General

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Meph

their life (which by the way is usually there to provide financial support for their families, not that you care you are in support of protecting criminals rather than police officers) due to people acting stupid.

I won't address the parts of your reply that put words in my mouth and/or that are illogical for any number of reasons (i.e., the bulk of it), but I will address the above quoted material (except for the saracstic ) because it was something I considered adding to my latter point about which is better, dead cops or dead civilians (fyi, they're not criminals, shady or otherwise, just because they did something a cop didn't like or felt threatened by), but decided to leave out for clarity's sake.

Even without reforms holding cops accountable for shooting in the situations we're discussing, I support having a lot more support provided to wounded cops and their families and the families of cops killed in the line of duty. And with the enactment of reforms clearly placing the risk in those situations on the cops, as I'm suggesting any moral, free society should do, such support would be absolutly necessary. I'm not talking about nickle and dime stuff that politicians talk up and that ulitmately amounts to jack ... I'm talking about complete public support for life for officers and their spouses, and for their kids through college. Paying for it would even be easy: we just take the money from useless welfare and civillian gun-control programs

I have no qualms paying people well to do a dangerous job, and taking care of them and theirs when that job results in harm or death--I do have a problem with letting a select group of government actors avoid accountability for "self defense" that would be labled trigger-happy murder were I or anyone else to engage in it when we felt threatened.

[Meph]

Yes. Me saying I would make slow motions and politely addressing the police and complying with their requests is illogical. So is stating that a cop reacting on instinct is illogical. And people reaping the benefits of their actions is illogical. That's all a bunch of hogwash.

How many times on this board do people gripe that society does not allow people to be held accountable by their actions anymore? Be it peoples driving, their raising of children, or any other number of things. The way you act in front of a police officer at the peek of a stressful and fast paced situation is just another example of you getting what you deserve. That is do you deserve to live or be shot dead? That answer almost exclusively relies on YOUR actions! Personal Responsibility. It is not just a distant memory of generations long ago. You act like a threat to their life then don't cry foul when they take the appropriate action to protect it.


And regarding financial support. I think most children would rather continue to have a father/mother in their life. Not just a check in the mail.

[John Satclaire]

You're not responding to my point: I don't disagree with personal accountability, and have consistently said the issue is what actions a cop may treat as a threat to which (s)he may respond with lethal force, and why the line is drawn where it is re: what's a "threat."

As I've pointed out, there's a stark and, as far as I can see, unjustifiable gap between a threat that justifies lethal force by a cop and one that justifies lethal force by the rest of us. If you'd like to comment on that, perhaps by saying why you think such a gap is justifiable, or that's not as big a gap as I claim, or that it doesn't exist at all... we could have a discussion. Alternatively, you could reconize that I'm not arguing against cops being able to respond to threats or that people shouldn't suffer "the" consequences of their actions... but that you have a different scope for what the reasonable consequences of a given action are than I do, and then state why your scope is more reasonable than the one I've defined.

Or, we could just admit we're no longer engaging and drop the matter. Given the content of your last post, I think the choice of which is still yours.

[Chachi]

now here's a question. Suspect is running from the cops and (while running) reaches for his waistline. Cops shoot suspect in the back. Suspect was found to be wearing excessively baggy pants and was pulling them up. Is the cop at fault because it was highly plausable in that situation that the suspect could have been going for a weapon?


(this event sparked the 2001 riots in Cincinnati)

[Meph]

I've already mentioned what I personally would have no problems as seeing justified. That is like the previous example a couple years ago with some dude and his wallet. Sure it's "only a wallet" but in THAT circumstance he made the officer do what he had to do.

A scenario; the guy slowly reaches back for his wallet, tells the officer "I'm reaching for my wallet" and again slowly pulls hand forward to display it.

B scenario; the guy is running from the cops, gets cornered, and decides to make a very abrupt motion to pull out his wallet.


There have been cases even where they now have the term "Suicide by Cop" because people decide that since they just broke up with their significant other, they will go on a chase, get out of the car, and do those very same acts of abrupt, threatening motions.

But I'm curious. When would you use lethal force against a cop? I'm assuming on duty officer, not a drunken bar brawl where he just so happens to be an officer.

[Meph]

Originally Posted by Chachi

now here's a question. Suspect is running from the cops and (while running) reaches for his waistline. Cops shoot suspect in the back. Suspect was found to be wearing excessively baggy pants and was pulling them up. Is the cop at fault because it was highly plausable in that situation that the suspect could have been going for a weapon?


(this event sparked the 2001 riots in Cincinnati)

They're running from the cops!

When was the last time an innocent law abiding citizen ran from the cops?

I don't even care if he had his arms spread wide like he's trying to catch butterflies and bubbles. Shoot 'em. To me that's a guilty plea! Why bother wasting the time and money in the courts just so they can get paroled early due to overcrowded prisons? It could all be so much easier if 2 things were done.

1) Less time (or even 0 time) for non-violent offenders
2) Repeat offenders (esp. violent ones) get sent to the town square for the guillotine.

No more prison overpopulation to worry about. And with more room in there we can get white-collar criminals in there for a change.

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Meph

There have been cases even where they now have the term "Suicide by Cop" because people decide that since they just broke up with their significant other, they will go on a chase, get out of the car, and do those very same acts of abrupt, threatening motions.

"Suicide by Cop" is generally the term for someone who makes it very clear they have a weapon and advance with purpose towards the cops. I have never heard the term applied to someone getting blown away as a result of the sort of ambiguously threatening gestures you describe. However, I spend very little time dealing with criminal law or the news relating thereto, so my understanding of the term may well be narrower than the commonly accepted definition.

Originally Posted by Meph

But I'm curious. When would you use lethal force against a cop? I'm assuming on duty officer

Um, unless the cop has drawn his/her weapon and threatened my life for what I believe to be no sufficient reason at all (and even then, proving that I really did shoot a uniformed officer in justifiable self defense for his illegally threatening me would be damn near impossible, so it would be a pretty desparate act of last resort)... never? My above posts have been pretty clear that my concern isn't about being able to use lethal force against a cop.

My concern is the different concepts of justification between cops and the everyday world. Example being, when a cop says "I shot and killed that unarmed, law abiding citizen because I felt threatened by actions X, Y, and Z that said citizen took," X, Y, and Z are sufficient for the cop to have a valid defense under your idea of how it should work... but if I, as a trained and licensed concealed carrying citizen, pull out my P7 and kill someone who was engaged in behavior X, Y, and Z, I will go to jail becuase a civilian shooting and killing someone who "threatens" them by doing X,Y, and Z is clearly a trigger happy gun nut or a vigilante.

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Meph

They're running from the cops!

When was the last time an innocent law abiding citizen ran from the cops?

I don't even care if he had his arms spread wide like he's trying to catch butterflies and bubbles. Shoot 'em. To me that's a guilty plea!

Assuming your lack of sarcasm, it's this sort of that s things up for the rest of us who want an expanded application of the death penalty and a streamlined process with fewer appeals. I know it's hard, but we gotta stop scaring the soccer moms when it's avoidable

More funamentally, the disgusting anti-American sentiment of this post makes me want to put this bluntly. Get it through your head: the same glorious Bill of Rights that allows me to worship whatever I want, say and print whatever I want, and own whatever type of gun I want (all great rights, btw) also allows me to run like Hell from the cops just because I don't like cops. Not having to give a damn what any government actor, be they a liberal public school principal, a nanny state federal legislator, or some pissant, thinks (s)he is God with a badge small town cop, thinks or feels about what you've done--unless your act has been made illegal by a law sucessfully tested against the Constitution--is one of the great things about America.

I am equally confounded by the Left wing pansies and the Right wing wing-nuts who each, abet in different ways, think it's a great American ideal for self-important government functionaries to have broad discretionary authority.

[/rant]

[Meph]

Yes because right next to the Freedom of Press and Freedom of Assembly is Freedom to drive 120 down the interstate to escape the po-po, or Freedom to jump fences to evade capture from the police.

Again forget about the fact that people running from cops put every single other citizens life in danger that they come across. Yea forget them. You want to have the "Freedom" to run from the police?

How the hell is that a freedom? Freedom to commit a crime and try to not go to jail? What Bill of Rights are you talking about?


And as far as streamlining and expanding the death penalty. I think I've made it clear I'm quite for this. My method is just even faster with less paperwork. And no the death penalty is not a deterrant. That is a BS reason for it, anybody who understands people know it's BS. I'm for the death penalty because there are just some people who are beyond help. "Oh life is precious" no it's not. It's abundant and overpopulated. The "miracle of child birth." What other "miracles" happen every single minute of every day? That's like trusting people that bleed for 5 days and don't die.

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Meph

Freedom to commit a crime and try to not go to jail?

Outside some fairly well defined circumstances, running from the cops is not, by itself, a crime. Driving over the speed limit for any reason is, of course, illegal. I'm talking about someone who has not committed a crime responding to the sight of a cop by taking off on foot down a public street. And it's not that I want to have freedom to run from the police, I already have that right as an American citizen: I don't have to bother with them unless they have grounds to stop me or arrest me. And no, my taking off running away from them is not, by itself, grounds for them to do so. They already tried that argument

As for the DP, getting into a discussion of what's faster and can actually be implemented in accordance with the Due Process clause seems... well, this is pretty clearly not the place for that