Dallas Police Used Robot with Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect: Mayor
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
I concur. There seems to be a lack of thinking and willingness to wait things out or backoff. Rather than backoff or retreat the police seem too trigger happy. The Baton Rouge shooting the police didn't want to wait for the suspect so they got aggressive and tried tackling him leading to a scuffle. The MN shooting, if the officer felt threatened he could have slowly backed up to his vehicle until backup arrives and only shoot if/when the suspect actually makes a truly life threatening move. (I know, easier said than done. But we need to de-escalate and disarm regular beat cops [slim chance of that happening now I suppose].)
I guess this also destroys evidence?
Reading the article it's clear the man was committing a crime. He was however not immediately threatening anyone was refusing to cooperate.
I think a question we should continue asking is at what point does Lethal force become acceptable?
The problem isn't that we don't know when lethal force is acceptable, the problem is that people keep ignoring the answer.
This is way too subjective.
This case though, with an armed suspect cornered during an active ambush who had been engaging in fire with the police, only a particularly obtuse person (or HN user) would deny the notion of "imminent threat".
That's exactly what happened here.
Obviously a slow ground robot with C4 is a little disturbing, but having UAVs with C4 is a whole new level of concerning. Are we going to start seeing targeted bombings when the driver of a traffic stop is being uncooperative?
"The driver reached for his glove box and wasn't responding to police commands, so we launched a hellfire missile to help ensure officer safety"
(turns out driver was deaf and getting his insurance papers)
> Five officers were killed and seven others were injured, as well as two civilians.
Even NBC is referring to non-police as "civilians" here which really drives the point home.
In some specialized contexts, non-civilians only include members of the military. An example of such a context would be some of the treaties that govern international armed conflicts.
Outside of those specialized contexts, the ordinary dictionary definition applies.
From the Oxford New American Dictionary:
civilian |səˈvilyən|
noun
a person not in the armed services or the police force.
2 a : one not on active duty in the armed services
or not on a police or firefighting forceIt makes just as much logical and legal sense to refer to programmers as non-civilians as it does to refer to civil law enforcement as non-civilians.
That's not the slang usage. That is the informal usage. And that is not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the formal usage of the term civilian, which according to numerous dictionaries [1] means someone not a member of a military or police force.
Is it your contention that these major dictionaries all got it wrong?
[1] Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, Random House
If not, then of course the word is being misused. Dictionaries simply update their definitions to reflect common usage, however wrong.
If this is what it took to end the suspect's life, thereby preventing further harm, then so be it and congratulations.
Your reasoning is based on a premise that hasn't been established: that killing the suspect was necessary to prevent further harm. It seems like most of the discussion here is questioning that point: if the suspect had been located and surrounded, was there a credible threat of further harm? If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
The intention to commit further harm is evident from statements by the accused and the vile nature of the crimes. Given the potential for harm, that the negotiations failed, and threats of explosives this was the safest course of action. Whether or not the suspect was surrounded has little bearing on if the threat was reduced or increased.
> If there was time to repurpose the bomb-dispoal bot, were there not also non-lethal ways to apprehend the suspect?
That is a flawed argument in that it guesses a quantity of time to modify a robot and time to neutralize an armed suspect are equivalent. It is also flawed in that it presumes there is a choice to be made. Another flaw is that doesn't account for the fact that the robot might already have been modified earlier in case negotiations failed, and if so then the robot is already modified and immediately ready while the suspect isn't.
More importantly, it is NOT the jurisdiction of the police to pass judgement and penalties on the suspect. Deadly force is only legal when the officer reasonably believes that the suspect poses a significant, imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to the officer or others. Note that the threat is a future threat, irrespective of whether harm was caused in the past.
But I suspect that your reasoning becomes clouded when it's your friends and coworkers who have been shot. Giving the accused a lawyer and a chance to defend himself in court is his right, but that's hard to do when you've seen someone you love die.
That is a huge guess. After 10 officers are shot I doubt the SWAT team was in a guessing mood.
> he wasn't going to get the opportunity to leave.
This is perhaps the most commonly fallacy I have read in this thread. Immobility does not immediately equivocate to either a reduction or increase in potential threat. The guys on the ground have to make that determination based upon the evidence available in the moment. After 10 officers were shot I am sure the suspect vocalizing additional threats likely didn't help the SWAT team believe the risk was diminishing.
Asking anything less than that from them is basically discarding the idea that we live in a civilized society.
What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all. The world isn't going to wait for you to call an assembly and have a cordial discussion about how to delicately make a possibly-suicidal suspect feel happy. It sure as hell isn't going to wait for to conduct an online survey to discover what makes people less sad. People are dying. The suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat. This is an active shooter incident. Once negotiations failed the only right decision is how to terminate the suspect. This is operational doctrine.
Stalling and feeling it out is a horribly bad decision to make and indicates a lack of professionalism for active shooter scenarios.
My claim is that it should not.
Operational doctrine here suggests that, with active shooter, you prioritize removing the shooter once negotiations have failed. The "probably would have" the poster is referencing is a what-if they didn't have time for.
... to save hostages, of which there weren't any.
Except if he'd had planted bombs on a deadman switch, which would have been triggered by taking him out.
They're lucky he was lying. Not smart, not skilled, lucky.
They killed him because they were mad and didn't care about the consequences (unfound bombs) to civilians.
100% wrong. That reasoning justifies all decisions.
This is what's wrong with our institutional thinking these days.
> This is an active shooter incident.
This stopped being an active shooter situation when they pinned him down without hostages.
> he suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat.
Fatally wrong again. Eliminating the threat would involve eliminating the bombs, not just the gun.
If they truly believed there were bombs they'd have had more motive to question the shooter, not less, because a single missed bomb could sit for days until triggered inadvertently.
They said he was wanted; he wasn't one of the shooters; they're yet to apologise or delete the tweet.
When the police take a life we lose the ability to understand the detail of why that deterrent failed. The deterrent is more important that the cure.
Whilst the police have suspects, they don't have this one and everyone's motivations are slightly different. The death of this individual also creates a martyr for others on a similar path.
In my humble opinion they should have used a stun or smoke grenade.
For those that are saying "there was no imminent threat", that is incorrect. One relevant data point, see the 2009 standoff in Oakland, where 2 SWAT officers died when they moved in on a cornered suspect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_shootings_of_Oakland_poli...).
This seems to me like a good application of technology in this extremely rare type of situation.
This individual was likely well trained. He fires and maneuvers. He has a good stance and chooses targets. He is clearly an accurate shot. He is aggressive and circles his target. He is calm under fire. [1]
His skill level is damn scary and likely superior to many of the police he was up against. Makes me think of the Special Ops guys I worked with in Iraq. If he escaped somehow from the garage, he could have killed could more.
While this robot technique is a bit scary, if I was responsible for stopping him, I would probably have done the same thing. No way you can charge in to stop him. Not only is he well armed, he may have a bomb. You don’t rush entrenched people with assault rifles, it’s not Call of Duty. You use grenades, explosives, air-strikes, etc.
Perhaps a non-lethal option could be developed. This would be ideal. But this robot bomb may have been improvised on the spot by the police to deal with this incident. Without a non-lethal robot to shoot a tranquilizer, release gas, or stun the suspect, I see no other way to stop him.
The chilling bit is that this was a death sentence for a suspect of non-imminent threat, which opens a pretty big can of worms. (What if it was the wrong guy? What if there was a hostage near him? etc)
It's amazing that it's happened first not by the military in a war situation, but by domestic police forces against it's citizenry.
Then again, if you're using it indoors or in a stadium or whatever, you don't want to injure other people if your AA misses the drone. Nets are more reasonable and safer for bystanders. Oh, and lighter.
I would not make that assumption. The military does not publicly disclose a majority of its tactics.
IEDs: rather less so.
This is the Dallas police department, they have equipment capable of dealing with this situation -- to include armored cars and ballistic shields.
I hope the legal process is explored in this case.
Either way, I can't think of any scenario where I'm comfortable with police having bombs.
You can't just "wait him out" and hope he won't escape.
If this goes in front of a judge it will be ruled that he was an imminent threat. There's really 0 question about that.
I say this as someone who feels strongly that lethal force is used far too often, and that there is a massive racial disparity in that use of force.
Active: producing or involving movement; being in physical motion.
These terms only refer to the present and future, not the past. They do not apply to the cornered suspect.
He (or he + accomplices) already killed 5 people, and injured what, 7 more? And he was still armed. I'm not sure how you could argue that (a) he definitely wouldn't have killed more, and (b) the officers on location should have been certain enough about that fact to make it worth risking more lives.
http://recoverymodel.com/id14.html
> An imminent danger is an anticipated danger that is likely to happen, is impending, and is separated by space or time. This impending danger could be one hour, one day, or an unknown time away but is still imminent.
https://www.osha.gov/as/opa/worker/danger.html
[Imminent Danger is defined here, but Imminent is used in a similar context to Imminent Threat] > any conditions or practices in any place of employment which are such that a danger exists which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately or before the imminence of such danger can be eliminated through the enforcement procedures
http://thelawdictionary.org/imminent-danger/
> In relation to homicide in self-defense, this term means immediate danger, such as must be Instantly met, such as cannot be guarded against It calling for the assistance of others or the protection of the law.
The shooter had a firearm, had used it, and had communicated an intent to use it again in the near-future. If any police officer had walked into the shooters line of fire it would be reasonable to assume that they would be shot. Thus, it is a _textbook_ definition of imminent threat.
I know that the legal context often uses English words in manners that are very similar to English, but do not share the precise definition. Right now, you are mistakenly using the English definitions in a legal context. You need to use the legal definition. And if you put this in front of a judge they will tell you that this is a clear-cut example of an imminent threat.
Honestly I'm glad the guy is dead, and it's easy to let emotions of this influence opinions. But I'm scared for the precedent this sets. In the future, when a suspect is cornered and would normally try to be talked down by police, they'll just send in a bomb robot and blow him up. Maybe he won't even be armed, but the police don't know that. So he's an "imminent threat" and can legally be executed.
If they had time to rig up an IED to the robot, and drive the sucker in there, use the camera to make sure he didn't have any hostages (they did that right?), and THEN detonate the bomb, it doesn't sound like the threat was all that imminent.
The FBI definition is "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area".
He was cornered in a parking garage, not active.
Not having been in the situation means I'm armchair quarterbacking the situation, but I hope there is a least some legal guidelines one when this is okay coming out of this.
The robot in question, incase anyone cares about the robot; https://www.qinetiq-na.com/products/unmanned-systems/dragon-...
On the other hand, depending on where they are and how they are triggered, it could be that he is able to trigger them himself and is just waiting to try to get as many police surrounding him as possible before he suicides and takes them with him.
So whether it is best from a safety standpoint to just keep him surrounded and wait it out hoping he surrenders, or it is better to take him out (and do so in a way that would not give him time to do something like trigger a bomb) really would depend on what can be figured out about those bombs and his state of mind when they are talking to him.
Until there is an investigation, and publication of transcripts or recordings of the conversations between him and the negotiators, I don't think those not involved have enough information to figure out the situation.
I'm particularly curious about how much planning was behind the attack on the police and who the attackers were. In particular, was it (1) a spur of the moment thing, or (2) something that was planned, but the planning only started a couple days ago, or (3) something planned long ago and they were just waiting for a good opportunity to act, which the protests yesterday provided?
The only difference is that one you have people with triggers, the other you have a remote person with a button. The result is the same.
When we begin using robotic fighters in wars, the same question will arise. And we'll make the same decision. We'll send the robots instead of human soldiers to minimize danger to our people, rather than give equal footing to the person or people not us.
I must say, I didn't expect this to happen so soon, but on the other hand, it was a practical decision --with lots of open questions, as well as precedence.
The entire thing, from the shooting of the unarmed man by police to this end seems to be one long chain of ridiculous over-reactions. I sense a theme.
In their efforts to find them, eight cops open fired on a truck with two women inside. Over 100 rounds fired, and the women thankfully survived despite multiple gunshot wounds. And of course millions of dollars were awarded to those women and none of the officers were fired as a result.
And remember how that situation ended? The cop killer holed up in a cabin in the woods by himself surrounded by hundreds of cops. They decided to burn the place down with the cop killer in it.
Only a few cops are actively over-aggressive and hot headed, but that nearly every other cop stands by as they let the suspect burn alive (or over a hundred rounds fired at a truck without any probable cause) says all that needs to be said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-34529611 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...
I'm guessing this situation needs a bunch of new procedures and definitions now.