[Alberta's Child]

Three are some good, objective concerns voiced here on this thread. But I'm the kind of person who thinks that if you're facing a bunch of cops with their guns drawn and you ignore their commands to drop your weapon, you've really forfeited whatever considerations you might have been accorded as a human being ... and nobody has any reason to complain about how the situation was handled.

I'll go back to a bit of sage wisdom I once heard from someone who knows a lot about these things:

"If you want to eliminate all of the troubling aspects of police shootings, just let lawyers respond to these kinds of 911 calls for a few months."

[HiTech RedNeck]

And they would have come at this one with tasers, and...? There’s such thing as being a caricature of a statist, and you come nigh to that.

[Talisker]

But I'm the kind of person who thinks that if you're facing a bunch of cops with their guns drawn and you ignore their commands to drop your weapon, you've really forfeited whatever considerations you might have been accorded as a human being ... and nobody has any reason to complain about how the situation was handled.

We "forefeit" NOTHING. We are not SLAVES, you cowering piece...

We are FREE HUMAN BEINGS and the police have to follow the LAW, DUE PROCESS, and respect our CIVIL RIGHTS and the CONSTITUTION. We have EVERY reason to police the police, and complain, over the loss of these rights.

Your "might makes right" attitude is - literally - sickening. You want to see where it leads? Look at Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Communist China.

If the police are intent on murder, do THEY forfeit their rights? SHOULD a free people stand up to murdering police, or should we go quietly into death?

DAMN your groveling, jackboot-licking cowardice!

[Candor7]

The Police have to face perpetrators of crime every day.

Was this use of deadly force justified?

Police are trained to respond with deadly force if a perpetrator is brandishing or pointing a deadly weapon at them or at another.

A knife is categorized as a deadly weapon in Police training.The police are not trained to mitigate the use of force when faced with a deadly weapon.This is why all 6 officers responded as they did. They are trained to do so.

If Hall had dropped the knife, he would have been arrested.Hall wanted to close with the police or the police dog so he could stab with the knife.As a result he was shot by all six officers, and died immediately.

Is it the proper use of deadly force? According to police , it is the proper use of deadly force.However, it is unlikely that the City Council of Saginaw will agree with that conclusion.The council will not be able to reprimand the police officers involved, IF they followed police procedure ( The Police Union will not allow it.)

The answer to this situation is for the council to change police procedure, and indicate that a knife is not a deadly weapon unless the perpetrator is 5 feet away or less, ( not true, knives can be thrown.), and make a tazer response procedurally necessary.

I think the police were justified at law in the use of deadly force, it is a justified hoimicide.I do not believe the police were morally justified in this group homicide, but the upside is that not one police officer or the police dog was slashed with Hall’s knife in an attempt to subdue Hall and arrest him.

The Saginaw City Council must address the moral issue.It will not go away.