Quote:
Originally Posted by Meph  Fact is that in a stressful and chaotic situation police need to rely on instinct, that and people do dumb ****. Namely pull fake toy guns on cops. Or whip their hand from around their back with a wallet. Or a hammer. Or a bare hand. That is just ASKING to be shot. You don't mess with the police, you cooperate. And if you make sudden moves that have any implications of threatening that officers life then they are going to protect their life at the expense of yours. I personally have no qualms with those actions. They are justified given the circumstances. They have a thankless job to begin with. We don't need to make people think they are hyper-evolved. They are regular humans. They do their best. Cut them some slack. |
In a word,
No.
If it looks like a gun and it's being drawn, fine. The cop(s) may shoot without worrying about the chances that it's fake. But this issue of the cop(s) getting to err on the side of protecting their life at the expense of the civvies they're guarding is going too far when they can use lethal force against potential threats like someone "whip[ping] their hand from around their back with a wallet. Or a hammer. Or a bare hand." Wake up and smell the double standard: in the U.S. legal system, nobody would return a finding of "justifiable homicide" if a well-trained CHL holder shot someone because they felt threatened by the actions you described.
Far from "ASKING to be shot," those are all normal behaviors, and while I appreciate that there is added risk to the life of a cop who has to wait that extra second or less after someone makes a sudden movement like that, I'd rather have a few extra officers killed or injured in the line of duty than more cops thinking their personal safety may be protected at the expense of the safety of cititzens. Shoot first, and worry later what the civilian was really about, is a mentality best suited for U.S. troops patrolling hostile foreign cities (ironically, sometimes their ROE are more restrictive than those applied to the NYPD).
Is it fair to ask cops to endanger themselves that extra amount, which may not be small? At least they have the choice, knowing ahead of time that if they want that job, being entrusted with a gun and a badge, what the risks are. It seems more fair than putting the burden on everyone else, whose only option would be always act like a submissive robot around cops or get the
out of the country.