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Schizophrenic man, armed with a stick that had a knife on one end, is shot and killed by California police
(www.nbclosangeles.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
34 points (80.4% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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• A demonstrator's guide to understanding riot munitions
• Cops aren't supposed to be smart
• Killings by law enforcement in Canada
• Killings by law enforcement in the United Kingdom
• Killings by law enforcement in the United States
• Know your rights: Filming the police
• Three words. 70 cases. The tragic history of 'I can’t breathe' (as of 2020)
• Police aren't primarily about helping you or solving crimes.
• Police lie under oath, a lot
• Police spin: An object lesson in Copspeak
• Police unions and arbitrators keep abusive cops on the street
• Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
• When the police knock on your door
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What is so hard to believe about someone taping a knife to a stick?
He doubts this man had to die. Qualified police should have been able ro subdue him without deadly force.
Would you try and subdue someone like that? Because I wouldn't.
Would you do it if you had a taser, a baton, years of training, and a radio to call for backup?
Do you know they didn't try the tazer?
And no, I'm not taking on someone armed with a knife with a baton, what the hell is wrong with you?
My favorite thing about you making dumbass comments all over the place in this post is you obviously haven't even read the article lmao.
You don't even know if what your saying has anything to do with the situation. You have no idea what even happened.
Would you look at that, turns out they did.
Look at that. The wonders of reading.
There are more choices in any given situation than just "do nothing" or "extreme"
Such as?
Deescalate for one.
What makes you think they didn't try?
Because they're cops.
Interesting.
Are you a cop? Because people who wouldn't shouldn't be.
That's not what I asked you.
But it's the right answer. If it's not your job you don't have to be willing to risk your life to save another. You're asking an irrelevant question and you know it.
What right do you have to expect someone else to do it, if you wouldn't do so yourself?
I wouldn't fly a plane so am I not allowed to travel via air? I wouldn't drive a bus so I can't send my kid off to school on the bus? I wouldn't teach children math so I shouldn't let my kid go to math class? Make your question make sense please. I didn't force anyone to be a cop and as far as I know, no point in the history of the United States of America has an individual been forced to be a police officer. If you choose a dangerous job you have to be willing to face those dangers. You wouldn't trust a surgeon who's afraid of blood to perform open heart surgery, why should I trust a cop who is afraid of a knife to protect me from thieves?
Edit: missed a word
Yeah. Can and have, plenty of times, armed with nothing and fully expected not to damage the people living in the facility.
I can't say I've never gotten bumps or bruises and it isn't a job for everybody, but I'd argue that statement then goes double for someone who's expected to respond to this sort of thing in a less controlled environment.
How many of them had knives?
Several! Knives, improvised clubs, chains, I've seen all kinds of stuff
Wouldn't that be a spear?
I've now better clarified my skepticism.
Was: "... mark me as damned skeptical."
New and improved: "... mark me as damned skeptical that this killing was self-defense."
Would you personally try and subdue someone like that without deadly force? Because I wouldn't.
Here's an idea: Maybe we shouldn't be trying to SUBDUE people who are having mental health crises. Maybe we should try some de-escalation. Maybe we should try to get them to accept sedating meds. Shit, maybe we should hit them with sedating meds from a fucking tranq gun. I can think of several steps along the path long before we arrive at "shucks, guess we had no other option but to murder them" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You guys are off the deep end.
The deep end is murdering people with a mental health crisis.
Sounds like they exhausted every other option to me.
So just so I'm clear...
Shooting him = Totally justified
Incapacitating him = off the deep end
Must be a fun reality to live in buddy
You're off the deep end for thinking that would work, tranquiliser darts aren't really a thing for people.
Tranquilizers do work on humans though. So do tasers or several other non-lethal options, which is really the point people are making while you're choosing to be pedantic.
It's pretty common for a tazer to not work, for various reasons, and if it doesn't, your chances of getting your firearm out before they get to you are slim to none. Similar story with this hypothetical tranquiliser gun.
Would you take that chance?
Police are trained and supposed to take that non-lethal force chance, yes absolutely. I am personally not a cop, because I don't want to be in those situations. But people that DO sign up to serve and protect the public should be held to a higher standard than the general public, especially considering the tools, training, and resources (money) police forces have at their disposal.
You're not going to convince me the only way to safely end this altercation was by shooting the mentally ill man to death. We have to ask ourselves how we can do better so we can learn from these situations and less people die violent deaths.
To use your your logic: why do tranquilizers even get produced at all then? Why don't we just shoot every unruly animal? Wild and sick animals are just as or more dangerous than a man with a knife on a stick.
They did try other options before shooting him though. It unfortunately sounds like they ran out of options.
He had a knife taped to a stick.
They put numbered him.
They could have done a lot more than just kill him.
We don't have video anyways to know exactly what happened.
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