows that the arguments against investigation and transparency are bankrupt. This officer bravely put his life at risk to do his job. Investigation and transparency show him to be worthy of our respect. It isn't the public looking over his shoulder preventing him from doing his job, it's the aggressively militarized culture of the profession in which he serves.
  - sp527 10y ago
    No actually the logic here is really simple. Any rational system of law enforcement has to operate with extreme prejudice in a threatening situation. The reason is obvious: 9 times you might survive trying to do the right thing and then get shot dead on the tenth. These are often split second decisions made with paltry situational context (you know next to nothing about the person with the gun and how they might behave). If you have a gun and encounter law enforcement and don't IMMEDIATLY rid yourself of it and drop to the ground, what happens next is simply a consequence of statistics. Statistically, some nonzero percentage of people with a gun are nutjob cop killers. That's the end of the argument right there. There's nothing else to be done because cops aren't trained to gamble on the situation (and keep in mind that cops are dealing with a large sample size, though these look like isolated incidents to us). It's super weird to me that this isn't obvious to people. Maybe armchair theorizing about situations involving guns simply has too much allure.
    - thatcat 10y ago
      I think you're mistaking the police for the military.
    - stestagg 10y ago
      To take this to its conclusion, statistically there's a non-zero chance that the next thing you eat could poison you, therefore you should never eat anything ever again. It's always a case of trade offs and, in the case of using force, morality. The real issue is the level of uncertainty a police officer should accept. In most European countries, the balance is legally set much more in favour of protecting the public in these situations compadres to the US
kencausey 10y ago
This is total extrapolation but I wonder if one or both of the other two officers who arrived later aren't somehow more 'connected' to someone at the police department or in local government. Perhaps there was even a "it's him or me" type ultimatum.
oxguy3 10y ago
Could a moderator please remove the "#comments" bit from the end of the URL of this article? :)
- Imagenuity 10y ago
  You can remove everything after the ? as is the case with most URLs.
- SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
  This was a careless mistake on my part. I shouldn't noticed that the link directed to comments instead of the article itself.
simbalion 10y ago
this is proof that police officers in 2016 are meant to be nothing more than executioners. This is exactly what the current government wants America to be. The insanity in our government and police departments is completely out of control. If they can't behave the way the people of the country want them to, then we have to get rid of them.
projectileboy 10y ago
Can we make any comparisons with how police in other countries typically deal with these situations? I'd like to know if this is a hard problem for all police everywhere, with similar outcomes, or if this is a problem unique to U.S. police, based on how they're trained.
- Sharlin 10y ago
  Well, either this sort of a hard problem happens much more frequently in the US, or the police in other countries are much less trigger-happy and better at de-escalation, negotiation and other soft tactics. The list of lists of killings by police officers in different countries is pretty eye-opening [1]. In many European countries police killing someone is always news and happens at most a few times per year, even in countries comparable in size to the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...
tempodox 10y ago
We still shoot first and ask questions later. Anything else is Un-American.
stillsut 10y ago
I'd equate this to breaking quarantine in a medical situation. Sure, to the doctor's trained eye, the little child did not seem infected and could be welcomed in. This of course is a noble act for that doctor alone (putting himself at risk to save the child), but it is reckless in that it puts the rest of the medical team at risk without their consent and in violation of protocol.
bobosha 10y ago
The headline sounds like an onion article

sp527 10y ago

Suicidal man had a gun. Nothing to see here.

helthanatos 10y ago
A relatively bad situation
pdabbadabba 10y ago
This might be a decent justification if he had shot the man. (Which, sadly, other officers arriving on the scene did.) But firing an officer for not killing him? That seems nuts. Can it really be police policy that an officer must kill any armed suspect that he or she encounters? I'm not sure I'd want to live in a place where that was the rule.
- sp527 10y ago
  I would have thought this was obvious but the down votes suggest otherwise. Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy. The chief made the tough but ultimately correct call in this case. Once an officer has proven himself incapable of acting with deadly force in a threatening situation, you don't keep him around to endanger the lives of the officers he works with. Civilians can't empathize with the context, but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work.
  - imagist 10y ago
    > Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable is a credible threat that places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy. I'm going to have to disagree with you here. If shooting someone is the only solution you have to a dangerous situation, then you have the emotional maturity of a neanderthal and you are the unstable person with a gun. > Civilians can't empathize with this context but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work. Like hell civilians can't empathize. Cops don't have the monopoly on dangerous situations. If this is a cardinal sin in police work, then police work is fundamentally broken.
    - sp527 10y ago
      You sound like the perfect candidate for police work since you clearly place a low value on your own life. Asking people to endanger themselves on the off chance a person with a gun isn't going to shoot is nothing short of insane.
      - mildbow 10y ago
        Well, if cops want to be lauded as heroes, maybe they need to act like it? I respect EMTs. I respect firefighters. Interactions with any of them has been a warm and human one. They truly are heroes. They save lives with little regard for personal sacrifice. Interactions with cops? Dehumanizing: a glaring symptom of the imbalance of power. We have forgotten, to our own peril, an old adage: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
        sp527 10y ago
        I think resorting to our own anecdata coupled with what the media presents us is a tempting fallacy. It's likely that most cops are good people trying to do the right thing. You might be hard-pressed to find even staunch BLM supporters who would disagree with that assertion. Where I think policing could stand to be improved is in the realm of situations involving obviously non-threatening individuals (particularly unarmed Black males). In general, our focus should be drawn to cases at the margin and not those in which decisionmaking is straightforward (e.g. armed and unstable people).
        mildbow 10y ago
        Of course. Whenever one relates personal experience in a public fora, esp. one with pretentions of logical thinking, the default reaction's to relegate it to an anecdote. The self reported intellectuals cry: "It's an anecdote so it doesn't count!" Ok. But I'm not writing a paper. I'm merely relating my experiences and subsequent thoughts. Surely many black people went through the same experience when talking about their "anomalous" and "anecdotal" interactions. Having a cop threaten me with a gun because I had the effrontery to claim a headache is an anecdote. But, it's one that indubitably influences how I approach subsequent interactions and -- moreover -- my whole stance on exactly how the power-balance in any citizen-to-cop interaction works. Yeah, plural of anecdote isn't data, but I'm not waiting for a scientific paper before I start forming my own opinions of the world.
  - jellicle 10y ago
    And yet, the police forces of every other advanced nation on earth manage to deal with armed people every day without shooting nearly as many of them as the United States does. How do you think they manage that?
    - sp527 10y ago
      It would be very hard to get apples to apples numbers to make that determination. Let me be clear that the recent spate of high profile executions (and believe me when I say that's how I feel about many of these cases) of various unarmed black men at the hands of cops across the country constitutes an altogether different problem. This particular case, involving an armed suicidal man who was presumably affecting an unstable demeanor, is comparatively cut and dry.
  - polotics 10y ago
    Do you realize how much time it would have taken for the suicidal dude to put himself and his lowered gun in any kind of stance that would have been a danger to the cop behind him if his gun had actually been loaded? At least half a second I'd say. How much time would it have taken for the cop to squeeze his trigger in that worst case scenario? What cardinal sin do you refer to, the one that says you shall not kill?
    - sp527 10y ago
      Oh you're ignoring a lot of essential practical aspects of using a gun, the most relevant of which are (1) you can miss and (2) the target may not be immediately incapacitated. Guns don't work in real life like they do in the movies.
      - polotics 10y ago
        oh I am sorry, my military training was like in 1994 and I stopped shooting guns a very long time ago, I agree to disagree.
  - joesmo 10y ago
    I'm not sure you realize you're defending a murder here.
    - sp527 10y ago
      I'm defending statistics. If a cop has say a 10% chance of being shot by an armed opponent, then this will occur within 10 such encounters, in expectation. This is ultimately why cops are trained not to gamble. I didn't say 'innocent' people don't get killed. I am saying cops aren't martyrs.
      - erelde 10y ago
        Does "trained not to gamble" means "SHOOT ON SIGHT" in your mind? Because that's what it sounds like. If in every situation the cop has to not gamble, that means he has to shoot everytime. That doesn't sound right to me. It _shouldn't_ sound right to you.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - joesmo 10y ago
        They could and should be trained otherwise and better. It's definitely done in many places throughout the world. This does not excuse murder. Murder is murder. Especially when they knew the guy was suicidal. But then they wouldn't have such stupid excuses for murdering innocent people, I suppose.
  - erelde 10y ago
    Ideally police should be about helping old ladies cross the road. As the name implies. If someone hesitates to kill doesn't that prove they're a better person than someone who James Bond his way through? James Bond is fun but he doesn't really kill people, it's actors. Killing a real person should be the absolute last resort used by military officers or if your jurisdiction still allows for it (for some barbaric rhetoric reason), a court of law. Not police officers in the heat of the moment. Another argument that might be only truish in France: police officers are not qualified, I'm sorry to say that, but the foot soldiers do not have the education, they didn't go to college, some didn't finish high school, it's fine as long they only regulate the city/polis, but once it gets philosophically tricky... They're not qualified. I've seen many police officers who just can't read without mouthing silently or even aloud. I don't trust the quick judgement of someone who can't read. Maybe I'm an elitist libertarian. I'm ok with that if it means I'm against killing people.
- simbalion 10y ago
  You are right. It's wrong. Those responsible are completely insane.
SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
I agree that it isn't an obvious case as it was with a pre-teen with a toy gun (Tamir Rice) or unarmed cigarette vendor without a license (Eric Garner). Here, the man was armed with a gun (albeit unloaded). He was unstable enough for his girlfriend to put the police on suicide watch during her 911 call. If the police had to take classes on handling various situations, this particular scenario would be a final exam question. Moreover, I'm afraid that a majority of our policemen would have flunked this question. Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. Each police officer working on duty is not only serving as the enforcer but also as a judge. He judges whether a subject should be let go, detained, or - shocking as it may seem - be put to death. A well functioning civil society founded on the idea of some social contract is bound to provide its citizens with some rights and protection. The prospect of summary execution at the any sign of threat to its law enforcers appears to fall short of this requirement in my eyes. The officer in question in the topic being discussed, Stephen Mader, acted ahead of his time. He demonstrated the form of policing possible in our society with further sophistication of the minds of our officers. He took decisions that prioritized the right (to life) of his citizens. He was fired for doing so. I am sure he would have shot Mr. Williams, having had his gun trained on him, had he chosen to make any threatening move. It is a fine line, I admit. But is this not what progress is based on? Have we not advanced our civilization by continuing to investigate finer and finer still of dimensions? Why do we continue to rely on such crude measures when it comes to law enforcement? Are we incapable of serving our citizenry with increased space for preservation of their rights?
- skissane 10y ago
  > Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. While I certainly agree that society would benefit from imposing more demanding recruitment standards on police, I think you are taking things too far. We can't expect police officers to be philosophers, and frankly, a philosopher isn't guaranteed to do any better a job at policing than anyone else. Most debates in philosophy have no relevance to policing–knowledge of debates around the existence of God, the problem of universals, the relationship between mind and body, the nature of personal identity, the philosophy of science, etc., are unlikely to make you a better cop. Even those parts of philosophy which might have some relevance – in particular ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law – there are such a wide range of views that we couldn't presume any particular practical benefits from a philosophical education. Even if you believe that accepting certain philosophical views (maybe say Rawlsian liberalism) might make police behave better, to truly have a sophisticated knowledge of philosophy you have to be aware of diametrically opposed views also, and once you teach people both sides of the argument they might adopt the opposite position from you. Conceivably, exposure to some philosophical viewpoints might even have a deleterious effect on law enforcement (e.g. some philosophers have defended extremist political positions, such as Gentile's support for fascism, Heidegger's support for Nazism, Nozick's support for legalising slavery). As far as law goes, certainly police need a basic understanding of the parts of the law relevant to their job, especially criminal law, criminal procedure, laws of evidence, civil rights, etc. However, I don't think "sophisticated knowledge" is required or would in most cases add any value. Sophisticated knowledge of the law is what we have lawyers for, and while most police could likely benefit from some greater education in the law, demanding every cop have a law degree would just be a massive waste of resources; plus, a person with a law degree driving around in a patrol car arresting petty criminals and handing out speeding tickets might get bored rather quickly.
imagist 10y ago
No there's something really important to see here. When a cop shoots a suspect, there's often little investigation or transparency. The argument against these things is that cops are putting their lives at risk to do their jobs, and can't do their jobs effectively if they have the public always looking over their shoulder. But this incident shows that the arguments against investigation and transparency are bankrupt. This officer bravely put his life at risk to do his job. Investigation and transparency show him to be worthy of our respect. It isn't the public looking over his shoulder preventing him from doing his job, it's the aggressively militarized culture of the profession in which he serves.
- sp527 10y ago
  No actually the logic here is really simple. Any rational system of law enforcement has to operate with extreme prejudice in a threatening situation. The reason is obvious: 9 times you might survive trying to do the right thing and then get shot dead on the tenth. These are often split second decisions made with paltry situational context (you know next to nothing about the person with the gun and how they might behave). If you have a gun and encounter law enforcement and don't IMMEDIATLY rid yourself of it and drop to the ground, what happens next is simply a consequence of statistics. Statistically, some nonzero percentage of people with a gun are nutjob cop killers. That's the end of the argument right there. There's nothing else to be done because cops aren't trained to gamble on the situation (and keep in mind that cops are dealing with a large sample size, though these look like isolated incidents to us). It's super weird to me that this isn't obvious to people. Maybe armchair theorizing about situations involving guns simply has too much allure.
  - thatcat 10y ago
    I think you're mistaking the police for the military.
  - stestagg 10y ago
    To take this to its conclusion, statistically there's a non-zero chance that the next thing you eat could poison you, therefore you should never eat anything ever again. It's always a case of trade offs and, in the case of using force, morality. The real issue is the level of uncertainty a police officer should accept. In most European countries, the balance is legally set much more in favour of protecting the public in these situations compadres to the US

This is total extrapolation but I wonder if one or both of the other two officers who arrived later aren't somehow more 'connected' to someone at the police department or in local government. Perhaps there was even a "it's him or me" type ultimatum.

oxguy3 10y ago

Could a moderator please remove the "#comments" bit from the end of the URL of this article? :)

Imagenuity 10y ago
You can remove everything after the ? as is the case with most URLs.
SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
This was a careless mistake on my part. I shouldn't noticed that the link directed to comments instead of the article itself.

simbalion 10y ago

this is proof that police officers in 2016 are meant to be nothing more than executioners. This is exactly what the current government wants America to be. The insanity in our government and police departments is completely out of control. If they can't behave the way the people of the country want them to, then we have to get rid of them.

projectileboy 10y ago

Can we make any comparisons with how police in other countries typically deal with these situations? I'd like to know if this is a hard problem for all police everywhere, with similar outcomes, or if this is a problem unique to U.S. police, based on how they're trained.

Sharlin 10y ago
Well, either this sort of a hard problem happens much more frequently in the US, or the police in other countries are much less trigger-happy and better at de-escalation, negotiation and other soft tactics. The list of lists of killings by police officers in different countries is pretty eye-opening [1]. In many European countries police killing someone is always news and happens at most a few times per year, even in countries comparable in size to the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

tempodox 10y ago

We still shoot first and ask questions later. Anything else is Un-American.

stillsut 10y ago

I'd equate this to breaking quarantine in a medical situation. Sure, to the doctor's trained eye, the little child did not seem infected and could be welcomed in. This of course is a noble act for that doctor alone (putting himself at risk to save the child), but it is reckless in that it puts the rest of the medical team at risk without their consent and in violation of protocol.

bobosha 10y ago

The headline sounds like an onion article