Police shootings and mental illness

stevescoins (68)in #criminal • 7 years ago

Five things (although there could be a lot more)

1- peaceful interaction @ 1:47, shots fired @ 1:55. It blew up and required a decision in that small of a time frame
2- you might ask why the cop was "hassling" the homeless guy. we'd all like to be left alone right? but the homeless do commit a high amount of petty crime. in return, the PUBLIC tells cops to keep the homeless moving. you complain about jack-booted thugs, but you dont want bums shaking you down for change either. ("you" equals the public which wants two opposite things here)
3- mental illness ties into homelessness pretty consistently. how much do we want government controlling the mentally ill? do you want trash like obama or clinton or biden defining "mental illness"? but there we go again, the PUBLIC doesnt want nutcakes bothering them either. cops aren't trained to deal with the mentally ill AND making a nut vs criminal decision eats up reaction time, which is always in short supply in these situations. a nut using a knife is just as dangerous as a criminal with a knife
4- cop was in close to communicate with the guy; already inside the 21 foot rule...otoh, he HAS to be to interact with the guy. See Tueller Drill
5- I have talked about problems with non lethal weaponry before (see next). not only does nonlethal not always mean nonlethal, but making a decision to use non lethal vs lethal eats up more reaction time, and fuckups happen when both options are close to each other on the officer - 'member the deputy that shot the prisoner with his gun, then sat there with the "oh shit" look on his face? he thought he had grabbed his taser. (almost a digression - there are reasons why shooting to wound doesn't work; good material for another day). Im surprised that none of the responding cops brought in NL tools, tho.

to do the job the public tells him to do, the cop has to be in danger close, which limits reaction/decision-making time, especially when dealing with the mentally ill. the public, which sets the guidelines for what the cop is supposed to do, has conflicting desires about the mentally ill and how to treat them. the public also has some unrealistic expectations about use of force in general (shooting to wound, shooting a weapon out of somebody's hand, the spock grip, etc)

this was a "good shoot"/ a "good shoot" doesn't mean the target deserved to die, it means the officer made A right decision ( note I did not say THE right decision)

Most of the time, in the vids I share, I cheer when the target gets shot. Most of them are dangerous and violent criminals, and a bullet for them is a lot better than how we have degraded the criminal justice system.

Wasnt no winners this time
Story Source

In before somebody tells me all cops are thugs...SOME cops are thugs, but please learn the difference between some and all, and the difference between norm and outlier; in addition, those tyrannical laws the cops enforce? those came out the public...an often oblivious public that let's politicians get away w/ some egregious things.

["Non-Lethal" - from a previous discussion on resisting arrest] You know those "non-lethal" weapons? There is a CHANCE that any one of those methods is indeed lethal under different situations. The cop don't know if you have a bad heart (tased to death, dumbass), asthma (maced to death, dumbass), how fat you are (heart attack from a chokehold, dumbass), or a weak spot on your skull (pop goes the nightstick, dumbass)