When Cops Create Their Own Risk, Innocent People Die for Their Mistakes

[GURPS]

The video is puzzling and shocking. After receiving a call to a non-emergency number requesting that police check on a neighbor’s house that had its doors open and its lights on, police approach silently. They look into an open door and into a brightly lit room, but they don’t say anything. They then creep around the house, moving from light to dark. They use a flashlight. They keep moving around the edges of the house.

Suddenly, in a mere moment, one of them spots movement in a window. The officer yells for the shadowy figure to put up her hands and then immediately fires a shot. Atatiana Jefferson was dead. She was 28 years old. According to her family’s lawyer, she was playing video games with her young nephew when they heard “rustling” outside and “saw flashlights.” There was a gun in the house, but there’s no indication (yet) that she was holding it in her hand.

But what if she was? Does a homeowner not have a right to investigate someone lurking on her property? Can she not arm herself at 2:30 a.m. when she hears a strange sound in the darkness?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019...-risk-innocent-people-die-for-their-mistakes/

 

[vraiblonde]

Being born is a risk. Being alive afterward is a risk you take every single day.

Do we agree that this sort of situation is rare? Or do you think that it happens every day and every person in the world will eventually be gunned down by a cop?

More innocent people die by drowning in their own bathtub than get killed by a cop. In fact, more innocent cops get killed in the line of duty than innocent people die at the hands of a cop.

So why are some deaths more noteworthy than others? Cop gets killed some shitbag, we're like...meh. But on the very rare occasion that a cop shoots an innocent citizen, all hell breaks loose and the news people instruct us to lose our hivemind.

Not saying cops are justified in negligence - far from it - but I also don't expect a perfect world. Accidents happen, negligence happens. The good news is it's rare and I don't feel the need to DO SOMETHING!!! every time it happens.

When the media encourages hatred and fear of cops, bad cops are what we'll end up with because no smart decent person will want to go into law enforcement and departments will have to take what they can get.

 

[glhs837]

Here's the takeaway from the article, and he has a point. It speaks to my point about the "Us vs Them" mindset thats increasingly prevalent in enforcement. And the "Bad Cop" meme doesnt help any. But the idea that most citizens are a threat to the officer is just as flawed as the idea that most officers are a threat to citizens. But most of them are armed, most of us are not.

When we evaluate police shootings, we wrongly tend to limit our analysis to the very instant of the shooting itself. The question of a cop’s reasonable fear at that instant is allowed to trump all other concerns, and becomes the deciding factor at trial. I would argue, however, that officers act unreasonably when they don’t give a citizen a reasonable chance to live — and giving a citizen a reasonable chance to live involves properly handling the situation so no weapon need be fired.

 

[Kyle]

Just to let everyone know...

I'M GREAT!!!

NEVER FELT BETTER!!!

DOIN JUST FINE!!!

DON'T NEED ANYONE CHECKING ON ME!!!

 

[This_person]

Being born is a risk. Being alive afterward is a risk you take every single day.

Do we agree that this sort of situation is rare? Or do you think that it happens every day and every person in the world will eventually be gunned down by a cop?

More innocent people die by drowning in their own bathtub than get killed by a cop. In fact, more innocent cops get killed in the line of duty than innocent people die at the hands of a cop.

So why are some deaths more noteworthy than others? Cop gets killed some shitbag, we're like...meh. But on the very rare occasion that a cop shoots an innocent citizen, all hell breaks loose and the news people instruct us to lose our hivemind.

Not saying cops are justified in negligence - far from it - but I also don't expect a perfect world. Accidents happen, negligence happens. The good news is it's rare and I don't feel the need to DO SOMETHING!!! every time it happens.

When the media encourages hatred and fear of cops, bad cops are what we'll end up with because no smart decent person will want to go into law enforcement and departments will have to take what they can get.

It's rare. Like unicorn riding an albino tiger rare.

The system is handling the problem the way they're supposed to.

It's news because the government is not supposed to kill citizens for the crime of being in their own homes. The system knows that, and they're treating it appropriately.

It's news for sure, but nothing to "DO SOMETHING NOW" about. Monitor and watch the right consequences.

 

[Hijinx]

Why is it that police shoot at criminals and miss them or wound them and can't hit what they aim at./

But let them make a mistake and shoot an innocent and they never wound them they seem to kill them every time.