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LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

kansas.com

621–630 of 864 posts

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The worst case scenario? I’m pretty sure that is the scenario that played out. Police should be prepared to die wearing the badge, with civilian casualty being an absolute last resort. It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.

Given it was thought to be a multi person hostage situation, I think the worst case is every hostage gets killed and shootout ensues.

As bad as it was, it probably wasn’t the worst case.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#622
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There is no reasoning with people about specific issues when they are tied up in identity politics. That is true whether they are a liberal or a conservative.

No argument there.

However it gets a bit iffy when you accuse a certain group of people of identity politics.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#623
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective, they are describing a very threatening movement. You don't have a perspective here, you're uncritically adopting theirs, which is designed to present things in a certain way. 'the male' - not a person or a man; dehumanizing language 'turned towards the officers' - probably because he had just noticed their presence; this language implies intent 'the residence' - it's a house; unnecessary abstract…

I do actually have a little bit of a martial arts background. That's actually why the officers' story seemed plausible to me - I know both how fast combat happens and how easy it is for an innocent person to look threatening because of the ambiguity and pace of it. I can't say that the officers acted well or badly here - I wasn't there. All I am saying is that this sounds like a tragic misunderstanding to me. And tha…

I get the points you're trying to make, but I think you need to broaden your perspective.

For one thing, combat is something that happens between two belligerents. I've been in a lot of fights and I've never, ever, gone off on someone by mistake because it's legally safer to risk a bit of disadvantage than to create a situation where none exists.

I absolutely disagree that we need to 'doing something on the civilian side' to make civilians more accommodating of police anxiety. That's literally the recipe for a police state, and there's good arguments for the proposition that we already inhabit one, it's just that it's benefits and costs are so unevenly distributed and the structure of it so decentralized that it's hard to perceive.

Knowing police officers gives you some xtra insight, as it has me. I suggest you expand your awareness to include information from criminals, attorneys in the criminal justice system, and other participants. Right now you seem to think that because you know some martial arts and some cops you're far enough ahead of the general population that you're half expert already. I think that's more likely knowing one corner of a field and thinking you've seen the whole thing.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#624

My wife's family house was mistaken for a drug house years ago, it was around the block. Police came in cuffing them and shot the family dog when it got aggressive trying to protect the yard, and noone in family being able to restrain him as they were in cuffs This was in Canada. This happened ~15 years ago, my wife still traumatized and never leaves pets outdoors. Their family has quite the disdain for police overal…

I couldn't agree more, and I'm sorry to hear about your wife's family. Your thesis statement: > Police have made these mistakes without false information... I put the biggest blame on them, also important to not label all police officers the same as some are very upstanding citizens. Is exactly what I wish more people on this forum would read. There's so many people painting every cop with the brush of evil, or eithe…

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Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American police and military are trained to shoot for the largest target area, center of mass, as this is the least likely area to have unintentional results. Some examples of unintentional results are: 1) Missing. 2) Hitting another person. 3) Maming, or otherwise causing grievous injury such as shooting in the leg and hitting an artery on accident when you didn't intend to kill the target.

The probability of killing someone when you hit them in the center of mass seems a lot higher than that of accidental hits to the femoral artery. Also, surely you've noticed that when American cops shoot someone they usually go on to cuff them but don't make any attempt to administer first aid, so that quite a few people die from bleeding out. At least if you get shot in the leg you've got some chance of stemming the…

> The probability of killing someone when you hit them in the center of mass seems a lot higher than that of accidental hits to the femoral artery.

It is, but American cops are not trained to shoot to incapacitate or warn. If they shoot it is to kill and that is why the target is the center of mass.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#626

I don't see anyone here asking this: how many people are police killing who are not 100% innocent bystanders like in this case, but still didn't need to be killed? I mean, we're all outraged because they shot "some dude in his PJs" but doesn't that imply they must be shooting 10, 100x as many folks where we'd be thinking "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand" or "he shouldn't have been high"? Where I live,…

Every year in the US cops kill ~1000 people. Of those ~50% are unarmed or armed with something other than a firearm. ~18% are unarmed. Nationwide less than 100 cops are killed every year by some form of assault. ~25 people are executed via death penalty every year. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/... https://www.odmp.org/search/year https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year

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Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#627

I think a machine learning assisted scene assessment could be more accurate in this scenario. Considering AI is better at image processing than humans, finding whether the subject in the view point is carrying a weapon should be able to give the officers a second opinion when needed under these circumstances.

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Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#628
post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops act like thugs because the overwhelming majority of people they arrest/hassle/shoot are guilty . Period. However, this does not justify any of the collateral damage to the ones who are innocent - the scales of justice are not a probability distribution! The entire point of the rule of law is to have a clear dividing line between the acceptable and the unacceptable - every innocent person assaulted by the police…

> Cops act like thugs because the overwhelming majority of people they arrest/hassle/shoot are guilty. Period. You realize that judging acts is not within their domain and sphere of interest, right? Also, I’d love to see your reference citation(s) to back up this statement.

Do one ride along. It's not hard to arrange.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst case scenario? I’m pretty sure that is the scenario that played out. Police should be prepared to die wearing the badge, with civilian casualty being an absolute last resort. It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.

> It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police. The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence. We dress it up today and make it seem all noble, and selectively forget all the torture at Abu Ghraib, drop weapons [1], the famous song about the "Little Haji Girl," .. and the list goes on. The military get away with much more murder and torture than police. Many p…

> The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence. We dress it up today and make it seem all noble, and selectively forget all the torture at Abu Ghraib...

Are you suggesting that there's a better solution to handling conflict than relegating the use of violence to the state? If so, what's that solution?

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. What you are asking them to be is super human, indeed even better than a computer could in the same situation. No amount of "proper training" or "discipline" can prepare you to make perfect decisions based on imperfect data (your sensory perception, plus all the data that isn't present such as must be read from…

Yea this answer is total and utter crap. We aren't asking law enforcement to be super human, we want them to be educated and competent. The fact that the U.S is both lacking in training and competence is a well established fact. Law enforcement in the United States has proven itself to lack training and discipline by firing on innocent unarmed citizens many many times. I don't believe any other country in the world h…

> Yea this answer is total and utter crap. We aren't asking law enforcement to be super human, we want them to be educated and competent.

That wasn't an answer and it is well reasoned. Saying "nuh uh" as a red herring to put forth what excuses you believe, frankly, is not compelling.

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