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> The person who did this clearly did something that they knew was wrong, and that ended in somebody dying. Whether they did it knowingly or not does not matte

by mcny 7y ago

> The person who did this clearly did something that they knew was wrong, and that ended in somebody dying. Whether they did it knowingly or not does not matter in this case. I still think this exposes a systemic problem that we need to address at a systems level. This feels like monkey patching if (x !== null) {} to "fix" a null pointer exception on something that should never have been null in the first place. In this case. there should have been no shots fired at all. I am not even saying the officer who shot should go to prison. I am just saying maybe the officer who shot shouldn't have had a gun or been there in the first place. They clearly didn't have proper training. Sending the person who made the phone call to prison solves nothing. We have blameless postmortems for us. Why can't we have blameless postmortems in these cases which are more life and death? We don't live in an "eye for an eye" society, do we?

saagarjha 7y ago
> We don't live in an "eye for an eye" society, do we? I disagree strongly with your characterization of this. The caller clearly knew what he was doing wrong (we can argue whether it was reasonable to assume that it would be responded to with lethal force, but that is not what you’re discussing). Likewise, the reaction of the police officer in this situation may have been a problem, but again it’s not relevant to the issue of willfully lying about a hostage situation to, at the minimum, waste the time of law enforcement and the SWATed person. Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with.
- mcny 7y ago
  » Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with. This is still treating a symptom and not the root of the problem. I don't care so much about "justice" for the victim as much as I care about the systems problem. In your example, why was someone driving well over the speed limit? Could we make it less likely or even impossible to speed that much? What can we do to make these events less likely to happen in the future?

by mcny 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

> We don't live in an "eye for an eye" society, do we? I disagree strongly with your characterization of this. The caller clearly knew what he was doing wrong (we can argue whether it was reasonable to assume that it would be responded to with lethal force, but that is not what you’re discussing). Likewise, the reaction of the police officer in this situation may have been a problem, but again it’s not relevant to the issue of willfully lying about a hostage situation to, at the minimum, waste the time of law enforcement and the SWATed person. Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with.

mcny 7y ago
» Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with. This is still treating a symptom and not the root of the problem. I don't care so much about "justice" for the victim as much as I care about the systems problem. In your example, why was someone driving well over the speed limit? Could we make it less likely or even impossible to speed that much? What can we do to make these events less likely to happen in the future?