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The person making the prank is in the wrong, but so are the officers. How I see it is that the officers of their own freewill took on the role of law enforceme

The person making the prank is in the wrong, but so are the officers. How I see it is that the officers of their own freewill took on the role of law enforcement and public service. Fully aware that they would be put in life threatening situations. Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin, but be trained to take time to assess the situation and risk erring on restraint of force. Most of the talk coming from police departments usually state their actions in terms of the officer's personal safety. Though that is important, due to their choice and the role in society that they play, their safety should be a secondary concern to the safety and lives of those they are to protect.

roenxi 9y ago
There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety. The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? What is the worst case scenario then? Hostage gets shot by a criminal instead of a policeperson? In this day and age, they could just fly in a drone in with a microphone and and a speaker while they sit 200 meters behind a bullet proof screen. Instead they proactivly put themselves in a situation where they felt at personal risk from ... turned out to be some dude sitting in his house. How could they have come up with a worse plan?
- vidarh 9y ago
  This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution. UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends up being rare. Stupid accidents still happens (e.g. an unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back), but serious ones are predictably few when police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns. But even firearms teams who are specifically called out when a suspect is armed have few serious accidents because they're not there to shoot their way to a resolution except as a last resort.
  - simonh 9y ago
    It looks like a default approach to provoke and escalate confrontation. A few days ago I watched the video of a police officer armed with a rifle arderimg a drunk guy to crawl on the floor. The drunk crawled wrong, so he was shot and killed. Turns out he was unarmed and innocent of any crime. The officer apparently will not be charged. Here in the UK this would be completely unacceptable, but in the US it’s routine.
    - glenneroo 9y ago
      And I witnessed a suicidal guy walking around Portland at 5am holding a gun to his head. The police surrounded him on three sides, wearing bullet-proof armor and hiding behind large armored vehicles and even had snipers in the parking lot across the street. They seemed pretty secure in their positions and decked out with heavy weaponry from a safe distance. He had a small 6-shooter and was walking in circles. They called out to him to drop his gun, to which he replied that he needed help (they wouldn't admit him to the hospital for mental care because he couldn't afford it). He pointed the gun towards the ground and fired, upon which they shot him multiple times from multiple positions. Don't they have people trained in psychology to deescalate such situations? Or is that just a movie trope? Even if wanted to shoot a cop, from my vantage point, there was no way he would have hit any of them. In the end it was labeled a police-assisted suicide i.e. he still shot himself and the police have 0% responsibility. The irony is that at the same time across town, the police chief of Portland was giving a conference about how the police will use less deadly force in such encounters in the future (because this wasn't the first time).
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        Shoot pretty much any direction in a busy city, and hit somebody. He was a loose cannon, aiming a deadly weapon irresponsibly. It can be argued, he had to be taken down. Cruel, but when people put themselves in that position something has to be done, and quickly. Not clear why a sleeping dart couldn't have been used though. Animal control does a pretty good job in such situations.
- tempodox 9y ago
  All the money goes to “more important” things. Police are badly educated, badly trained, badly equipped, etc. And part of a culture that views dead bodies as an acceptable outcome, “better than the alternative”.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  You are reading too deep into it. The situation is that the cops have too little downside and too high an upside: since they never get convicted for these crimes, you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. Cops need to go to jail for this. Its as simple as that. And they will find the way to not shoot like that anymore.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    It really does seem that simple. Most people will behave similarly in similar situations and American cops have so many perverse incentives.
  - gutnor 9y ago
    > you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. I'm disturbed by that line of thought. A normally educated human being from a developed country should feel bad about using deadly force, and worse after using it. The whole point of military training is to break the human instinct no to kill and even with the pressure of actual combat situation (where the upside is much higher, the downside much lower than for SWAT teams), killing breaks the soldier mentally. What kind of people is the US is selecting (or what kind of training) for its police force that only some fear of criminal prosecution is keeping them from shooting people ? After shooting dead an innocent, you would expect a police officer to be mentally wrecked. Even worse as he utterly failed at his primary mission of protecting the citizen which, as a Police officer, should normally be pretty high up in his list of personal priorities. So I can of understand going easy of the Police, from a legal point of view. But if the kind of people you have in the police are the one looking for the license to kill to assuage their most primal instinct, the problem is not with the legal side, you are hiring/training really wrong. That's not a police force, that's a criminal cartel.
    - Symmetry 9y ago
      You're right, US police officers are trained to be less hesitant in using force than would be natural. They are taught that at any moment they could be in a life and death struggle and that they have to have a "warrior mindset" to react quickly before it is too late.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  > The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? The police is also under an immense pressure when they are assigned to a hostage situation. Yes, I suppose much of that comes from their own feeling that they must achieve a quick resolution to a distressing situation, and if they are not well trained, not experienced and do not have the right incentives to work in a professional way, this kind of tragedies will happen. In my country of 5 million people, the police force (8000 policemen) often uses less than 10 bullets in action per year, per the whole force (including warning shots but excluding ammunition used in training), but on the other hand, police officers being killed in the line of duty is also extremely rare, so they can usually approach most situations without being too aggressive. (This is not because we wouldn't have a lot of guns in the country - we do. We just don't have violent subcultures that would shoot each other or the police.)
- dickbasedregex 9y ago
  Real answer? They are scared cowards. The 18 year old marine in parts unknown, LEGIT scared for his life has better judgement.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Individual police officers individually opting out of individual SWAT missions, or teams, or equipped-police-departments, isn't going to end SWAT tactics. Policy changes, and collective action, are.
dickbasedregex 9y ago
Cops are laughably trained. A fresh boot from any service has more resolve than beat cops. I used to think SWAT was different but the last few years proves otherwise. As a son of a cop and former service member myself, the whole thing makes me sick. And the COMPLETE lack of repercussions makes me furious. God forbid some idiot doesn't get his "gold watch." The thin blue line will rally around that idiot to protect him.
mcv 9y ago
It's not a prank, it's a deliberate attempt on someone's life. And it takes advantage of US police officers' lack of training in de-escalation. Compared to other western countries, American police officers receive less training, and their training is more focused on shooting, less on de-escalation. Better training would go a long way towards preventing them from being abused like this.
oreo81 9y ago
>Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin. I agree with this, however, do you realize that the officers were told this was a hostage situation? I think in this case they were thinking about the hostages, not themselves since they weren't the ones being threatened.

roenxi 9y ago

There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety. The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? What is the worst case scenario then? Hostage gets shot by a criminal instead of a policeperson? In this day and age, they could just fly in a drone in with a microphone and and a speaker while they sit 200 meters behind a bullet proof screen. Instead they proactivly put themselves in a situation where they felt at personal risk from ... turned out to be some dude sitting in his house. How could they have come up with a worse plan?

vidarh 9y ago
This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution. UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends up being rare. Stupid accidents still happens (e.g. an unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back), but serious ones are predictably few when police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns. But even firearms teams who are specifically called out when a suspect is armed have few serious accidents because they're not there to shoot their way to a resolution except as a last resort.
- simonh 9y ago
  It looks like a default approach to provoke and escalate confrontation. A few days ago I watched the video of a police officer armed with a rifle arderimg a drunk guy to crawl on the floor. The drunk crawled wrong, so he was shot and killed. Turns out he was unarmed and innocent of any crime. The officer apparently will not be charged. Here in the UK this would be completely unacceptable, but in the US it’s routine.
  - glenneroo 9y ago
    And I witnessed a suicidal guy walking around Portland at 5am holding a gun to his head. The police surrounded him on three sides, wearing bullet-proof armor and hiding behind large armored vehicles and even had snipers in the parking lot across the street. They seemed pretty secure in their positions and decked out with heavy weaponry from a safe distance. He had a small 6-shooter and was walking in circles. They called out to him to drop his gun, to which he replied that he needed help (they wouldn't admit him to the hospital for mental care because he couldn't afford it). He pointed the gun towards the ground and fired, upon which they shot him multiple times from multiple positions. Don't they have people trained in psychology to deescalate such situations? Or is that just a movie trope? Even if wanted to shoot a cop, from my vantage point, there was no way he would have hit any of them. In the end it was labeled a police-assisted suicide i.e. he still shot himself and the police have 0% responsibility. The irony is that at the same time across town, the police chief of Portland was giving a conference about how the police will use less deadly force in such encounters in the future (because this wasn't the first time).
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      Shoot pretty much any direction in a busy city, and hit somebody. He was a loose cannon, aiming a deadly weapon irresponsibly. It can be argued, he had to be taken down. Cruel, but when people put themselves in that position something has to be done, and quickly. Not clear why a sleeping dart couldn't have been used though. Animal control does a pretty good job in such situations.
tempodox 9y ago
All the money goes to “more important” things. Police are badly educated, badly trained, badly equipped, etc. And part of a culture that views dead bodies as an acceptable outcome, “better than the alternative”.
conanbatt 9y ago
You are reading too deep into it. The situation is that the cops have too little downside and too high an upside: since they never get convicted for these crimes, you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. Cops need to go to jail for this. Its as simple as that. And they will find the way to not shoot like that anymore.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  It really does seem that simple. Most people will behave similarly in similar situations and American cops have so many perverse incentives.
- gutnor 9y ago
  > you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. I'm disturbed by that line of thought. A normally educated human being from a developed country should feel bad about using deadly force, and worse after using it. The whole point of military training is to break the human instinct no to kill and even with the pressure of actual combat situation (where the upside is much higher, the downside much lower than for SWAT teams), killing breaks the soldier mentally. What kind of people is the US is selecting (or what kind of training) for its police force that only some fear of criminal prosecution is keeping them from shooting people ? After shooting dead an innocent, you would expect a police officer to be mentally wrecked. Even worse as he utterly failed at his primary mission of protecting the citizen which, as a Police officer, should normally be pretty high up in his list of personal priorities. So I can of understand going easy of the Police, from a legal point of view. But if the kind of people you have in the police are the one looking for the license to kill to assuage their most primal instinct, the problem is not with the legal side, you are hiring/training really wrong. That's not a police force, that's a criminal cartel.
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    You're right, US police officers are trained to be less hesitant in using force than would be natural. They are taught that at any moment they could be in a life and death struggle and that they have to have a "warrior mindset" to react quickly before it is too late.
ptaipale 9y ago
> The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? The police is also under an immense pressure when they are assigned to a hostage situation. Yes, I suppose much of that comes from their own feeling that they must achieve a quick resolution to a distressing situation, and if they are not well trained, not experienced and do not have the right incentives to work in a professional way, this kind of tragedies will happen. In my country of 5 million people, the police force (8000 policemen) often uses less than 10 bullets in action per year, per the whole force (including warning shots but excluding ammunition used in training), but on the other hand, police officers being killed in the line of duty is also extremely rare, so they can usually approach most situations without being too aggressive. (This is not because we wouldn't have a lot of guns in the country - we do. We just don't have violent subcultures that would shoot each other or the police.)
dickbasedregex 9y ago
Real answer? They are scared cowards. The 18 year old marine in parts unknown, LEGIT scared for his life has better judgement.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Individual police officers individually opting out of individual SWAT missions, or teams, or equipped-police-departments, isn't going to end SWAT tactics. Policy changes, and collective action, are.

dickbasedregex 9y ago

Cops are laughably trained. A fresh boot from any service has more resolve than beat cops. I used to think SWAT was different but the last few years proves otherwise. As a son of a cop and former service member myself, the whole thing makes me sick. And the COMPLETE lack of repercussions makes me furious. God forbid some idiot doesn't get his "gold watch." The thin blue line will rally around that idiot to protect him.

mcv 9y ago

It's not a prank, it's a deliberate attempt on someone's life. And it takes advantage of US police officers' lack of training in de-escalation. Compared to other western countries, American police officers receive less training, and their training is more focused on shooting, less on de-escalation. Better training would go a long way towards preventing them from being abused like this.

oreo81 9y ago

>Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin. I agree with this, however, do you realize that the officers were told this was a hostage situation? I think in this case they were thinking about the hostages, not themselves since they weren't the ones being threatened.