St. Louis: White Missouri cop kills armed black 18-year-old

[icenine]

Originally Posted by finnbow

We live in a country where significantly more law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in the single year of 2010 (177) as soldiers killed in Iraq in all years from 2010 to the present (118).

Yet, we expect them to make perfect split-second decisions at the risk of their own death or criminal prosecution if their split-second decisions prove incorrect after the fact. Furthermore, these decisions are made on the mean streets of the most dangerous country in the industrialized world with 300 million guns in circulation and a plethora of social problems. How would you like to have a job where your decisions had to be made in seconds and wrong decisions cost you your life, livelihood or freedom?

I've been to over 60 countries and the only places remotely as dangerous as the rougher streets of the American cities I've lived (DC, Baltimore and New Orleans) are Mombasa and Colon, Panama, and then only at night.

This is the backdrop for our laws which state that a cop must only reasonably perceive a threat (even if, after the fact, a threat didn't truly exist) before using deadly force. It's a chicken and egg conundrum. Some seem to contend that tough cops beget tough streets, whereas others seem to contend that tough streets beget tough cops. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in between, though skewed toward the latter IMHO.

OK Mr Law and Order (oh you have not been to Iraq by the way, and I doubt you would get off of plane in Honduras or El Salvador today) give me the statistics of how many people have been killed by the police in any given year.
Good luck.

[icenine]

The police have never stopped me from getting killed by an open carry maniac or burglar, serial killer, etc. Luck has. They do show up after the fact though. I would say the great deterrent is prosecution after the fact. But preventative law enforcement, unlike preventative medicine, is about as rare as being struck by lightning. If this is too complicated to understand I mean to say it is rare for the police to stop a killer during the actual crime itself.

After 50 years on the planet I have become cynical to some degree. I guess I could buy a weapon, but that would only serve me well by standing guard by my door at night with a round chambered, but I would be too tired to drive to work. The open carry clowns with their casual Starbucks brunch weapons in their holsters do not know if they ever pull that out of their holsters they better be ready to kill someone or be killed.

Plus I do not know if open carry transfers across race lines.

[Rajoo]

My perception is that by over committing their resources on a few cases, they cannot do a credible job of investigating other cases. So how is this deterring crime. To use a slang, it's all about the collar and not preventing crime necessarily.

[donquixote99]

Just had a kid in Cleveland executed for openly carrying an air gun. I call it executed because the shooter gave the kid no time to drop or surrender or anything....

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by icenine

OK Mr Law and Order (oh you have not been to Iraq by the way, and I doubt you would get off of plane in Honduras or El Salvador today) give me the statistics of how many people have been killed by the police in any given year.
Good luck.

And I doubt their cops are unarmed bobbies.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by icenine

Plus I do not know if open carry transfers across race lines.

In an open carry state, you can cruise a Wal-Mart with your Bushmaster and you're good to go..... if you're white.

If you're black, standing in that same Wal-Mart aisle with a BB gun (store inventory, by the way) gets you killed.

John

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Please quit with this straw man, Pat. It's unworthy of you.

John

All I'm saying is we have expectations of our cops to act like programmed, infallible robots on the mean streets of America. Having lived in northern Europe for 11 years and the reminder of my life in relatively dangerous American cities, it's simply ridiculous to expect our cops to act like their counterparts in (relatively crime-free) northern European countries.

I can assure you that I'd much prefer living in a relatively safe, mostly unarmed society with far fewer social problems and not one where we use legions of armed cops to address our seemingly intractable social ills. Yet, unless and until we solve these problems, armed cops and the attendant fuck-ups associated with them will remain part of the American fabric. Get used to it.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Just had a kid in Cleveland executed for openly carrying an air gun. I call it executed because the shooter gave the kid no time to drop or surrender or anything....

Same thing happened in Santa Rosa, CA, the county seat here. It was a little different from the Ohio case though. In Ohio it took 2 seconds from the time the cops arrived to the time of the kill shots. In Santa Rosa it took 9.

Both victims were of color.

Both victims were kids, good kids.

The cop in Santa Rosa was the Sherrif's Department firearms instructor.

He's back on full duty.

John

[donquixote99]

Hey Finn, are these kids OK for "poster" use? Don't want to offend by picking someone you don't like....

[whell]

Originally Posted by sheltiedave

Whe'll, if this were the end of a Redwings/Blackhawks game, this would only be a small tussle.

LOL! That's for sure.