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Comment by deathgrips | Hacker News Reader

Until someone is convicted of a crime in America, they are presumed innocent. I don't see why that should change just because a suspect was killed before they could be tried. All police killings should be thoroughly investigated. The statistic that 99% of them do not lead to legal punishment is extremely suspicious.

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To simplify, if someone shoots at the police first, and police shoots back, and kills him.... what's the point of the whole trial, if the suspect is already dead? Should they be on trial for the thing they were suspected to be doing? Or for the shooting at the police? Both? If you're a store owner that called the police on the suspect, because the suspect robbed your store, what good would it be, if you had to go to court and testify for a full robbery case (apart from the shooting case, where you're just a possible witness), if either way, the suspect is already dead?

Edit: to clarify, i'm talking about the suspected "original" crime, eg. a robbery, and not the shooting part. The shooting should of course be investigated, but i see no point in holding a full trial for the robbery part, if the suspect is already dead, and if there is no actual benefit for anyone.

You mean to tell me I can just call the police on a black person that happens to be in my store, they get killed, and we call it a day? Everything that results in some sort of police punishment must be investigated, even if the person is dead. Both the crime that may have led to the police being called, shooting at the police, and then police handling of the situation.

I'm not saying that... i'm refering to the parent post:

> Until someone is convicted of a crime in America, they are presumed innocent. I don't see why that should change just because a suspect was killed before they could be tried. All police killings should be thoroughly investigated. The statistic that 99% of them do not lead to legal punishment is extremely suspicious.

The first part, suspect innocent until proven guilty (for the original crime, the one police got called for), and i see no point in going further with the trial for the original crime, if there is no point to be made (eg. trial for robbery, having the store owner come to court, proving was there a robbery, proving the suspect was the one robbing the store, etc.).

The shooting (so robber vs. police) part should of course be investigated.

"Justified shooting" in American merely means that the police followed the protocols of his police department, which often say "shoot if you feel threatened". The rules of police departments should not in themselves be a shield from criminal liability. If cops shoot someone who was not guilty of a crime, they should be punished, much in the same way that if you or I shoot and kill an innocent person, we should be punished.

But if the shooting itself was justified (infront of the court, jury, or whatever other method of proving justification they implement, and you consider to be fair), because (eg.) the suspect started shooting at the police first, what does it matter, if the suspect really robbed that store, or if he started shooting due to some other reason?

If the suspect started shooting at police first, he is guilty of attempted murder, since intentionally shooting someone with a gun implies intent to kill. It's not necessary to obfuscate the issue with "justified shooting" which inevitably gets biased by the officer's subjective fears, biases, and paranoia. If I wrote down rules on a piece of paper in my house stating cases in which I could shoot other people, you wouldn't give a damn about my use of force policies if I killed someone because I feared for my life. Why should we do that for police departments? Their use of force policies are arbitrary and not legally binding. It shouldn't matter one bit if a police department allows their officers to shoot a detained driver if he quickly reaches into his glove compartment. Murder is murder regardless of the bureaucratic justification.

I was saying just one thing, for example:

- Suspect allegedly robs a store. Store owner calls police.

- Police finds suspect, yells "stop, police!", suspect starts shooting at the police.

- Police fires back, kills suspect.

- After that, the shooting investigation starts (or atleast should start).

All I'm saying is, that due to suspect being dead, the trial for the robbery is not needed (if noone gains anything from that). Yes, shooting, attempted murder, and everything else is valid and should be investigated, go to trial, etc. But the robbery itself, in my opinion doesn't that much anymore.

If the suspect survived the shooting, then of course, investigating the robbery should be done TOO (checking security footage, search warrant to find stolen stuff, etc), next to attempted murder etc.

I think that in order to determine if a shooting was justified, you must determine if the victim was committing a crime. That should be the standard. If you kill someone who was not committing a crime, you should be punished, regardless of what you believed at the time or what police department policy you are following.

I don’t think people are arguing that every police officer should be tried for every incident however in many countries there is at least an investigation. For example, in England there is around 12 incidents per year in which police officers discharge firearms and each of these is investigated extensively — regardless of the cause or justification. Every shot is accounted for. American police can shoot indiscriminately with impunity: there’s a middle ground available, very few people advocate putting every police officer on trial.

> American police can shoot indiscriminately with impunity

Are you sure about this? American Police don’t have to account for each bullet while on duty? They can shoot indiscriminately?

Or are you just saying this because it sounds sorta true and you don’t think anyone will disagree?

No, it’s a fact. Although things are improving, here’s an article from a few years back providing more insight:

““You can get online today and figure out how many tickets were sold to ‘The Martian,’ which I saw this weekend. . . . The CDC can do the same with the flu,” he continued. “It’s ridiculous — it’s embarrassing and ridiculous — that we can’t talk about crime in the same way, especially in the high-stakes incidents when your officers have to use force.””

“In New York, state officials now require a special prosecutor to investigate any death at the hands of police. In Texas, lawmakers recently approved legislation requiring local police to report shootings by their officers.”

“Until now, federal officials have relied on local police to report officer-involved shootings, but reporting is voluntary and typically occurs months after the fact.”

If you consider what happens in other countries, what happens when a citizen shoots someone, what is required of American police when they shoot someone and the accountability police face when they shoot someone unreasonably — it’s pretty clear “indiscriminately” and “with impunity” are valid descriptions of the current situation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fbi-director-calls-l...

Every shot is absolutely accounted for while cops are on duty in the US. What do you think happens when cases go to trial? “Sorry judge, we don’t bother keeping track of how many bullets our officers come back with, so we can’t prove whether it was the suspect who shot the gun”? That would be ridiculous.

What you’re referring to is a centralized federal registry you can do a simple query on. Yes, that doesn’t fully exist right now, because reporting numbers to a central federal authority is new, and currently voluntary.

But do you honestly think this means we don’t keep track of times officers use their guns, on a local level? That officers are simply not responsible in any way for using their gun on duty?

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