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They killed my son because he's black (Saratoga Springs)

HighlandHomie said:
It'd be ideal for our armed police who are so trigger happy to be trained well enough to be able to disable an unarmed person like Brown, or someone with a knife like the latest victim in the linked story by just shooting them in the leg - but that would mean we'd have to have skilled, smart, semi-coordinated, athletic and reasonable citizens in the police force. As it stands now, for every police force that has a policeman/woman who could fit that bill they have 15 who are either fat, dumb, unreasonable and/or uncoordinated dregs with a Napoleon complex.
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Anytime I hear someone suggesting the "shoot to disable" I know I'm dealing with someone who is completely ignorant about the subject. That concept is not based on reality. It is the absolutely most dangerous option possible.

If you'd like to know why feel free to ask. My response will be tl;dr, so I doubt it'll do you any good. But I can help you to save yourself from embarrassment and just suggest that in educated company you never advocate for police to use their firearms as a less than lethal alternative because putting bullets in a person always has the potential to be lethal.
 
E.J. Wells said:
Negative. I'm not going to sit back while this arrogant, uninformed, half-witted **** head spews his mindless mouth diarrhea on men and women who would gladly lay their own lives down to save his. Ungrateful sack of dump. If he were talking about members of the US military, I bet you'd be singing a different tune. I have friends and family who are cops, and we have board members who are also cops. I'm just not going to let it go unchallenged, sorry.
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I am not talking about members of our military. And the police who I have disdain for aren't the ones who "gladly lay their own lives on the line to save mine,", they're the ones who signed up to get a badge because they have a god complex and/or a nasty desire for authority. More and more video keeps surfacing to show how disgusting and despicable these abusive cops are all over the country. The latest show cops throwing haymakers and violently handling handcuffed teenagers/young men who are just standing there. These pigs reveal themselves as arrogant, base animals with no sense of decency or rationale.

We're just lucky these racist ingrates who have dumb, base hobbies like shooting, hunting or wrestling weren't vain enough to run for public office. It's easy enough to become a cop and be handed a gun. Only a real sociopath, with no qualifications would try to run for public office to have "that type of power".
 
Gameface said:
Anytime I hear someone suggesting the "shoot to disable" I know I'm dealing with someone who is completely ignorant about the subject. That concept is not based on reality. It is the absolutely most dangerous option possible.

If you'd like to know why feel free to ask. My response will be tl;dr, so I doubt it'll do you any good. But I can help you to save yourself from embarrassment and just suggest that in educated company you never advocate for police to use their firearms as a less than leathal alternative when putting bullets in a person always has the potential to be lethal.
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How about rubber bullets? Tasers (yes, I know people die from Tasers too sometimes due to heart attacks)? And I know two police officers, one a sheriff, and have had that discussion with them at length. And, yes, there is a huge difference from taking two shots at an unarmed suspect to put them down and firing out an entire clip into his back or otherwise after he's disabled following the second shot.

There is nothing embarrassing about wishing police who have to shoot at an unarmed person would be able to do so without killing them. It's called being a human being and having a soul.
 
HighlandHomie said:
How about rubber bullets? Tasers (yes, I know people die from Tasers too sometimes due to heart attacks)? And I know two police officers, one a sheriff, and have had that discussion with them at length. And, yes, there is a huge difference from taking two shots at an unarmed suspect to put them down and firing out an entire clip into his back or otherwise after he's disabled following the second shot.

There is nothing embarrassing about wishing police who have to shoot at an unarmed person would be able to do so without killing them. It's called being a human being and having a soul.
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I think rubber bullets are an option, but do you arm all police with only rubber bullets? What do police with rubber bullets do when someone, knowing police have rubber bullets, wears a couple layers of leather? Fact is, there are situations where police need firearms with standard ammo or else they and possibly innocent people will die.

I think in the case of this guy tasers should have been used for sure. From what I have heard they shot him in the back as he was running away. I'll wait for more info, but I think these cops made a huge error and if they were in the wrong I strongly believe they should be tried for murder.

You can wish all you want, but police shouldn't be shooting unarmed people for the most part anyway. Training them that it's okay to shoot people in the leg will only serve to increase the frequency of police shootings. It is important to always stress that the use of their firearm is only appropriate when it is the only way to prevent someone from threatening the life and limb of innocent people. There is no other time when lethal force should be used.
 
Not saying anything about who is right or wrong here, but I can think of a hundred reasons where shooting someone in the back several times is perfectly acceptable. Especially if someone with a samurai sword was running toward a group of people or into a store with people in it.
 
Gameface said:
It is important to always stress that the use of their firearm is only appropriate when it is the only way to prevent someone from threatening the life and limb of innocent people. There is no other time when lethal force should be used.
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Best post in the thread. No need to kill someone over theft/drugs/insult. With that said, this dude was unresponsive/erratic, and was running in a mall with a samurai sword. Tough situation.

Gameface said:
I think rubber bullets are an option, but do you arm all police with only rubber bullets? What do police with rubber bullets do when someone, knowing police have rubber bullets, wears a couple layers of leather? Fact is, there are situations where police need firearms with standard ammo or else they and possibly innocent people will die.

I think in the case of this guy tasers should have been used for sure. From what I have heard they shot him in the back as he was running away. I'll wait for more info, but I think these cops made a huge error and if they were in the wrong I strongly believe they should be tried for murder.
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Well...they could divert resources away from the War on Drugs (2000+ arrests per day for simple possession of marijuana...), and have more available officers to handle situations like this (yes, I recognize this is probably overly simplistic). If each officer has both a lethal and non-lethal weapon (presumably, they already do), the risk to officers and bystanders from an officer using non-lethal force when lethal force was appropriate/needed is reduced with an additional officer or two at the scene. I'd be curious to know how many situations like this occur per year, how frequently tasers are used, and how often the use of tasers isn't sufficient to handle the situation. Obviously, situations in which tasers are used are not directly comparable to situations where firearms are used, but it would still be useful information.
 
I think the issue of the samurai sword is being played up quite a bit but we do all realize that 99.9% of samurai swords out there are novelty items that don't have a real edge on them and would break if you actually tried to use them, right?

And...people are packing heat all over the place these days. Some are concealed weapon permit holders, some open carry. Sometimes they go into a panda express, sometimes they go to starbucks, sometimes they walk down the street. Being armed is not equal to being a threat and is not justification for being shot in the back. Unless this guy was acting in a specifically threatening way I can't imagine these cops were justified. They could have chased him and killed him if he actually presented a threat to anyone.
 
Say what you want about protecting the public, but the Ferguson guy didn't have a weapon and the Utah guy had a machete, not a gun. I didn't read anything about him threatening anyone with the machete. I still say that lethal force was unnecessary based on the reports that I read. As one poster commented, the policemen on the beat are often not very competent or intelligent individuals, and not trained well enough for such situations.

Not only that, I don't recall in days of yore (when I grew up), reports of police shooting and killing people in situations where lethal weapons were not being used against them.
 
E.J. Wells said:
Negative. I'm not going to sit back while this arrogant, uninformed, half-witted **** head spews his mindless mouth diarrhea on men and women who would gladly lay their own lives down to save his. Ungrateful sack of dump. If he were talking about members of the US military, I bet you'd be singing a different tune. I have friends and family who are cops, and we have board members who are also cops. I'm just not going to let it go unchallenged, sorry.
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I never said you had to let it go unchallenged. At all. But you can be somewhat mature or restrained in your tone while still being aggressive, intelligent and dickish. Unless you want to be banned for like the fourth time, only to come back to Jason on hands and knees, begging for reinstatement, your tail between your legs. Then have at it. That's your call. I'm just presenting to you what I see.
 
Also, such injudicious behavior by police will start to make the average person fearful of them and look upon them as adversaries rather than defenders, especially in the U.S. for those who are persons of color, and if you are in Mississippi or Alabama or Florida (in certain sections) or any one of those redneck states, you better not say boo to them.
 
Regarding the issues of race and alleged (and documented?) police prejudice toward people of color, wouldn't it be interesting to read about all the times cops don't shoot and kill people in situations like this one? Just from a scientific standpoint, I think it would help people to see the statistics for the way cops handle these potentially tragic circumstances.

What stands out to me though are these thoughts: a). how many people are killed by police in Saratoga Springs annually, and b). how many people of color live in this town? I could do the math, but it seems like an easy logical jump to make that this guy might have been treated differently for his skin color. I mean, if your police dept kills one person a year on average, and the town you're policing has .8% black people, you're going to raise suspicion for killing that black guy, regardless the other circumstances related to the case.

The other possibility that emerges here is that "black people commit more crimes." That's a scary road to go down, if you're not prepared to think critically. The answer there, for me, has everything to do with socialization, and absolutely nothing to do with genetic heredity.
 
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After three days of silence about what prompted officers to shoot and kill a man outside a fast food restaurant Wednesday, investigators issued a brief statement Saturday saying he lunged at officers with a sword.

But an attorney for the man's family questioned that scenario, saying an autopsy shows Darrien Hunt was shot numerous times from behind as he ran away from police...
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https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=31552049&nid=148&title=lawyer-autopsy-shows-saratoga-springs-man-shot-from-behind
 
E.J. Wells said:
It IS possible and more than likely that your kid died because he was stupid, not because he was black.
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Not stupid, troubled. It was likely a combination of both; neither a troubled white man nor a non-troubled bpack man would have wound up dead.
 
One Brow said:
Not stupid, troubled. It was likely a combination of both; neither a troubled white man nor a non-troubled bpack man would have wound up dead.
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Was he either? I don't know.

Maybe he was just a nerd. I have two brothers that are around that age that have fantasy swords.
Afro_Samurai_Resurrection_TV_Interview_-_Samuel_L._Jackson


I think the first question is: Was he actually behaving in a way that made him a credible threat? If yes then was shooting him a reasonable response given the situation?

I don't think there is enough info yet to answer these. There is enough to raise some eyebrows,imo.
 
One Brow said:
In Utah, where people apparently carry around semi-automatic weapons openly, why would anyone freak out over a sword, even if it was not a toy?
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Maybe perhaps because a weapon is a weapon.
 
One Brow said:
Not stupid, troubled. It was likely a combination of both; neither a troubled white man nor a non-troubled bpack man would have wound up dead.
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If either of them approached a place of business carrying a sword and walked away from police trying to contain a situation they were called out for then likely it would have ended the same.
 
Anyone else surprised that the national media hasn't jumped on this yet?

Seeing the outrage in Ferguson... Why isn't this story getting any momentum nationally?
 
The Thriller said:
Anyone else surprised that the national media hasn't jumped on this yet?

Seeing the outrage in Ferguson... Why isn't this story getting any momentum nationally?
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Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson could be a couple of reasons...

People aren't rioting in Saratoga Springs could be another...
 
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