321–330 of 864 posts
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Of course there are scenarios out of our control. In this one particularly the victim walked out of the house and then was shot after he slipped up on one of the commands. Not to blame the victim, but his mistake lead to their over reaction. My point is even us citizens aren't experienced these situations and some guidance could help.
Maybe a brochure once a year giving tips on how to not get murdered by the police?
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SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. That is demonstrably false. For reference, start with this case.
Police were responding, in this case, to a call made by someone claiming to be armed and holding his family hostage. You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
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I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article: Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said. "The male then turned towards the of…
an absurdly violent culture with too many guns. the culture needs to reduce the violence, and remove the guns already... or simply state how many innocent people you're perfectly fine with being killed for any reason each year, including if that happens to be your own family because you believe guns are fine that it's someone else's issue.
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Right, most of these calls are designed to provoke no-knock forcible entry... "hostages actively being threatened", "domestic violence in progress", etc.
Neither of these situations should trigger no-knock forced entry. The response to most situations should be careful assessment of the situation at hand, the involved actors and the dynamic of the situation, especially since swatting has come up. Police truly need to expect that an anonymous tipster is trying to goad them into action. There’s few situations that should probably trigger an immediate forceful response,…
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> But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place. It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns . That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and t…
The obvious answer is: because you think they ARE armed, and if you wait until they start shooting at you, it’s too late.
What do you think will happen if a shirtless man on a porch a pulls a pistol, while you have your high powered rifle's scope locked on their chest while you are wearing body armor, positioned behind a police car, a few hundred feet away?
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They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.
Shouldn't they prepare for the most likely scenarios, i.e. it's a bogus call or misrepresented whats happening, or that the perp just wants to surrender? How often do these calls turn out to be actually dangerous? One in a dozen? A hundred? Should cops wearing body armor use sniper rifles to shoot someone on their porch several hundred feet away just on the off chance they might have a pistol in their waistband?
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Yes, the guy is definitely guilty of some degree of murder, because he knew what he was doing. However, I'm contrasting it with my country, where calling in such a situation would be very unlikely to get someone killed, because the police are much more reticent to shoot people. In such a case, the caller could be guilty of wasting resources, but not of murder. The only difference is the handling of each situation by…
> However, I'm contrasting it with my country, where calling in such a situation would be very unlikely to get someone killed, because the police are much more reticent to shoot people. Yeah, but I don't think that's reasonable to do. If you live in the U.S. you know this is a problem, choosing to still do it is more damning.
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We know what is different but we refuse to address it. I understand that many people feel the second amendment is very important, but we at least have to have the intellectual honesty to admit that shootings like this are a consequence of it. We might decide we are willing, as a society, to accept that risk, but we can’t pretend it isn’t there.
Do we know what it is? You seem quite confident. Americans have 101 guns per 100 citizens. Finns have 34.2 guns per 100 citizens. Icelanders have 30.3 guns per 100 citizens. America has 110x the murder rate than Finland has. America has 13,000x the murder rate Iceland has. Whatever the cause is, 3x the guns ≠ 110x the murder rate (or 13,000x the murder rate). A more interesting comparison might be to examine countrie…
You misspelled “I want to believe it’s not guns.”
I am from Ukraine originally. Poverty is the reason there. So yeah let’s have that proper safety net instead.
But when we are talking about this, let’s break it down a bit between different types of violence where guns are used: police shooting suspects, gang violence, run of the mill murder, and acts of terrorism. You don’t believe that the police are shooting suspects because the officers are poor, do you? Or that the Vegas shooter was poor? Or the Sandy Hook one? Gang violence is a result of poverty, but terror attacks (the US likes to call these mass shootings when the suspect is white and/or Christian), are not.
I think it is time to repeal the second amendment. It clearly failed to create an organized militia that could stand up to an oppressive government. The US police force alone is enough to suppress any rebellion by the civilians, and if aided by the military, no militia could stand up to it. You can have gun ownership without the second amendment. Individual laws could grant access to weapons. But it is time to switch from a loophole that lets us have all the guns unless specifically disallowed by a law to a denied first, allowed second system.
Do I hear you ask about all the criminals that would keep their guns anyways, and only the law abiding citizens would be left unarmed? I will buy that argument the day it’s applied across the board to drugs and abortions.
What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced. You are a cop with 5+ other cops. You all pull your guns. Someone comes to the door, groggy in the middle of the night. They may or may not understand you are police. They may or may not believe you are the police. They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence. We now begin the dice rolling process. Since every pol…
Not to be too blunt, but that's why they call it law enforcement. What's causing all the cognitive dissonance is the fact that law enforcement was summoned inappropriately -- i.e. on a an innocent person in a situation where no laws were broken and no enforcement was needed. If the drug-lord whose assassins raped and killed your sister is confused and groggy in the middle of the night and gets shot accidentally or ev…
I am a firm believer is due process and equal protection under the law for all. What you are suggesting is far from it, and a far cry from the ideal.
SWAT teams, as heavily armored as they are, are still police, serving under the motto of protect and serve. If armor and automatic weapons are necessary to fulfill that goal, so be it.
But SWAT teams are fundamentally not an extrajudicial force to kill people in the middle of the night.
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Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst. Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.