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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

So, the situation in the video goes like this: (1) police had reason to believe that the man was armed and (2) man made a movement that was looking like he was reaching for a firearm.

Now, what police should do in a situation which combines data points (1) and (2)?

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They should put a higher priority on "don't kill an innocent person" than on "immediately eliminate anything that could be a threat". Police officers should be trained based on the principle that the loss of an officer's life, while awful, is still less of a tragedy than the death of someone who could be an innocent bystander. They should be trained that when confronting a suspect, an outcome in which the officer and the suspect are both badly injured but alive is better than an outcome where the officer is unharmed and the suspect is dead. It should not be the role of police officers to kill anyone unless that person is unambiguously attempting violence or is planning imminent violence and cannot be deterred in any other way.

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.

Verify the firearm and attempt a non-lethal solution.

And would that be a good decision in a typical situation that combines said data points?

It should be. Society is better off when the trained, paid officers, bear the risk, rather than unarmed civilians.

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.

The situation was not ONLY about those two data points. I think you're conveniently ignoring other facts like: he complied with police orders from the beginning, they had ample time to handcuff him, the police officer was imprecise in giving instructions and constantly threatened to kill him, etc, etc, etc.

Police officers carrying Semi-Automatic weapons should not get a free pass to act as robots without situational awareness.

You appear to be fishing for an answer you are expecting but are not getting. Please explain why you want the answer to be "no" or "the shooting was correct".

easy. the kid was pinned down, face down, from the very start of the video.

officer 1 advances to cuff, officer 2 covers. so fucking simple.

See, here's the difference - I'm talking about a pattern, and you're talking about the exact situation. You can't train most people to act according to each individual situation in an intelligent manner, especially when situation is very scary, and those rare people who can be trained to do this are usually in special ops, not in regular police. So, when considering a police or military response to a situation, consider a typical situation with these data points.

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.

The officer said he was afraid for his life and "terrified".

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.

Very short span of time? He had minutes of saying things like "you disobey me again and there is a strong possibility you end up dead" "shut up" and "you do that again we're shooting you". And your excuse is that they're too dumb to not shoot?

> You can't train most people to act according to each individual situation in an intelligent manner, especially when situation is very scary

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.

Take two steps back, calm down and command themselves and the situation.

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.

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