Policeman fired for not killing a suicidal man | Hacker News Reader

Policeman fired for not killing a suicidal man

washingtonpost.com

Can we make any comparisons with how police in other countries typically deal with these situations? I'd like to know if this is a hard problem for all police everywhere, with similar outcomes, or if this is a problem unique to U.S. police, based on how they're trained.

Well, either this sort of a hard problem happens much more frequently in the US, or the police in other countries are much less trigger-happy and better at de-escalation, negotiation and other soft tactics.

The list of lists of killings by police officers in different countries is pretty eye-opening [1]. In many European countries police killing someone is always news and happens at most a few times per year, even in countries comparable in size to the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

Could a moderator please remove the "#comments" bit from the end of the URL of this article? :)

You can remove everything after the ? as is the case with most URLs.

This was a careless mistake on my part. I shouldn't noticed that the link directed to comments instead of the article itself.

This is total extrapolation but I wonder if one or both of the other two officers who arrived later aren't somehow more 'connected' to someone at the police department or in local government. Perhaps there was even a "it's him or me" type ultimatum.

I'd equate this to breaking quarantine in a medical situation. Sure, to the doctor's trained eye, the little child did not seem infected and could be welcomed in. This of course is a noble act for that doctor alone (putting himself at risk to save the child), but it is reckless in that it puts the rest of the medical team at risk without their consent and in violation of protocol.

We still shoot first and ask questions later. Anything else is Un-American.

The headline sounds like an onion article

this is proof that police officers in 2016 are meant to be nothing more than executioners. This is exactly what the current government wants America to be.

The insanity in our government and police departments is completely out of control. If they can't behave the way the people of the country want them to, then we have to get rid of them.

Suicidal man had a gun. Nothing to see here.

A relatively bad situation

This might be a decent justification if he had shot the man. (Which, sadly, other officers arriving on the scene did.) But firing an officer for not killing him? That seems nuts. Can it really be police policy that an officer must kill any armed suspect that he or she encounters? I'm not sure I'd want to live in a place where that was the rule.

I would have thought this was obvious but the down votes suggest otherwise. Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy. The chief made the tough but ultimately correct call in this case. Once an officer has proven himself incapable of acting with deadly force in a threatening situation, you don't keep him around to endanger the lives of the officers he works with. Civilians can't empathize with the context, but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work.

> Yes: hesitation to act once you see a gun in the hands of someone who presents him/herself as unstable is a credible threat that places your life and (perhaps more relevant to this situation) the lives of your fellow officers in jeopardy.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. If shooting someone is the only solution you have to a dangerous situation, then you have the emotional maturity of a neanderthal and you are the unstable person with a gun.

> Civilians can't empathize with this context but what the officer did, in failing to act, is tantamount to a cardinal sin in police work.

Like hell civilians can't empathize. Cops don't have the monopoly on dangerous situations.

If this is a cardinal sin in police work, then police work is fundamentally broken.

You sound like the perfect candidate for police work since you clearly place a low value on your own life. Asking people to endanger themselves on the off chance a person with a gun isn't going to shoot is nothing short of insane.

Well, if cops want to be lauded as heroes, maybe they need to act like it?

I respect EMTs. I respect firefighters. Interactions with any of them has been a warm and human one. They truly are heroes. They save lives with little regard for personal sacrifice.

Interactions with cops? Dehumanizing: a glaring symptom of the imbalance of power.

We have forgotten, to our own peril, an old adage: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

I think resorting to our own anecdata coupled with what the media presents us is a tempting fallacy. It's likely that most cops are good people trying to do the right thing. You might be hard-pressed to find even staunch BLM supporters who would disagree with that assertion. Where I think policing could stand to be improved is in the realm of situations involving obviously non-threatening individuals (particularly unarmed Black males). In general, our focus should be drawn to cases at the margin and not those in which decisionmaking is straightforward (e.g. armed and unstable people).

Of course.

Whenever one relates personal experience in a public fora, esp. one with pretentions of logical thinking, the default reaction's to relegate it to an anecdote. The self reported intellectuals cry: "It's an anecdote so it doesn't count!"

Ok.

But I'm not writing a paper. I'm merely relating my experiences and subsequent thoughts. Surely many black people went through the same experience when talking about their "anomalous" and "anecdotal" interactions.

Having a cop threaten me with a gun because I had the effrontery to claim a headache is an anecdote. But, it's one that indubitably influences how I approach subsequent interactions and -- moreover -- my whole stance on exactly how the power-balance in any citizen-to-cop interaction works.

Yeah, plural of anecdote isn't data, but I'm not waiting for a scientific paper before I start forming my own opinions of the world.

The perception of threat by a random police officer shouldn't equate to judge+jury+executioner.

However, due to the lack of consistent repercussions, it's much better for a cop to shoot first and ask questions later.

Ergo, if you aren't a cop and support this situation, maybe you need to think again.

Indeed, an officer who manages to subdue a suspect without shooting them faces repercussions.

Police officer sacked for not shooting black man holding an unloaded gun: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/police-officer-sacked-not-...

> “I told him, ‘Put down the gun,’ and he’s like, ‘Just shoot me.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you brother.’ Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it,” he said.

> “I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and de-escalate it. I knew it was a 'suicide-by-cop' situation.”

I'd be interested to know if that's common, or if it's a one off.

I don't have the source to hand, but I seem to recall reading that it is becoming more and more common. People who are suicidal know that all they have to do is wave a weapon (even an unloaded one) in the vicinity of a cop and they'll be shot dead. Here's a Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_cop

> I think resorting to our own anecdata coupled with what the media presents us is a tempting fallacy. It's likely that most cops are good people trying to do the right thing.

In one sentence you criticize mildbow for using an anecdote. In the next sentence you counter with pure speculation.

> In general, our focus should be drawn to cases at the margin and not those in which decisionmaking is straightforward (e.g. armed and unstable people).

It's clearly not straightforward, because both a police officer and a large number of people on this thread disagree with you. Simply stating that your opinion is straightforwardly correct is not an argument.

> Asking people to endanger themselves on the off chance a person with a gun isn't going to shoot is nothing short of insane.

This is a straw man argument. I never asked anyone to endanger themselves. I don't criticize the officers who shot the man--it was a tough call and while it turns out they made the wrong call, I believe they made the best call they could given the information they had. I'm saying that the officer who didn't shoot, should be lauded for his actions, not fired.

Further, people who apply for police work do so of their own accord. No one forces anyone to become a police officer. If you want to be safe, you should get a desk job instead of becoming a police officer. If you put yourself in danger and use that as an excuse to shoot people unequivocally, you're just a murderer. Part of an officer's job is assessing a situation and deciding whether lethal force is warranted. I don't blame an officer for making the decision to use lethal force, but it should be a decision. And if you aren't willing to make that decision, you should find another career.

Here's where you're mistaken: cops are at the end of the day mostly just normal people like us. There isn't some secret reservoir of especially heroic people to draw on. They are not expected to place their lives at unnecessary risk (like trying to negotiate with an armed, unstable person) on behalf of the public. They in particular must avoid these risks because they deal with large sample sizes. Attempting to negotiate with armed, unstable people is a great way to ensure you will eventually be shot dead by one of them. I didn't say this wasn't a case of an 'innocent' man getting killed. Law enforcement has a playbook for situations involving armed opponents that favors protecting the life of the cop, his fellow officers, and any potential innocent bystanders. There's nothing irrational about that in my view or in the view of countless researchers and policymakers who have designed that system (and who by the way have a lot more experience with the reality of law enforcement than random internet commentators).

Bottom line: If you display a gun and emotional instability in the presence of a cop, you have forfeited your right to necessarily walk away alive. If you think that's unreasonable, then I suppose that's your opinion.

> There isn't some secret reservoir of especially heroic people to draw on.

This is true, but irrelevant. The conversation at hand is about the fact that we are actively firing heroes for taking heroic actions.

> They are not expected to place their lives at unnecessary risk (like trying to negotiate with an armed, unstable person) on behalf of the public.

Again, this is a straw man argument. This is not what I am proposing.

Please read the posts you are responding to before you respond to them.

> Bottom line: If you display a gun and emotional instability in the presence of a cop, you have forfeited your right to necessarily walk away alive. If you think that's unreasonable, then I suppose that's your opinion.

That's not my opinion, it's the straw man you're presenting. Please respond to what I actually said, not to straw men.

My actual opinion, which you have completely ignored, is that when police make the correct call and correctly identify that a suspect is not dangerous despite the fact that the suspect is holding a gun, police should not be punished for doing the right thing.

> My actual opinion, which you have completely ignored, is that when police make the correct call and correctly identify that a suspect is not dangerous despite the fact that the suspect is holding a gun, police should not be punished for doing the right thing.

Well in that case, addressing this point directly, I would argue that defying standard training/protocol in a real life situation is among the few incontestably red flag behaviors one can observe with respect to cops and that is precisely when you should fire someone, before his behavior can result in tragedy for himself, his fellow officers, or an innocent bystander. The officer did the right thing at the expense of good situational judgment. We as observers have difficulty stomaching it, of course. But a cop's career spans a much wider breadth than a single encounter with an armed, suicidal individual. This is why good judgment is so important: you have to weigh this across all such encounters with armed persons, which then has a bearing on a highly relevant random variable (cop survives his career).

Okay, we're analyzing this situation in two ways, which I think are both legitimate ways to analyze it:

1. Looking only at this situation, Mader made the right decision which, if not for the other officers, would have saved the suspect's life. Looking only at this situation, I think we can agree that Mader's actions were correct, and the protocol is wrong.

2. Looking at the bigger picture, Mader made a decision which has bearing on a highly relevant random variable (whether he survives his career). But there is another highly relevant random variable: whether or not Williams, the suspect, survives the encounter. And during his career, Mader would make this decision hundreds of times with hundreds of suspects. I have no objection to valuing an officer's life over a suspect's, but even with that weighted valuation, it's hard to make the claim that a difference in the probability of Mader's surviving his career is worth him being required to leave a swath of dead bodies in his wake.

It's an extraordinary claim that every police officer killing every suspect with a gun they encounter is a better result than simply letting the police officers make the decision themselves. The police have the most at stake (their own lives and whether they've taken another person's life) so they have the right to make their own decisions on how to handle a situation. The police in a situation also have the most information about that situation. Even looking at the big picture, I still think that Mader's actions were correct, and the protocol is wrong.

EDIT: It's a bit disingenuous to approach this as if your stance is based in caring for the well-being of the police. This isn't a situation where you're defending an officer. Remember, you're defending someone sitting behind a desk firing a police officer who risked his life to save someone else's. Let's keep that in perspective.

Sure that's fine. My personal belief is that no matter which way you look at it, you're dealing with a tradeoff between the likelihood of a cop being killed and the likelihood of an 'innocent' armed and unstable person being 'murdered'. Whatever else you may choose to believe, there was no way for Mader to know with any certainty whether or not this individual would have shot him. He would have had to use his gut in this instance (and did) and that defies police protocol for the various reasons I outlined.

I'm okay with the nature of this tradeoff as currently interpreted in police work because, tragic edge cases such as suicide-by-cop aside, it's a policy that makes sense. I'm staunchly against this idea that cops should hesitate to neutralize individuals posing a clear threat (and I think an armed, suicidal individual qualifies) to them and those around them. There could come an unfortunate time where you or I might be a bystander in this situation and I'm not interested in a cop gambling with my life as well as his own on the off chance he can convince said person to stand down (which btw is stupidly unlikely considering they don't even have the training to do that). I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you.

You're appealing to fear of a hypothetical situation here, but we're talking about a real, non-hypothetical situation. There weren't bystanders, and Mader was trained to deal with the situation:

"Immediately, the training he had undergone as a Marine to look at “the whole person” in deciding if someone was a terrorist, as well as his situational police academy training, kicked in and he did not shoot."[1]

> I don't want to live in a world of cops hesitating to shoot armed, unstable people and neither should you.

The alternative that you're proposing is a world where cops are the armed, unstable people, except that now the armed, unstable people have power and authority. That's not a world I want to live in.

[1] http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2016/09/11/Weirton-...

So you're saying it would have been fine for the armed, suicidal man to be shot more or less immediately if a bystander had been present? Good at least we can agree on that.

If Mader had been trained to deal with this situation and expected to do so as a police officer, he would not have been fired. His having been a Marine does not change the conditions of his employment as a cop. You're basically implying it's okay to defy protocol if you view your own knowledge as exceptional. That's not prudence or good judgment; it's arrogance channeled into reckless personal endangerment.

You also seem to be saying that Mader risking his own life in the process of trying to talk down an armed, suicidal man is acceptable. Certainly in his own view. Not in the view of the department. There are all kinds of problems with what he did: statistical likelihood in these situations and establishing a precedent that defies protocol being the most pressing among them.

If you display a gun in the presence of law enforcement, you have an altogether different set of problems than the average citizen. Barring certain gun nut states with open carry laws, such a person has willfully forfeited the expectation of being treated like a normal citizen and I'm okay with that. I want to be defended against exactly that variety of morons, crazies, and criminals. That's just a sensible tenet of a functioning, civilized society.

If you don't trust law enforcement to carry lethal weapons and to exercise its best judgment in the face of situations with imperfect solutions, then feel free to go live somewhere else. But exerting your moral authority against an institution with many decades of accumulated practical expertise is little more than juvenile utopianist posturing.

EDIT: Oh and by the way, it's also worth quoting Mader directly, in case you think he has any misconceptions about how the police should act in these situations:

- "Firing me for it, it’s less of an eyebrow-raiser then to say the other officers are justified in what they did — which I think they were.”

- “They did not have the information I did,” he said. “They don’t know anything I heard. All they know is (Mr. Williams) is waving a gun at them. It’s a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don’t think they did anything wrong.”

> You also seem to be saying that Mader risking his own life in the process of trying to talk down an armed, suicidal man is acceptable.

Yes.

> There are all kinds of problems with what he did: statistical likelihood in these situations and establishing a precedent that defies protocol being the most pressing among them.

In a life-and-death situation, setting precedent is should absolutely not be a consideration, period. People's lives are more important than that.

> If you display a gun in the presence of law enforcement, you have an altogether different set of problems than the average citizen. Barring certain gun nut states with open carry laws, such a person has willfully forfeited the expectation of being treated like a normal citizen and I'm okay with that. I want to be defended against exactly that variety of morons, crazies, and criminals. That's just a sensible tenet of a functioning, civilized society.

I disagree. I think part of the fundamental disagreement you and I have is that I think giving someone a badge does not put them above the law or above ethics. Just because someone is an LEO doesn't mean they should shoot everyone who displays a gun in their presence.

> If you don't trust law enforcement to carry lethal weapons and to exercise its best judgment in the face of situations with imperfect solutions, then feel free to go live somewhere else.

This is, again, a straw man. You're the one who wants a law enforcement officer to be fired because he exercised his best judgment. I'm for trusting law enforcement to exercise it's best judgment instead of allowing pencil-pushers to determine absolutist protocols.

Also, "love it or leave it"? Seriously?

> EDIT: Oh and by the way, it's also worth quoting Mader directly, in case you think he has any misconceptions about how the police should act in these situations:

> - "Firing me for it, it’s less of an eyebrow-raiser then to say the other officers are justified in what they did — which I think they were.”

> - “They did not have the information I did,” he said. “They don’t know anything I heard. All they know is (Mr. Williams) is waving a gun at them. It’s a shame it happened the way it did, but, I don’t think they did anything wrong.”

I agree with him completely, and nothing there opposes anything I've said. You'll note Mader literally said nothing about "how officers should act in these situations". What he said was that the officers were justified in what they did, which I've also said.

You seem incapable of holding a nuanced opinion here or understanding the nuance of my opinion. I'll try to break it down for you, as simply as I can, and if you still can't or won't understand it, I can't help you:

1. When an officer encounters an armed suspect, the decision to shoot or not to shoot should be the officer's decision, because the officer has the most skin in the game, and the most information to make a good decision.

2. An officer is justified in shooting the armed suspect, because it's the officer's decision.

3. An officer is justified in NOT shooting the armed suspect, because it's the officer's decision.

4. Someone who sits behind a desk is not justified in firing the officer because he didn't shoot, because it is the officer's decision.

> I disagree. I think part of the fundamental disagreement you and I have is that I think giving someone a badge does not put them above the law or above ethics. Just because someone is an LEO doesn't mean they should shoot everyone who displays a gun in their presence.

First of all, I don't believe I made any such logical leap of 'display gun' -> 'get shot by a cop'. In fact, it's probably worth sticking to this specific situation of an armed and unstable man "waving a gun" at law enforcement. Yes, we absolutely have a fundamental disagreement as to how a person exhibiting that kind of behavior should be treated. I think he should be shot before he can harm anyone else (including a lone cop responding to the situation). Period. It's not even a close call in my opinion. And, as noted, Mader is a trained law enforcement officer who at least understands why that response is justified.

>This is, again, a straw man. You're the one who wants a law enforcement officer to be fired because he exercised his best judgment. I'm for trusting law enforcement to exercise it's best judgment instead of allowing pencil-pushers to determine absolutist protocols.

That's a hopelessly shallow argument. Let's allow a sole officer with a limited degree of personal situational expertise to ignore decades worth of accumulated research, based upon an order of magnitude higher number of cases and codified into a protocol. In fact, I hope you realize your assertion that cops should be allowed to wing it is profoundly, laughably ironic in the broader context of everything you've said. The next thing you're going to tell me is they should only 'wing it' when it meets your ethical standards lmao.

> 1. When an officer encounters an armed suspect, the decision to shoot or not to shoot should be the officer's decision, because the officer has the most skin in the game, and the most information to make a good decision.

Only to the extent that his interpretation of that specific situation is relevant to the subjective aspects of decision-making. When there's a higher order protocol, with specific situational guidance that deviates from what he might personally want to do, he should follow it. Period.

> 3. An officer is justified in NOT shooting the armed suspect, because it's the officer's decision.

Oh in that moment anyone can do whatever they want to do of course. A fairly inane thing to enunciate really. That doesn't exempt them from post facto repercussions.

> 4. Someone who sits behind a desk is not justified in firing the officer because he didn't shoot, because it is the officer's decision.

Actually, there's a great word we have for this in the civilian world: management. Review the play. Decide if it constitutes acceptable behavior. You would want cops choking unarmed black men to death to be held to account, right? It shouldn't come as a surprise that the same holds true in reverse. Cops are not unilaterally responsible for their actions. The very insinuation of such is carelessly misguided.

I'm fine with leaving this conversation as is. Anyone who reads through it in its entirety will witness you progressively moving the goalpost further away from an achievable law enforcement reality.

> First of all, I don't believe I made any such logical leap of 'display gun' -> 'get shot by a cop'.

You said, "If you display a gun in the presence of law enforcement, you have an altogether different set of problems than the average citizen. Barring certain gun nut states with open carry laws, such a person has willfully forfeited the expectation of being treated like a normal citizen and I'm okay with that."

> That's a hopelessly shallow argument. Let's allow a sole officer with a limited degree of personal situational expertise ignore decades worth of accumulated research, based upon an order of magnitude higher number of cases and codified into a protocol.

You have a great deal of faith in the idea that this is based on research. I don't have any such misconception.

> In fact, I hope you realize your assertion that cops should be allowed to wing it is profoundly, laughably ironic in the broader context of everything you've said.

Describing "making a decision that you have the most investment in making correctly, and that you have the most information for making" as "winging it" doesn't prove your point. You're just labeling things, you're not actually presenting information that supports your position.

> The next thing you're going to tell me is they should only 'wing it' when it meets your ethical standards lmao.

I'll add this to the list of straw men you've presented.

> > 1. When an officer encounters an armed suspect, the decision to shoot or not to shoot should be the officer's decision, because the officer has the most skin in the game, and the most information to make a good decision.

> Only to the extent that his interpretation of that specific situation is relevant to the subjective aspects of decision-making. When there's a higher order protocol, with specific situational guidance that deviates from what he might personally want to do, he should follow it. Period.

I'm not sure where exactly you think his interpretation of that specific situation stops being relevant, given that he is the only person capable of interpreting the full situation.

> > 4. Someone who sits behind a desk is not justified in firing the officer because he didn't shoot, because it is the officer's decision.

> Actually, there's a great word we have for this in the civilian world: management.

There's another great word: micromanagement.

> You would want cops choking unarmed black men to death to be held to account, right? It shouldn't come as a surprise that the same holds true in reverse. Cops are not unilaterally responsible for their actions. The very insinuation of such is carelessly misguided.

When the suspect is unarmed, management has a clear criteria by which to judge whether the danger of the situation warrants deadly force. When the suspect is armed but isn't pointing the gun at the officer, and says, "Just shoot me", management can't possibly judge the danger of the situation--it's far more complicated.

> Anyone who reads through it in its entirety will witness you progressively moving the goalpost further away from an achievable law enforcement reality.

My assertions have been consistent throughout. The goalposts have been simple and immobile: when confronted with an armed suspect, an officer has the right to decide how to best handle the situation. I defended this assertion by noting that the officer has the most information and the most skin in the game.

You've presented a variety of straw men, either as sophistry or because you don't understand my position, and when you finally responded to what I actually said, you merely claimed that research (which you did not present) proves you right and claimed that my position was an unrealistic way to enforce the law. Readers are supposed to accept your assertions on faith that you know best because "research" and "protocol" are words you've used, apparently.

And yet, the police forces of every other advanced nation on earth manage to deal with armed people every day without shooting nearly as many of them as the United States does. How do you think they manage that?

It would be very hard to get apples to apples numbers to make that determination. Let me be clear that the recent spate of high profile executions (and believe me when I say that's how I feel about many of these cases) of various unarmed black men at the hands of cops across the country constitutes an altogether different problem. This particular case, involving an armed suicidal man who was presumably affecting an unstable demeanor, is comparatively cut and dry.

Do you realize how much time it would have taken for the suicidal dude to put himself and his lowered gun in any kind of stance that would have been a danger to the cop behind him if his gun had actually been loaded? At least half a second I'd say. How much time would it have taken for the cop to squeeze his trigger in that worst case scenario? What cardinal sin do you refer to, the one that says you shall not kill?

Oh you're ignoring a lot of essential practical aspects of using a gun, the most relevant of which are (1) you can miss and (2) the target may not be immediately incapacitated. Guns don't work in real life like they do in the movies.

oh I am sorry, my military training was like in 1994 and I stopped shooting guns a very long time ago, I agree to disagree.

I'm not sure you realize you're defending a murder here.

I'm defending statistics. If a cop has say a 10% chance of being shot by an armed opponent, then this will occur within 10 such encounters, in expectation. This is ultimately why cops are trained not to gamble. I didn't say 'innocent' people don't get killed. I am saying cops aren't martyrs.

Does "trained not to gamble" means "SHOOT ON SIGHT" in your mind? Because that's what it sounds like. If in every situation the cop has to not gamble, that means he has to shoot everytime. That doesn't sound right to me. It _shouldn't_ sound right to you.

They could and should be trained otherwise and better. It's definitely done in many places throughout the world. This does not excuse murder. Murder is murder. Especially when they knew the guy was suicidal. But then they wouldn't have such stupid excuses for murdering innocent people, I suppose.

Ideally police should be about helping old ladies cross the road. As the name implies.

If someone hesitates to kill doesn't that prove they're a better person than someone who James Bond his way through? James Bond is fun but he doesn't really kill people, it's actors. Killing a real person should be the absolute last resort used by military officers or if your jurisdiction still allows for it (for some barbaric rhetoric reason), a court of law. Not police officers in the heat of the moment.

Another argument that might be only truish in France: police officers are not qualified, I'm sorry to say that, but the foot soldiers do not have the education, they didn't go to college, some didn't finish high school, it's fine as long they only regulate the city/polis, but once it gets philosophically tricky... They're not qualified. I've seen many police officers who just can't read without mouthing silently or even aloud. I don't trust the quick judgement of someone who can't read. Maybe I'm an elitist libertarian. I'm ok with that if it means I'm against killing people.

You are right. It's wrong. Those responsible are completely insane.

I agree that it isn't an obvious case as it was with a pre-teen with a toy gun (Tamir Rice) or unarmed cigarette vendor without a license (Eric Garner).

Here, the man was armed with a gun (albeit unloaded). He was unstable enough for his girlfriend to put the police on suicide watch during her 911 call. If the police had to take classes on handling various situations, this particular scenario would be a final exam question. Moreover, I'm afraid that a majority of our policemen would have flunked this question.

Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen. Each police officer working on duty is not only serving as the enforcer but also as a judge. He judges whether a subject should be let go, detained, or - shocking as it may seem - be put to death.

A well functioning civil society founded on the idea of some social contract is bound to provide its citizens with some rights and protection. The prospect of summary execution at the any sign of threat to its law enforcers appears to fall short of this requirement in my eyes.

The officer in question in the topic being discussed, Stephen Mader, acted ahead of his time. He demonstrated the form of policing possible in our society with further sophistication of the minds of our officers. He took decisions that prioritized the right (to life) of his citizens. He was fired for doing so.

I am sure he would have shot Mr. Williams, having had his gun trained on him, had he chosen to make any threatening move.

It is a fine line, I admit. But is this not what progress is based on? Have we not advanced our civilization by continuing to investigate finer and finer still of dimensions? Why do we continue to rely on such crude measures when it comes to law enforcement? Are we incapable of serving our citizenry with increased space for preservation of their rights?

> Law enforcement is meant to be complex, and should require sophisticated knowledge in law and philosophy as prerequisites for aspiring policemen.

While I certainly agree that society would benefit from imposing more demanding recruitment standards on police, I think you are taking things too far. We can't expect police officers to be philosophers, and frankly, a philosopher isn't guaranteed to do any better a job at policing than anyone else. Most debates in philosophy have no relevance to policing–knowledge of debates around the existence of God, the problem of universals, the relationship between mind and body, the nature of personal identity, the philosophy of science, etc., are unlikely to make you a better cop. Even those parts of philosophy which might have some relevance – in particular ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law – there are such a wide range of views that we couldn't presume any particular practical benefits from a philosophical education. Even if you believe that accepting certain philosophical views (maybe say Rawlsian liberalism) might make police behave better, to truly have a sophisticated knowledge of philosophy you have to be aware of diametrically opposed views also, and once you teach people both sides of the argument they might adopt the opposite position from you. Conceivably, exposure to some philosophical viewpoints might even have a deleterious effect on law enforcement (e.g. some philosophers have defended extremist political positions, such as Gentile's support for fascism, Heidegger's support for Nazism, Nozick's support for legalising slavery).

As far as law goes, certainly police need a basic understanding of the parts of the law relevant to their job, especially criminal law, criminal procedure, laws of evidence, civil rights, etc. However, I don't think "sophisticated knowledge" is required or would in most cases add any value. Sophisticated knowledge of the law is what we have lawyers for, and while most police could likely benefit from some greater education in the law, demanding every cop have a law degree would just be a massive waste of resources; plus, a person with a law degree driving around in a patrol car arresting petty criminals and handing out speeding tickets might get bored rather quickly.

No there's something really important to see here.

When a cop shoots a suspect, there's often little investigation or transparency. The argument against these things is that cops are putting their lives at risk to do their jobs, and can't do their jobs effectively if they have the public always looking over their shoulder.

But this incident shows that the arguments against investigation and transparency are bankrupt. This officer bravely put his life at risk to do his job. Investigation and transparency show him to be worthy of our respect. It isn't the public looking over his shoulder preventing him from doing his job, it's the aggressively militarized culture of the profession in which he serves.

No actually the logic here is really simple. Any rational system of law enforcement has to operate with extreme prejudice in a threatening situation. The reason is obvious: 9 times you might survive trying to do the right thing and then get shot dead on the tenth. These are often split second decisions made with paltry situational context (you know next to nothing about the person with the gun and how they might behave). If you have a gun and encounter law enforcement and don't IMMEDIATLY rid yourself of it and drop to the ground, what happens next is simply a consequence of statistics.

Statistically, some nonzero percentage of people with a gun are nutjob cop killers. That's the end of the argument right there. There's nothing else to be done because cops aren't trained to gamble on the situation (and keep in mind that cops are dealing with a large sample size, though these look like isolated incidents to us). It's super weird to me that this isn't obvious to people. Maybe armchair theorizing about situations involving guns simply has too much allure.

I think you're mistaking the police for the military.

To take this to its conclusion, statistically there's a non-zero chance that the next thing you eat could poison you, therefore you should never eat anything ever again.

It's always a case of trade offs and, in the case of using force, morality.

The real issue is the level of uncertainty a police officer should accept. In most European countries, the balance is legally set much more in favour of protecting the public in these situations compadres to the US

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Actually I am, but it's worrisome to see how far certain groups' expectation have diverged from reality. Presumably the cops should have just shot the gun out of his hand or shot some nearby grocery stand which would have caused an avalanche of fresh fruit to envelope the suspect. Book 'im, Danno!

> The reason is obvious: 9 times you might survive trying to do the right thing and then get shot dead on the tenth.

If police aren't trying to do the right thing, then absolutely nothing differentiates them from a gang.

I have no objections to officers erring on the side of self-preservation, but that's not what we're discussing here. What we are discussing here is a cop who did the right thing and is being punished for it.

We're also discussing a cop who failed to 'err on the side of self-preservation', which is an obviously relevant detail. The officer was facing a man who was emotionally unstable and had a gun. The cop certainly did the morally correct thing, but it was also logically stupid. Again, it's necessary to think in the aggregate about encounters with armed opponents. It's a logical misstep to treat this incident in isolation.

I'm not treating this event in isolation--I'm actually considering more than you, as I'm considering the lives of suspects across the officer's career in addition to the officer's own life.

I can only imagine that the reason you don't care about the suspect's life is an us-or-them mentality, but this is inherently the wrong mentality for police work, and it's exactly why cops kill so many unarmed black men in the US. Police need to keep in mind the lives of the people they serve.

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