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Another fatal shooting in St. Louis

Lursa said:
Can you please provide a source for that (bolded)? (No, you cant.) I can tell you what they are taught tho.

And if you are being attacked, you need to stop the threat as quickly as possible. Otherwise the attacker kills YOU. Or takes your weapon and kills other people....they are a danger to the public as well.

It is utterly ridiculous if you think that in most lethal confrontations, people always have the option of using non-lethal force. Do you have no idea at all how quickly life or death situations go down? If it wasnt so fast, most wouldnt be life-threatening. :doh
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Can you provides some articles or Police training materials for utilizing non-lethal options?

Sometimes police are faced with clear aggression, like when shots are fired at them.

The instant case of a man brandishing a knife, might present a possibility of non-lethal options.

What was the training of these officers in using non-lethal options first, backed up with adequate self-defense options?

Did the officers have the 35 Foot cartridges? The 100 foot range tasers?

Did the officers have the knife resistant vests?

Perhaps the officers truly had no time for non-lethal options. I cannot look through their eyes, at that time.

The video seems to indicate there was no planning or effort for non-lethal options.

The police have to make the on the spot decisions, but the Police Chiefs and city councils look like they are not giving as much non-lethal training and equipment as possible.



"In this video, a man with a large machete is standing outside Buckingham Palace. The police carefully gage their distance, then shoot him with a Taser gun. The confrontation ends almost instantaneously as the man drops the knife when his body begins to convulse:
Read more at http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-police-stop-someone-knife/#Zl6ZH1BcTEIV1lj7.99


'Sure, it’s not the most effective way of dealing with the situation, but it’s infinitely better than blasting someone away who clearly needs psychiatric help.

The officers who shot Powell did have a choice. They could have moved away from him. They could have gotten back into their car to protect themselves. They could have run away. All of those options are preferable to killing someone, and those tactics are used in other countries where human life is deemed more valuable than the need to assert authority.

Police protocol in America allows police officers to apply lethal force when there is “probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm … to the officer or to others.” So a police officer can basically say, “I thought the guy was a threat, so I killed him”. It’s incredibly subjective, and the broad definition and has lead to the death of around 400 people a year in America, a massively disproportionate number being black. That is..."

Read more at http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-police-stop-someone-knife/#Zl6ZH1BcTEIV1lj7.99




http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-police-stop-someone-knife/






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The Man said:
He yelled at officers 'shoot me now' several times. Well, they obliged him. You don't yell 'shoot me now' at anyone who is holding a gun pointed at you, unless you want to be shot now.
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Really, police should shoot anybody that tells them to?
 
The Man said:
You go ahead, and smart people will use the gun.
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Not so sure about that. There's a cop right now probably wishing he had used his taser instead.
 
Montecresto said:
Not so sure about that. There's a cop right now probably wishing he had used his taser instead.
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No there's not. Is he happy that he killed someone? Absolutely not, he will have to live with that and possibly be traumatized by it for the rest of his life. But he is damn happy that he's still alive, which he may not be if he had used a taser.
 
The Man said:
No there's not. Is he happy that he killed someone? Absolutely not, he will have to live with that and possibly be traumatized by it for the rest of his life. But he is damn happy that he's still alive, which he may not be if he had used a taser.
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Actually, you've no authority to declare either, unless you know Wilson, and have been talking to him.
 
The Man said:
And neither do you. But I do know how normal people would feel.
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I said 'probably', whereas you made a declaration. At any rate, its my opinion that a taser would have stopped this man, and then this individual could have received the help he needed.
 
Montecresto said:
I said 'probably', whereas you made a declaration.
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But I made a true declaration, whereas you made a probable declaration that makes no sense. You said that he probably wishes that he used a taser. Unless he's suicidal, it makes no sense to think that he probably wishes that he was killed or injured in that knife attack, which is what using a taser would have likely gotten him.

He was attacked with a knife by a thug, he used a gun, thug is dead. That is the best outcome. I still can't understand why people root for the bad guy in these instances.
 
The Man said:
But I made a true declaration, whereas you made a probable declaration that makes no sense. You said that he probably wishes that he used a taser. Unless he's suicidal, it makes no sense to think that he probably wishes that he was killed or injured in that knife attack, which is what using a taser would have likely gotten him.

He was attacked with a knife by a thug, he used a gun, thug is dead. That is the best outcome. I still can't understand why people root for the bad guy in these instances.
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Oh, now I understand. I didn't realise that you had already decided what will take a Grand Jury panel a couple of months to determine. So its pointless talking to you. Your minds made up, already. Btw, I don't root for anything, and I don't wish for police to be harmed and I would prefer that individuals such as the guy with the knife, received the help he needed.
 
Montecresto said:
Oh, now I understand. I didn't realise that you had already decided what will take a Grand Jury panel a couple of months to determine. So its pointless talking to you. Your minds made up, already.
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This case is not going to trial. That's a fact. The cop rightly killed a thug who attacked him with a deadly weapon. It's open and shut.
 
Montecresto said:
Oh, now I understand. I didn't realise that you had already decided what will take a Grand Jury panel a couple of months to determine. So its pointless talking to you. Your minds made up, already. Btw, I don't root for anything, and I don't wish for police to be harmed and I would prefer that individuals such as the guy with the knife, received the help he needed.
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Well it's a little late for the thug with the knife to receive help. If he wouldn't have attacked police with a deadly weapon, dropped it like he was repeatedly told to, he'd still be around to receive help. ;)
 
Montecresto said:
I said 'probably', whereas you made a declaration. At any rate, its my opinion that a taser would have stopped this man, and then this individual could have received the help he needed.
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The police chief addressed that question, noting that tasers do not always stop suspects. A non-lethal weapon like a taser is appropriate where a suspect is not presenting a lethal threat to police or other people. That was not the case here. The police apparently knew that this man had a knife and had used it to rob the storekeeper. So when they got out of their car, they already had their pistols drawn.

There were three or four officers, and the video makes clear they warned him loudly, again and again, to get rid of the knife and get his hands in view. And yet he ignored the warnings and kept walking toward them. When he got maybe ten feet away--close enough to have lunged at them with the knife--they fired what sounded like eight or nine rapid shots and he fell on the sidewalk. I couldn't see from the cell phone video I was watching, taken from a distance, if the man ever took the knife out. But it really doesn't matter, because he could have pulled it out in an instant. The police had reason to think he still had the knife, and he refused their orders to take his hands out of the pockets of his jacket.

Just an aside. When I was in law school in St. Louis, I had a girlfriend who lived pretty close to both Ferguson and the area this incident took place. Driving around there, I remember several times seeing black people on the streets acting very odd--dressed strangely, walking in circles, yelling at the air, and so on. I never could decide if they were drunk, high on drugs, just crazy, or something else. Two or three times, I saw one of them come out of the thick shrubbery and trees that often grow near freeways there, and just run--dangerously--across the lanes of traffic. I still have no idea what they were doing in there, where they were going, or why they didn't go to someplace where there was a pedestrian crossing.
 
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matchlight said:
The police chief addressed that question, noting that tasers do not always stop suspects. A non-lethal weapon like a taser is appropriate where a suspect is not presenting a lethal threat to police or other people. That was not the case here. The police apparently knew that this man had a knife and had used it to rob the storekeeper. So when they got out of their car, they already had their pistols drawn.

There were three or four officers, and the video makes clear they warned him loudly, again and again, to get rid of the knife and get his hands in view. And yet he ignored the warnings and kept walking toward them. When he got maybe ten feet away--close enough to have lunged at them with the knife--they fired what sounded like eight or nine rapid shots and he fell on the sidewalk. I couldn't see from the cell phone video I was watching, taken from a distance, if the man ever took the knife out. But it really doesn't matter, because he could have pulled it out in an instant. The police had reason to think he still had the knife, and he refused their orders to take his hands out of the pockets of his jacket.

Just an aside. When I was in law school in St. Louis, I had a girlfriend who lived pretty close to both Ferguson and the area this incident took place. Driving around there, I remember several times seeing black people on the streets acting very odd--dressed strangely, walking in circles, yelling at the air, and so on. I never could decide if they were drunk, high on drugs, just crazy, or something else. Two or three times, I saw one of them come out of the thick shrubbery and trees that often grow near freeways there, and just run--dangerously--across the lanes of traffic. I still have no idea what they were doing in there, where they were going, or why they didn't go to someplace where there was a pedestrian crossing.
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Yeah, I'm aware of the warnings. Warnings that you and I would have heeded. But this fella had mental issues.
 
Montecresto said:
Yeah, I'm aware of the warnings. Warnings that you and I would have heeded. But this fella had mental issues.
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A cop cannot consider a suspect's mental state when their lives, or others' lives are immediately in danger. That's not their job, nor should it be. The time for psychiatric healing is not during a possibly lethal attack.
 
The Man said:
A cop cannot consider a suspect's mental state when their lives, or others' lives are immediately in danger. That's not their job, nor should it be. The time for psychiatric healing is not during a possibly lethal attack.
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Four or five cops with guns, guns drawn and tasers. Sure, a real sticky situation. I'm with those questioning police training anyway.
 
The Man said:
You left out the guy attacking them with a knife.
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Oh, sorry, I thought we all knew that that was why the four or five cops were there with their guns drawn.
 
Montecresto said:
Oh, sorry, I thought we all knew that that was why the four or five cops were there with their guns drawn.
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So, the cops should have let one of their own get stabbed and sliced before they shot the thug? That's your stance?
 
Well, I agree a guy's got to have a couple screws loose to keep coming toward three cops who have their guns drawn, refusing their repeated orders to take his hands out of his pockets, when he knows they're aware he's got a knife. But although cops try to help people who are in a bad way when they can, they are not social workers. And although I'm sure they would much rather be able to get suspects to comply with their orders and have things end peacefully, there is a good reason they're equipped with sidearms. Some people can't be reasoned with.

The cops I've met are mostly reasonable people, and I'm sure about the last thing most of them want is to know they once had to kill a guy who was probably not all there. Anyone who thinks the average cop gets a kick out of killing a guy he had nothing against should listen to Sugar Ray Robinson some time, talking about how it felt to throw a punch that killed an opponent in the ring. It shook him enough that for a while after that he couldn't bring himself to hit anyone very hard.
 
The Man said:
So, the cops should have let one of their own get stabbed and sliced before they shot the thug? That's your stance?
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Yeah, somehow I don't think I ever said that.
 
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