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[hector13]

The conclusion that the police officer could have dealt with the situation in such a way that it didn’t result in a death?

[jipehog]

Shoulda, coulda, woulda is a nice song, but we seem to be focused on the legal qualifiers

[Duuvian]

How convenient those legal qualifiers are in regards to imaginary weaponry.

Would you be in favor of a change in them to preclude an outcome such as this?

[jipehog]

Everyone has their prejudice motivations and implicit bias, that why cops have procedures to deal with potential threats and the law offers everyone protection and day in court against abuse.
 
Depends on what you are actually proposing, I would caution that I know very little about your situation to form an opinion. I can say that we have many problems of our own some are different, others are not too dissimilar or even worse. Summarily most hope for change and many are actively fight for it (not just ridding their 5min of daily online outrage) including from with the system. But change is hard to come by in practice, especially when we already have critical staffing shortages, high burning rate some of the most difficult placements, and have little in the way of incentivize people to stay or recruit among those who have better options.

[EuchreJack]

Everyone has their prejudice motivations and implicit bias, that why cops have procedures to deal with potential threats and the law offers everyone protection and day in court against abuse.

Hey, do us all a favor and read your own words.  See if they might, I dunno, apply to you?

Now for Truth Time. The law offers GREATER Protection for Cops than literally anyone else.  If they kill someone in the line of duty, they're far better protected legally then if say a lawful gun owner wounded someone trying to kill them.
It's called Qualified Immunity.

Additionally: I can practically guarantee that the cop who shot the guy did NOT follow his department's proper procedures.

But hey, let's look!
Link the page on Pueblo County Sheriff Deputy Charles McWhorter who fatally shot Richard Ward, age 32

And a link to the Pueblo County Sheriff's Policies
That particular link is Probable Cause.

Deadly Use of Force procedure

[hector13]

It gets worse the more I read into it.

The cops said he jumped out the car at a news conference at the scene, when he was actually pulled from the car. The two officers involved left him to die in front of his mother and kids being picked up because they were too scared to apply first aid for the three minutes it took firefighters to show up. Cops were justified according to the local DA because they feared for their life (akin to other bullshit stock justifications like “I thought I smelled weed” or “they stopped too long/not enough at a stop sign”). They treat the guy that completely fucked up the situation that resulted in a man’s death like a hero by giving him a medal.

Situation’s completely fucked.

[jipehog]

Everyone has their prejudice motivations and implicit bias, that why cops have procedures to deal with potential threats and the law offers everyone protection and day in court against abuse.

Hey, do us all a favor and read your own words.  See if they might, I dunno, apply to you?

Pretty sure everyone includes me and so do you. Speaking of how does "someone that clearly had some mental health issues" look like? Same question with drug addict or anything in between..

As for truth time, are you sure its truth you are after, how many here bothered checking past the headline before they decided the person/system is guilty?

[Rolan7]

Sounds like you have some preconceptions about us.  Understandable.  But you might want to stick to reasoned arguments unless you'd rather discuss the taste of boot leather.

Fact is, your arguments are vague enough to justify almost any police misconduct.  Essentially: The cop isn't literally omniscient, therefore he was justified to use lethal force just to be safe.  That's a dangerous (and very incomplete) argument.  Cops would face no consequences even for murder (simply imagine).

Like EJ pointed out it's not even proper according to their own regulations.  That means we (you) have to justify the cop killing someone *against regulations*, which is a problem because it weakens the reliability of those regulations.  If a cop can go off-the-book and kill someone, then reforming the regulations does not prevent abusive policing.  This is clearly the case, but we can't ADMIT that while still claiming that incremental reform can address the problem.

[McTraveller]

How about instead of just crying "the system is broken!", offering feasible solutions on how to change the system?

Given society does need some kind of law enforcement institution so you can't just disband all forces and have a time of no coverage, what do you do?

Maybe something like "any fatality or need for medical treatment of a suspect on your shift, you have a mandatory X-month paid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Any second fatality or need for medical treatment on your shift within 1 year is mandatory X month unpaid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Three such instances in any 3 year span is mandatory termination with a four-year ban on serving in law enforcement.  If investigation finds excessive force: you're immediately terminated, banned for life from law enforcement, and possibly subject to imprisonment."

You still have the possibility of investigation being abused, but the mandatory clauses which are not subject to investigation findings should reduce the hazard there.  Also I suppose if the investigations are not done by people part of the direct law enforcement agency, that would probably help... I guess maybe Internal Affairs is already "independent" in some sense, but maybe needs more independence?

[Frumple]

Specific to the US system:

Step one is take most of their guns from most of them; demonstrably from policing efforts the world over, they are generally not needed and US police has proven over and over again they cannot be trusted with the responsibilities involved.

Step two is take most of their money and give it to people that actually know what the fuck they're doing, cops are clearly being called on to handle too many duties they do not having the training or inclination to handle well and that job mandate needs to be broken up and distributed appropriately.

Step three can be getting rid of qualified immunity and similar; they should not have any more protections than any of us when they're in front of a judge, and it is staggeringly clear at this point the organizations involved cannot be trusted with the privilege thereof.

Step four, fuck civil forfeiture and everything that looks like it. Banditry is banditry no matter how you try to fancy it up, and it should be criminal, not enshrined into law.

Steps not necessarily in order. That'd be a good start, and it won't happen until american conservatism is no longer a meaningful political force at a minimum, so *shrugs*

[Rolan7]

How about instead of just crying "the system is broken!", offering feasible solutions on how to change the system?

Who said the system is broken?  It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The regulations are designed to calm and mislead the public, yet be ignored without consequence.  The only failure of the system is that people are becoming aware of its purpose and the utter lack of accountability in which it flourished.  The only justice comes from individuals recording and disseminating the truth, and public demonstrations resulting in individual cops being sacrificed as scapegoats.  And the system does not change.

Bizarrely there are still people crying "It's GOOD that they can murder us!  The system is good!" over every case of police violence.  That's the conversation we were having, before we could even talk about solutions- a classic defense in depth.

Given society does need some kind of law enforcement institution so you can't just disband all forces and have a time of no coverage, what do you do?

Debateable.  I'm sure we all know that our modern police system was developed less than a couple centuries ago, for ignoble ends, and civilization seems to be a bit older than that.  Even cities!

Maybe something like "any fatality or need for medical treatment of a suspect on your shift, you have a mandatory X-month paid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Any second fatality or need for medical treatment on your shift within 1 year is mandatory X month unpaid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Three such instances in any 3 year span is mandatory termination with a four-year ban on serving in law enforcement.  If investigation finds excessive force: you're immediately terminated, banned for life from law enforcement, and possibly subject to imprisonment."

You still have the possibility of investigation being abused, but the mandatory clauses which are not subject to investigation findings should reduce the hazard there.  Also I suppose if the investigations are not done by people part of the direct law enforcement agency, that would probably help... I guess maybe Internal Affairs is already "independent" in some sense, but maybe needs more independence?

There is a LOT we need to change about the policing system.  I'm skeptical that another set of legal patches are going to work this time, particularly when police-defenders are in this very thread *ignoring the laws and regulations on the books*.  But maybe if we completely overhaul Internal Affairs into something that serves the public, that could someday result in a system of policing where it's possible to be a good officer and not get fired.

In specific terms: Law enforcement should come from the communities they police, more positions should be subject to election and recall, and the conversation certainly needs to move on from "the cop was afraid so murder is fine".  It's "strange" that the latter ever comes up anymore.

Edit: Oh, and everything Frumple said there, obviously.  We have models of policing which are less shitty than ours.  They're still fundamentally evil but we're insisting on talking about incremental reform I guess, so...

[Duuvian]

How about instead of just crying "the system is broken!", offering feasible solutions on how to change the system?

Given society does need some kind of law enforcement institution so you can't just disband all forces and have a time of no coverage, what do you do?

Maybe something like "any fatality or need for medical treatment of a suspect on your shift, you have a mandatory X-month paid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Any second fatality or need for medical treatment on your shift within 1 year is mandatory X month unpaid leave, pending investigation by an independent organization.  Three such instances in any 3 year span is mandatory termination with a four-year ban on serving in law enforcement.  If investigation finds excessive force: you're immediately terminated, banned for life from law enforcement, and possibly subject to imprisonment."

You still have the possibility of investigation being abused, but the mandatory clauses which are not subject to investigation findings should reduce the hazard there.  Also I suppose if the investigations are not done by people part of the direct law enforcement agency, that would probably help... I guess maybe Internal Affairs is already "independent" in some sense, but maybe needs more independence?

These are good ideas. However on the democratic side, one problem with things such as this is that it appears there is often an exclusive group of (in this example, local) society that very much tries to consolidate power by exclusion of those who are represented as outsiders, often despite the outsiders' political opinions being the majority in the local population. This often results in the embrace of organizations willing to profess loyalty to the exclusive club in exchange for driving their policies (despite say huge marches and protests against them), and the advancement based on loyalties (not to mention financial ambitions) rather than competence. This results in further isolation of the exclusive segment from the outsider majority, while organizations work to undermine their position with voters. This leads to organization candidates who are divorced from the interests of even the exclusive segment that arise once the exclusive club has been weakened; the exclusive club's goal of disrupting the outsiders has already concluded.. The biggest of ironies is when the exclusive segment has been convinced by "loyalist" organizations to enforce a system that benefits the "exclusive" club against the "outsiders" but then find themselves ousted from control and these same systems turned against them as they once more become the outsider.

Here is a great example
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/nyregion/eric-adams-theft-masks-nyc.html
To prevent robberies, Mayor Eric Adams is telling shopkeepers to bar customers who refuse to lower their masks when they first enter stores.

[EuchreJack]

Teen faces felony after emergency dash to hospital interrupted by Arkansas State Police PIT Maneuver

Arkansas cops like improperly using the PIT Maneuver.

[dragdeler]

trooper Montae Hernandez said he performed the PIT Maneuver due to the frequent vehicle and pedestrian traffic near the hospital.

trooper itchy dick said he fired his gun because there were enough residential buildings around to absorb any stray bullets