I will never, ever be able to accept that it is ok for the police to shoot a person who they do not see carrying a weapon. There is no circumstance in which you can say you feared for your life if you did not see a weapon. And if you legitimately did fear for your life when you didn't see a weapon then maybe you shouldn't be a police officer.
LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
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Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#52The principal issue is: why was an unarmed man shot on his doorstep by the police. This focus conveniently absolves the police of wrong doing; e.g. "if someone didn't call in a problem, no one would be dead".
Ostensibly because he reached for his waistband instead of immediately putting up his hands.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#53Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards. Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely…
> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does
Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#54I'm glad this person is an adult located in the U.S. Hopefully this makes for swift and severe justice. I'm sad to learn the victim was the father of two children. And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening. I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position wher…
>" I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that."
Watching the video of the shooting in the hotel hallway a few days ago, I think that the answer is just go to the floor with your hands visible and don't move, never mind what they say.
I think there is a training problem. For instance, in that video, they control the situation using fear, that it's, I think, the correct thing to do. But then, when they guy is trying to comply with everything, almost crying and obviously confused, instead of trying to calm him, they keep scaring him.
When they shoot, they shoot five times, five times in a hotel hallway. It's like they are trained for war or even video-games instead of police action.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was my immediate reaction. My guess is that the blame and punishment will all be laser focused on the caller, in an attempt to avoid a public outcry for the actual shooter’s head. That cop shouldn’t be on administrative leave, he should be in jail for murder.
Should cops have to wait until they are actually being gunned down before they can use force to protect themselves? What happened was an absolute tragedy, and every measure should be taken to avoid anything like that ever happening again. The shooting was not justified, and cops need better training, non-lethal options must be expanded, penalties for this kind of "prank" must be made harsher. Everyone agrees on that.…
Statistically, policing is nowhere near top dangerous occupations in USA. And most causalities are from traffic accidents. It is safer and safer every year. So maybe they could give some of that safety to public too.
There is such a thing as exaggerating risks and you are doing that now.
Non trained members of public are expected to keep perfect calm and control. It makes Bo sense that expectations on random Johny are higher then those on trained cops.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person with good hearing I’m wondering what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this to avoid getting killed. Anyone know of any stats on the military service experiences of these shooter cops? Possible ptsd? Is this fear the officer had just the result of police training or was he dodging IEDs in Iraq? I’m just curious. And WTF is it with “gamers?”
US military people are often quite critical of the rules of engagement employed by US police. Even in potentially more dangerous situations the military typically is much more disciplined and slower to use lethal force.
Perhaps one answer here is to require military service before becoming a police officer.
That potentially could solve two issues; better trained police, and employment for veterans.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
All good points except for the last one even if you could even theoretically develop practical armor that could stop cal. 50 round it would still be able to kill a person through the impact force damaging internal organs.
Not true at all. If the person firing the round can survive the momentum imparted into their shoulder from the rifle, then the person on the receiving end can survive it if they're wearing armor that spreads out the imparted momentum similarly. Basic Newton's Third Law. Also, there are .50 BMG handguns (and no, I'm not mistakenly referring to .50 AE, I mean .50 BMG). They are stupidly impractical, but they exist. You…
The killer is not the momentum, but the impulse. Let's do some simple kinematics:
The M82 has a barrel length of 20 inches (51 cm, .051 meters) and fires a 45 gram bullet that, at the end of that time, is going 900 m/s. Meaning the bullet goes from having zero momentum to 41 Newton-seconds in 1.13 milliseconds. Meaning the shooter feels over that 1.13 millisecond period of ~36,000 Newtons of force on his shoulder. The person getting shot has to make that bullet go from 900 m/s to 0, but he has to do it over say 2 inches of distance or his organs start getting smushed. Meaning he's experiencing, over that 110 microsecond period, ~360,000 Netwons of force. The exact same momentum, but in the shooter's case it's like getting punched and in the shootee's case it's like getting your torso gummed on by a T-rex.
This is why going from 0 to 100 in a car can either be no big deal (if done over 60 seconds) or kill you six ways from sunday (if done in a few milliseconds when you crash into a wall or something).
We're also not getting into the power of a good muzzle break or the weight of the rifle itself, both of which considerably reduce the felt impulse by the shooter. You can look up people rapid-firing 50 cal rifles from the hip on youtube for an illustration of just how much you can tame the recoil of these guns.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect? I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough port…
3) Anyone implying that the police need to change is labeled anti police by a large portion of the population because this has become a political issue in the US and given the current political climate of identity politics there is really no reasoning with those people.
>given the current political climate of identity politics there is really no reasoning with those people.
Can I just point out the irony of saying there's no reasoning with 'those people' because of identity politics.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#59Since we're mostly debating the police action here, there's a short video available now of the fatal moment:
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html
The victim really does make a fairly unfortunate movement right before he's shot. Still I'm hardly in a position to say how far this mitigates the shooter.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#60I'm glad this person is an adult located in the U.S. Hopefully this makes for swift and severe justice. I'm sad to learn the victim was the father of two children. And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening. I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position wher…
> And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening.
I can understand that, but I recommend caution when it comes to judgement. Combat is every bit as technical as system architecture, and I think it requires related experience to judge fairly. Movies prepare you to critique a fighter about as well as they prepare you to critique a system security posture. Which is to say, not at all.
The best way to understand why police react the way they do is get a little experience with the real thing: watch footage of actual confrontations. Here are some examples:
https://youtu.be/uyEE_IpjstA https://youtu.be/2mnTE85LYFU https://youtu.be/p6mds5tDqDw
Combat is fast. When someone makes a sudden move, you have to react immediately or you will lose.
I'm mad that this went down the way it did, too, but from the description, it is very understandable. It is tragic that people with no combat background just don't understand what looks threatening and why. You'd no doubt consider it foolhardy to point an airsoft pistol at a policeman, but probably don't understand that a movement that could be a fast concealed weapon draw is just as threatening.
I do a little martial arts, and we train that if someone is hiding their hand, assume it contains a knife or gun. If you have your hand behind you or in your pocket and move it fast, I have to react as if it's an attack, as that's the only way to avoid it. It takes too long to identify a weapon.
Look at some videos of knife attacks, for example:
https://youtu.be/dqnwsljTVt8 https://youtu.be/ts2LCbDQkeg
They are fast and sudden. The only way you can hope to defend them is to assume a hand you don't see is about to hit you with a knife.
Which is why police are jumpy. This is the environment they work in and what they train for. If your day to day life involves no violence, your ideas about what's reasonable in that context don't come from applicable experience.
> I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position where police are pointing guns at me and shouting instructions, I expect I will be shot. I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that.
Move slowly. Keep your hands very visible and very obviously empty. Even if you can't hear the officer's commands, moving slowly and keeping your hands visible will keep you from appearing suddenly threatening, which should let you get the situation sorted out.
I can't help you if you run into a policeman who is a bully, but most of these tragedies are misunderstandings between good people. The very best way to avoid that is to do everything slowly and deliberately. Don't panic. Just move slowly and carefully. Pretend the cop is a dinosaur or something and sudden movement will provoke him.