Police Shootings

I checked again today for the governmental investigative report on the November 29, 2019, London Bridge attack and still can't find one.--Percy

I haven't commented here on most of the police murders from George Floyd onward because it's all so much same-old same-old: entitled and legally nearly invulnerable policemen use lethal force against someone alleged to have committed some minor infraction. Last night it was Duane Wright, a black man shot and killed after a traffic stop in Minneapolis. He did have a warrant out on him.Why police do this? Who knows? After the killing protesters gathered, there was looting, and the national guard was called out.Wouldn't it have been more in the interest of safety for all concerned had they just let Mr. Wright go on his way, especially since he seemed determined to leave and given that they had his name, vehicle license number, and all the associated information of a registered vehicle. I wonder what the warrant was for? I'm guessing something heinous like possession of more than an ounce of marijuana, drinking in public, or jaywalking.Most police don't need guns, and obviously many do not have the proper temperament or training to have them.--Percy

It appears it was for:"Court records show Wright was being sought for fleeing from law enforcement officers and for possessing a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June. In that case, a statement of probable cause said police got a call about a man waving a gun who was later identified as Wright."

That makes sense. Nothing like feeling they're in danger to make police shoot first and ask questions later.--Percy

Here's an interesting wrinkle: Officer who shot Daunte Wright meant to use Taser but fired gun, chief saysThis officer's training was so good, his poise in anxious situations so profound, that when he reached for his Taser he instead pulled his gun. Despite a Taser's shape, feel, weight, trigger and just about everything else being very different from a gun, he continued to think his gun was his Taser as he aimed it at Daunte Wright and pulled the trigger.That's absurd, of course, and of course he's lying. He acted on impulse and anger in a bad moment, just like all human beings have bad moments. What caused the bad outcome here was that a gun was present.--Percy

Fortunately, my handgun is still present. Lately it's been an FN 1906 that was most likely made in 1913 or early 1914.

Maryland state trooper fatally shoots 16-year-old after responding to reports of an armed man - ABC News, reports ABC News. The gun was an airsoft. According to the article, a Maryland state trooper responded to two reports of a suspicious man with a gun. The "man," 16-year-old Peyton Ham, took a shooting stance pointing his gun at the trooper. The trooper then shot him, wounding him. Ham then pulled a knife and tried to get up, at which time the trooper fired again, likely killing him, though he wasn't pronounced dead until he reached the hospital.Perhaps the story is true, but it sounds incredible. A 16-year-old pointing his toy gun at a state trooper? A 16-year-old, just shot and wounded, pulling a knife and attempting to get up? That's pretty crazy and very determined behavior.The information about the shooting is from a witness. I wonder if it was one of the people who reported the suspicious man with a gun.Nothing makes a firearm death more likely than inserting someone with a gun into the situation. Insufficient training is also a possible factor, since the trooper, after receiving a report of a gun, may have exposed himself to possible gunfire instead of approaching the situation with caution, thereby forcing a lethal response.I'm sure we'll learn more in the coming days, unless reporting bandwidth is taken up by all the other police shootings.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Spelling.

Im beginning to agree with your theory that we should have a smaller group of armed police.(a highly trained group) and that the rest of them shouldn't be armed. In order to do this, however, we would need to reduce the ease of acquiring guns and disarm the public to a degree first. Otherwise how else will we achieve peace?

Wonderful, jar. We hope and trust that *you* will never have a bad moment. And you may actually save somebody some day.Play devils advocate for a moment. Defend Percys argument that less police should be armed. Surely there must be a defense to that argument.

Phat, I agree that we need to reimaging what policing should be. We need to redefine the basic roles of policing in the US.That would begin with reforming much of our current legal system and diverting funding to address root causes. You misunderstand why I carry a handgun.I am not and have no intention of acting as a civilian law enforcer. I will never make a traffic stop, serve an arrest warrant, make an arrest, respond to a domestic violence call, try to stop a mass shooting event or most any of the silly stuff shown in movies and TV.I do not carry a gun in some hope that I will someday use it.But carrying a handgun does require an additional amount of responsibility, a requirement that I remain aware of my surroundings and see beyond my smart phone. It requires constant awareness that I am full responsible for any shot I might ever take and that includes being responsible for things like over penetration or ricochets. It requires being aware of what might be beyond my field of vision but still within any possible trajectory.I carry a gun in the fervent hope that I will never use it for anything other than target shooting and training but have had to use a handgun on a couple occasions to dispatch a nolegs.We need to keep the police out of tasks where they are not trained. When need expanded mental health folk and increased community involvement from the ground up.We need to decentralize schools, move education back into the neighborhood with far small schools and a much higher teacher to student ration as well as return the grandmothers and aunties directly into the daily education environment.We need to decriminalize drugs and make them legal and I strongly believe we should federalize distribution of drugs; give them away for free through local neighborhood health clinics.We need to address root cause and the guns themselves ain't a root cause.

From PZ Myers blog.

This is my own list of the several causes of violence in this country:

• Too many guns
• Increasing lethality of guns.
• Too much love of guns
• Racism
• Poverty
• A culture of violence in which the police are part of the problem.
• The attitude that reducing crime requires the threat of lethal force.
• The belief that no-knock raids are an effective law enforcement tool.
• The arming of police. If you can point it they shouldn't have it.
• The effect of allowing police forces to prey upon communities with impunity. There's a "cops are almost never charged let alone convicted" rule. Almost any kill is a good kill when a cop does it. Take almost any example and replace the cop with someone else and you'll get an entirely opposite legal result. If mental health workers instead of police had murdered actress Vanessa Marquez, would they would have walked? If a neighborhood watch group instead of police had murdered Tamir Rice as he played with a toy gun, would they have walked? There are so many examples (Google "remember their names") that this list item could go on for pages, but I'll stop after two.
• The belief that bad apples are responsible for police violence.
• The belief that more training is the solution to police violence.
• The absurd notion that training somehow provides superhuman powers of judgment and discernment. The actual effect of training seems to be to scare the hell out of police to the point of paranoia, to the point where there primary directive is to protect themselves at the expense of all others. Emptying clips of bullets into people is one symptom.

--Percy

Gee, what a surprise, it's happened again: Police: 8 dead in shooting at FedEx facility in Indianapolis - POLITICOI'm sure people often wonder why shooters are so successful. How does one person kill 8 and injure more? The answer is lethality. Modern shooters don't use the old .22 rounds that travel straight. No, they instead use .223's designed to tumble and cause mass destruction. When they hit you they don't create a small hole - they create a chasm. Wounds are huge tortured landscapes of rendered flesh. The few survivors will carry massive scars and disabilities for life.But that's what a person needs today for personal defense today, right? Stopping power! Even somebody just winged with one of these rounds ain't goin' anywhere. How else are you going to defend yourself without one of these?Getting back to police shootings, I usually listen to 15 or 20 minutes of NPR every morning, and today it was reassuring to hear an interviewed professor say the same thing I've been saying for years: police making traffic stops, directing traffic, performing wellness checks and so forth do not need guns, and in fact they are counterproductive.--Percy

Hi Percy. I'm curious - do the NRA still trot out the same bullcrap about people carrying guns being able to stop mass shooters ? Or have even they accepted that that crap no longer holds any water ?

I couldn't be precise about what the NRA is doing today because their leader and the organization is distracted by lawsuits and bankruptcy motions. If they've issued statements about the recent spate of shootings, which is usually their habit, they either haven't done so this time or I somehow missed it in the news.But certainly up until the very recent past much of what they've said has been lies. They don't even want the American people to have the information necessary to an informed judgment. I don't know how well it's known outside the US, or even inside the US for that matter, but there's a law that prevents the federal government from conducting or sponsoring research into guns, be it about safety, lethality or whatever. All gun research must be funded privately or by the states. The NRA was largely responsible for that law. Without looking it up I would guess it was passed during the Clinton administration (the 1990's).30 years or more ago the NRA was more like the AAA, a helpful organization. If the AAA were like the NRA today they would be advocating for bigger, faster, more fuel guzzling and more dangerous vehicles. Seat belts and air bags and crash bumpers and roll cages and speed limits and traffic lights would all be infringement on our freedoms rather than benefits we receive from living in a civilized society. The mere existence of the NRA in its present form argues against ours being a civilized society. As Biden accurately put it, gun violence in the US is to out international shame.--Percy