The sanctity of saving innocent lives from state abuses is a hard fought lesson of history that we should not take lightly. Any time the state abuses this there should be serious consequences. Not a civil lawsuit paid out by taxpayer money.
That's a bit extreme.
First, because illegitimate aggression isn't just accepted by quite a lot of people, there is vocal debate and public outcry over it. Which is good.
Second, confirmation bias may be amplifying your fears here. According to the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...), there were about 1100 people killed by police in 2016, and almost 1200 in 2015. And some portion of those were likely justifiable (and maybe even saved lives).
To get killed by police is not quite as unlucky as getting struck by lightning, but the odds are about 1/295,000 for the former.
It's hard to overstate how completely alone the United States stands when the stats are compacted: [0]
Australia had 94 fatal police shootings between 1992 and 2011. The U.S. had 97 in March of 2015.
England and Wales had 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years. The U.S. had 59 in the first 24 days of 2015.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-...
Illegitimate violence from the state (the police) is actually common enough that I have seen it many times in my life; and I am a White, law-abiding person who makes a point to stay out of trouble.
I feel extremely safe and have always had friendly encounters with police in both Europe and East Asia.
Note the official stats don't include scenarios such as the ones around Gary Webb or Ian Murdock. We won't ever know what really happened, but they're extremely suspicious.
How we calibrate our personal fears and existential anxieties in light of all these bad things, is a different matter.
The context of a World War - even more so than that of any other war - makes it much easier for any government to do what it likes. Which most often means to kill lots and lots of people.
What I argue is that such context is very different from a time of peace. It's not really fair to include WW2 atrocities when talking about the number of deaths caused by guns in a peace-time.
The GP tried to do exactly that, which I disagree with in itself, and moreover forgot to include any other "government [that] murdered millions of unarmed civilians" in their argument. I don't have a strong opinion on whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a good or bad idea, I just pointed out that, in that single operation, the US government effectively "murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians". Again, that's nothing surprising, nuclear weapons are designed to do just that.
So, again, it was war. People die in wars. That's what the wars are for, basically. Now, since then, we're at peace (here in Europe, at least). The number (and rate) of deaths caused by guns during this peaceful time is overwhelmingly higher in the US than in Germany. That's it, I don't mean anything else, just that this is a fact and that mentioning Auschwitz is not a valid counter-argument for this.
Germany also had economic warfare waged against them and this should not even be controversial--even mainstream "modern-day priests" like the hugely influential economist Keynes had said this.
That said the Japanese empire was an evil one, like most empires, but when the bombs were dropped on civilians the war was already over--that is why Eisenhower said "there was no reason to use those things."
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-an...
Police violence is an issue but way overblown for most people -- violence from other citizens far outweighs the police risk.
Compare to third world countries where you can easily be murdered in broad daylight surrounded by people, over a few hundred bucks, and the murderers face very little chance of being caught, let alone convicted.
Of course the best solution is to move to a country with great demographics equalling no crime or police violence, but those are becoming hard to find.
1: Turns out if you report (online with no followup) one of your licence plates as having fallen off your $300 car, cops might do a "felony takedown" on you, your 100 lbs wife, and 1 year old daughter. This apparently includes aiming handguns at your head while giving instructions like "lift your shirt up from the top".
Canada, The UK, Australia, New Zealand - those are the english speaking ones that meet your criteria. After that, most countries in the EU, Nordic countries, most countries in Asia would also be considered to have less crime and police violence than the US, while having comparable or superior social services and demographics (most but not all, countries in Asia - Duterte isn't making any friends recently).
Wait, what? That's the kind of statement that just begs for a followup. Did they say what they thought was going on to justify that response?
I got new plates soon after that, I never found out what happened to mine.
But if so you would think the criminals would learn to swap plates instead, as who looks at their plates that closely?
Telling the police someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that's what they're supposed to do.
That's not at all equivalent to a proof that "calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed."
I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let's not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.
I'm British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.
The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me "anti-police" then I'm very happy not to live in your great nation.
That's what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it's this exact situation --- when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.
Especially if the call is anonymous with few concrete details -- the police should consider why does this caller know the info they know? Why is the call anonymous or otherwise untraceable?
How many times have lives been saved by SWAT entering after a call like this vs an innocent person getting injured or killed? How many anonymous, untraceable calls to 911 have even turned out to be legitimate?
Of course "going in" does not mean shooting indiscriminately.
Apart from call tracing, I'd expect simple things like whether the caller stays on the line and cooperates with the dispatcher (vs hanging up immediately) to be quite predictive.
Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort
I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of 'swatting' constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it's no surprise that sending military-style squads to 'shoot on sight' ends in tragedy again and again.
Often. Mostly domestic violence barricading scenarios, which are usually handled by front-line officers with sidearms and negotiation. SWAT deployment is usually discretionary at such a scene, predicated on an active shooter, and anticipates forced entry. In an active shooter scenario, front-line officers will typically defer to SWAT to force entry, given the risk.
But yes, it does happen. A lot of domestic violence ends badly.
I'm no fan of wife-beaters, but somehow every other nation on earth has figured out less violent ways of dealing with them. Yes, in many cases "the way" is to simply accept that wives will get beaten. Admitting this is no more an acceptance of police violence than admitting that not all nations are governed with perfect justice would be an acceptance of all of our damned wars. This is a "won't somebody please think of the children?!" level of argument.
People can obviously do plenty of damage beating each-other with objects, slashing with kitchen knives, or whatever, but guns seem to lead especially often to escalation from shoving to instant death.
When police show up, if someone has a gun everything is a lot more difficult/dangerous.
Collect some evidence? Absolutely.
I get the point about guns being important to protect against a fascist government, but then I literally see a p protest march by Nazis armed with assault rifles...
So should we take away rights so the government feels less threatened? That seems like the wrong reason.
"The government" - that's supposed to be the way we organize ourselves and stand up together to above things we believe in as a nation. While that's not always working well talking about it as if its given that it's a malevolent, suppressive regime is only going to make things worse. The US finally needs to do its wild West mentality and arrive on the 21st century with the rest of the civilized world.
Asking the most armed government in the world to eliminate gun violence, by using their guns?
The cost:benefit of the second amendment is way out of proportion, IMO.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/antifa-movement-...
I don't actually disagree with you. The use of lethal force was the mistake here, but the presence of force was justifiable. The problem is how easily one seems to lead to the other. What should have happened is the police realizing their force was unnecessary and then standing down.
Also, if someone were to call in, say, a terrorist threat or a bomb threat in Britain, someone would show up with guns there as well. You know, because Britain also has their equivalent to SWAT teams. With guns. That they shoot people with.
Not that 'shot dead from across the street as soon as his hand twitched' is justifiable.
[0]http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html
“A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”
Perhaps it previously had some other claim about the circumstances, but if so it has since been revised to remove it.
"They're trained to properly identify targets before shooting, knowing that they will be required to justify their actions in court."
Obviously, they neither properly identified their target nor did they have to justify their actions in court.
I think the balance is about right and nothing like the USA. More importantly the jury of peers, in the coroners court, thought the Met Police failed on Health and Safety grounds but not the individual shooters.
The big difference is, there are fewer opportunities for armed police to screw this up. There are far fewer of them (heavily armed police are the exception, rather than the default) and they are not nearly needed as often (the citizenry is not as heavily armed). The policy that largely prevents the mistakes is what really helps, rather than having better armed police or better post-cockup inquiries (both of which, to me, seem fairly debatable).
We're not going to get anywhere with such silly caricatures, and they are dangerous in themselves -- just ask Dallas. May be something to keep in mind while we're on the subject of indirect culpability.
I'm not sure where you thought I was being nationalistic. I stated my nationality to make the context clearer. My country is an odious cesspool in many ways. We're just lucky not to have a fully militarised police force.
The *use* of lethal force was the mistake here, but the *presence* of force was justifiable.
That isn't the problem (at least primarily). Claiming that there is a serious hostage situation with the possibility of serious violence (perhaps even a potential murder) seriously escalates the risk and hostility of the situation. I didn't say potential hostility; the claim itself directly increases the perceived threat level of the situation, even if it isn't credible. A team of people responding en masse with weapons[1] at the ready further escalates the tension of the situation and the hostility of the room, even if their weapons are never used.
The end result is a very tense situation with everyone - on all sides - ready to jump at anything that might be a threat. Fortunately there is at least some evidence[2] that in "most" swattings, cooler heads eventually prevail and nobody gets shot. However, evaluating potential threats is always going to use the faster but less accurate "System 1"[3][4]. The higher the tension level, the greater chance that someone's mind will make a serious mistake, which can easily result in a cascade of everyone recursively responding in ways that probably compound the mistake, which is when people tend to get shot/stabbed/beaten/whatever.
The solution is that there needs to respond to situations that are less likely to escalate the situation to greater levels of hostility. Once it turns into a "charlie foxtrot"[5], it's too late. However, if a streamer's prior notification to the police that, should any threat be called in regarding their address, if the police pound on the door, they can expect the stream to walk outside peacefully to talk, maybe the dangerous escalation where they breaking down the door and pointing guns at everyone can be avoided. They can always fall back to that strategy if nobody comes out to talk.
edit: added [2]'s missing footnote and URL
[1] of any type - a bunch of people storming a room armed only with batons is still an escalation of violence.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...
Should this not be responded to with lethal force available? You're going to get a lot more people killed that way. Obviously the error rate should be reduced as much as possible, but a naive approach of ignoring calls without a lot of validation would be a disaster.
I imagine it would be really easy to fake some verification anyways, and coordinate a SWAT with two callers.
The way your police acts is retarded. No other country would respond with such backwards way to a simple single call.
calling this homicide
OTOH, some codes specifically address false reports of emergencies producing death, avoiding any need to address indirect homicide.
There's a pretty good description of how that works here - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1320
This case, a repeated offender (he did many calls like that) who made highly specific buggy claims (armed hostage taking with already dead hostages) with the intend to arm or kill the target (see his message) and a trace of everything (see twitter messages and recordings).
It's a perfect school case. It makes perfect sense to charge him for murder. Everything is the worst it could possibly be with the worst possibly aggravating circumstances.
Can't wait to see the proceedings. Won't be surprised if they make an example out of him.
Justified police shootings are not homicide by any definition.
Yes, they are; they are pretty much the textbook example of justifiable homicide.
They aren't criminal homicides, but not all homicides are criminal.
> the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homicide https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/homicide http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homicide
from definitions.uslegal.com
If you're just charging the officer and not the entire swat squad, then you're admitting that that officer stepped out of line of what the swat call should have done. In that case, there's no homicide case against the caller.
In this case, ONLY the officer should be charged with homicide.