5 ms·

Remind me what the sentence was for the police officer in Wichita who murdered Andrew Finch? When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot

by dsr_ 7y ago

Remind me what the sentence was for the police officer in Wichita who murdered Andrew Finch? When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop.

davidw 7y ago
There's tons of room to improve the police. However, in a country with so many weapons, they're always going to be a bit more quick to fire due to a fear for their own safety. You can downvote all you want, but the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US.
- ergothus 7y ago
  > the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US. Absolutely. And one reason we're supposed to respect the police is that they take these risks. If they instead start shooting people first, they aren't taking the risks, they are creating them. Being a police officer interacting with citizens is more dangerous than being a citizen...but is it more dangerous than being a citizen interacting with the police?
  - davidw 7y ago
    A swat call is someone telling the police that there's an armed and dangerous person on the other side of the door. That's not one of the instances of police, say, choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. It's a situation where even someone courageous is going to be pretty amped up.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      Have you even watched the video of the shooting? Being amped up wasn't an excuse here. There was multiple cops aiming rifles at this guy, who was raising his hands when he was shot. The officer that shot him said he saw him move his hands at that's why he shot him. Even if the guy had a gun, there was no way he would've had time to raise it, aim it accurately (at cops who were behind cover) and take a shot without police being able to fire at him first after clearly seeing it was a gun. Plus, at that distance, he wasn't likely to hit a cop who was behind cover with a pistol anyway, even if he was able to shoot many shots.
      - davidw 7y ago
        I wasn't writing about this specific case so much as commenting on the fact that cops are far more likely to be nervous and twitchy in the US because of the very real threat that the prevalence of arms represents. Re-run a scenario 100 times and the more nervous people are, the more bad things will happen in some % of cases. Cops aren't saints in Italy where I lived for many years, not by a long shot. And yet this stuff happens less.
    - _edo 7y ago
      > choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. Please don't spread misinformation about a tragedy that's been used to create so much division in this country.
      - Miner49er 7y ago
        Good point - there's no evidence that he was actually selling cigarettes. They choked a guy just standing on the sidewalk to death.
        _edo 7y ago
        Seriously? 1. He resisted arrest. He clearly stated his intent to resist arrest. He was given the option to be peacefully arrested, which he declined. In the resulting forcible arrest he was choked, which is wrong, he shouldn't have been choked, but he absolutely wasn't "just standing on the sidewalk" - he was resisting arrest. 2. When you say he was choked to death people might get the impression that there was intent to kill him or that he died on the spot from asphyxiation instead of later from a heart attack. (edit: roughly a heart attack. The coroner listed several pre-existing conditions that contributed, including heart disease, but didn't say "heart attack") Since we've had literal riots over things like this I think it's appropriate to ask that we all try to stick to the facts.
        Miner49er 7y ago
        1. There is no such thing as a peaceful arrest. Arresting someone is violence. He was just standing on the sidewalk when they started attempting to arrest him. 2. The choking caused his death. He was therefore choked to death. We have riots because people like you keep defending murderers and they keep getting away with killing people.
        CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        > There is no such thing as a peaceful arrest. Arresting someone is violence. When you expand the use of a word so widely, it ceases to have meaning. You could say a traffic stop is violence. Court-ordered searches and seizures could be violence.
    - ergothus 7y ago
      My understanding of the militarization of police relative to the actual NEED for such implies that the amping up is the problem. However, I can certainly be wrong about this detail. Nonetheless, if police are deciding that an anonymous claim allows them to move to kill-first mode, then they are forfeiting the respect that taking risks for the greater good entails.
- snarf21 7y ago
  I agree with you. We need to supply police with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Anyone who thinks otherwise should strap on a vest and knock on a door tagged with a 911 "shots fired" situation. Go talk to someone on the front lines and tell them they are doing it wrong. They are scared shitless and just want to get home to their family too.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > Go talk to someone on the front lines and tell them they are doing it wrong. Sometimes, the people on the front lines aren't great at looking at things from a system-wide perspective.
    - davidw 7y ago
      I think it's possible to be empathetic with some cops - being young, nervous and maybe not dealing with the nicest people day to day - and think that systemic fixes include better training, mental health programs, fewer guns or whatever else.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >We need to supply police with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Less-lethal weapons leads to them just tazing more people for contempt of cop (people who would generally not be shot). The net amount of violence increases because police use less lethal weapons to force compliance in situations where they had not previously had that option.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      ... even for intent of contempt of cop.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- breakbread 7y ago
  It's not like they were knocking on the door. They'd established a perimeter like across the street from the house.
- inscionent 7y ago
  The cops shoot us because we have so many guns, but you can't take away guns, because the cops will shot us.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Actually it may be true. I don't know what to advocate to fix the US. Years ago I thought I did, now, not sure actually.
    - moate 7y ago
      Can you point to any instances in which having a gun prevented someone from being killed by the police? It seems like part of the problem is that there's an arms race. The cops need SWAT teams because citizens have Uzis, etc. Then the criminals get even more Uzis because now the cops regularly have them. On and on.
      - jacobush 7y ago
        It seems like for a brief period, when the Black Panthers in California started carrying rifles in public, the police relented in their attacks for a while. Of course, gun laws were then swiftly made stricter to make up for it. Also: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-knock-warrant-drugs.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-k... Impossible to know if it saved the person doing the shooting, or his girlfriend. Maybe. Given how incompetent everything else was done, it's not hard to imagine. About the arms race, I agree. It's very unfortunate.
- dlphn___xyz 7y ago
  should the state implement mental health screening for police officers? if a cop has this much fear and anxiety dealing with civilians they should consider another profession (let alone carry a weapon).
  - davidw 7y ago
    > Barriss falsely claimed he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside. Who would not be more than a bit stressed if they believed this was the actual situation? I don't know all the facts, and maybe reasonable people would conclude the cop acted in an unprofessional or even criminal way. That's not the point: the point is this kind of thing will keep happening because of the mix of nervous people with lots of guns.
  - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
    > should the state implement mental health screening for police officers? Yes, for a very good reason. Currently, incentives are such that police are rewarded with long careers and large pensions for avoiding mental healthcare. Despite having excellent access to healthcare, police notoriously avoid accessing any type of mental health resources. They're afraid that they'll lose their jobs for it, which makes sense. A cop's testimony is pivotal to most criminal cases, and if it is called into question because of the cop's mental health status, that can be a liability. Many places have strict policies concerning mental health and policing, as well. It's absolutely necessary that the state implements mental health screening for police officers, because they refuse to implement it themselves.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/careers/2018/01/05/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/109193204/ https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/careers/2018/... Police are on the list... at #14. Occupations more dangerous than being a police officer in the USA: Logging. Fishing. Aircraft pilots and engineers. Roofers. Garbage and recycling. Iron and steel workers. Commercial truck drivers. Farmers/ranchers. Supervisors in construction and extraction. Agricultural workers. Grounds maintenance. Supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers. Construction labor. And then police. Police aren't quick to fire because of their fear for their own safety. Police are quick to fire because they've been trained that way. Culture tells them that they are heroes, and then gives them guns.
sorokod 7y ago
"No officer was charged with a crime for the event." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting
throwaway_law 7y ago
>When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop. Apparently he attempted to by asking Finch to raise his hands, and instead the hands went to pull up his pants instead. If true, and police/swat are called to the scene of a murder with additional hostages, then a person leaving the residence reaches for their waist area instead of complying with a request to raise his hands...its simply tragic. But I assure you, if the officer didn't shoot Finch, swatting wouldn't stop. Its not like these guys would have said well we swatted the address and swat didn't kill the guy...so lets stop swatting. They would have sat in the safety of their own home laughing and virtual high-fiving each other for a job well done and planning the next. Its become a scapegoat for mass shootings, which is unfortunate, but people who do this are some combination of psychopath, mentally ill, and/or on drugs. Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people Are you talking about the police?
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    Society marginalizes these people, making them even more isolated and dangerous. Society doesn't allocate enough funds to identify and treat these individuals...so it only makes sense this filters down to government institutions and individual employees who are not equipped to handle them, this certainly includes schools/teachers; police; and courts. A lot of fingers are pointed at the officer, which may or may not be useful here. At the end of the day someone was shot and killed, and all we have is the officer testimony that he asked the person's hands be raised but the hands went to his waistband. Maybe it is bullshit (I hope there was video to at least confirm the testimony and it wasn't an outright lie), but the reality is the officer was responding to a hostage situation with 1 alleged death already. I get it we all want to see some officer magically save the day and stop these tragic events from unfolding. Maybe their training confirms this isn't a real hostage situation, its kids swatting someone over a stupid video game, but society doesn't train officers for that, they are trained to respond, and if you have responded to a hostage situation, demand to see hands, demand hands be raised, and instead the go to a waistband, what follows is what they trained to do. I see this stuff every day in mental health court, and mental health court (in my jurisdiction) is new and its voluntary...and I can confirm no one has been trained to deal with these people and you can't expect more from teachers/officers/judges/attorneys without that training...and that training only comes from society demanding funding, but they don't.

by dsr_ 7y ago

Remind me what the sentence was for the police officer in Wichita who murdered Andrew Finch? When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop.

davidw 7y ago

There's tons of room to improve the police. However, in a country with so many weapons, they're always going to be a bit more quick to fire due to a fear for their own safety. You can downvote all you want, but the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US.

ergothus 7y ago
> the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US. Absolutely. And one reason we're supposed to respect the police is that they take these risks. If they instead start shooting people first, they aren't taking the risks, they are creating them. Being a police officer interacting with citizens is more dangerous than being a citizen...but is it more dangerous than being a citizen interacting with the police?
- davidw 7y ago
  A swat call is someone telling the police that there's an armed and dangerous person on the other side of the door. That's not one of the instances of police, say, choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. It's a situation where even someone courageous is going to be pretty amped up.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    Have you even watched the video of the shooting? Being amped up wasn't an excuse here. There was multiple cops aiming rifles at this guy, who was raising his hands when he was shot. The officer that shot him said he saw him move his hands at that's why he shot him. Even if the guy had a gun, there was no way he would've had time to raise it, aim it accurately (at cops who were behind cover) and take a shot without police being able to fire at him first after clearly seeing it was a gun. Plus, at that distance, he wasn't likely to hit a cop who was behind cover with a pistol anyway, even if he was able to shoot many shots.
    - davidw 7y ago
      I wasn't writing about this specific case so much as commenting on the fact that cops are far more likely to be nervous and twitchy in the US because of the very real threat that the prevalence of arms represents. Re-run a scenario 100 times and the more nervous people are, the more bad things will happen in some % of cases. Cops aren't saints in Italy where I lived for many years, not by a long shot. And yet this stuff happens less.
  - _edo 7y ago
    > choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. Please don't spread misinformation about a tragedy that's been used to create so much division in this country.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      Good point - there's no evidence that he was actually selling cigarettes. They choked a guy just standing on the sidewalk to death.
      - _edo 7y ago
        Seriously? 1. He resisted arrest. He clearly stated his intent to resist arrest. He was given the option to be peacefully arrested, which he declined. In the resulting forcible arrest he was choked, which is wrong, he shouldn't have been choked, but he absolutely wasn't "just standing on the sidewalk" - he was resisting arrest. 2. When you say he was choked to death people might get the impression that there was intent to kill him or that he died on the spot from asphyxiation instead of later from a heart attack. (edit: roughly a heart attack. The coroner listed several pre-existing conditions that contributed, including heart disease, but didn't say "heart attack") Since we've had literal riots over things like this I think it's appropriate to ask that we all try to stick to the facts.
        Miner49er 7y ago
        1. There is no such thing as a peaceful arrest. Arresting someone is violence. He was just standing on the sidewalk when they started attempting to arrest him. 2. The choking caused his death. He was therefore choked to death. We have riots because people like you keep defending murderers and they keep getting away with killing people.
        CompanionCuuube 7y ago
        > There is no such thing as a peaceful arrest. Arresting someone is violence. When you expand the use of a word so widely, it ceases to have meaning. You could say a traffic stop is violence. Court-ordered searches and seizures could be violence.
  - ergothus 7y ago
    My understanding of the militarization of police relative to the actual NEED for such implies that the amping up is the problem. However, I can certainly be wrong about this detail. Nonetheless, if police are deciding that an anonymous claim allows them to move to kill-first mode, then they are forfeiting the respect that taking risks for the greater good entails.
snarf21 7y ago
I agree with you. We need to supply police with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Anyone who thinks otherwise should strap on a vest and knock on a door tagged with a 911 "shots fired" situation. Go talk to someone on the front lines and tell them they are doing it wrong. They are scared shitless and just want to get home to their family too.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > Go talk to someone on the front lines and tell them they are doing it wrong. Sometimes, the people on the front lines aren't great at looking at things from a system-wide perspective.
  - davidw 7y ago
    I think it's possible to be empathetic with some cops - being young, nervous and maybe not dealing with the nicest people day to day - and think that systemic fixes include better training, mental health programs, fewer guns or whatever else.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >We need to supply police with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Less-lethal weapons leads to them just tazing more people for contempt of cop (people who would generally not be shot). The net amount of violence increases because police use less lethal weapons to force compliance in situations where they had not previously had that option.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    ... even for intent of contempt of cop.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
breakbread 7y ago
It's not like they were knocking on the door. They'd established a perimeter like across the street from the house.
inscionent 7y ago
The cops shoot us because we have so many guns, but you can't take away guns, because the cops will shot us.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Actually it may be true. I don't know what to advocate to fix the US. Years ago I thought I did, now, not sure actually.
  - moate 7y ago
    Can you point to any instances in which having a gun prevented someone from being killed by the police? It seems like part of the problem is that there's an arms race. The cops need SWAT teams because citizens have Uzis, etc. Then the criminals get even more Uzis because now the cops regularly have them. On and on.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      It seems like for a brief period, when the Black Panthers in California started carrying rifles in public, the police relented in their attacks for a while. Of course, gun laws were then swiftly made stricter to make up for it. Also: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-knock-warrant-drugs.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-k... Impossible to know if it saved the person doing the shooting, or his girlfriend. Maybe. Given how incompetent everything else was done, it's not hard to imagine. About the arms race, I agree. It's very unfortunate.
dlphn___xyz 7y ago
should the state implement mental health screening for police officers? if a cop has this much fear and anxiety dealing with civilians they should consider another profession (let alone carry a weapon).
- davidw 7y ago
  > Barriss falsely claimed he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside. Who would not be more than a bit stressed if they believed this was the actual situation? I don't know all the facts, and maybe reasonable people would conclude the cop acted in an unprofessional or even criminal way. That's not the point: the point is this kind of thing will keep happening because of the mix of nervous people with lots of guns.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  > should the state implement mental health screening for police officers? Yes, for a very good reason. Currently, incentives are such that police are rewarded with long careers and large pensions for avoiding mental healthcare. Despite having excellent access to healthcare, police notoriously avoid accessing any type of mental health resources. They're afraid that they'll lose their jobs for it, which makes sense. A cop's testimony is pivotal to most criminal cases, and if it is called into question because of the cop's mental health status, that can be a liability. Many places have strict policies concerning mental health and policing, as well. It's absolutely necessary that the state implements mental health screening for police officers, because they refuse to implement it themselves.
dsr_ 7y ago
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/careers/2018/01/05/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/109193204/ https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/careers/2018/... Police are on the list... at #14. Occupations more dangerous than being a police officer in the USA: Logging. Fishing. Aircraft pilots and engineers. Roofers. Garbage and recycling. Iron and steel workers. Commercial truck drivers. Farmers/ranchers. Supervisors in construction and extraction. Agricultural workers. Grounds maintenance. Supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers. Construction labor. And then police. Police aren't quick to fire because of their fear for their own safety. Police are quick to fire because they've been trained that way. Culture tells them that they are heroes, and then gives them guns.

sorokod 7y ago

"No officer was charged with a crime for the event." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

throwaway_law 7y ago

>When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop. Apparently he attempted to by asking Finch to raise his hands, and instead the hands went to pull up his pants instead. If true, and police/swat are called to the scene of a murder with additional hostages, then a person leaving the residence reaches for their waist area instead of complying with a request to raise his hands...its simply tragic. But I assure you, if the officer didn't shoot Finch, swatting wouldn't stop. Its not like these guys would have said well we swatted the address and swat didn't kill the guy...so lets stop swatting. They would have sat in the safety of their own home laughing and virtual high-fiving each other for a job well done and planning the next. Its become a scapegoat for mass shootings, which is unfortunate, but people who do this are some combination of psychopath, mentally ill, and/or on drugs. Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people.

HarryHirsch 7y ago
Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people Are you talking about the police?
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  Society marginalizes these people, making them even more isolated and dangerous. Society doesn't allocate enough funds to identify and treat these individuals...so it only makes sense this filters down to government institutions and individual employees who are not equipped to handle them, this certainly includes schools/teachers; police; and courts. A lot of fingers are pointed at the officer, which may or may not be useful here. At the end of the day someone was shot and killed, and all we have is the officer testimony that he asked the person's hands be raised but the hands went to his waistband. Maybe it is bullshit (I hope there was video to at least confirm the testimony and it wasn't an outright lie), but the reality is the officer was responding to a hostage situation with 1 alleged death already. I get it we all want to see some officer magically save the day and stop these tragic events from unfolding. Maybe their training confirms this isn't a real hostage situation, its kids swatting someone over a stupid video game, but society doesn't train officers for that, they are trained to respond, and if you have responded to a hostage situation, demand to see hands, demand hands be raised, and instead the go to a waistband, what follows is what they trained to do. I see this stuff every day in mental health court, and mental health court (in my jurisdiction) is new and its voluntary...and I can confirm no one has been trained to deal with these people and you can't expect more from teachers/officers/judges/attorneys without that training...and that training only comes from society demanding funding, but they don't.