exhibit A: https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/939014159726870530
(warning to system-believers: the link contains video of police executing a prone, face down, unarmed, nonviolent, nonresisting, white male; the officer was acquitted)
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/footage...
Goes without saying this shouldn't be happening, but makes me think as a member of the public, step one is just, keep your hands where they can see them. (Which isn't big news)
The guy in the hotel room had been showing someone his pellet gun. Someone saw this through the hotel room window, thinking it was a real gun, and called the cops.
The cops arrived, expecting someone armed and dangerous. They seem really amped up on adrenaline.
A woman and the man come out of the hotel room, and the cop with the assault rifle screams at them to get down on the ground. They comply, but seem scared and confused. The cop asks if they are drunk, which they deny. He asks if they'll be able to understand all his commands, and they say yes. He keeps screaming at them and cutting them off when they try to talk.
The woman follows instructions and is successfully cuffed and taken away. The man tries to comply, but is sobbing and appears drunk. The cop gives him some (what seemed to me) not entirely clear instructions, and then tells the man to crawl toward him. After about 5 feet the man seems to lose his balance and try to pull up his pants, at which point the cop repeatly shoots him.
At the end the two cops try to get in to the hotel room, but the key cards they are given don't work. The second cop drops a key card after trying it a handful of times, picks it up, and keeps trying, seemingly extremely agitated. The video then cuts out.
Now, what police should do in a situation which combines data points (1) and (2)?
As it is, any police officer can claim "I felt threatened" and do whatever they want. That is 100% a recipe for thuggery and oppression that does not belong in a civilized democracy.
Proposal: always verify the gun. If you shoot someone that actually didn't have a weapon, it's manslaughter. If you plant a gun, it's murder.
Police officers carrying Semi-Automatic weapons should not get a free pass to act as robots without situational awareness.
officer 1 advances to cuff, officer 2 covers. so fucking simple.
Oh, and I completely forgot the fact that a decision like this should be taken in a VERY short span of time - you can't turn on intelligence for this, it HAS to be trained.
For me, algorithm adds "possible weapon", "suspect understands that we're pointing guns at him" and "arm reaching down" and automatically goes to "open fire" is the only possible one.
You know who would be terrified in a situation like that? Me. I have never even held a gun and I have no training whatsoever.
A police officer shouldn't be terrified in a situation like that. He had a suspect with hands in the air clearly willing to comply. This is such bullshit.
How does this not apply more to the guy who was killed? He had guns pointed at him, at least one of them an assault rifle, was drunk and surprised. There were at least 3 cops there who certainly had more training than the civilian in being in that situation. The blame lies squarely with them.
So applied to this case, the police officers should not have shot the suspect until they unambiguously saw a gun in his hand. Does that mean that they would be running the risk that the suspect had been faking his sobbing terror and his panicked, confused attempts at immediate compliance for the past three minutes, and that he had in fact decided to pull out a handgun to attack an entire team of police officers who had rifles aimed at his head? Yes, it does mean that they would be running that risk. By waiting until they could clearly see a gun in his hand, there would indeed be a chance that a suspect irrational and suicidal enough to try that could get off one or two hastily aimed shots in the general direction of the officers before being killed by their overwhelmingly superior firepower. But in the actual situation, and I suspect in a great many similar situations, an unnecessary death would have been avoided.
Moment you start yelling you've lost control of yourself. For a police officer with a weapon drawn that's a dangerous and career ending situation.
Most of these cases would be trivially solved by police taking two steps back hiding in safety behind a corner while the situation calms down.
Or here is a new idea: take a risk, after police here is to protect others, NOT themselves.