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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

The facts presented are that, despite a frantic call about viscious dogs, the responding officers were able to assess that the threat level was low, and avoid shooting the dogs.

But you seem to be holding them accountable not for their actions, but their words later.

There is entirely too much focus on peoples thoughts rather than their track record of actions.

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If we take this heresay as gospel we have a situation where an on duty officer would have shot the dog, had they thought they could get away with doing so. Additionally they admitted as much in conversation, and I consider speaking about wanting to discharge your weapon during a call to be an action worth note.

Let's raise the stakes for another example. If a cop does a debrief after a routine traffic stop and says, "I was waiting for a reason to shoot this man where he stands", that's a matter of concern. It doesn't matter that the cop did the correct thing this time, because they're showing that the desire to kill someone is the driving force in their actions.

It doesn't just require taking the story as gospel, you'd also have to take the officers' words as deterministic of their actions (which is dubious at best), and you'd also have to interpret them in the worst possible way.

For instance, you can interpret disappointment in at least two ways:

(A) Disappointment that they were unable to apply lethal force regardless of the situation; or

(B) Disappointment that the situation did not call for lethal force, but had no desire to apply lethal force where it was not required.

You chose (A), but there's really no evidence presented for that interpretation over (B).

This is just another reason we should judge actions rather than words. Actions are much more objective.

Why is B much better here? It enables the officer to claim they felt threatened when no valid threat existed and then exercise lethal force in self defense (whether or not the threat was valid).

I can't think of any reason why someone should be justifiably disappointed they couldn't apply lethal force.

Intent is everything. Does that disappointment of not being able to justify shooting dogs extend to disappointment over not shooting a human being for other people working as police?

I simply disagree. "Intent" without any positive step toward realizing that intent, much less carry it out to completion, means little in comparison to a real action.

I don't claim that words mean nothing, but we seem to be weighting them much too highly. Especially when we have actual actions to compare it to.

Seems to me we are weighting the reaction to the reaction to them too highly.

Intent informs the end result ultimately.

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