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Alton Sterling shooting.


James Arryn

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1 hour ago, Arakan said:

The USA has the wealth to create a great society, with injustice reduced to a minimum. But this will never happen because individualism is considered the highest value. So: all for me, fuck the rest. because it's their own fault if they cannot make it.  Unfortunately the US has that calvinistic approach to capitalism and solidarity. 

This is the root cause for everything. 

 


There are a lot of problems in America and some of them are to do with a seemingly too-common notion that helping those less off than you is a weakness, but this strikes me as an extraordinarily simplistic statement that doesn't relate to this particular situation or problem, like, at all.

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Oh yes, it relates to everything. Out of all OECD countries, the USA is the most injust one. Which is the root cause for everything. 

You wont see that kind of violence in a trully civiliced society. Where emphasis is put on "no one is left behind". Try to see the bigger picture. 

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From my review of the video and other articles about it, the shooting Sterling was a mistake, but it was a mistake any reasonable police officer would have made.  The two officers were in a struggle with Sterling.  During the struggle, one officer felt Sterling's handgun and shouted "He's got a gun!"

Typically, if you hear someone shout "he's got a gun" your instinct is going to be that he is holding the gun and pointing it at someone.  From the second officer's perspective, in the split second that he's struggling with Sterling and hears his partner shout 'gun', his first thought is probably that his partner is in immediate danger and that deadly force is justified.

This highlights a gap in officer training.  One the one hand, they're trained to shout out "he's got a gun" or "gun" if the subject has a weapon.  On the other hand, shouting it during a high intensity struggle without the context that it was in the subject's pocket escalated the situation. 

During a stressful situation, everyone including law enforcement officers are going to revert to training or muscle memory.  The first officer's training led him to shout 'gun', the second officer's training led him to open fire.  It was a mistake, but a reasonable one given the totality of the circumstances.

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56 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

During a stressful situation, everyone including law enforcement officers are going to revert to training or muscle memory.  The first officer's training led him to shout 'gun', the second officer's training led him to open fire.  It was a mistake, but a reasonable one given the totality of the circumstances.

I don't see a single reason why this would be considered as just a mistake, and it's insane to think that it could EVER be considered a reasonable one.

If police officers can shoot people and shrug it off as a "reasonable mistake", then you better believe it's only a matter of time before people start packing guns for protection from the police itself. And we can only imagine what that will lead to.

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I completely disagree that it was a reasonable mistake. I think there were several mistakes that lead to the situation escalating in the first place. I understand that some people who don't want to be arrested will struggle - isn't that pretty much a given that an officer will encounter that quite often? I'd call that a job description. Sure, each encounter will have some level of stress, but it's also something officers need to be trained to handle so this type of thing doesn't happen. I don't know what happened leading up to this, but initial approach, de-escalating the situation, calmly stating the suspect has a gun in his pocket - all of that should have happened and I'm not confident it was. We can hear that the officer reporting the gun was anything but calm.

Look, I get it - the man was struggling, he did have a gun on him - yes, this was a stressful situation. I find it hard to believe, however, that it isn't a situation that happens daily and therefore the officers should have a standard response and procedure, and that should not include getting trigger-happy. I don't expect officers to be perfect in all situations, but they should have and use tools that minimizes these situations. By saying, oh yes, it was stressful and I can clearly understand how this happened doesn't help make this better because it relieves the officers of all responsibility. They do have a greater responsibility, so I am in favor of giving them some leeway and benefit of the doubt, but even in cases where the officer is not found to be at reasonable fault, there need to be some type of consequences.

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43 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

BBW,

If the allegations in the Minneapolis shooting prove true, how could that shooting be justified?  If the man was complying with the officer's instructions?

We don't have the complete video of what happened, so it's hard to say for sure.  On the video, the officer says that he told the driver not to reach for anything.  The passenger says that he was complying with instructions.  We don't yet know for sure what really happened.

36 minutes ago, baxus said:

I don't see a single reason why this would be considered as just a mistake, and it's insane to think that it could EVER be considered a reasonable one.

An unarmed man was shot dead by the police. Someone must be held accountable. If police officers can do things like these and shrug it off as a "reasonable mistake", then you better believe it's only a matter of time before people start packing guns for protection from the police itself. And we can only imagine what that will lead to.

Apparently Sterling was packing heat to protect himself from the police, and this is what it led to.

As a side note, whether or not the subject was 'armed' has little to do with it.  An unarmed subject can get access to the officer's weapon, especially in a close quarters struggle.  Approximately 10% of all officer deaths are from their own weapon.  Further, in these intense situations, police aren't expected to make a split second determination as to whether they can defeat an unarmed opponent in hand to hand combat.

For example, say a 5'1 female police officer is dealing with a 6'1 violent male subject who is unarmed.  She isn't expected to risk her life by going after him with a baton, and risk the previously unarmed man getting a hold of her sidearm.  That is an extreme example, but you can't have different rules for different officers.  You can't tell a male police officer that he has to go hands on while a female doesn't.  There is one standard for all officers.

Now, many police forces have threat continuums, which state that if a subject is unarmed, you use your baton (for example).  If he has a knife, you use a taser (for example).  But at the end of the day, once you're in that type of close quarters struggle pretty much all rules are off.  Once a subject is struggling/fighting back the threshold for deadly force is much lower.

35 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

I completely disagree that it was a reasonable mistake. I think there were several mistakes that lead to the situation escalating in the first place. I understand that some people who don't want to be arrested will struggle - isn't that pretty much a given that an officer will encounter that quite often? I'd call that a job description. Sure, each encounter will have some level of stress, but it's also something officers need to be trained to handle so this type of thing doesn't happen. I don't know what happened leading up to this, but initial approach, de-escalating the situation, calmly stating the suspect has a gun in his pocket - all of that should have happened and I'm not confident it was. We can hear that the officer reporting the gun was anything but calm.

Look, I get it - the man was struggling, he did have a gun on him - yes, this was a stressful situation. I find it hard to believe, however, that it isn't a situation that happens daily and therefore the officers should have a standard response and procedure, and that should not include getting trigger-happy. I don't expect officers to be perfect in all situations, but they should have and use tools that minimizes these situations. By saying, oh yes, it was stressful and I can clearly understand how this happened doesn't help make this better because it relieves the officers of all responsibility. They do have a greater responsibility, so I am in favor of giving them some leeway and benefit of the doubt, but even in cases where the officer is not found to be at reasonable fault, there need to be some type of consequences.

Most police officers will go through their entire career without firing at a subject. It isn't something that happens on a daily basis, especially if you're not in an inner city or high crime area.

You can criticize the events leading up to the shooting, but under the law and in shooting reviews they are separate instances.  If the police could have handled the initial confrontation better, or even if they made flat out mistakes, that doesn't negate the justification of a shooting that happens later.

I think you're underestimating the impact of stress on trained personnel, even law enforcement.  It isn't practical for all officers to get the type of high-intensity team based training that say members of a SWAT team get.  That's one reason that most house entries these days are being done by SWAT teams.  It's not an escalation or militarization of the police, but an acknowledgement that SWAT teams have specialized training that minimizes these kinds of mistakes.

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22 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Apparently Sterling was packing heat to protect himself from the police, and this is what it led to.

Are you saying that carrying guns for self-defence is a bad idea? I mean, I agree, but this isn't a view consistent with what we hear after, well, pretty much any mass shooting.

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Just now, Emre Mor-mont said:

Are you saying that carrying guns for self-defence is a bad idea? I mean, I agree, but this isn't a view consistent with what we hear after, well, pretty much any mass shooting.

I was being facetious in response to Baxus.  Although carrying a weapon for self-defense against police officers is a bad idea.  You might get the first one, but the second, third, fourth, fifth and so on will get you eventually.

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34 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Most police officers will go through their entire career without firing at a subject. It isn't something that happens on a daily basis, especially if you're not in an inner city or high crime area.

That's not at all what I was talking about. I am talking about skills and mind-set to de-escalate a situation before it gets to the point officers feel threatened. This started as a simple confrontation of a man possibly selling illegal goods. The man obviously didn't want to confronted and struggled against it - this is the situation that I imagine happens on a fairly regular basis. In the video, you can hear the was not calm at all when he yelled 'gun'. I realize police have a shitty job and every confrontation holds some level of danger or threat. I don't expect them all to have SWAT level training, but I do expect them to be proficient at controlling a situation to the best of their ability.

Like I said, I don't know what happened leading up to this, but I don't have a whole lot of confidence that the police did their best to control the situation before it got to the point of holding a man down at gunpoint. I don't have the confidence to say the police were trained properly to do so, or encouraged by their superiors. I could be entirely wrong here, but that's my perception.

I would really love to see/hear what the body cams reveal. They were worn, but conveniently got dislodged, right? They should at the very least show how the initial approach went down. I know that a bad start where police make mistakes from the get-go won't necessarily negate their later actions (shooting) in some cases, but we need to identify what goes wrong and correct it. The more things we can identify as problem areas means the more we can do to improve it.

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1 minute ago, Gertrude said:

That's not at all what I was talking about. I am talking about skills and mind-set to de-escalate a situation before it gets to the point officers feel threatened. This started as a simple confrontation of a man possibly selling illegal goods. The man obviously didn't want to confronted and struggled against it - this is the situation that I imagine happens on a fairly regular basis. In the video, you can hear the was not calm at all when he yelled 'gun'. I realize police have a shitty job and every confrontation holds some level of danger or threat. I don't expect them all to have SWAT level training, but I do expect them to be proficient at controlling a situation to the best of their ability.

Like I said, I don't know what happened leading up to this, but I don't have a whole lot of confidence that the police did their best to control the situation before it got to the point of holding a man down at gunpoint. I don't have the confidence to say the police were trained properly to do so, or encouraged by their superioirs. I could be entirely wrong here, but that's my perception.

I would really love to see/hear what the body cams reveal. They were worn, but conveniently got dislodged, right? They should at the very least show how the initial approach went down.

According to CNN, police responded because Sterling brandished his gun to a homeless man who was asking for money.  CNN is also reporting that there is body cam footage.  Though they were dislodged during the struggle, they continued to record.

You can criticize the training that police officers get.  Clearly, they don't get much training in de-escalation or interacting with the mentally ill.  But the 'reasonable officer' standard is based on the training officers get, not what they 'should' get.

No one is going to be calm when they're in a fight.  It's impossible once your heart rate goes up and your adrenaline starts flowing.  That they attempted to physically subdue Sterling instead of drawing weapons immediately is a sign that they were trying to do the right thing with an unarmed subject.

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36 minutes ago, Harakiri said:

I love police sycophants like BBW that go to great lengths in their police brutality apologist rhetoric.

I love extremists that refuse to look at the actual situation, and would rather respond emotionally.

I get your rage, I do, but it's misguided.  Have you ever been in a situation like the one described above?  I'm sure your upper middle class upbringing has lead to many a tough spot, but these situations are way more nuanced than 'all black people are innocent' and 'all police are brutal killers'. I know that's tough for you to grasp, but that's reality.  

 

ETA: Don't ever private message me again.  I don't usually report stuff to the Mods (that way is cowardice), but I'm not a fan of the PM system, and people abusing it. 

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47 minutes ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

According to CNN, police responded because Sterling brandished his gun to a homeless man who was asking for money.  CNN is also reporting that there is body cam footage.  Though they were dislodged during the struggle, they continued to record.

You can criticize the training that police officers get.  Clearly, they don't get much training in de-escalation or interacting with the mentally ill.  But the 'reasonable officer' standard is based on the training officers get, not what they 'should' get.

No one is going to be calm when they're in a fight.  It's impossible once your heart rate goes up and your adrenaline starts flowing.  That they attempted to physically subdue Sterling instead of drawing weapons immediately is a sign that they were trying to do the right thing with an unarmed subject.

And yet you and other apologists will bend over backwards to say that its the victims' fault for not complying immediately with contradictory instructions yelled suddenly by men pointing guns in the victims' faces.  Weird how you're willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the people trained explicitly to be calm in a fight and not the civilians who have had no practice with that situation whatsoever.  

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35 minutes ago, peterbound said:

I love extremists that refuse to look at the actual situation, and would rather respond emotionally.

I get your rage, I do, but it's misguided.  Have you ever been in a situation like the one described above?  I'm sure your upper middle class upbringing has lead to many a tough spot, but these situations are way more nuanced than 'all black people are innocent' and 'all police are brutal killers'. I know that's tough for you to grasp, but that's reality.  

 

ETA: Don't ever private message me again.  I don't usually report stuff to the Mods (that way is cowardice), but I'm not a fan of the PM system, and people abusing it. 

What nuance? The police had him pinned, face-down, on the ground.

Alton Sterling wasn't a paragon of a human being. Many news sources have acknowledged this. It doesn't matter.

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