Posted on 07/21/2016 9:21:15 AM PDT by Morgana
Cops in Florida shot and wounded an African-American behavioral therapist lying in the street with his hands raised next to a troubled autistic man whom he was trying to help, according to the victim’s account and a disturbing video of the incident.
Charles Kinsey can be seen and heard pleading with the North Miami officers that their weapons were not necessary, and that the autistic man was carrying only a toy truck, according to WSVN-TV.
“When I went to the ground, I’m going to the ground just like this here with my hands up,” Kinsey told the station from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from a wound to his leg.
“I’m telling them again, ‘Sir, there is no need for firearms. I’m unarmed, he’s an autistic guy. He got a toy truck in his hand.’ ”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
So, question:
What should the citizen have done differently so as not to get shot? If you were them, what would you have done?
If NOTHING you could do would prevent you from being shot, how is it a FALSE dilemma?
If they had then an unarmed, defenseless man would not be full of bullet holes.
Words only have the power we ascribe to them.
From my perspective, “Clean shoot” means “Justified” or “Appropriate to the circumstances.”
The cop who took down the Fort Hood terrorist therefore had engaged in a “clean shoot.” Against a U.S. Citizen. Who was a commissioned officer in the Army.
Further, I think we spend so much time as a society getting spun up on wording and semantics that we end up disagreeing over details rather than substance.
For example, you and I both agree this appears to be an unjust shooting of a defenseless U.S. citizen.
Beyond that, does terminology really matter?
I’m still waiting for one of the defenders of this officer to tell me what they would have done differently. So far, crickets. If I’m still going to get shot lying on the ground with my hands up doesn’t that mean that the police can pretty much shoot and kill anyone anytime?
REAL conservatives should be outraged about this; summary shootings of citizens without provocation when they are lying on the ground is something we should expect in North Korea.
“Beyond that, does terminology really matter?”
Yes.
Terminology influences thought processes and how actions are viewed. It is a necessary prerequisite to creating an ‘us vs them’ mindset, it can divide and in today’s day and age there is no such thing as ‘context’. The very use of the phrase ‘civilian’ by police, which I have seen, is an incredibly negative and dangerous use of language. Most of us here understand what you mean by ‘clean shoot’, but were I a lawyer in a courtroom I could use it to a jury to argue that you (the generic ‘you’) have dehumanized a citizen not yet convicted of a crime to the level of an animal or enemy combatant.
You are right, words only weigh what we allow.
It just seems our force is much more geared towards a “clean shoot” than a “clean disarm”
This one is horrible.
Seems to me there was a huge mistake in leadership here.
No one took command, or did a bad job of it.
Otherwise it would have been quickly determined the guy wasn’t armed.
Sure, assume the worst at first- for safety- but then quickly gather information and get control.
Yea, to me “clean” shoot was always used in a hunting sense. I was there to take that animal, and due to that I wanted it to be clean. There were no other options, I was there for only one purpose.
I do not want my LEO’s thinking like that.
Again, words do only weigh what we allow, but they do weigh.
Thanks for the well worded reply, you summed up alot that was hard for me to put to words without rambling ha ha.
Totally agree.
A bit off topic, but I found this to be an interesting piece of journalism from the WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/
It allows you to filter every police killing from 2015 through a variety of filters. I found it interesting that in my state (WA) there were no blacks killed by cops at all. With the exception of a Hispanic and two Asians, everyone killed was white.
That the man had his hands up before he was shot, is obviously true. Whether the man had his hands up when he was shot is not necessarily established. Oddly, the Video does not cover that period of interest.
One would think that the man would keep his hands up and behave in a non-threatening manner, but one would also think that an officer wouldn't shoot someone who was behaving in such a way.
Perhaps it was a mistake or abuse on the part of a trigger happy officer, but after so many other examples of "facts" which turned out later not to be true, I am cynical that everything is really just as it has been presented.
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 far, we only have the man's word that this man was lying there harmless. Perhaps it is true, but then you have to make sense of why someone thought it was a good idea to shoot him.
So, what should the person have done to avoid being shot?
Well, I think for starters, a good idea is to stay away from the Police.
I think getting all the Cops to wear body cameras will certainly make it less likely that people won't get shot any more than necessary.
Getting back to my original point, the man's assertion that the other fellow was autistic and that he was holding a toy truck is not something you can necessarily accept until you can verify it yourself.
Officers are often faced with situations in which people will claim to have something other than a gun, and it is a foolish officer that will simply take someone at their word.
I’ll wait to hear what he was doing to cause the officer to pull his weapon.
In most cases, there are namely more than just two extreme alternatives.
Regards,
I've noticed that often more than one fallacy can overlap in one response. I regard the man's insinuation that my position was that street people should be shot as a "straw man." But yes, the False Dilemma fallacy can also apply.
If a person can be killed simply because the police officer wishes to, there is no dilemma at all, false or otherwise:
You are saying that there is simply no action that a citizen can take that does not result in a police officer being able to shoot them with no condemnation from you.
There really are only two alternatives: the officer is guilty of shooting an innocent citizen OR it is OK by you for an officer to shoot even someone lying prone, hands up and offering no resistance.
Unless and until someone shows video evidence that the victim reached for a gun or otherwise credibly threatened the officers or other citizens (and even then, please tell me how someone in the position shown in the video could in any way hope to get the drop on multiple well armed officers) All I can conclude is that there are *no* circumstances under which some people would condemn ANY police shooting whatsoever.
If you are going to accuse me of ‘false dilemma’ then please explicate what the alternatives are.
But I though that was why all the intense training. I can understand a cop being under massive stress, but if he has been taught “off target, off trigger”, then he should not be able to squeeze the trigger under stress. Say he screws up that one, and neglegently has his finger on the trigger, and stress causes an accidental shot to fire — if his training tapught him good muzzle discipline, then the bullrtveould not have hit anyone.
So under extreme stress, the officer had to violate not just ONE, but at least TWO rules of safe gun handling. That sounds like poor training to me. But if he received good training and just ignored it, then he is not fit to be a street cop with a gun. Stick him behind a desk.
No, the cop is the idiot.
“I don’t know” was not a good response from the officer. Actually really, really insane in itself.
Exactly.
“This just gets worse and worse. According to the police, the cop may have been aiming at the autistic man.”
I wondered why they did not shot him. Really. They were giving orders and he was not complying. He just sat there and played with his toy. The therapist tried to tell the cops about the kid but they would not listen. Like they did not want to hear.
One of my clients worked with a 4 year old brain. The horrors that were inflicted on this ‘man’ in the interest of his actual age were terrible.
He could NOT understand.
As a society, we’re broken when it comes to understanding out ‘broken’.
Anybody remember the movie WATERMELLON MAN?
"This man stole something."
"What did he steal?"
"Uh ... we don't know."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.