Posted on 09/09/2020 3:39:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Aug. 23, 29-year-old Jacob Blake, a black man, was shot seven times in the back by a white police officer. The original video, which only included the last moments of the incident, gave no context for the incident. But further video and police reports made clear what happened.
According to the police association, the police were called to the scene by a black woman who had dialed 911 to report that Blake was attempting to steal the keys to her car. There was an open warrant on Blake for third-degree felony sexual assault; the alleged victim is the woman who dialed 911, and she apparently had a restraining order against Blake. Back in May, she alleged that Blake entered a room where she was sleeping near one of her children, thrust his finger into her vagina, pulled it out, smelled it and said, "Smells like you've been with other men." The alleged victim also said that Blake sexually assaults her approximately twice per year.
Upon arriving at the scene, the police attempted to effectuate an arrest. Blake resisted. He apparently got one of the officers in a headlock and resisted two separate uses of a stun gun. He then disobeyed officer commands, walked around to the driver's side of an SUV and reached inside. A knife was found on the driver's side floorboards.
This is the definition of a justified shoot, by all available evidence. Yet Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris have chosen to side with an alleged rapist and against police officers attempting to do their job.
On Sept. 2, Biden said he thought that the officers in Blake's shootings should be charged, adding, "Let's make sure justice is done." Harris -- whose judgment on these matters ought to be doubted, given her conviction that Michael Brown was murdered and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a probable rapist -- agreed that the officer "should be charged."
But Biden and Harris didn't stop there. Biden traveled to Kenosha and met with Blake's family. Biden got on the phone with Blake -- who was handcuffed to his hospital bed, since he is currently under arrest -- and quoted the book of Psalms, adding that "nothing is going to defeat" Blake. Harris went further, telling Blake she was "proud" of him and saying that the Blake family is "incredible" -- an amazing description of a family wherein the son is an alleged rapist and the father is an open anti-Semite, according to his public social media posts.
The New York Times provided cover for this insulting insanity in a long puff piece about Blake, describing him as a hero who "survived and has begun to tell his own story." That piece left any description of his crimes to paragraph 17 and never mentioned that he resisted arrest and had a knife in the vehicle.
On a raw level, none of this makes sense. Blake is, by all available evidence, a villain. The police officer was, by all available evidence, acting within the scope of his duty. But in the context of a broader Democratic narrative that police are systemically racist, and that all criminals of minority ethnicity are victims of that system, it all makes perfect sense. If you think that American racism is responsible for a black man allegedly raping a black woman, this is a story in which there are only victims and there is no perpetrator but the system itself -- in this case, a system represented by the white police officer.
If we wish to live together in a society, this perspective cannot win. By lionizing Jacob Blake while decrying the police who tried to arrest him, Democrats justify and incentivize criminality. This must stop. Individuals are responsible for their crimes; police are necessary to stop those crimes. Those who disagree cannot be allowed to gain power.
I don’t think the majority of Americans can even see it.
Defending these criminals is just stupid, no matter the color of the cop or the criminal. You have to be really desperate to start riots over this. Yes, the Democrats, George Soros, and our foreign enemies are behind it. The Democrats don’t mind burning down the country and descending us into hell as long as they rule.
Every disputed election year, or when there is a Republican incumbent, suddenly the economy takes a huge hit. 1991-1992, real estate North East killed the markets. 2008, fake oil speculation, followed by a run on wall street killed the market. 2020, China virus, and Burn Loot, Murder, with their Chicom, George Soros directed friends, known as Antifa, tear up the country and damage the economy.
It’s a pattern, not a coincidence
In any society there are boundaries. We have stoplights, we have traffic lanes, we have speed limits - all done to protect society as a whole.
Now, again, we are faced by forces who want the boundaries stretched or even broken to allow them to do what they want to do - rape, murder, theft - and not be held responsible, and our government has weakened to the point that it dithers, it apologizes, it even tries to prosecute the people we have assigned the responsibility to enforce those boundaries for our own protection.
Enough.
It remains to be answered if this was a justified shoot. This man was shot 7x in the back for resisting arrest. Police were not being threatened by deadly force when they shot him.
Despite his criminal past, his resisting arrest and a knife found in his car, I ask myself: 'In today's world of high-tech, why isn't there a means for police to arrest a resistant criminal short of shooting him 7x in the back?'
the entire detroit lions football team walked out in protest over this shooting. They took the side of a wanted criminal, registered sex offender, accused wife beater over the police....
the national felons league is dead to me...
If I was a police officer would be deaf dumb and blind to black on black crime.
Jacob Blake is just the latest Trayvon Martin/Michael Brown/George Floyd.
Black criminals ALL! Yet because they were killed committing yet ANOTHER felony (while high on drugs) become martyrs to the Black community and leftist white protesters.
I like MY martyrs to be “GOOD” guys, not THUGS!
ALL 4 of these pieces of excrement, DESERVED exactly what happened to them. THEY CAUSED it! They killed THEMSELVES (excluding Blake, (still alive) not that he didn’t try hard enough).
Martin Luther King is turning over in his grave.
To all thugs and protesters/rioters WWMLKD?
Facts do not matter.
Just let the criminals do what they do according to BLM.
“...Police were not being threatened by deadly force when they shot him...why isn’t there a means for police to arrest a resistant criminal short of shooting him 7x in the back?...” [JesusIsLord, post 4]
Knives are most certainly deadly force.
Your chances of dying in a knife attack are higher than your chances of dying if you are hit by a handgun bullet.
If you are with 21 ft of an individual holding a knife, you are too close. The knife-wheeler is capable of closing the distance and inflicting mortal injury before you can react. You will lose the fight - even if you are equipped with a handgun that you have drawn and are aiming at the individual.
These facts might sound wrong to the uninformed, but they are derived from crime reports, physiological studies of human performance factors, and close-combat training developed by the armed forces.
Jacob Blake was a serious threat to the law enforcement officers in Kenosha: he had not yet been handcuffed, was still resisting, and a knife was within his reach, and they were within arms’ reach. At that moment, the officers were about out of options. They tried less-lethal means to subdue him, to no result; they had only a fraction of a second left, and they chose the course they did. Second-guessing them now will not improve things.
I agree. However, the reports of this incident does not say the man was weilding a knife. They said a knife was found in his car. The man was shot 7x in the back - no knife in hand.
Police used to have batons, and a baton would probably have subdued Floyd, but after the Rodney King riots in 1992, those mostly went away.
Floyd was reaching into his car. Officers did not know what he was going for, but a prudent assumption would be that it was a weapon.
If it had been a gun, the officers could have been killed.
“...the reports of this incident does not say the man was weilding a knife. They said a knife was found in his car. The man was shot 7x in the back...” [JesusIsLord, post 10]
Your response implies a clarity of vision, a timeline sufficiently long to permit leisurely examination of every move by every participant, and a calmness of mind that would foment rational analysis, full consideration of alternatives, and repeated testing of every hypothesis.
None of these conditions prevailed during the encounter. Law enforcement officers had the merest fraction of a second to evaluate the situation, consider alternatives, select one that might work, and implement it. And they had to do it under intense pressure, under massive physical exertion, in poor lighting, in the presence of great fear and anxiety brought on by the not-unreasonable suspicion that the suspect was within inches of accessing a weapon.
Not even the most highly trained individual owning decades of on-duty experience can make the “right” choice every time - assuming there is a “right” choice.
The fact that seven rounds were fired is of no importance. Law enforcement personnel are trained to keep firing until the threat is overcome. Some officers fire until their magazines run dry.
My initial response was asking the quetion (paraphrase): 'In this day and age, why don't police have a weapon that can completely incapacitate a perp without shooting him 7x at close range?"
I'm thinking a weapon that's much more effective than a taser. Possible there is no such weapon but hey, if we can put a man on the moon ...
We know that wildlife folks use weapons that can tranquelize an elephant in a matter of seconds so why put a similar option/weapon in the policeman's hand. This is not saying do away with the Glock - only provide them other options when on the street.
It takes a lot more than a few seconds to bring an elephant down with tranquilizers.
I did a little more research on the question of alternative weapons that incapacitate. I'm not the first person to raise the question. There are tranquilizers that can instantly incapacitate. However, the main problem in using them in law enforcement is that one size does not fit all. A tranquilizer dose and even a taser setting high enough to kill a 120 lb person might not even phase a 300 lb person. This seems to be the main obstacle in using a tranquilizer as a weapon against perps -- proper and effective dosage.
“...I’m thinking a weapon that’s much more effective than a taser...only provide them other options when on the street.” [JesusIsLord, post 14]
“...There are tranquilizers that can instantly incapacitate...one size does not fit all. A tranquilizer dose and even a taser setting high enough to kill a 120 lb person might not even phase a 300 lb person. This seems to be the main obstacle in using a tranquilizer as a weapon...” [JesusIsLord, post 16]
Whoever fed you the information has no idea what they are talking about. No such chemical exists. And the situation is more complex than administered dose in mg/kg: physical fitness, emotional state, prior activity level, nutrition, are just a few of the variables.
Any drug that will incapacitate a suspect in a very short time might kill just as quickly.
The same applies to bullets. Though it’s endlessly argued among enthusiasts, there is no amount of kinetic energy that will wound or incapacitate a suspect without killing them. “Stopping power” cannot be quantified; one reason the military establishment is explicitly forbidden to use it when drafting statements of operational need.
A passionate desire to have all the sciency stuff work out so that you can have your cake and eat it too does not guarantee success. Weapons design and development takes a fair amount of time; so many different constraints apply that full success is never possible.
I had come to the same conclusion: "A tranquilizer dose and even a taser setting high enough to kill a 120 lb person might not even phase a 300 lb person.".
‘In today’s world of high-tech, why isn’t there a means for police to arrest a resistant criminal short of shooting him 7x in the back?’
They Tased him.
Twice.
L
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