191–200 of 316 posts
What happened to "THIS IS THE POLICE, OPEN UP" along with banging the door? The only situation where I understand a no-knock warrant is like when the police is actually targeting someone's computer and don't want to go through all the hustle of cracking the password.
USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under…
> nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon This is often part of the "rules of engagement" that military personnel are expected to follow; not only because they're expected not to shoot civilians, but also peacekeeping situations where firing on the wrong forces could cause WW3, as well as the very basic check that the target isn't wearing the same uniform as you and shooting in your direction by m…
I suspect you're missing something here or not communicating what you're trying to say very well -- military personnel aren't going to sit around and do nothing if they're being shot at, they're going to return fire, call for artillery on the source of the shooting, call for aircraft support to bomb the source of the shooting, call for a QRF team to help them destroy the source of the shooting, etc.
Even "peacekeeping" forces are going to return fire if fired upon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
May I ask why? I assume this is because many people think it is better that a left-leaning newspaper doesn't publish right-wing opinion pieces, but I would think that this creates a "bubble" and prevents readers from challenging their own opinions. A reduced version of this question would be: if Hitler/Xi/Kim were to publish an opinion piece in NYT, should they reject it or should they publish it?
For me it was not that it was a right/left opinion piece. It was a piece calling for the government to murder protesters which the editor solicited and published without reading. Nor was any context or commentary provided indicating such. (edit) You can also see, now, after the backlash, NYT agrees that it probably shouldn't have been published. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our…
While as a life-long military person I don't agree with his conclusions, you are mischaracterizing his article and I strongly suspect haven't read it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
News agencies shouldn't report that because the Senator didn't say that. He made it very clear he was talking about rioters and looters, not protestors: > Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants. And nowhere in the op-ed did he call for murdering or kill…
When someone advocates for "taking no quarter", they're advocating for killing people. You may say the average person doesn't interpret that phrase that way, but a former Army captain like Cotton knows full well what it means. The thing about the whole argument of, 'we only advocate cracking down on rioters and looters' is how is someone supposed to get that distinction right in the fog of a chaotic situation? Arrest…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
News agencies shouldn't report that because the Senator didn't say that. He made it very clear he was talking about rioters and looters, not protestors: > Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants. And nowhere in the op-ed did he call for murdering or kill…
When someone advocates for "taking no quarter", they're advocating for killing people. You may say the average person doesn't interpret that phrase that way, but a former Army captain like Cotton knows full well what it means. The thing about the whole argument of, 'we only advocate cracking down on rioters and looters' is how is someone supposed to get that distinction right in the fog of a chaotic situation? Arrest…
> You may say the average person doesn't interpret that phrase that way
Given that he used that phrase in a Tweet, and not in a military order, it's reasonable to assume he was speaking to "the average person" and using that phrase accordingly. And given that he has actually said that he was using the phrase colloquially, you're interpreting his words contrary to what he's clearly said.
And given that he enlisted in 2005, and not in 1905, is it even reasonable to assume that he knew about this ancient meaning of the phrase? Does the military still use this phrase?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What, specifically, do you think an “overwhelming show of force” by the military implies?
To me that reads as they’d send enough personnel to flood an area such that it would deter people from the worst aspects we’ve seen while allowing non violent protests. So any troublemakers would think twice about trying to hit an area to sew chaos (looting, rioting, setting property on fire, etc.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem? I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fau…
Is the bad guy a couple of cops who we hold to the impossible standard of not returning fire? Or are no-knock warrants the bad guy which routinely cause deaths for the sole purpose of keeping some drugs from being flushed down the toilet? Because one of these is very easy to fix and would 100% mean Taylor would still be alive. The other would be super difficult to fix and who knows if it would have saved her life.
Yes? I mean, no, they're not the only bad guy. There are other problems to address too and other ways to solve the abstract problem. But abstract solutions aren't the same thing as "justice", and these officers made the decision to engage in violence that killed an innocent woman. That's culpability, period.
Look: the whole reason we put guns into the hands of special people is that we trust them to keep us safe. And that trust should come with responsibility when they don't. The officer's judgement needs to be applied in circumstances like this, they aren't robots. If they felt, like you do, that the warrant was impossibly unsafe to serve, they should not have served the warrant. That's what the trust we place in them is supposed to be for.
And they didn't. Clearly they were wrong about the safety, but they thought it was safe, because they did it. And Breonna died. And that lapse in judgement needs to be addressed with justice.
USA Today has the best coverage of this I’ve seen. The NYT coverage of this is awful: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under…
> Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. I do. They should temporarily cover to safety, understand the situation, announce themselves and attempt to de-escalate. Only if gunfire persist after that, it's reasonable to use deadly force. That's the LAST thing they should do (because in fact, mistakes at that point will be final, with mortal consequences)