http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/james-boyd/ I cam across this article on another forum and thought I'd share it with all of you. At this point, Americans are 8 times more likely to be killed by police than terrorists. As far as I'm concerned every cop there should be charged as a murderer or accessory to murder, that man was complying when they threw the grenade at him. Not to mention, why should it be illegal to camp there anyway? Who was he bothering and don't the cops have something better to do?
Two pivot points, both stupid decisions - one by the Police and one by the Subject 1) the grenade was a horrible choice to make and made things escalate at an insanely fast level 2) the knives being drawn then made the escalation even worse Unfortunately decision (2), which is actually probably a justifiable shoot given the fact he had drawn weapons at that point, should not have been necessary because decision (1) should never have occured. An appallingly bad decision As a side note - or then again maybe not upon reflection - this is yet another illustration of the necessity for better mental health care within society. The subject in this case apparently has previous convictions for Criminal Sexual Penetration, Aggravated assault, Aggravated battery(with a blade),Aggravted battery on a Peace Officer,Aggravated battery on a Custody Officer and many others - now whilst trespass in and of itself it not Grand Theft Auto, this WAS an offence and the individual had a long history of excessively violent crime This was not a camper cooking beans and getting slotted Should he have been killed for camping out? No, absolutley not. Could this have been avoided? Yes it could. Tragic and avoidable? Yes Is it murder? No, it isn't If you wished to really stretch the definition, you could potentially argue manslaughter against the grenade thrower on the basis that his initial action caused the subject to respond...however, the choice of "draw two knives" could not reasonably have been anticipated when surrounded by an armed SWAT team so that does not directly apply This will probablyend up being an action against the PD for poor training and tactics
Just as a side note: Isn't the statistic of likelihood of death by cop versus terrorist a bit naught? It sounds good, but terrorism really doesn't kill that many people in the US at all. I'd imagine in the list of things causing more deaths each year terrorism would be fairly far down
That statistic was originally put in place to show how out of kilter the "OMG!!Terrorists everywhere!!!" view was...it has since been hijacked by people with agendas and no clue about the context of the original comment or study
Yeah, terrorists just don't kill many people at all, yet we still pay over 600 billion dollars to hunt them. Money well spent?
Even upon drawing a knife, it just wasn't necessary to open fire. They didn't give him a chance to put the knife down and he was to far away to use it unless he was an expert knife thrower (he wasn't)
If I approach and you already have a knife drawn I will slow my approach and challenge. This was dynamic and as such warnings are not required or even necessary He had higher ground and can close that distance in a heartbeat - if someone pulls a knife they are displaying intent to use it; do that to me you get shot - end of
Would you be willing to bet your life on that? This is a tragic situation and I agree with Hannibal that it is more a condemnation of our mental health system than our police.
He may have had higher ground, but he was disoriented from the flash grenade and the officers had no lethal options. He made no move toward them. None of that would have happened in the first place if they hadn't thrown the grenade at him, there was no need at all for that. This guy would still be alive if they hadn't escalated the situation with no cause.
I just thought I would run the numbers to see if the "Cops in America are murderers" thing is being overblown. I used my country as a comparison. New Zealand: 7 people fatally shot by police in the last 11 years (according to the most recent data I could find). Population: 4.5 million Chance of being shot and killed by police per year: 1 in 6,400,000 or 0.000016% (roughly) United States: Using a incomplete data set of 587 in 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2012) Population: 317.8 million Chance of being shot and killed by police per year: 1 in 541,397 or 0.00018% (very roughly) So from what I can tell, police shootings are not a very common way to die in either country. That being said, you are roughly 13 times more likely to be shot to death by the police in the US than you are in New Zealand. Seeing as New Zealand has an intentional homicide rate of 0.9 per 100,000 whereas the US has an intentional homicide rate of 4.8 per 100,000 I would guess that the higher rate of fatal police shootings in the States is at least partially due to the higher percentage of dangerous criminals.
It would be more useful I think to look at an American city to see a trend forming, let's take philly as an example. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/P...gs_in_Philly_soar_as_violent_crime_falls.html Also, from the statistics you put forward people in America are 11.8 times as likely to be killed by police than their New Zealand dwelling counterparts, while as they are only 5.3 times as likely to be violent criminals. That shows that police shootings are at a rate that is disproportionally high when compared to New Zealand, even taking into account the higher rate of violent crime.
I know I'd rather spend some of that on things like universal healthcare, government sponsored education at the university level, and social safety nets.
Statistics. Used to make anything seem either Awesome or Terrible depending on intended percieved result favouring one's opinion, since its invention
Well I watched the video. It seems as though the officers lulled him into a sense of security and he was packing up his stuff to leave. Then they threw the grenade for no reason. I feel that if I was being treated like that I'd want to defend myself too. The police officer having already said during the negotiations "I have the right to kill you". However I can't make a judgement call based on a video so this is just my estimation of things.