SpheresOfBalance wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2017 11:18 amWhat I've highlighted above is cold and indifferent, and definitely speaks of your psyche. If it were one of your loved ones, if you actually have any, I'm sure it'd change to OUTRAGOUS and EXCESSIVE FORCE! But then that would be different wouldn't it!!! Huh??? Yeah!!!
Well no, I can't necessarily guarantee that a personal bias wouldn't get in my way of judgement, assuming there would be a bias to get in my way of judgement. Although, I have a feeling you're going to take issue with me saying this, even though it's a fairly intuitive fact that we're all subject to bias, and it's nothing you should be surprised about. Luckily, in this particular situation, I'm not as transparently biased as you suggest I could be. I think this hypothetical character placement is actually what many people in this thread have been doing; They assume the kid in question is someone close to them, while not giving the same benefit to the police. If the campus cops were someone you cared about, I'm sure you would be far more hesitant to have them charged with manslaughter and much less, murder.
The reason why I'm saying it wasn't the
most optimal solution is exactly because I'm trying to empathize with the person who was killed. I acknowledge that he probably shouldn't have died, but unfortunately I don't know that would have been a rational conclusion for the cops to have made with the available data and resources that they had on them. I do think what they had, was at least enough to grant the cops a right to defend themselves, and I honestly can't guarantee they would have been able to talk him out of it, even with what we know now.
That doesn't 'appear' to be the case at all, instead it's obvious that they were itching to kill someone
I'm a psychopath, the cops were all psychopath,
everyone's just a psychopath in your world, apparently.
or surely 'unreasonably' fearful for their lives, 'unreasonably'!! The kid was hesitant, unsure and shaky at best. He had no gun drawn, he made no sudden moves that could be misconstrued as drawing a gun. So shooting one that is not obviously armed, is the way of a coward and trigger happy cowards shouldn't be on the police force, they're not psychologically sound! Their fear outweighs their reasonable resolve. I would never have shot him. Instead the police force should have another unit specifically designed for these mentally handicapped cases, that come in behind the fire armed toting first responders, to either net, trank, or tase such confused people!
I do agree that there are irrational fears, and it shouldn't be used as a scapegoat to keep someone from legal punishment, but I don't think this was one. I brought up the shooting of Philando Castile as an example for something like this, where I don't doubt the officer's fear, but I believe it was unfounded. And it's not just about the fear being unfounded, but Castile never threatened anyone. Maybe the officer had a false perception of one, but that's not the same thing as a false perception within an actual threat.
While he didn't escalate his threat by drawing a gun to prove that he had one, he did escalate the situation by continuing to approach them against their commands, with the full knowledge of him supposedly having a gun. I don't think your characteristic of him being so 'unsure' is necessarily correct.
While it may sound like a cool idea to be able to have a SWAT team of men move in on someone with a knife, and disarm them like solid snake, I'm not quite sure it's as good as it is on paper. I mean, we can certainly talk about implementing such a tailored system in the future to prevent the same thing from happening again, but that's not to say the campus police in this scenario had that solution. Ironically, it sounds like you're the one trying to come up with an
optimal solution, but when I suggest there probably was a better solution, I'm apparently the psychopath. And I'm apparently also the psychopath since I'm defending the solution the cops chose,
too much. Needless to say, I'm getting some mixed impressions, here.
No life is worth miscalculation and should absolutely never be characterized as the lack of an 'optimal solution.'themselves mentally disturbed, It's a life, not a video game with a reset button!
I don't think it was exactly a 'miscalculation', because I think they just didn't and couldn't have all the numbers. I think they made a rational choice based on the numbers they did have.
Apparently, it sounds like the officers lives are worth their 'miscalculation' to you.
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:33 am
I think your argument about the police force being corrupt
I never said that!
I believe I mistook your sentiment as something else. I thought your statement
the police as an organization is obviously flawed in their approach was a claim based on historical and prior examples of brutality, but having re-read it, I can see that wasn't really the case in the way I thought. Still, the rant was directed more-so to people reading in on the thread, and people letting these things cloud their judgement.
No my point was that killers lurk "everywhere," and one who defends killers of innocence are just as bad as those killers.
Besides the fact that clearly isn't true - those comments were still reared directly at me. You're just backpedaling, because you regret so blatantly trying to call me this psychopath who needs to be dropped in the middle of a war-zone to die, due to your abrupt, teenage-like angst.