RE: Fucking Cops: Volume II
November 25, 2015 at 1:20 pm
(This post was last modified: November 25, 2015 at 1:22 pm by Strider.)
(November 25, 2015 at 11:50 am)Chad32 Wrote: Officers are supposed to deescalate a situation. Not escalate it. That keeps people from getting killed. If you have a means to take someone down nonlethaly, then you have no reason to use a lethal weapon. This is part of why officers use the buddy system. One guy with a knife should not require lethal force to capture.
Yes, you are correct that officers are obligated to try and deescalate a situation. Obviously, this is not always possible and sometimes officers simply and erroneously neglect to even attempt it.
Saying that an officer does not have a reason to use a lethal weapon if a less-than-lethal alternative is available is not realistic. Imagine there is a guy armed with a gun and the confronting officer has a taser available. Will the taser be effective on the person holding the gun? Maybe it will, but it would be a very, very foolish thing to attempt. The situation doesn't change much when applied to someone wielding a knife. If the person charges with the intent of stabbing you, would you want to hit him with your taser and take your chances of it stopping his advance? Of course, I'm not using this video as an example of that because this guy was not even approaching the police when he was shot. Anyway, that particular "shouldn't use lethal force because they have non-lethal options" argument just doesn't hold up. There's a time for non-lethal and a time for lethal, and the mere availability of non-lethal does not necessitate its use.
In college, I had a course taught by a police chief. One night when he was still a patrolman, he encountered a guy outside of a bar with a large knife, swearing and threatening people. Tasers weren't available yet and the patrolman tried to reason with the guy to no avail. Obviously, he had no desire to kill this guy so when the man started approaching him the patrolman tried a defensive maneuver to disarm him. Unfortunately, it didn't work and the guy buried the blade up to its hilt in his gut. Another cop with him tackled the suspect. As for the chief, he had to have emergency surgery but pulled through, albeit with a nasty scar.
Long story short, he should have shot him and was well within his rights to.
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." ~ Benjamin Franklin