Remind me what the sentence was for the police officer in Wichita who murdered Andrew Finch?
When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop.
When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop.
You can downvote all you want, but the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US.
Absolutely. And one reason we're supposed to respect the police is that they take these risks. If they instead start shooting people first, they aren't taking the risks, they are creating them.
Being a police officer interacting with citizens is more dangerous than being a citizen...but is it more dangerous than being a citizen interacting with the police?
That's not one of the instances of police, say, choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. It's a situation where even someone courageous is going to be pretty amped up.
There was multiple cops aiming rifles at this guy, who was raising his hands when he was shot. The officer that shot him said he saw him move his hands at that's why he shot him.
Even if the guy had a gun, there was no way he would've had time to raise it, aim it accurately (at cops who were behind cover) and take a shot without police being able to fire at him first after clearly seeing it was a gun. Plus, at that distance, he wasn't likely to hit a cop who was behind cover with a pistol anyway, even if he was able to shoot many shots.
Cops aren't saints in Italy where I lived for many years, not by a long shot. And yet this stuff happens less.
Please don't spread misinformation about a tragedy that's been used to create so much division in this country.
1. He resisted arrest. He clearly stated his intent to resist arrest. He was given the option to be peacefully arrested, which he declined. In the resulting forcible arrest he was choked, which is wrong, he shouldn't have been choked, but he absolutely wasn't "just standing on the sidewalk" - he was resisting arrest.
2. When you say he was choked to death people might get the impression that there was intent to kill him or that he died on the spot from asphyxiation instead of later from a heart attack. (edit: roughly a heart attack. The coroner listed several pre-existing conditions that contributed, including heart disease, but didn't say "heart attack")
Since we've had literal riots over things like this I think it's appropriate to ask that we all try to stick to the facts.
2. The choking caused his death. He was therefore choked to death.
We have riots because people like you keep defending murderers and they keep getting away with killing people.
When you expand the use of a word so widely, it ceases to have meaning. You could say a traffic stop is violence. Court-ordered searches and seizures could be violence.
The only reason most people don't resist is the threat of more violence if they do.
Is kidnapping someone at gunpoint not violence?
You refuse to admit the difference between a peaceful and by-force arrest because you're expanding the definition of the word violence and apparently would like to talk about it.
You've expanded the definition of the word 'murder' to no longer require intent.
You've expanded the meaning of "choked to death" beyond what any reasonable person would expect it to mean.
If the police had gone out there and violently murdered somebody by choking them to death I would be very angry. That's simply not what happened and if you believe it is maybe you should examine exactly how you came to that conclusion.
However, I can certainly be wrong about this detail. Nonetheless, if police are deciding that an anonymous claim allows them to move to kill-first mode, then they are forfeiting the respect that taking risks for the greater good entails.
Sometimes, the people on the front lines aren't great at looking at things from a system-wide perspective.
Less-lethal weapons leads to them just tazing more people for contempt of cop (people who would generally not be shot). The net amount of violence increases because police use less lethal weapons to force compliance in situations where they had not previously had that option.
It seems like part of the problem is that there's an arms race. The cops need SWAT teams because citizens have Uzis, etc. Then the criminals get even more Uzis because now the cops regularly have them. On and on.
Also:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-k...
Impossible to know if it saved the person doing the shooting, or his girlfriend. Maybe. Given how incompetent everything else was done, it's not hard to imagine.
About the arms race, I agree. It's very unfortunate.
Who would not be more than a bit stressed if they believed this was the actual situation?
I don't know all the facts, and maybe reasonable people would conclude the cop acted in an unprofessional or even criminal way.
That's not the point: the point is this kind of thing will keep happening because of the mix of nervous people with lots of guns.
Yes, for a very good reason. Currently, incentives are such that police are rewarded with long careers and large pensions for avoiding mental healthcare.
Despite having excellent access to healthcare, police notoriously avoid accessing any type of mental health resources. They're afraid that they'll lose their jobs for it, which makes sense.
A cop's testimony is pivotal to most criminal cases, and if it is called into question because of the cop's mental health status, that can be a liability. Many places have strict policies concerning mental health and policing, as well.
It's absolutely necessary that the state implements mental health screening for police officers, because they refuse to implement it themselves.
Police are on the list... at #14.
Occupations more dangerous than being a police officer in the USA:
Logging.
Fishing.
Aircraft pilots and engineers.
Roofers.
Garbage and recycling.
Iron and steel workers.
Commercial truck drivers.
Farmers/ranchers.
Supervisors in construction and extraction.
Agricultural workers.
Grounds maintenance.
Supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers.
Construction labor.
And then police.
Police aren't quick to fire because of their fear for their own safety. Police are quick to fire because they've been trained that way. Culture tells them that they are heroes, and then gives them guns.
Apparently he attempted to by asking Finch to raise his hands, and instead the hands went to pull up his pants instead.
If true, and police/swat are called to the scene of a murder with additional hostages, then a person leaving the residence reaches for their waist area instead of complying with a request to raise his hands...its simply tragic.
But I assure you, if the officer didn't shoot Finch, swatting wouldn't stop. Its not like these guys would have said well we swatted the address and swat didn't kill the guy...so lets stop swatting. They would have sat in the safety of their own home laughing and virtual high-fiving each other for a job well done and planning the next.
Its become a scapegoat for mass shootings, which is unfortunate, but people who do this are some combination of psychopath, mentally ill, and/or on drugs. Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people.
Are you talking about the police?
A lot of fingers are pointed at the officer, which may or may not be useful here. At the end of the day someone was shot and killed, and all we have is the officer testimony that he asked the person's hands be raised but the hands went to his waistband. Maybe it is bullshit (I hope there was video to at least confirm the testimony and it wasn't an outright lie), but the reality is the officer was responding to a hostage situation with 1 alleged death already. I get it we all want to see some officer magically save the day and stop these tragic events from unfolding. Maybe their training confirms this isn't a real hostage situation, its kids swatting someone over a stupid video game, but society doesn't train officers for that, they are trained to respond, and if you have responded to a hostage situation, demand to see hands, demand hands be raised, and instead the go to a waistband, what follows is what they trained to do.
I see this stuff every day in mental health court, and mental health court (in my jurisdiction) is new and its voluntary...and I can confirm no one has been trained to deal with these people and you can't expect more from teachers/officers/judges/attorneys without that training...and that training only comes from society demanding funding, but they don't.