I find it hard to think of an explanation other than force of habit.

No dishonor to sweat on an honest brow. Kudos.

And agreed. I, too, would be a million times behind bars from my time as a bartender had I gone with gunz or weapons (bar towels don't officially count).

Breoona Taylor was asleep in bed. Was she not complying?

Well, clearly not. She failed to respond to any orders the officers gave her, initially because she was asleep and then because she was dead. AIUI that's more than enough for a charge of resisting arrest.

Dave

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=309584

Officer shot the carer of a man with autism, three shots and one hit, claimed he was trying to shoot the man with autism because he thought he was armed and had taken the carer hostage (despite the carer having tried desperately to explain to the police that he only had a toy truck), which didn't stop him handcuffing the carer and leaving him bleeding and without medical assistance for 20 minutes. When the victim asked why the officer had shot him, the officer replied, "I don't know." He got off with a misdemeanour.

"Infinitesimally small" is mathematically incorrect terminology to describe the probability of something that is known to have happened, BTW.

Dave

Infinitesimally small is correct. The chances of my neighbour turning out to be a serial killer who murders me in my sleep is infinitesimally small. Such things clearly happen, but it doesn't constitute anything like a "reasonable fear". The same with cops. Absolutely bad things happen, some of them due to bad luck, some due to negligence, some due to bad intent.... but it is not a "reasonable fear" to see any given cop as on the point of executing you in the street. See the comment I was responding to below:

That would clearly not be a reasonable fear.

When I say "infinitesimally small" I am clearly not making a claim about the theory of limits. It is a colloquial expression for "so tiny that in the situation under discussion [an individuals rational fears] it can be discounted".

Charged yeah. Whether or not Eric Gardner's murder will actually face meaningful punishment remains a future hypothetical. Breonna Taylor's murders are walking free with impunity.

Only 42 police officers have been convicted for unlawful killings in the line of duty since, and nearly all of those were for less offenses. You couldn't run a table at Vegas with those odds.

I can think of Levar Jones, Rekia Boyd, John Crawford 3rd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, and Charles Kinsley, right off the bat.

And this is only people who were shot while either complying, or having never received an order to comply with at all. Never mind those beaten, tased, teargassed, shot with rubber or wooden bullets, choked, or otherwise assaulted under the same situations (such as nearly every young black male in NYC, an entire neighborhood in Ferguson MO, high school kids in Baltimore MD on the day Freddie Grey was buried, etc.), people given unlawful orders when killed (such as Eric Garner, who was choked out when he refused to be arrested for...being outdoors, or Freddie Grey who was tortured after running away from police who were after someone else), and so forth.

Why should any non-criminal need to be compliant? Why should people be shot just for not wanting to live in an oppressive police state?

Bully for you. I reiterate my previous statement:

It's sickening and terrifying how many people see a death sentence as an appropriate reaction to "Not being sufficiently groveling to a police officer."

Listen I'm not some bleeding heart jumping up and down clapping at the fact that police are finally the bad guys in societal narrative so I can finally rectify the fact that I'm mad I missed the 60s and can now live out some Berkeley Hippie "Cops are Pigs" fantasy.

Hating cops doesn't make me happy. And you step to a cop as an actual threat and whine about getting your pee-pee smacked and I'll need to go outside to have enough space for the jerk off motion it will produce in me. But facts are facts and "The citizen made my cop dick feel small so I had to kill them" is sadistic crap.

In your opinion, is the number of such incidents (police caused deaths of unarmed black people) in the USA that are the cause of current unrest, and of the discussions here, an acceptable level of collateral damage? My understanding from your posts is that you see no problem with these deaths because they are relatively few. Here is you opportunity to correct my understanding (and perhaps that of other posters here).

You absolutely don't have to be compliant. Having said that, the police can't know who is and who isn't a criminal. If you are compliant with police you are going to have a better time than if you act aggressively. Anybody who expects being compliant not to result in the vast majority of cases in a better outcome is a fool. If you don't mind getting shot or tased, by all means fight with the cops.

Better to not have your pants fall down while grovelling on the ground while a cop with an AR-15 barks contradictory orders at you.

Daniel Shaver reached to pull his pants up, which fell down while following the orders of a cop telling him to get off the ground onto his knees while keeping his ankles crossed with his hands above his head. He was shot dead with rifle fire for this mistake. It's like a game of twister, but you get perforated with 5 shots from a rifle if you slip up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver

The cop is collecting a medical retirement because the murder he committed gave him PTSD.

Yes, I think it can if your skin's pale enough. But it happens, and every time it happens it's a monstrous injustice. And we should be no less concerned about stopping it happening than we should be concerned about stopping serial killers from killing people; unless maybe you think that, because your personal risk from serial killers is "infinitesimal" then law enforcement shouldn't bother with them.

Dave

"You don't have to be compliant, but if you aren't compliant the cop might shoot you and it won't be his fault because you should have known better."

Again was Breonna Taylor aggressively snoring? Was Eric Garner's choking too aggressively?

I am doubtful that the current unrest has much to do with the very small number of unarmed black people killed by the police every year. In a country with the level of violence that the US has, you are necessarily going to have unarmed people being shot and killed by the police. Maybe the level could be lowered with reasonable measures, but you are always going to have cases like this.

I don't think I would say this. I was responding to jimbob who was implying that it was reasonable for your average black law abiding citizen to fear that the police would shoot them. The odds of that are small enough that I don't see that on an individual level they are worth worrying about. If you want, you can make them higher by being aggressive and non-compliant with police, maybe getting in a fight with them... but those are choices.

I think you should go round telling black people that they don't need to be afraid of being shot or beaten by police, then. I'm sure they'll be grateful for the reassurance.

Dave

The city of Louisville has settled the wrongful death lawsuit with the family of Breonna Taylor. Details are lacking but the Mayor is expected to hold a press conference later today where we might get more info.

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/15/us/br...ent/index.html

You just finished saying that people only get shot by police because they are non-compliant.
The fact is that even if you ARE a criminal your chances of being shot by police should be zero unless you have a weapon in hand and are trying to use it. The idea that people “get shot because they didn’t follow orders” is right out of the worlds worst most repressive police states.

Your attitude seems some very, er, unamerican.

Do what the man in the uniform tells you, regardless of any of that constitutional stuff and you won't get hurt...

The fact remains, policemen shoot innocent people in the USA. Policemen kill innocent black people in the USA.

As small as the problem is, in your eyes, it happens. A large part of the problem is that when it happens the response to extra-judicial killings of innocent people is, to say the least, weak, leaving officers with poor judgement, those with a hard-on for killing and those who simply don't have the stones for the job, still employed with a badge to do it again.

I won't bother busting out the videos of angry armed white people getting up in cops faces without getting shot (or even arrested) and how all of the white mass murders who don't intentionally pull a suicide by cop manage to not get shot yet again just for it to be ignored.

"But they were being aggressive / non compliant / made my cop pee-pee feel small" is just a fancy way of saying "Cops should just be able to shoot whoever they want and make up an excuse later."

I'm beginning to feel privileged. Every young man should get a chance to be slapped around by Franco's goons a few times. Clarifies the mind.

The trait they shared with the cops in all the recent videos is that of a strutting, cheap punk, drunk with an authority they ascribe to their own person, not to the law they represent. When you talk back, you are attacking their manhood, not the law.

Cheap. Punks. Blind teddy bear could whup their butts before breakfast.

If you are black in the US you are about 3 times more likely to be killed by police. But in some states this is much higher. If you are Black In Utah, Oklahoma or Alaska your chances of being killed by police is on par with the most dangerous and/or repressive countries on Earth.



But, even if you are white, you are:
2.5 times as likely to be killed by police in the US as you are in Canada
6 times as likely to be killed by police in the US as you are in France
18 times as likely to be killed by police in the US as you are in Germany
40 as likely to be killed by police in the US as you are in the UK

Well, there were 14 unarmed black people shot and killed by the police in 2019, and 9 so far this year, according to the Washington Post. You've got about 45 million black people in the USA. So that would give odds of being shot in 2019 of around 1/3,000,000. Those just aren't the sorts of odds one worries about day to day.

Looking at the individual 2019 cases, we have:

Atatiana Jefferson which looks to be a bad shoot.
Channara Tom Pheap attempted to choke the office and grab his taser
Gun went off during a fight on the floor with a schizophrenic. Officer was black.
Gregory Griffin seems like a bad shoot.
Isaiah Lewis was acting like a crazy person and attacked police.
Jimmy Atchison looks like a bad shoot.
Josef Delon Richardson could well be a bad shoot.
Kevin Bruce Mason could be a bad shoot. He seems to have told police he was going to kill them.
Kevin Pudlik pinned an officer to a wall with a car after a chase.
Marcus McVae - Violent career criminal got into a fight with officers.
Marzeus Scott - had just punched the hell out of a store clerk, wouldn't obey commands and was marching towards a retreating office.
Melvin Watkins drove at an officer who had been called to the scene because his family said they were afraid he was going to kill someone.
Michael Dean looks like a stupid accidental shooting caused by negligence.
Ryan Twyman looks crazy bad.

So, out of the 14, what do we have... 7 that I don't see the person who got shot did much to bring it on. Even some of those 7 were interacting with the police because they were criminals. Your odds of getting shot and killed in 2019 as a law abiding unarmed black person were less than 1/6,000,000.

Not at all. Fighting with police is probably not going to end well. Radical freedom and all that, you are free to refuse to cooperate with police, reach suddenly into your pockets, pull out a novelty vape shaped like a pistol to show the police how unafraid you are. One has to make ones own judgement call about how to deal with the police. They don't know you don't have a real gun, and they want to live through the day just like you do. You can help them not to shoot you, or you can help them to shoot you.

Yes, but that is unavoidable. Maybe the level can be reduced a bit, but you are still going to have some innocent people being killed, and some innocent black people being killed. Innocent feels like the wrong word here, since you getting shot isn't a question of guilt or innocence.

Sure it does. It is tragic for the people impacted by it. It will always happen to some degree though.

You are talking about maybe 7 such cases in 2019. I'm not going back to check, but I recall reading a lot of statements about the officer quitting, being fired, or being prosecuted. Maybe there were some where that didn't happen, but the number of officers is tiny.

No I didn't.

No it shouldn't.

You don't get shot for not following orders. You get, legitimately, shot because the officer has a reasonable fear that you are going to inflict serious injury or death and lethal force is appropriate to stop you. Not following orders like "keep back", or "don't put your hand in your pocket" are good ways of establishing a reasonable fear in the mind of the officer.

And when the cop screams "Don't move! Put your hands up!" and shoots you because doing both things at the same time is impossible?

And again "No I'm not saying police can shoot you not following orders, I'm just saying police can shoot you if you're a threat and not following orders makes you a threat" is just pure word games.

Also what orders was Breonna Taylor failing to follow?

Well, then you are out of luck. One person died due to that bit of stupidity last year. You are never going to get to the point where police don't occasionally kill people through stupidity without getting rid of the police. As I have already said, if you do nothing wrong, the odds of any given black person who wasn't doing anything crazy stupid getting shot dead by the cops was about 1/6,000,000 in 2019. Clearly it happens.

So, take Marzeus Scott.... Your view is that the officer should have allowed the violent criminal who had just beaten the heck out of a some cashier to get up close to her and see if he was going to take her gun, beat her unconscious, or just wanted to give her a hug?

She is some combination of bad luck/negligence by the cops. You aren't going to be able to do away with that entirely without stopping having police.

I'm not playing a rousing game of you showing me soup that is too cold to counter the claim that some soup is too hot.

I get it. "Oh here's some unrelated example of a violent thug I guess you're saying the police should have just given him a hug."

Why doesn't this work the other way? Why aren't a few dead cops given the same "Oh well shucks that's just the way it is" shrug?

It's like saying we can't stop all murders so why charge any of them.

You did, and I quoted the post where you did.
The US constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights say otherwise.
No. First of all “fear” isn’t part of equation in ANY way. Reasonable cause is seeing a gun or some other weapon in your hand and directing it at someone, and even that may not suffice in some cases. The only people with cause for reasonable cause to use violence to defend themselves in most of these situations is the victim.

You guys keep throwing cases at me. When I throw one back, you want to take your toys away? Please!

You seem to be very interested in accidental shootings, or bad shootings. Maybe 7 of the 14 unarmed shootings of black people last year, give or take. Sure, they are bad.... but you are always going to have some level of bad cops, always going to have some level of negligence, always going to have some level of bad luck. By all means, reduce it where we can, but we are talking about 7 total incidents in 2019. Where I got in to this was reacting to jimbob claiming that black people minding their own business had a reasonable fear of being shot dead by the police for no reason. This is simply not the case. The odds are of the order of 1/6,000,000. Infinitesimal.

In as much as I agree, and given all the rioting and grandstanding about Blake etc.... I'm really not sure that the cops have the edge on this.... but anyway... in as much as I agree, maybe it's because the cops have a vastly higher odds of getting killed in the line of duty than your average law abiding black person does of being killed by the cops. Also, in the recent case of those two officers being shot in the head, we aren't talking about a justifiable killing, an accident, carelessness or somebody being too trigger happy as covers almost all of the unarmed shootings of black people. We are talking about somebody who just walked up to two people sitting in a car who he didn't know and shot them in the head. Even the worst of the 2019 cases I went through is better than that.

Sure, but if we are talking about the cops murdering unarmed black people then that is even rarer.

Darat would you ban Shuttit and just after the fact claim that he wasn't following your instructions and you were afraid of him?

//That was sarcasm before any pearl clutching starts//

Honestly, I don't see it. Could you quote it again, and I promise to explain myself.

In that case, the self defence statue in Wisconsin that I've been reading up on looks to be in breach of that as it only demands you have a reasonable belief that serious harm or death is imminent and that lethal force is a proportionate response. Could you point to where in the constitution or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it says you can only respond with lethal force to somebody who is already armed and attempting to use the weapon?

I suppose it might not be sufficient in all cases, but it isn't necessary in all cases either.

This isn't the case.

You have to add to those cases all of the improper actions of US policemen that don't end in fatal shootings, those in which they abuse their power and privilege. You're picking only those that end in fatal shootings and calling that the whole of the problem, which it is not.

And of course you would rather hope that the police would be operating to a slightly higher standard than some meth head with a gun.

You keep bringing up Breonna Taylor, but I don't think she fits this narrative. It is a tragedy that she died, but she didn't get shot because she was black, or because cops were misbehaving. I think that most likely, the cops involved had no idea what race or gender she was at all until after the event was over. For all intents and purposes, she is a tragic example of collateral damage.

The problem in Breonna Taylor's case has nothing to do with her race or ethnicity. The color of her skin is irrelevant to the issue there. The problem is that cops served a no-knock warrant, at an incorrect address, for someone who was already in custody. The cops who served the warrant hold only minimal accountability for this situation. Whoever requested the warrant in the first place should be held accountable to a very, very large degree - the address was not valid for the person they were after, and the person was already in custody. That's a major screw up on the part of the person who requested the warrant. The judge who approved the warrant request should also hold some accountability in my view, because no-knock warrants are a bad idea altogether... and if the judge is asked to provide one, it should be incumbent upon them to verify that the information is accurate, and that the circumstances truly necessity a no-knock approach.

The homeowner (I can't recall his name) was, in my view, completely and unquestionably within his rights to shoot at what was in essence a home invasion. The cops didn't identify themselves as such, it was the middle of the night, and honestly, his reaction is pretty much exactly what I would have done.

Breonna Taylor shouldn't have died. The situation that caused her death should never have occurred. But it doesn't fit the theme of police brutality against black people.

Don't get me wrong - Breonna Taylor's death highlights a problem with the police system, definitely. But it's a different problem from the one being protested about.

Well, as has been pointed out upthread. It's not that US police don't needlessly kill white people. It's that they needlessly kill disproportionately even more black people than the white people.

This couldn't be more wrong. BLM is about more than the unambiguous on the job murders committed by cops, it's about a system of policing that results in brutality and death. This includes a system where cops kill people, like Taylor, despite having done nothing "wrong", at least according to police training and policy.

The two problems are inextricably entwined.

George Floyd's slow murder was especially egregious, but deaths caused by the broader system's indifference to life, like Taylor's, are still very much part of the greater anti-cop protests happening right now.

I'm not saying it's the whole of anything. I'm saying that the odds of the average law abiding black person being killed by the cops is around 1/6,000,000. I'm saying that about half of the times an unarmed black man is shot and killed, it is because he was a criminal, acting crazy and putting the police in the position where shooting them was a reasonable reaction. I'm saying it is ludicrous to act like if the police weren't wicked racists this wouldn't happen.