Murder or Duty?

[Gemini]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC9lHoZwfjM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/james-boyd-killed-by-cops_n_5021117.html

We've had a few threads like this recently, and I thought this was an interesting case.

Watch the vid and see for yourself.  Which do you think this is:  Murder or Duty?

Personally I feel like the police were kind of justified in doing something drastic because the guy was waving a knife around (even though he was nowhere near them), but their reaction seems way overboard.

It's like they were playing at being SWAT rather than a regular PD.

[Skuzzy]

There is no way this is going to end well.  So, let me preface this thread by saying, if anyone decides they are above the forum posting rules, they will get instantly suspended from the board for no less than four weeks.  That includes anyone quoting a forum rule violation as well.

I edited the title to make it less than 78 characters long.

[BluBerry]

Murder on Duty


it's one of the hazards of the job.

[Delirium]

Duty.

Why should a police officer take a risk of possible injury when a suspect won't comply with audible instructions?

[BluBerry]

Duty.

Why should a police officer take a risk of possible injury when a suspect won't comply with audible instructions?

Because the job is to "protect and serve", protect not intended to mean yourself first.

Cops shouldn't say they put their life on the line for us every day if they won't "risk" possible injury.

[Volron]

Skuzzy, I don't think this is going to end well at all.  It's likely going to end up worse than my thread did.

[Gemini]

Duty.

Why should a police officer take a risk of possible injury when a suspect won't comply with audible instructions?

Risk of possible injury? So some slow-moving idiot who brandishes a couple of knives 50ft away, and has just been flash-banged, is a threat to someone with an assault rifle?

Cops should be considered strictly liable in assaults and shootings. Burden of proof should be on the officers to show they used all reasonable care prior to using force.

As a society we entrust police officers to keep the peace, by holding them to lower standards in the application of force we allow them to exploit the people they are duty bound to protect far too easily. Power corrupts, you must have strong checks to that power to protect the people from that corruption.

[BluBerry]

Skuzzy, I don't think this is going to end well at all.  It's likely going to end up worse than my thread did.

well since you jinxed it, I say if it doesn't end well you should get a 1 week suspension.  

[GScholz]

Murder.

[Karnak]

Murder, I am afraid.

The LAPD officers who shot up the newspaper delivery ladies' pickup fired more rounds in that one incident than the police did in Germany in all of 2010.  Iceland police recently were mourning the first time that an Icelandic police officer had ever shot and killed a suspect.

I think there a wall of us vs them has been built between American police and the American population.  I think that in a nation that claims to prize liberty so strongly we are much to blaze about government taking fellow American's most significant thing, their lives.  We the people allow shoddy white washed "investigations" to excuse these things over and over and it happens from liberal San Francisco to conservative rural areas in Kansas.

I don't have a solution, but I see the problem.

[Gemini]

Albuquerque officers have shot more people than the NYPD, a department serving a city 16-times larger, since 2010, according to ProgressNow.

[BowHTR]

Duty.

Who's to say that he didn't have a gun on him? Just before he was shot he had his hands to his sides; was he still holding the knives? He must have been, because he still had the knife in his hands once he was on the ground. Had he complied with the officers this wouldn't have happened.

 

Risk of possible injury? So some slow-moving idiot who brandishes a couple of knives 50ft away, and has just been flash-banged, is a threat to someone with an assault rifle?

In most states, that K9 is considered an officer. If you were to assault the K9 you could be charged with assault on an officer. After the flash-bang, they moved to attempt to make physical contact with the subject. It looks as if the subject still had the knives in his hands and was attempting to hold his ground against the K9. Thats when the K9 Officer pulled the K9 back and the officers took appropriate action in their eyes.


Just a simple thing they teach in most police academies; the 21 foot rule. At 21 feet someone can get to you before you can un-holster your weapon, get a sight picture and pull the trigger. The officers were well within the 21 feet after the flash-bang.

[pembquist]

You know what they say about the perfect world with German mechanics, French cooks etc. Well they say British cops, I've seen another video like this one http://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw but this was the first one I found. Different cultures do different things, all I can say is from what i have seen, if my son or daughter had a psychotic break for some reason I would much rather it be in britain than Oregon.

[Dichotomy]

horrible misunderstanding IMO.  More training and more potential consequences may be necessary in the use of deadly force.  That said I'm not a cop and I haven't 'walked a mile in their moccasins' so it's kind of wrong of me to criticize because I was not there. 

[Gman]

I will say that in the last few years this sort of stuff is in the public eye a lot more, and also due to that seems to be happening a lot more often too.

The LAPD a year or two ago, chasing after that armed and dangerous x-cop I think he was?  Anyhow, the LAPD accidentally shot up a truck of the same model and color in the dark, containing 2 older aged Asian ladies - wrong race, sex, and everything else, a terribly bad shoot.  Also, enroute to that very same bad shooting, the LAPD encountered another unlucky soul driving the same make and model vehicle - they rammed him at full speed and unloaded a bunch of rounds into the truck, luckily missing the occupants.  I've never heard about what punishment if any happened over that, as the LAPD policy is to keep the punishment classified.  The police likely weren't fired from the articles I read.  The 2 woman in Torrance mistakenly shot cost the taxpayers 4.2 million dollars, and 40,000 for a new truck, the initial peace offering from the city, which the lawyer didn't like, hence the 4.2 mil.  Also, the 2 woman stopped doing the delivery job, saying it was "dangerous"...no kidding.  They now clean homes for a living - get that.

It's a tough job, no denying it, and I won't bash the police here or anywhere else for that matter, but brutal mistakes like the former make it a hard thing sometimes to support.  I do understand the police were out of their element, being hunted by one of their own, and having lost an officer to the culprit prior to the "bad shoots".