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Comment by HelloImDumb | Hacker News Reader

Again, I love that Monday morning quarterbacking.

Crazed gunman? Come back later. Crazed gunman with a kid? Come back later. Crazed fugitive gunman with a warrant out, with a kid, threatening to kill police? Let them settle down, come back later.

There was outrage in my town over a standoff with a guy (with kids) who was having attempted to be served on him by the cops for the dozenth time after a year on the lam, for driving drunk and unlicensed while out on bail for a previous serial drunk-driving arrest. He shot at the cops, screamed that he wouldn't be taken alive, and the cops secured the area, and the guy shot himself in the head. People said they should have left and come back later.

Makes a lot of sense.

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You know that being confrontational and absolutist doesn't help anything and is part of the reason why it's hard to have discussions like this in a reasonable way nowadays, right? Goes with the territory if this is Facebook, or reddit, or Twitter, I guess. But let's keep the insults, pigeonholing, and irrational black-and-white thinking off of HN.

I think you misunderstand me: I'm not trying to say what the police should have done. I'm just saying it's not a hostage situation.

It's also worth thinking about what factors lead someone to become "crazed", and whether killing them is the right way to deal with the problem.

If we've got data let's go with the data, if all we've got is opinions let's go with mine.

Where's the data? We'll probably never know because the police never (rarely?) back down.

And we (society in general) probably aren't prepared to carry out the experiment, but it would be an interesting experiment.

You're right though, the Monday Morning Quaterbacks would criticise LEO regardless. Probably.

Answer me this. Honestly. Is people getting served really more important than people's lives?

>Is people getting served really more important than people's lives?

She wasn't just being served court documents, the police were executing a bench warrant, meaning the police were there to bring her into jail. Moreover, the officers went into this knowing this woman was charged with 4 misdemeanors including resisting arrest, and then she didn't go to court and that is why they were there. Execution of bench warrants is one of the most dangerous jobs of law enforcement, even against non-violent defendants, its probably not good policy to tell officers to execute bench warrants...unless defendants threaten you with violence, in which case, not only don't bring the defendant to jail on the bench warrant but don't charge them with the new crime either.

It would be like saying, is giving a seat belt ticket more important than lives? Of course not, but that doesn't mean pulling a gun on an office is your way out of a traffic ticket.

If executing a bench warrant is so dangerous, maybe police should be more careful about how they serve them. For example, surveil the target and approach when the target is not holding a gun.

Yeah it would be great if police had resources so they could do surveillance for every defendant who is issued a bench warrant for failing to show up to court. Alternatively, it would be even better if the defendant's saved us all those tax payer dollars and a) showed up to their court hearings, or b) turned themselves after they were mailed the warrant and remove the need for the police to execute the warrant.

Unfortunately, unlimited police funding and hoping all defendants appear in court/surrender themselves are not real solutions. To put the issue in perspective, take the State of NY, at any given time there are going to be well over 1,000,000 open arrest warrants. At that scale even with all the resources and all the care in the World, police are not going to eliminate either officer or defendant deaths completely when warrants are executed. Just look at the society we live in, this defendant was being encouraged in real-time on Facebook to do something that ultimately resulted in her death and the child being shot. As a side I would really like to see these the alleged posts encouraging her not to surrender peacefully, depending on exactly what was said these individuals could in theory be charged with significant crimes themselves.

At this point the target has proven to be EXTREMELY unstable and is an enormous hazard. The kind of hazard you would call the police on because you would be afraid of them shooting someone.

I guess this shows that people on HN do not understand these situations as much as they think they do.

That's basically the balance that government makes, with the answer typically being "sometimes". Is people's electricity service more important than people who die from air pollution? Is getting on an airplane one hour faster more important than people who die from terrorism? There are no easy answers.

If he's a serial drunk driver, that may be the same thing.

> Is people getting served really more important than people's lives

If the person being arrested is a danger to others, there is no distinction.

This was not about a subpoena being served. This was an arrest warrant.

Thank you for your Monday morning psychiatric diagnosis of the deceased's mental state.

I downvoted you because I read your comment as needlessly confrontational and possibly trolling.

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