When Defending Cops Becomes Impossible

[toysoldier]

Apparently this is a picture of the cop's rifle in the Daniel Shaver shooting.

 

The one with the "You are fucked" inscription -on the dust cover- that the jury wasn't allowed to see?

[EchoFiveMike]

Of course the officers involved said every thing worked as it should. Wouldnt have done anything different. Guy caused his own death by his reckless actions.

 

IMO The officer who pulled the trigger wasnt responsible for Shaver's death, the Sgt giving the commands was.

 

They're all responsible for that pathetic criminal clownery; the only difference is degree. This "organization" was fucked up from the time they were issued lethal weapons. Just picking random kids off a farm would give you a higher average maturity level.

 

Wipe that entire department out and start fresh. S/F....Ken M

[glenn239]

There's a small portion of cops out there that go off on any excuse. Police should be required to occasionally wear equipment that monitors their emotional state during duty so that the ones that tend to go off on a dime can be identified and moved to other duties.

[Murph]

Ok, here is my two cents: I wasn't there, I did not see what the jury saw, so I cannot address what the jury got to see and what they did not see. Understand that in any jury trial, the jury actually only gets to see part of the evidence, never all of it. The Grand Jury gets to see it all, if it is done right and it so seldom is unfortunately.

 

The video is horrific, just watching the video you cannot come to any other conclusion.

 

That being said, where is the rest of the context? What was the call, what were the facts put out by the dispatchers to the officers who were responding? What did they see from citizens at the scene and what were they told by citizens at the scene?

 

I have been in a police shooting, I have almost shot several other people over the course of 23 years, I have been stabbed by a guy we were fighting (I was lucky, he hit my vest so I survived). I have been on the receiving end of garbled, overly excited dispatch transmissions, I have also seen the chaos at situations where you have seconds to make a life or death decision.

 

Stuff like this, makes it really hard to defend, and I am not trying to defend the officer who did what he did. The ejection port "art" is completely unjustifialble, and just plain stupid. The book Rise of the Warrior Cop, is good, but it has blind spots, the "Us vs Them" mentality has developed since the Clinton Era where the Left has consistently demonized cops. How often do you a positive portrayal of police in the media? Seldom if ever.

 

I have had guys approach me in felony situations screaming things like "Don't shoot me, I give up", and then as soon as they get within lunging distance they attack. I was told by an old veteran cop (Texas Ranger), that you use short (3-4 words) sentences, loudly, and repeat it. "Stop!" "Do Not Move" "Lay on the ground!, Show me your hands", because studies have shown that people remember, and react to short authoritative statements. It has worked for me, I have not had to shoot anyone since 1997. The guys laugh at me and tell me I have "the voice of Satan" when I am giving commands, because people tend to obey them.

 

All that being said, the video is bad, really really bad.

[KV7]

There's a small portion of cops out there that go off on any excuse. Police should be required to occasionally wear equipment that monitors their emotional state during duty so that the ones that tend to go off on a dime can be identified and moved to other duties.

You can spot these people from a mile away. The problem is they are probably a very large proportion of police in many regions.

 

Fixing things using rules and punishments is going to be hard, because there is so much grey area. I think something like a station bonus for no shootings in a period would be a good idea, because the officers are still losing out when they shoot when is is borderline justifiable by the rules, but unnecessary using common sense reasoning. Other officers will then have an incentive to use peer pressure to reign in suspected trigger happy idiots.

 

[MiloMorai]

Why wasn't the guy cuffed when he was laying on the floor?

 

Murph, the call was about a guy with a rifle in a hotel room.

[glenn239]

KV7 You can spot these people from a mile away. The problem is they are probably a very large proportion of police in many regions.

 

We had one up here in Canada where a kid with a knife on a streetcar (unoccupied) was being talked down by a group of police that seemed to know what they were doing and were calm. Then Joe Cowboy showed up and shot him dead within seconds. Police I think sense that these predators in their midst do them more harm then good, but they were probably as afraid of this guy as the guy on the floor was.

Fixing things using rules and punishments is going to be hard, because there is so much grey area. I think something like a station bonus for no shootings in a period would be a good idea, because the officers are still losing out when they shoot when is is borderline justifiable by the rules, but unnecessary using common sense reasoning. Other officers will then have an incentive to use peer pressure to reign in suspected trigger happy idiots.

 

Nothing is going to fix the problem except a better system of identifying and moving to desk jobs the minority of police that have a tendency to go off too quickly in circumstances that do not warrant it. We've all been stopped by police where you have a sense that if things went pear shaped this guy would escalate to lethal force. We've all met that guy. Robotic police operating with police will help. In this video, there is a bullying aspect to it where the weakness of the victim seems to be egging the shooter into escalation, like how a pit bull instinctively attacks the weak, not the strong. A robo-cop might deter that at the instant it turns and orders pit bull cop to stand down immediately.

Edited December 9, 2017 by glenn239

[KV7]

 

KV7 You can spot these people from a mile away. The problem is they are probably a very large proportion of police in many regions.

 

We had one up here in Canada where a kid with a knife on a streetcar (unoccupied) was being talked down by a group of police that seemed to know what they were doing and were calm. Then Joe Cowboy showed up and shot him dead within seconds. Police I think sense that these predators in their midst do them more harm then good, but they were probably as afraid of this guy as the guy on the floor was.

Fixing things using rules and punishments is going to be hard, because there is so much grey area. I think something like a station bonus for no shootings in a period would be a good idea, because the officers are still losing out when they shoot when is is borderline justifiable by the rules, but unnecessary using common sense reasoning. Other officers will then have an incentive to use peer pressure to reign in suspected trigger happy idiots.

 

Nothing is going to fix the problem except a better system of identifying and moving to desk jobs the minority of police that have a tendency to go off too quickly in circumstances that do not warrant it. We've all been stopped by police where you have a sense that if things went pear shaped this guy would escalate to lethal force. We've all met that guy. Robotic police operating with police will help. In this video, there is a bullying aspect to it where the weakness of the victim seems to be egging the shooter into escalation, like how a pit bull instinctively attacks the weak, not the strong. A robo-cop might deter that at the instant it turns and orders pit bull cop to stand down immediately.

 

I think the grey area is too big. Yes you can identify psychos but a lot of atrocities seem to be 'shooting this guy lowered the risk to me by 0.00001 %, and he did not follow instructions, I don't like shooting people but it is his bad luck, he should have done as he was told' etc. People like that are cold and callous but not noticeably deranged. They will never be disciplined because they can reasonably argue they are following procedure- although changing the procedures would also help.

 

But absolutely it will take a lot of political pressure, which is hard to apply. The comments above about the limitations of BLM are mostly astute.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by KV7

[Jeff]

The cop set him up to fail.

I think that's a key point to make. It was like an extreme game of Simon Says with death the price of failure. They should have given firm but minimal commands to gain control of the situation and then cuffed the suspect. Instead, they had him doing the hokey pokey until he messed up and then they killed him. I appreciate that they were responding to a call of "suspect with a gun" but they had him dead to rights at this point.

[Cinaruco]

If the video involved a US soldier and a civilian it would be murder without a doubt, people would be spitting fire.

[Paul G.]

 

 

The cop set him up to fail.

I think that's a key point to make. It was like an extreme game of Simon Says with death the price of failure. They should have given firm but minimal commands to gain control of the situation and then cuffed the suspect. Instead, they had him doing the hokey pokey until he messed up and then they killed him. I appreciate that they were responding to a call of "suspect with a gun" but they had him dead to rights at this point.

Completely agree.

 

Of note. Thw Sgt issuing the commands resigned from the force and relocated to the Philippines.

[Colin]

This was a classic case of poor leadership and to many cops at the scene. Generally I find the RCMP excel at talking down individuals, but in this case the senior officer did not stop and assess the situation, likely due to to many officers and overwhelming force. Had only 2 officer attended I suspect a much more nuanced approach would have happened.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident

[Burncycle360]

Factor in drunk, stressed and scared and you get brain locked. To some officers that is equated to reluctance to comply. From the limited perspective it looked like he reached back to pull his pants up but stopped himself halfway through, but it was too late. His instinct is to pull up his pants when he needs to, muscle memory of a lifetime of doing that overrode the instructions he had been given, and nervous officers jumped the trigger.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Burncycle360

[NickM]

Then he should 'burn'...take Oscar Grant; he spent his weekends picking fights on The BART line and getting arrested; I'd heard he was in cuff and on the ground when the BART transit officer shot him--AFAIK the idiot transit cop thought he had a tazer in his hand & not his sidearm...which begs the question as to why the heck he was going to taze Grant when he was already on the ground in cuffs.

[Calvinb1nav]

I wouldn't condemn cops as a whole as in any group of people, there are always jackasses. Wasn't there but it seems like the cop was in the wrong here.

 

One thing I think should change is police departments shouldn't get to investigate their own shootings. There should probably be a state-level agency that does it. No military unit that has an aircraft mishap investigates it themselves; outsiders come and do it to get a more objective look.

 

Also, I don't think police should use military ranks nor military rank insignia. I think in some cases that stimulates the us-versus-them mentality.

 

At any rate, the vast majority of police are normal, decent people trying to do a very difficult job while being under-resourced and under-trained (we expect them to be social workers and ombudsman too).

[Marek Tucan]

European police forces use captains , lieutenants and other military ranks without going into the same re. General population. I think it might be result of the general polarization of the us society, along with the nice populist fallacies of "criticism f police means you are a cultural marxist against law and order" vs. "all police are trigger happy bullies".

 

In cz use of arms by police is rare and mostly against runaway drivers. Cops in traffic stops are generally polite and not on the edge despite plenty of guns in the population...

[toysoldier]

I would laid some blame at the feet of citizens that absolutely must call the police on account of every loud fart.

[Ivanhoe]

Of course the officers involved said every thing worked as it should. Wouldnt have done anything different. Guy caused his own death by his reckless actions.

 

IMO The officer who pulled the trigger wasnt responsible for Shaver's death, the Sgt giving the commands was.

 

I recall from one of those old "shoot, don't shoot" training videos from the 1980s that one of the test scenarios is where a suspect is running away, and some other cop is yelling "shoot him! shoot him!" or some such. The sermon was that the guy pulling the trigger must have an articulable reason to use deadly force. "Joe told me to" not being sufficient. Shooter has ownership of all bullets sent downrange sorta thing. Dunno what the current doctrine is.

 

However, I have no problem with other officers going before the court for contributory negligence etc. The "multiple morons" scenario seems to keep happening, so the overall LE community is not adequately addressing the problem.

[Murph]

No sh*t, I have had calls for a kid not wanting to get out of bed, and for tree branches being over the neighbors fence.

 

 

I would laid some blame at the feet of citizens that absolutely must call the police on account of every loud fart.

[Murph]

We don’t the Texas Rangers investigate any we have. Bigger departments though keep it in house.

 

 

I wouldn't condemn cops as a whole as in any group of people, there are always jackasses. Wasn't there but it seems like the cop was in the wrong here.

 

One thing I think should change is police departments shouldn't get to investigate their own shootings. There should probably be a state-level agency that does it. No military unit that has an aircraft mishap investigates it themselves; outsiders come and do it to get a more objective look.

 

Also, I don't think police should use military ranks nor military rank insignia. I think in some cases that stimulates the us-versus-them mentality.

 

At any rate, the vast majority of police are normal, decent people trying to do a very difficult job while being under-resourced and under-trained (we expect them to be social workers and ombudsman too).

 

[BansheeOne]

European police forces use captains , lieutenants and other military ranks without going into the same re. General population. I think it might be result of the general polarization of the us society, along with the nice populist fallacies of "criticism f police means you are a cultural marxist against law and order" vs. "all police are trigger happy bullies".

 

In cz use of arms by police is rare and mostly against runaway drivers. Cops in traffic stops are generally polite and not on the edge despite plenty of guns in the population...

 

More or less all continental European police forces have a military heritage, even if (nowadays) using civilian ranks like in Germany; after WW II the uniformed branches took over the detective "officer" designations like Inspektor, Kommissar etc. The lower rank designation of Wachtmeister was originally military too, an alternate to Feldwebel that remained in use in the Wehrmacht cavalry and artillery, and in the Swiss and Austrian armies to this day. It's just the way the military was used for internal order on the continent, too, evolving towards dedicated police forces via the French Gendarmerie type spread during the Napoleonic Wars, while the Anglo approach was more civilian.

 

I suspect the major cause for the unfortunate us-vs.-them, officer security über alles development in the US is that cops have some legitimate reason for fear working in a violent, armed society, and it's not something really new. As I've pointed out before, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was really a messed-up affair that the lawmen didn't seem to expect, but drew accusations of murder by the opposing side; Bonny and Clyde were killed in a classical military ambush without as much as a "freeze"; dropping an explosive charge on the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia from a helicopter wasn't exactly standard police work either. I think most people fail to fully understand the old adage of an armed society being a polite society - it's not an automatic result, but has to be actively lived by a sufficient majority. Because the full text should probably read "an armed society is a polite society, or it will blow up".

 

Not that local police don't show some of the same tendencies, in part probably because as in so many areas, the US is a role model people elsewhere like to emulate because American is cool, setting international trends for better or worse via Hollywood, the internet etc.; OTOH the same is also true for criminals and wannabe gangstas, and regardless of cultural influences the climate in crime hotspots has certainly become rougher along with a general decay of respect for official authority, or what is seen as such - first responders of all kinds including EMTs and firefighters (see the mounting complaints about people resisting being told to stop jamming accident sites while taking cellphone pictures), railroad staff, and so on. Sometimes I think that after two dictatorships over the last century people here want to prove they're not blindly obedient to authorities just a little too much.

 

Overall the cop on the street tends to be safer than his US counterparts though, spectacular cases to the contrary notwithstanding; two from this year I can recall is the Federal Police officer who got shot in the head with the duty gun a troublemaker had wrestled away from her colleague at a Munich S-Bahn station (she also shot him and survived, but I've heard nothing positive about her status), and the two who were run over and killed at a roadblock by a schizophrenic on drugs who had previously stabbed his grandmother to death in Brandenburg. Going further back, there's of course the still somewhat mysterious case of BW officer Michelle Kiesewetter who is listed as the only German victim of the National Socialist Underground terror cell. At least her duty gun was found at their hideout; her colleague who was also shot in the head during the incident recovered, but has no recollection of what happened while they were supposedly taking a break in their cruiser. I also dimly recall a case where two criminal brothers (?) ambushed a police car chasing them, using an automatic weapon.

 

House calls are probably the most risky; a couple years ago two officers responding to a domestic disturbance call on my block were stabbed in the head and neck with a pair of scissors by the enraged Vietnamese guy opening the door, which resulted in me coming home to a street parked solid with police cars. Any calls involving a barricaded and/or possibly armed suspect are typically served by SEKs, and they tend to have the most noted losses. There was one in Berlin a couple years ago where IIRC a guy from an Arab clan shot the first man through the door below the latter's bulletproof visor, then quickly laid down the gun and surrendered to be taken alive, which miraculously seems to be the usual outcome in such cases. Same with the Reichsbürger who was expecting the raid to take his guns in BW earlier this year and killed one officer (it later turned out he had been tipped off about impending action via a cop somewhat sympathetic to the movement); and the Hell's Angels chapter head in RLP who was acquitted for killing an SEK trooper outside his door with a legally-owned gun because the officers hadn't identified themselves, and he could argue to have acted in putative self-defense against an attack by rival rockers he expected.

 

But police also mess up, SEKs get the housenumbers wrong, people get killed by panicked officers, etc. The most egregious case to me is two officers acting on a wrong tip that an urgently wanted serial killer, robber and rapist was staying at a Thuringia hotel in 1999, who shot an unsuspecting tourist through the closed door of his room, which violates about any rule for firearms use I can think of. Then there were the two who between themselves fired a total of three full magazines into a mentally handicapped guy playing in the woods with a self-made wooden rifle. Incidentally, when the assault weapons ban subsequently was lifted in 2003 and airsoft rifles became legal, police unions wailed that there would be a trail of mistakenly-shot kids, the lack of evidence from other European countries to the contrary. In fact while there has been a wealth of "man with a gun" calls that turned out to be kids with airsoft, nothing of that sort has happened. Even so, guns of less than 0.5 joule energy which are covered by the EU toy guideline and thus could be carried in public were later selectively banned from doing so again. I tend to be cautious with my collection around windows specifically for the possibility that a nosy and hysterical neighbor has nothing better to do than cause an SEK to break through my door.

Edited December 10, 2017 by BansheeOne

[Rickard N]

Um

 

European police forces use captains , lieutenants and other military ranks without going into the same re. General population. I think it might be result of the general polarization of the us society, along with the nice populist fallacies of "criticism f police means you are a cultural marxist against law and order" vs. "all police are trigger happy bullies".

In cz use of arms by police is rare and mostly against runaway drivers. Cops in traffic stops are generally polite and not on the edge despite plenty of guns in the population...

I don't know much about the British military but I would think that the amount of Detective Chief Superintendents are quote low

Same goes for the Swedish police btw.

 

/R

[RETAC21]

European police forces use captains , lieutenants and other military ranks without going into the same re. General population. I think it might be result of the general polarization of the us society, along with the nice populist fallacies of "criticism f police means you are a cultural marxist against law and order" vs. "all police are trigger happy bullies".

 

In cz use of arms by police is rare and mostly against runaway drivers. Cops in traffic stops are generally polite and not on the edge despite plenty of guns in the population...

 

Actually GNR (Portugal), Guardia Civil (Spain), Gendarmerie (France) and Carabinieri (Italy) are military, guess others too.

[Murph]

Well, we have the ranks of: Deputy, Senior Deputy (PFC stripes), Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain. Plus Chief Deputy and Sheriff. We are in our own way a paramilitary organization, albeit one with no more than 5-6 patrol deputies on at any given time for 711+ square miles. So you have to handle a bunch of calls by yourself, rather than like big cities which had 5-10 officers per call. You learn to talk to people first.

 

All our shootings have been investigated by the Texas Rangers and they are as unbiased as you can get. Thank goodness we don't have many of them at all.

 

I have seen an increasing desire on the part of the public to let us (the Sheriff's Office) handle things that 20 years ago, they would have handled themselves. I have seen people ask us to make their kids get up, get on the bus, do their homework, etc. The 9-1-1 calls that come in have a number which are silly in the extreme, which makes me wonder if he have a nation of adults any more?

[Cinaruco]

I have seen an increasing desire on the part of the public to let us (the Sheriff's Office) handle things that 20 years ago, they would have handled themselves. I have seen people ask us to make their kids get up, get on the bus, do their homework, etc. The 9-1-1 calls that come in have a number which are silly in the extreme, which makes me wonder if he have a nation of adults any more?

The nanny state is a result of cultural Marxism, the next part is called Police State, Citizen.