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Unarmed elderly man with dementia killed by police in Calif.

Re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/unarmed-retiree-dementia-fatally-sh

GhostlyJoe said:
Clearly, it was the unarmed man's fault. He should have know better than to go around the neighborhood not wielding a gun. Or it's society's fault for making the cops scared of old men and little boys. After all, some guy in a video shot a cop once, so who can blame them, right?
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I never said any of that. What I said was that the people who called in the complaint said there was a gun when none was present. That's kind of like calling in a fire when there is no fire or calling in a kidnapped child when there is no kidnapped child. If you think something funky is going on then definitely call it in but NEVER include as facts and circumstances stuff you aren't sure about. Just lay out the situation based on what you actually know.
 
Re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/unarmed-retiree-dementia-fatally-sh

Lutherf said:
I never said any of that. What I said was that the people who called in the complaint said there was a gun when none was present. That's kind of like calling in a fire when there is no fire or calling in a kidnapped child when there is no kidnapped child. If you think something funky is going on then definitely call it in but NEVER include as facts and circumstances stuff you aren't sure about. Just lay out the situation based on what you actually know.
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This I can agree with. You're absolutely right about that; it's irresponsible to report an armed gunman unless you know for sure there's a gun.

I can see a caller misreading a situation, however, or being frightened and jumping to conclusions about the presence of a firearm. If the gun was just a fabrication, though, to try to get the police to respond with more urgency, then the caller certainly deserves some share of responsibility for the tragic outcome. Still, it's tough to expect callers to know every detail before placing a call. People can be and often are mistaken.
 
Re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/unarmed-retiree-dementia-fatally-sh

Moderator's Warning:
GhostlyJoe said:
Thread title got mangled by accident. Can a mod fix?
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Fixed. Next time PM a Mod and we'll get to it sooner. :)
 
Re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/unarmed-retiree-dementia-fatally-sh

GhostlyJoe said:
Clearly, it was the unarmed man's fault. He should have know better than to go around the neighborhood not wielding a gun. Or it's society's fault for making the cops scared of old men and little boys. After all, some guy in a video shot a cop once, so who can blame them, right?
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If you must assign blame for an unfortunate event like this, blame the idiot citizen who told the cops that a gun was involved, or might be involved, or whatever was actually said. The cops will always assume a gun MIGHT be involved, but when the caller says there was a gun involved (bad information), it adds fuel to an already dangerous situation.

If the caller did not clearly see a weapon, he or she should not have said he did.

I do agree the cops pulled the trigger, and do it too damn easily and frequently, but if the citizen caller primes that pump by reporting a gun on a hunch, well.....
 
GhostlyJoe said:
Didn't see this posted. What an absolute shame. Police are way too trigger happy. This has to stop.

Unarmed elderly man with dementia killed by police in Calif.
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It's interesting, in some level, this problem. The shoot first, ask questions later mentality that is being pushed. Recently a cop was fired for not shooting first and asking questions second, so obviously, this is procedure.

So then you ask people why, and they say that cops have a dangerous job and need to protect themselves. So OK, let's start there, can we find a better solution? Cops need a better and more reliable way to subdue or incapacitate that isn't as lethal as a gun. And lo and behold, so many people oppose even this. I would think that in 2016, this is a solvable problem. But in the end, it seems like people don't want it solved. The biggest pushers for Death By Cop aren't to review police tactics, encourage deescalation, to invest in R&D for better and more reliable less than lethal devices; it's to restrict people's ability to redress the government, to limit lawsuits against the government, and otherwise to protect the government against its actions which include these cases where unarmed Citizens are gunned down by government agents.

So we're just going to see more of this, and we as a society are, on some level, encouraging this.
 
Re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/unarmed-retiree-dementia-fatally-sh

Cops shoot first and think afterwards. They are trained that way to make the transition to Robo Cops less dramatic when it happens in the not too distant future....
 
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