Posted on 07/21/2016 9:21:15 AM PDT by Morgana
So the obvious solution is to shoot the black guy laying there with his hands up. Got it.
Instead he lay on his back with his hands up because, maybe, it's very hard to lay on your belly with hands up. Whatever reason, he wasn't on his belly so the shooting was justified. Is that about it?
And now the media will go nuts for this video (ignoring all videos of non blacks being killed by cops) and black lives matter will shoot some more cops to get revenge.
rinse and repeat.
“The cops should have just listened to this fellow whom they’ve never met. “
DING DING DING. We have the winner.
There is a childish debating tactic that I refer to as the "opposite extreme", but it more commonly goes by the term "Straw Man" tactic.
I believe there are a wide degrees of options between not trusting what every street person tells you, and shooting them all.
After watching the video, it has become increasingly unclear to me why this man was shot, but I also simply do not accept his narrative of things on the face of it.
Given all the current focus on Cop/Black interaction, a man would have to be a fool to shoot someone with no good reason. Perhaps he is, but i'm not going to simply accept what an apparent victim says about it.
We've found out time and again that people who claim the cops shot them for no reason, were lying.
After looking at the video, that appears to be true. Still, too many times have we gone down this road of accepting whatever people say, all to discover that they were lying.
I find it odd that the video is interrupted during the actual shooting. If an investigation reveals that the officer did not have a good reason for shooting the man, then I will favor all appropriate sanctions on the irresponsible officer.
But at this point, after Travon, and Michael Brown, and after this latest incident in Wisconsin, I am very gun shy of merely accepting what people say happened in these sorts of incidents.
It’s not a ‘straw man’, it’s ‘Reductio ad absurdum’ and any post saying that a police officer is justified in shooting someone lying on the ground with their hands in the air just because ‘some people on the street lie’ is basically saying that a police officer is justified in shooting anyone, anytime anywhere.
And the bitter irony is that BLM (and their booster, 0bama) share responsibility for this. American cops are now on a hair trigger, and they have a laser focus on black males. Who can blame them, considering what is happening? Decent black men are going to be unintended victims of BLM’s terror campaign.
And you don't think this is a "straw man" for my position?
Using the justification that ‘some people on the street lie’ when the person who was shot has their hands up, no.
the logical extension of justifying what this officer did is saying that even if one is supine, hands up they can still be shot with justification.
If they were shuffling towards an officer and refused to take their hands out of their pockets? Yeah it would be different.
I mean even if the officer had no reason to trust them, the guy is lying there doing any and everything you or I could or would do to avoid having their patient or themselves shot.
So, what should the person have done to avoid being shot?
Actually, that is more like an example of the False Dilemma Fallacy.
In most cases, there are namely more than just two extreme alternatives.
Regards,
No excuse, this officer needs to seek employment in another profession. Thank God he did the kill the poor fellow.
“So if you don’t comply, they can just shoot you - regardless of the situation, I suppose.”
Exactly! How long will the average American citizen put up with this? We are American citizens, and the police are not kings.
This shooting was absolutely one of the worse I have ever seen. This officer should be up for attempted murder..... at a minimum.
As a former LEO myself, I can only say that I’ve never seen a “trigger happy cowboy.” At least in my jurisdiction, even drawing your weapon for anything other than a felony stop was rare. Of my peers, some were less mature than others, some were superstars, and some were lazy—In other words, the same cross section of personality types and foibles you see in other walks of life.
Sometimes the most intelligent and dedicated officer would have an unexplainable lapse in judgement and stack up his car, and sometimes the guy you had pegged for a well-intentioned idiot would surprise you with flawless performance under pressure.
My point is, whatever the reason this officer fired, I doubt his peers (or even him) saw it coming. The one thing I *never* saw was a cop signing into service all excited over who they might get to shoot today.
That said, choices have consequences. Cop supporters often cite the life-risking aspect of the job in their appreciation for the police, but the far greater risk in the profession is making a career-ending decision in the blink of an eye.
The latter often has a direct influence on the former as going through the mental flowchart on your use-of-force pyramid induces action latency that can get you killed.
In this case, it does not appear to be a clean shoot. I’d speculate adrenaline and improper weapon safety before assuming nefarious intent. It’s unfortunate for the therapist, and for the officer involved...But even more so for dutiful cops across the country whose lives will be at increased risk as a result of this video.
“ALL that matters is that the officer got to go home that night.
A wounded/dead ‘civilian’? well, you everyone’s a little edge /s”
Amazing what our fellow Americans can just brush off isn’t it?
Those were two law abiding American citizens lying on that ground. One not able to even process information. Through it all, neither showed any signs of aggression, as a matter of fact I am not sure I have ever seen any man in a less threatening position.
I have said it on other posts and I will say it here, if any person thinks this was ok, I do not consider you my countrymen.
“The guy put his life on the line to save his patient.”
Yes he did, and one of our officers tried to take it.
“does not appear to be a clean shoot”
A clean shoot is something you talk about when deer hunting not when defending yourself.
You see, even the terminology is inappropriate for use on American citizens.
Forgive me, I am sure I will get flamed for this, but that thought process is exactly what is wrong.
Three times?
It undermines any and all attempts to paint what BLM says as provocation; they really couldn’t have a better example of out of control police killing unarmed citizens without any provocation if they tried.
Oh bull. The only ones responsible for this are the police officers who failed to properly assess the situation and who recklessly fired at an unarmed suspect without a shred of evidence that their lives or the lives of anyone in the vicinity were in danger.
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