The estate of a person who is killed will still be able to sue the police. The reasons why police are trained to shoot for center mass is, as has been touched on either here or in the Defund thread as well as that article linked a few posts above, include a) easier to hit center mass vs. arm/leg and b) even if one hits arm/leg, it is far less likely to stop the aggressive behavior than hitting center mass.
Yeah. I would imagine a wrongful death lawsuit is a lot worse than a "you shot me in the arm" lawsuit. There's also the fact that if you aim for a smaller target and miss, you've got a bullet flying who knows where. The same thing if you hit the leg or arm, but it goes through.
The main argument for cops not shooting to kill is that doing so does not guarantee the offender will cease to pose a threat, and could thus kill/injure cops or innocents. There is some merit to this, but I would still prefer the attempt be made. I might feel different, of course, if a wounded perp (or one the cop missed) then killed a loved one. But that's just me. Either way, if it fails, someone is mourning someone. Whilst if it works, everybody lives.
I mean, there are few guarantees in life. But shooting for center mass is presumably a whole lot more likely to stop the threat than shooting for an arm/leg. Along those lines, shooting and hitting someone in the hand or leg isn't a guarantee everyone lives, either. You can certainly bleed out if the wrong spot is hit in the leg/arm, and someone aiming for leg/arm can miss and hit center mass or hit another person.
I don't think it unfair or unreasonable to ask for examples. I don't think most police shootings are unjustified under the law, which is admittedly more forgiving than public opinion because it doesn't judge with the benefit of hindsight and allows for mistakes that could be considered reasonable. Judged in those terms, there aren't a lot of shootings that are clearly wrong, to my understanding.
so if the law (and by extension, those who enforce it) doesn't align with the public opinion (and by extension, the public will), is it valid?
Validating everything with an opinion poll is an excellent way to never arrive at a consistent, rational standard.
except it isn't "everything" we're talking about, but rather police use of deadly force and the conditions under which it's use is acceptable. linkypoo Thousands of people around the world are killed by law enforcement, both on- and off-duty. Police officers in the United States shoot and kill hundreds of people every year, far more than comparable developed countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. In the United States, police shootings have sparked protests across the country, such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year-old African-American student who was shot and killed in 2012. His killer, George Zimmerman, was a neighborhood watch coordinator of a gated community where Trayvon visited relatives. Zimmerman was acquitted at trial for Trayvon’s death, claiming self-defense. A Change.org petition calling for Zimmerman’s arrest collected over 2.2 million signatures, the most massive petition in the website’s history. The Washington Post has kept track of police shootings in the United States since 2015. Between 2015 and 2018, U.S. police have killed 3,309 people. In 2019, U.S. police killed 1,099 people, 24% of whom were black. Location matters when it comes to police killings, both in U.S. states and around the world. Black persons in Oklahoma are six times more likely to be killed by police than those in Georgia. Additionally, eight of the 100 largest police departments in the United States kill black men at higher rates than the U.S. murder rate. These departments are Reno, Oklahoma City, Santa Ana, Anaheim, St. Louis City, Scottsdale, Hialeah, and Madison. The United States, however, does not have the highest number of police killings or the highest rate of police killings per 10 million people. The United States has the fifth-highest number of police killings and the 30th-highest police killing rate per 10 million people. The following countries have the highest numbers of police killings in the world, based on the most recent data available: Brazil – 6,160 Venezuela – 5,287 Philippines – 3,451 India - 1,731 Syria – 1,497 United States – 1,099 Nigeria – 841 El Salvador - 609 Afghanistan – 606 Pakistan – 495 Brazil has the highest number of police killings at 6,160, nearly six times that of the United States. Rio de Janeiro, the country’s most violent state and much of which is under the control of drug-trafficking gangs, has the highest number of police killings. Officials claim that most of the police killing victims died in confrontations with police and were armed. Police killings are much less common or virtually nonexistent in some European countries. Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland have all reported zero police killings. Both Denmark and Iceland are among the top ten safest countries in the world. Additionally, police in Iceland do not carry firearms. Other countries have very low numbers as well. Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, and Saint Lucia have one police killing in a year. Of these, Portugal and New Zealand are considered to be among the ten safest countries in the world as well. Here are the 10 countries with the most police killings: Venezuela (1632.70) El Salvador (954.50) Syria (831.60) Philippines (542.90) Nicaragua (522.70) Palestine (508.00) Jamaica (472.70) Trinidad And Tobago (339.70) Brazil (293.20) Bahamas (275.70) Now, I get it... you're okay with cops killing people because it isn't nearly as likely to happen to you personally because... reasons? wonder what those might be?
No shit? I had no idea - especially since I was fully trained in weapons in the military. Also, doesn't have shit to do with my post.
also, this: Not just “a few bad apples”: U.S. police kill civilians at much higher rates than other countries Police violence is a systemic problem in the U.S., not simply incidental, and it happens on a scale far greater than other wealthy nations. by Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, June 5, 2020 There is no question that the number of police killings of civilians in the U.S. – who are disproportionately Black and other people of color – are the result of policies and practices that enable and even encourage police violence. Compared to police in other wealthy democracies, American police kill civilians at incredibly high rates: The chart above compares the annual rates of police killings in each country, accounting for differences in population size. This is the most apples-to-apples comparison we can make with this data. But the total number of deaths at the hands of police is also worth seeing in comparison with other countries:
speaking of straw... it's like you can dish it out but can't take it... especially if it's a logical conclusion in the face of a lack of any evidence to the contrary. get a fuckin' Brita
You're not getting a "logical" conclusion if you put every use of force incident on an opinion poll. And if you're going to pull a stat-wank, show the other side. How often do US civilians attack police versus other countries? I bet you have never looked, and won't pretend to give a shit.
you said every, not me what the fuck is a "stat-wank" (other than your resistance to objective facts)? how often do civs in the US attack cops isn't really part of the discussion... if you'd like to introduce it explain the relevance and get your own stats to wank I think that last bit qualifies as a "tu quoque", well done with trying a new fallacy.
A selective copy-and-paste of stats cherry picked in a way you think supports your position. Use of force is not part of a discussion about use of force? No thinking being believes the police violence occurs completely in a vacuum. Some would just prefer not to deal with anything inconvenient to the agenda of mindlessly vilifying all cops. Sometimes it is justified, sometimes it isn't, and irrefutably relevant to that is the circumstances surrounding that event, including all civilians involved and what violence they brought to the scene. But you won't reason yourself into comprehending that with knee-jerk copy and paste in place of supplying your own arguments.
People who paint themselves into the corner of "everyone who hates cops is a genius who understands the world" versus "anyone who declines to unconditionally condemn even one particular cop is a sycophant" are fucking idiots who are not worth engaging. How you seem to convince yourselves you have any goddamn business whatsoever acting smug about it is a fucking mystery for the ages. "All cops are bad" is mindless bullshit for edgy teenagers. Most people grow out of that kind of simplistic petulance, but there is always those few failures to fucking launch who comfort themselves flinging turds at everyone else instead.
Umm, no the search terms I used were "police use of deadly force by country" that was the third in a list of 67 million results. and no, it's a separate, though parallel discussion. Although I think the obvious answer to how police in the US face a greater threat from citizens might not be to your liking. also, where in this discussion have I "vilified all cops"? for someone who so frequently mislabels others' points as strawmen, you certainly seem to be quite adept in using them to make your own.
wow... the lack of self awareness in this is just... wow. everything in pink or purple haired absolutes, eh?
I'm sure there are a lot of ways one could answer that question. There is nothing inherent that makes what the law says or what the public believes more valid than the other. There certainly have been examples of when killings were arguably legal but immoral (certain wars, executions, abortion, etc.), popular but immoral (lynching). In the context of policing, we still are a democracy. If people want to change the terms of what types of shootings are considered unjustified, they can vote in politicians who will either change the alw or appoint judges who do.
Taking the source at face value, it's clear that U.S. cops kill more people than the their counterparts in wealthy countries, and that the countries that outdo them on a per capita basis are not ones that Americans would want to be in the same company as. The real question is why that is. There are arguably lots of potential causes or contributing factors. Racism/sexism/poverty come to mind. Pop culture and sociology is a potential factor. We Americans have lionized cops for years through Hollywood and politics in a way that I'm guessing most 1st world countries don't. Which could make cops feel like they can do anything. Another possibility is some combination of officer training and general police department policy is better in those other countries than it is here. Another factor could be that cops in the U.S. are attacked more than their counterparts and thus have to use force to defend themselves justifiably, or if the threat of force is prevalent enough to make them make incorrect decisions to shoot. Most people will hopefully agree that cops are generally justified in shooting to defend themselves or another. It could very well explain at least in part the discrepancy in how much more police violence there is in the U.S. if the U.S. police more often face situations where shooting is justified by someone using force against them. In other words, if it is rare that people try to shoot or kill German cops, German cops will rarely try to shoot and kill civilians. If people often try to shoot and kill U.S. cops, U.S. cops will often shoot in self-defense, or even in mistaken self-defense. According to the FBI, 44 U.S. police officers were shot and killed in 2019. That figure does not include the number of officers shot at, or attacked with knives or other weapons. https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/p...forcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty Of course, a more direct marker would be to look at the details of the police killings to see if there is a pattern to them, and what the pattern means. For example, the statistic that blacks are disproportionately killed may mean that racism is at work again. Or it could mean that cops disproportionately shot black people because, say, the people who shot at cops were disproportionately black. Or it could be a little from column A and a little from column B If we take this list of police killings from January 2021, for instance, a lot of the 22 seem as though they have surface justification. Officers shot after someone fired a gun, presented a gun, charged with a knife or similar. Keeping in mind that sometimes cops lie (like everyone else), that still would probably leave a majority in the category of 100 percent legal or reasonable mistake. There only seem to be a couple that seem sketchy to me: the tasering of a mentally ill person (Jamal Sutherland) and a guy who was first shot by an off-duty Austin cop in a road-rage situation and then by on-duty Austin cops (Jorge Gonzales). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...t_officers_in_the_United_States,_January_2021 P.S. I find it hard to trust statistics from a source that considers the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman a "police killing," and you should too. My Google-Fu may be weak, but I can't seem to come up with a source that says how often cops from other countries are killed. My Google-Fu may be weak, but I can't seem to come up with a source that says how often cops from other countries are killed.
