PHILADELPHIA (AP) — More than a dozen people were arrested and more than 30 officers injured in protests stemming from the police shooting death of a Black man they say refused their orders to drop a knife in a confrontation captured on video, Philadelphia police said Tuesday.
Can we take one day off from killing each other? Please. Just try it for one day. Don’t kill anyone. It can’t be that hard. I will let myself out now.
Cops just can’t resist passing a chance of shooting a person. They spend so much time at the shooting range and so much time fantasying about shooting a real person, that they will at the slightest excuse, if human targets are not available, dog will do.
Another Faux News KKKomment board proving that the GOP and its Trump KKKult need to be completely and utterly destroyed by all means necessary and available and without mercy, quarter or remorse…
If you haven’t completely had it with these people and don’t yearn desperately for their total destruction and subjugation, then there is something wrong with you.
I was begging for no protests, no violence, no fires. But I guess doing it on the TPM forums wasn’t the right venue.
Goddam I am sick to death of cops killing citizens, but with a week to go before the election I would hope to avoid rioting and destruction and attacking random cops. It goes STRAIGHT to Chump’s twitter feed and becomes the photo lede on every RW site. Bill Barr is doing a traveling Riots and Burning show as we speak.
Our local Philly morning news show had a former police officer, now attorney on air today. He said cops are trained to shoot to kill. There is no middle ground when an officer pulls their gun. They either shoot and miss or shoot and kill (or gravely wound). These two officers fired 10 to 14 rounds at a man about ten feet away. He was probably dead before he hit the ground. And the city is ablaze.
Does Philly not have tasers? Are bullets the only defense that officers have? I can’t for the life of me understand why the first reaction to a man holding a knife is to shoot him if there is any other method to defend yourself.
SERIOUSLY. WHY DIDN’T THE COPS USE TASERS FIRST?
For the sake of their own humanity, why don’t they at least TRY a less lethal method?
The local reporting is saying the officers didn’t have tasers and all Philly cops don’t have them because of budget issues. They didn’t even try to de-escalate the situation. They were on scene for probably two minutes before they opened fire.
Hammer - meet nail.
Honestly if police don’t take away from this that not a single one of them was injured in the initial event but 30 of them were injured in the backlash, I don’t think you can fix that kind of stupid.
People aren’t just violently lashing out. They are responding to violence. Criminal Justice and the social sciences have long told us that violence is contagious. This was the logical and knowable outcome. Stop shooting people who aren’t shooting you and the “riots” magically go away.
No one is going to riot over the guy with a knife getting tased – do Philly Police not have non-lethal options or do they shoot white people too?
If there are two cops in a squad car, then one should be issued a taser. Now, consider the costs imposed by this man’s killing. The cost of rioting in terms of destruction of property. The cost of injuries to multiple cops. It certainly seems “penny wise and pound foolish” to not issue tasers.
ETA: …and the cost of lawsuits!
All the peaceful protests in the world haven’t changed anything about this. No wonder shit starts burning when people feel they have no other voice.
I’ve known more than a few cops. Most of them hated to draw their gun. Some of them suffered from PTSD or depression after firing at a citizen. It’s a damn tough job when it’s crunch time; It requires a very cool head which is sometimes not there. I have also known a couple cops that shouldn’t have been cops because they were defective personalities (read: assholes). Don’t paint all cops with a broad brush. That being said, very basic systemic changes MUST be made. It’s blatantly obvious that our policing method is ineffective at best in many cases, and apparently quite often results in murder. I’ve lost count of the murders over the last year. I also don’t care much for police “unions” that do everything they can to hide bad cops behind a bureaucratic wall of protection.
When you get right down to it, all the busting of public employee unions in Wisconsin did NOT involve the removal of police unions. That was by Republican design.
The police knew he had mental health issues and was in crisis. So, ever at the ready to serve and protect (and armed with a hammer and spotting a nail) they shot him dead.
Fun Fact: The Philly PDs motto is “Honor, Integrity, Service Agency.” Also, “Have Gun, Will Travel.”
This is exactly what officers should be trained to do when they pull their gun. It is what everyone should understand a gun is for: killing. Not deterrence. Not disabling. Not disarming. Killing. That is what guns are for, and it is what everyone who points one at another human being must be assumed ready to do.
It is also why ‘pull their gun’ is the ABSOLUTE LAST THING they should ever opt for. As the senior Wallace asked, why didn’t they use their tasers?
Jesus H. Christ. Non-lethal options (not that tasers can’t kill) shouldn’t be the shit cops lose because of budget cuts. Lose the fucking guns, first. Hell, I’ll bet you Philly’s PD still has plenty of military-grade hardware they almost never need, laying around. Probably bought more of it with the budget they didn’t have room in for tasers, too.
Curious that they don’t have tasers yet the PPD has an armory full of so-called non-lethal weapons and barrels of tear gas and pepper spray.
It’s also curious that, according to video of the shooting, they’re also not issued batons. Those, too, are evidently reserved only for use on peaceful, unarmed protesters.
I think the evidence clearly shows that the color of the human’s skin is a deciding factor in most police shooting cases.
I’ve seen way too many armed white perps make it out of police stand offs alive to believe that this has anything to do with cops being trained to shoot to kill.
At some point can we please please start funding mental health in this country.