4 ms·

Okay, we're analyzing this situation in two ways, which I think are both legitimate ways to analyze it: 1. Looking only at this situation, Mader made the right

by imagist 10y ago

Okay, we're analyzing this situation in two ways, which I think are both legitimate ways to analyze it: 1. Looking only at this situation, Mader made the right decision which, if not for the other officers, would have saved the suspect's life. Looking only at this situation, I think we can agree that Mader's actions were correct, and the protocol is wrong. 2. Looking at the bigger picture, Mader made a decision which has bearing on a highly relevant random variable (whether he survives his career). But there is another highly relevant random variable: whether or not Williams, the suspect, survives the encounter. And during his career, Mader would make this decision hundreds of times with hundreds of suspects. I have no objection to valuing an officer's life over a suspect's, but even with that weighted valuation, it's hard to make the claim that a difference in the probability of Mader's surviving his career is worth him being required to leave a swath of dead bodies in his wake. It's an extraordinary claim that every police officer killing every suspect with a gun they encounter is a better result than simply letting the police officers make the decision themselves. The police have the most at stake (their own lives and whether they've taken another person's life) so they have the right to make their own decisions on how to handle a situation. The police in a situation also have the most information about that situation. Even looking at the big picture, I still think that Mader's actions were correct, and the protocol is wrong. EDIT: It's a bit disingenuous to approach this as if your stance is based in caring for the well-being of the police. This isn't a situation where you're defending an officer. Remember, you're defending someone sitting behind a desk firing a police officer who risked his life to save someone else's. Let's keep that in perspective.

sp527 10y ago
Sure that's fine. My personal belief is that no matter which way you look at it, you're dealing with a tradeoff between the likelihood of a cop being killed and the likelihood of an 'innocent' armed and unstable person being 'murdered'. Whatever else you may choose to believe, there was no way for Mader to know with any certainty whether or not this individual would have shot him. He would have had to use his gut in this instance (and did) and that defies police protocol for the various reasons I outlined. I'm okay with the nature of this tradeoff as currently interpreted in police work because, tragic edge cases such as suicide-by-cop aside, it's a policy that makes sense. I'm staunchly against this idea that cops should hesitate to neutralize individuals posing a clear threat (and I think an armed, suicidal individual qualifies) to them and those around them. There could come an unfortunate time where you or I might be a bystander in this situation and I'm not interested in a cop gambling with my life as well as his own on the off chance he can convince said person to stand down (which btw is stupidly unlikely considering they don't even have the training to do that). I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you.
- imagist 10y ago
  You're appealing to fear of a hypothetical situation here, but we're talking about a real, non-hypothetical situation. There weren't bystanders, and Mader was trained to deal with the situation: "Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot."[1] > I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you. The alternative that you're proposing is a world where cops are the armed, unstable people, except that now the armed, unstable people have power and authority. That's not a world I want to live in. [1] http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-fired-officer-who-did-not-fire-at-man-with-gun/stories/201609090080 http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-...
  - sp527 10y ago
    So you're saying it would have been fine for the armed, suicidal man to be shot more or less immediately if a bystander had been present? Good at least we can agree on that. If Mader had been trained to deal with this situation and expected to do so as a police officer, he would not have been fired. His having been a Marine does not change the conditions of his employment as a cop. You're basically implying it's okay to defy protocol if you view your own knowledge as exceptional. That's not prudence or good judgment; it's arrogance channeled into reckless personal endangerment. You also seem to be saying that Mader risking his own life in the process of trying to talk down an armed, suicidal man is acceptable. Certainly in his own view. Not in the view of the department. There are all kinds of problems with what he did: statistical likelihood in these situations and establishing a precedent that defies protocol being the most pressing among them. If you display a gun in the presence of law enforcement, you have an altogether different set of problems than the average citizen. Barring certain gun nut states with open carry laws, such a person has willfully forfeited the expectation of being treated like a normal citizen and I'm okay with that. I want to be defended against exactly that variety of morons, crazies, and criminals. That's just a sensible tenet of a functioning, civilized society. If you don't trust law enforcement to carry lethal weapons and to exercise its best judgment in the face of situations with imperfect solutions, then feel free to go live somewhere else. But exerting your moral authority against an institution with many decades of accumulated practical expertise is little more than juvenile utopianist posturing. EDIT: Oh and by the way, it's also worth quoting Mader directly, in case you think he has any misconceptions about how the police should act in these situations: - "Firing me for it, it’s less of an eyebrow-raiser then to say the other officers are justified in what they did — which I think they were.” - “They did not have the information I did,” he said. “They don’t know anything I heard. All they know is (Mr. Williams) is waving a gun at them. It’s a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don’t think they did anything wrong.”

by imagist 10y ago

sp527 10y ago

Sure that's fine. My personal belief is that no matter which way you look at it, you're dealing with a tradeoff between the likelihood of a cop being killed and the likelihood of an 'innocent' armed and unstable person being 'murdered'. Whatever else you may choose to believe, there was no way for Mader to know with any certainty whether or not this individual would have shot him. He would have had to use his gut in this instance (and did) and that defies police protocol for the various reasons I outlined. I'm okay with the nature of this tradeoff as currently interpreted in police work because, tragic edge cases such as suicide-by-cop aside, it's a policy that makes sense. I'm staunchly against this idea that cops should hesitate to neutralize individuals posing a clear threat (and I think an armed, suicidal individual qualifies) to them and those around them. There could come an unfortunate time where you or I might be a bystander in this situation and I'm not interested in a cop gambling with my life as well as his own on the off chance he can convince said person to stand down (which btw is stupidly unlikely considering they don't even have the training to do that). I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you.

imagist 10y ago
You're appealing to fear of a hypothetical situation here, but we're talking about a real, non-hypothetical situation. There weren't bystanders, and Mader was trained to deal with the situation: "Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot."[1] > I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you. The alternative that you're proposing is a world where cops are the armed, unstable people, except that now the armed, unstable people have power and authority. That's not a world I want to live in. [1] http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-fired-officer-who-did-not-fire-at-man-with-gun/stories/201609090080 http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-...
- sp527 10y ago
  So you're saying it would have been fine for the armed, suicidal man to be shot more or less immediately if a bystander had been present? Good at least we can agree on that. If Mader had been trained to deal with this situation and expected to do so as a police officer, he would not have been fired. His having been a Marine does not change the conditions of his employment as a cop. You're basically implying it's okay to defy protocol if you view your own knowledge as exceptional. That's not prudence or good judgment; it's arrogance channeled into reckless personal endangerment. You also seem to be saying that Mader risking his own life in the process of trying to talk down an armed, suicidal man is acceptable. Certainly in his own view. Not in the view of the department. There are all kinds of problems with what he did: statistical likelihood in these situations and establishing a precedent that defies protocol being the most pressing among them. If you display a gun in the presence of law enforcement, you have an altogether different set of problems than the average citizen. Barring certain gun nut states with open carry laws, such a person has willfully forfeited the expectation of being treated like a normal citizen and I'm okay with that. I want to be defended against exactly that variety of morons, crazies, and criminals. That's just a sensible tenet of a functioning, civilized society. If you don't trust law enforcement to carry lethal weapons and to exercise its best judgment in the face of situations with imperfect solutions, then feel free to go live somewhere else. But exerting your moral authority against an institution with many decades of accumulated practical expertise is little more than juvenile utopianist posturing. EDIT: Oh and by the way, it's also worth quoting Mader directly, in case you think he has any misconceptions about how the police should act in these situations: - "Firing me for it, it’s less of an eyebrow-raiser then to say the other officers are justified in what they did — which I think they were.” - “They did not have the information I did,” he said. “They don’t know anything I heard. All they know is (Mr. Williams) is waving a gun at them. It’s a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don’t think they did anything wrong.”