https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-police-robot-c4-exp...
However, I'd be interested in hearing the perspective of people who disagree. Maybe I'm overlooking something.
[1] I'm assuming that the police had already exhausted options to resolve the situation non-violently and that a non-lethal robot wasn't available or viable (do they make TASER robots?).
Police in the states already get away with all kinds of corruption, abuse of power, violence/killings, so I think we should do as much as possible to avoid normalizing these kinds of tactics. The only comparable case that comes to mind is when police bombed an apartment block of radicals in Philadelphia:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/13/osage-avenue...
While not a sniper, this is the police in the UK apprehending a suspect with a machete. I've never heard of similar tactics being used in the US. And conversations with police have led me to believe they would actively avoid such tactics and instead resort to violence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY
You can actually watch dashcam/bodycam footage of police shootings. In situations where the suspect is armed with a bladed weapon, there’s usually an attempt to call for backup and subdue them with less lethal means. It’s just that there’s more often 1-2 officers instead of a dozen onscene.
Also note that, in the clip you shared, at no point does the machete-wielding suspect break into a full-on sprint towards any of the officers. In the police shootings I’ve seen, that moment is the one when police open fire, and rightly so: human reaction time is such that a knife equals or beats a gun within 21 feet or so. This is why you see the British cops backpedaling whenever machete man turns to face them—American cops have done the same in the footage I’ve seen. Also consider what would have happened if machete man here actually made an honest attempt to start killing officers. He would have been successful.
And it’s not like British police don’t use lethal force when it’s called for. Just look at what happened to the terrorist on London Bridge.
The sniper was a trained soldier that was an imminent threat to the police officers—he had already killed several and given his training, motive, and the premeditation of the crime, it was entirely likely that he would have killed additional officers who attempted to arrest him (by way of booby traps or similar).
This has nothing to do with routine police use of force, where you could argue that some police should sometimes take some more risks in balance with the public good.
+ It is really difficult to detonate accidentally. (Even when it burns it may not detonate.)
+ It can be shaped, so that the charge only moves in the intended direction. (So the first floor isn't at immediate risk.)
Did the sniper deserve to die? Wrong question. In an ideal world, a man in a bulletproof lycra bodysuit would have shown up and apprehended him bloodlessly. We don’t live in that world. We live in the world where there was a tradeoff between ending only the snipers’ life and endangering more of the lives of the cops. Whichever choice is made, someone gets the short end of that tradeoff[1].
So the right questions are
1) Who should have gotten the short end of the tradeoff in those particular circumstances?
2) How to we create an organization where people hold the values that lead them to make our preferred tradeoff?
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for...