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Those police killed Eric Garner. Do you think the police would be so understanding of someone who killed another person in a bar fight because there was a chance of having a tooth knocked out? That's not a normal standard of behavior. Even if you don't think it's reasonable to hold them to higher standards of behavior, holding them to a lower standard seems really strange to me.

The police subdued Eric Garner in an effort to arrest him because he was resisting. What they did was reasonable and only the hindsight of his health problems says otherwise. Eric Garner shares a large portion of the blame in his own death since he is the one who resisted, was breaking the law, and knew about his own health situation.

Your bar fight scenario makes no sense because there are lots of ways that a bar fight could result in one participant's death and the other participant would be judged to have acted reasonably just defending himself from an injury as "minor" as a knocked-out tooth.

No, what they did was not reasonable. You're assuming he died because of the fight... In reality he died because of how he was positioned after the fight (on his stomach, arms behind his back). We have known for years that this is a dangerous thing to do (it makes it _much_ harder to breath, at a time when he was already working harder than normal to breath). The NYPD actually has a policy against exactly this sort of positioning...

I partly agree with you and I definitely concur with your post above on this whole issue. I'm regretting mentioning Garner in my own post since it's a rathole of preconceptions.

But I will point out that reasonable is not the same as perfectly following every policy. It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

The USA court system is every bit as flawed as (and certainly more corrupt than) USA law enforcement. This appeal to authority completely misses.

> It's important to note that there were no indictments handed down in this case.

OTOH, those who complain about police excesses usually also complain about prosecutors being uninterested in pursuing abuses by police as crimes, seeking indictments, etc. So, "no indictments" can be viewed different ways.

True, but I've yet to see the decision-based situation in the universe that couldn't be viewed differently by someone.

Compared to Internet second guessing, the lack of indictments is a pretty strong data point.

Absolutely not. Gauging your response to a purported suffocation on the false assumption that "if you can speak, you can breathe" is not at all reasonable.

(Incidentally, that's pretty scary: to be made to suffer by someone who doesn't realize it and has constructed ironclad "proofs" that you must not be suffering.)

Are you justifying unnecessary force and unnecessary force multipliers by invoking hypothetical situations? This is madness. When any hypothetical situation is a valid excuse for use of force, all uses of force will fall back on hypothetical situations as justification.

And most do, when it comes to the police and use of force.

Have you ever seen the South Park episode where they forbid the killing of animals unless in self defense, so hunters shout "it's coming right for us!" before lighting them up with automatic gun fire?

Yeah, this is like that.

Go back and read the post to which I was responding where the author stated that in his mind he thought that officers signed up for a dangerous job knowingly because they're heroic and self sacrificing.

I'm saying it's a job, in many ways similar to your job and my job where putting all this heroic self-sacrificing burden on them isn't fair.

Interesting how you criticized me for creating hypotheticals which are almost direct quotes from everyday stories on HN and then tried to prove your point by referring to a South Park episode - a cartoon that features fictional characters doing outrageous things for the sake of comedy.

I read it, and I disagree with your evaluation of the situation. There is risk with all jobs, and for cops, firefighters, etc., that risk can be great.

You referenced Eric Gardner, which really sat poorly with me. It's pretty universally accepted that he was murdered by cops with no care for the public or their constant overuse of force. It was a terrible example.

South Park is not just a cartoon - as with many shows like it, it's pretty heavy with political commentary - which this is.

It's pretty universally accepted that he was murdered by cops

Do you have some polling data on that? That's not at all the impression I get from the wide variety of news sites that I peruse.

Regarding South Park, yeah, I know all that. I love SP. But you were the one criticizing hypotheticals.

I don't require police to martyr themselves. My own problem with the Garner homicide is that I don't think they needed to tackle Garner at all. An even more cynical view is that they wanted to tackle him, wanted an excuse to act violently, and cultivated that situation hoping for that end (not necessarily that they wanted to kill him, but they wanted an arrest, and were game for a use of force). I don't know the whole truth of it but I do know that the basis of it was tax evasion, not an imminent threat to public safety that needed immediate detention at all costs.

Saying "it's dangerous" doesn't mean "accept being hurt or killed", just the same as saying "they'll expect 80 hours a week" or "stock options may be worthless" don't mean "accept being abused and left poor".

It means "make sure your contract guarantees hours or appropiate payment for extra hours before you sign". It means "research the markets and the startup and demand proper pay if it looks bad". It means "make sure the citizens are safe, make sure you are safe, but don't pretend that killing someone is anything but the last resort when you failed to properly address a tactical situation".

"If outsiders kept callously telling us "you signed up for it knowing that you would work 80 hours a week" or "you signed up for it knowing that your stock options would probably be worthless", we'd be up in arms and demanding that no one should be treated that way."

No, not really. It's really only irritating because I started out every day telling myself that.

"Can you imagine going to work every day where the public expectation is that the risk of your knocked-out teeth when confronting someone resisting arrest is perfectly acceptable?"

Yeah, I've known a few bouncers in my time. Also, some farmers and ranchers.

...farmers and ranchers.

Haha, somehow I've refrained from shooting the cow that broke two of my fingers last week.

Except those 5 officers had no need to arrest Eric Garner. They could have issued a citation and left. Discretionary arrests are a police officer's method of punishing someone in advance of that pesky finding of guilt (or not) -- now that person has an arrest on their record, may have to spend a night in jail prior to receiving a bail hearing, may be stuck in jail until trial or a plea arrangement if they can't afford bail, etc.

> The public is just way too callous in thinking that it's okay for you to be injured or killed because "you signed up for it".

Agreed with this point. A police officer effecting a routine traffic stop to potentially issue a citation should not be cause for alarm. And perhaps, most of the time it's not. But that 1/x times it does turn violent, the officer needs to be ready, or risk not going home.

A police officer should not have to believe that pulling over a driver may be a life and death situation. Yet, they train knowing they are entering a potentially dangerous situation. The public telling them, it's okay they signed up for it, is reprehensible.

There is a balance between the need to preserve officer safety and the acceptance of danger required to do the job.