This is a tragedy. And people are sometimes set up by police, guns placed in their possession that werenât theirs, nor were they brandishing them. However, that has to be rare Iâd think. But on a different issue, in instances where suspects do brandish a gun in the presence of police and also ignore plainly spoken warnings to drop them. What makes a person point the gun at police, or at minimum ignore warnings to drop it? Letâs eliminate âsuicide by copâ where getting killed is their intent. For people not wanting to die, what damned reason do they have for pointing and/or failing to put a gun down? And can police be faulted when dealing with a person apparently so far removed from the capability to do the rational thing? To conduct themselves in a manner at least offering the remote possibility of surviving the encounter? If you want to live why do you show your gun to a cop and then refuse to put it down when commanded to do so?
This is another reason why body cams should be required on police. With all the doubt that can be cast on their actions, a body cam cold confirm their account.
I donât think a âdrop pieceâ is as rare as you seem to think it is. And other than suicidal people, I seriously doubt the scenario you depict really happens, other than LEOâs claiming that is what happened. Which is why cameras must be mandatory and ON AT ALL TIMES. I donât believe the LEOâs. Theyâve been caught lying/covering for their comrades too many times to trust their word.
Depends on the timeline. Iâm one of those people who tend to not react immediately to people shouting at me. Might even take 5-10 seconds to parse the situation and be sure I was doing the right thing. And thatâs unimpaired. Doesnât seem that should be a capital crime.
I in no way am suggesting anyone deserves death for failure to react properly and in a timely fashion. However, being impaired due to ingestion of drugs and/or alcohol is a choice, as is choosing to carry a gun while impaired. If youâre stopped by the police and your inability to think and react quickly and rationally is due to impairment of your own choosing, well, life exacts a cruel penalty for bad choices sometimes. No one says âToo bad the drunk/high guy plowed into a school bus head on and killed himself and five kids. But hey, he WAS impaired, guess we should cut him some slack.â Yet the cop threatened by a drunk or high person brandishing a gun is supposed to be the person to manage the situation to a successful conclusion. Um, if you do stupid, criminal, reckless things while impaired you should be prepared you might suffer some worst case outcomes. Like getting buried.
I agree that officers should wear body cams at all times, for their protection as well as the citizenry. Complaints of excessive force are drastically lower when officers wear cameras, either because they know they canât get away with it, or (more likely, I would like to think) because false claims dry up when the whole incident is on film.
At the end of the day, the fact that a large number of police shootings are coming to light that are OBVIOUSLY not justified, or at least are circumspect, that now doubt is placed on any shooting of a black man, even when it isâŚ
And itâs also worth noting the number of times a white person waving a gun around, clearly a threat, is taken down non-lethally, while a black person will be shot for reaching for what might be a weapon in a pocketâŚ
Yea really, a lot seem to think they are above the law. And Iâm getting tired of the âgoodâ ones covering for the bad ones.
Racism is plain wrong. Racially based decisions by cops are wrong. But the disparate treatment by police when confronted by someone with a gun is well publicized. Doesnât make it right, just makes it known. If I want to take a vacation and Iâm limited to Aleppo or Oslo Iâll choose Oslo, knowing the chances of getting harmed in Aleppo are drastically higher. Why would I choose to put myself in a dangerous scenario knowing a safer choice is available? Similarly, why does a black person make a choice knowing they have a higher risk of harm than others making the same choice? They can bemoan the injustice of the underlying conditions making them less safe, but being pissed off or dismissive of disparities of treatment due to their race doesnât help them see tomorrow, does it? Put the effing gun down and strive for equality in a different venue. Youâre not going to bend 300 years of bigotry to your favor standing on the berm of the road waving a gun at a cop.
Thatâs the same argument people make about women should know better than to go to a frat party, because they should assume theyâre going to get raped. Theyâre putting themselves in harmâs way, after all, and they should make better decisions.
I donât think that anyone should wave a gun around at the police. I sometime carry a gun, legally, in my vehicle. When an officer approaches my car, I keep both hands on the steering wheel and calmly inform him of the weapon before reaching for my registration in the glove box.
But Iâm white. Iâm not likely to get shot just for saying I have a gun on my person. The same cannot be said for a black person, and implying that the fault lies, even partially, with the victim is a slippery slope.
Should this guy have kept his hands in plain view, or dropped the alleged weapon when instructed? Yes. But if he were white, he would be 80% less likely to be shot, under the exact same circumstances and thatâs the problem here. Not that an armed and erratic suspect was shot, but that he likely would not have been had he been white.
To say nothing of the children with toy weapons and unarmed black men shot on a weekly, if not daily, basis because the color of their skin makes police consider them a greater threat.
is N.carolina a conceal carry state and if it is why did they need to ask him to drop a gun they said it was ok for him to carry�? just askin is all and IF he was even carring a weapon cops WILL lie to cover their own asses and those of their fellow cops
Why does a black parent put a toy replica assault rifle under the Christmas tree for their 12 year old boy? Why does any parent do it? Youâre sitting at home and the police call, âYour son was shot by an officer. He was pointing what turned out to be a toy AR-15 at him. Weâre very sorry.â
âWhat?! Oh no, I donât understand why this happened?!!! Couldnât you see he was a child?â
Yeah, itâs really important people should be able to lead their lives while denying the reality of the world around them.
Does it sound likely to you that a mature man would get out of a car with a gun, in the presence of police, get back in the car after being told to drop the weapon, and then get out of the car again, still with the pistol in hand? Does that sound like something that was likely to happen?
There are 325 million people in this country. Itâs entirely plausible that every day of the week somewhere police are confronted by seemingly sane people that nevertheless pull dangerous stunts for which there is no logical explanation. And some of those irrational, inexplicable stunts end up getting people injured or killed.
True. Also true is that 300 years of bigotry plus 10 years of cameras everywhere have made it clear that the claimed gun waving is sometimes a fabrication, that a lot of dead suspects were âreaching for weaponsâ that werenât there, and that a lot of cops have treated non-compliance alone as a threat meriting deadly force (this has been especially hard on people who have hearing impairments or who have mental conditions that make it hard for them to understand the situation).
More cameras, please: for justice; for transparency; for public education; and for research and evaluation by academics and law enforcement agencies who want to develop training and policies that will reduce the number of tragic errors without leaving police vulnerable.
No, it doesnât.
Yeah, itâs really important people should be able to lead their lives while denying the reality of the world around them.
âŚthe reality of the racism of shooting black people who openly carry guns- or not, real or not- where it is legal to do so.
Havenât seen many instances of police executing white suburbanites under dubious or improbable circumstances.
But hey! Maybe thatâs because of reverse racism!
Some people just canât stand that itâs getting harder to murder Blacks.
My parents put an actual AR-15 in my hands as a 12 year old⌠Wanna guess how worried they were that I would be shot if I were carrying it outside in my predominantly white middle class suburbs?
Or are you claiming that (arguably) poor parenting decisions justify the shooting (disproportionately) black children?