Just as the verdict in the Derek Chauvin case was coming down on Tuesday, another high-profile police shooting of a Black person was taking place in Columbus, Ohio. But this case resolved very differently than the Chauvin case. Police had been called to a house where a fight was taking place and body cam video of the incident was released almost immediately. Here's what it showed:
The girl wearing black, identified as 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, has a knife out and is obviously about to stab the girl wearing pink. A police officer on the scene shot Bryant four times before she could do any harm.
By American standards this was a righteous shooting. The police officer did the right thing and will certainly not be in any trouble over it.
But looking at this a little more broadly suggests that maybe American standards aren't very good. Police are trained to react to situations like this with direct firepower, and you can make an argument that this is the right thing to do. But was it? Would rushing the two girls have been adequate? A warning shot? A taser? In countries like Norway and the UK it would have been handled differently simply because cops in those countries don't routinely carry guns.
Shooting Bryant was, in some sense, the lowest-risk response. It was 100% guaranteed to save the girl in pink from any injury whatsoever. But would a different response have been better, even if it ran some small risk of the girl in pink suffering some (probably non-fatal) injury?
I think so.
I wasn't 100% guaranteed to save the girl in pink. There is a non-zero chance that the shooter would miss and hit the girl in pink, right?
In an Oafkeeper's hamhock hands, that outcome is almost guaranteed.
Or that the police shooter would hit the girl in black and not kill her, so that she could still stab the girl in pink.
Or that the bullet would pass through both girls and kill both of them.
Or that the bullet would miss both girls and hit some other random person off in the distance.
Or that the police shooter would kill the girl in black and then it comes out after the fact that the girl in pink was actually the original assailant and the girl in black was defending herself.
Really, firing a weapon should be the absolute last resort by police, because the desired outcome - bad people are shot and only the bad people are shot - is never 100% guaranteed. (To be clear, in this particular case, it appears that the shooting was justified, but Kevin's assumptions that police shooting guns always hit their intended targets and that police never mistake the victim for the perpetrator or vice versa are both demonstrably false if he were to spend any time reading police blotters.)
Look at this video - it comes from a neighbor
If you play it in real time it gives you a different perspective
This cop had no choice
Either let the girl in pink get injured OR killed
Or shoot
https://www.yahoo.com/news/neighbor-footage-makhia-bryant-shooting-190312372.html
It's uncomfortable for sure
But for many of us "life" has so little meaning nowadays. From police officers who kneel on peoples necks to younger black women wanting to stab someone to death
You know the phrase "couldn't hit a barn door"? Well this is pretty close.
On the bright side, I think we can say that hunger has been abolished in Black America.
What a grotesque thing to say about a gunned-down 16-year-old.
How do we know the officer who shot was looking at it from this angle? This might be (no information is given here) the body cam from one of the other officers on the scene.
Eh, the video is from the cop's body cam.
More than “non zero”! The cop was shooting right at her.
Only 1% of felony stabbings are fatal, on the other hand, and the solid majority of those involve multiple wounds. A teenage girl flailing about with a knife is highly unlikely to kill someone.
Can't let all that time you've spent at the shooting range go to waste.
Do you think police officers should spend less time on the shooting range?
Probably. Shooting ranges are notorious for have high levels of lead vapor. And we all know what the results of lead exposure are.
Actually, police spend a surprisingly small amount of time at the range to get qualified, and a surprisingly small amount of time to stay qualified, given that they are almost certainly going to use a handgun when things get dicey. I think the better solution would be more rigorous handgun training PLUS more training in non-lethal de-escalation techniques.
If you tell rookie cops that their handgun is the ultimate solution AND give them inadequate training, you're going to get undesirable results.
Wow. A lot of sweeping accusations and assumptions there
For some perspective from a study done in 2017
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-look-at-police-officers-who-have-fired-their-weapon-on-duty/
{snip}
bout three-in-ten adults estimate that police fire their weapons a few times a year while on duty, and more than eight-in-ten (83%) estimate that the typical officer has fired his or her service weapon at least once in their careers, outside of firearms training or on a gun range, according to a recent Pew Research Center national survey.
In fact, only about a quarter (27%) of all officers say they have ever fired their service weapon while on the job, according to a separate Pew Research Center survey conducted by the National Police Research Platform. The survey was conducted May 19-Aug. 14, 2016, among a nationally representative sample of 7,917 sworn officers working in 54 police and sheriff’s departments with 100 or more officers.
{snip}
A fairly large sample of almost 8000 officers
This number would drop if they had included smaller more rural departments so even these low numbers are slightly skewed
I understand where Kevin is coming from but I don't think there's a good alternative option. As he said, another action might result in the victim (girl in pink) being injured. Perhaps severely. Law enforcement's job is to "protect and serve". The primary job, in this case is to protect the innocent (again, the girl in pink). If I was the father of the girl in pink and the cop chose to "rush" the assailant and the girl in pink ended up stabbed, I would be on the war path wanting to know why the cop didn't protect my daughter when he could have.
Also, it's semi-ridiculous to ask cops to engage in hand to hand combat with a knife-wielding assailant. What if the the cop is a 5'5" 110 pound woman and the assailant is a 6'2" 250 pound man. That obviously wouldn't end well for the cop.
i agree it would be nice if there was a different way. And maybe there is. But the highest priority is to protect innocent people. Any course of action that compromises that objective needs to be heavily scrutinized.
Well said. You are a much better person than I am (low bar, though).
You do know that "protect and serve" is just the motto of the LAPD since the 60s, right, not a legal job description?
Surely the job of the police, if called in to put a stop to a fight, is to protect the lives of all combatants in the fight if possible? We still don't know what was happening, whether there was a "good guy" or "bad guy" in this fight. I do know that the first step in stopping a fight shouldn't be shooting one of the participants dead, unless there is no alternative. Maybe there was none here. But I contend that even drawing a firearm so soon after arriving represents an escalation that wasn't obviously necessary.
People can get killed with brass knuckles, or in a fist-fight. Should police fire into a melee within seconds of arriving on the scene? Where can the rest of us acquire the magic bullets which somehow never hurt innocent people?
"Also, it's semi-ridiculous to ask cops to engage in hand to hand combat with a knife-wielding assailant. What if the the cop is a 5'5" 110 pound woman and the assailant is a 6'2" 250 pound man. That obviously wouldn't end well for the cop."
Disingenuous at best. Who would send a single police officer to break up a fight between three people who are at least potentially armed? And who are you to decide that a police officer shouldn't be willing to risk her life to protect an assailant? Isn't the whole element of heroism for the police their willingness to risk their lives to protect others? When did we as a nation decide that some "others" just deserve to get shot dead?
I think the problem was this was happening just as they arrived. At least that's the info I read. If you're just exiting your vehicle you are definitely not going to be able to reach the fight before one person can kill the other.
Was the cop "a 5'5" 110lb woman"? No. Was Ma’Khia Bryant a "250 lb man"? Hardly.
Your hypothetical just isn't relevant here.
I think we're talking about policy here. Policy takes into account all situations. Not one specific one.
A policy position about this would recommend and train for officers to first attempt to physically restrain suspects unless there is a major physical disadvantage or other circumstances to consider (like multiple suspects).
So this:
"What if the the cop is a 5'5" 110 pound woman and the assailant is a 6'2" 250 pound man"
Is just a strawman on your part, as neither Kevin nor anyone around here has suggested officers do that in every scenario.
I disagree that policy would "recommend and train for officers to first attempt to physically restrain suspects". There's no police agency in the country that wouldn't empower their officers to use deadly force to save the life of themselves or another person.
To answer your other comment: "I disagree that policy would...."
That is the problem. That's why we so often see police officers being trigger happy without even attempting non-lethal approaches, or without taking the time to assess what they're dealing with. Very often as soon as they feel even the tiniest bit of stress they automatically resort to using their guns (either as a threat or actually firing it), which only helps to escalate things and make it much more likely for people to end up death. That's Kevin's and my point. Unlike other nations where not every police officer is carrying a gun, in the US police departments aren't as well trained to deal with situations without having to resort to using their guns.
Thanks. If there is a better way, as Kevin believes, I guess it would take study and a lot of retraining to put in place.
I disagree with almost all of this:
Number one the cop fired several shots. There was a big risk to kill the person that was supposed to be protected. The cop is lucky he didn't .
Secondly this is a case with a cop and two teenage girls (and most likely a second cop), not one with a tiny female cop and a heavyweight prizefighter. What would be appropriate in this second case is irrelevant to what is appropriate in the situation at hand.
It used to be that cops tried to shoot into the legs. When did that disappear?
But seriously, yelling at the assailing girls and rushing them would almost certainly have kept both of them alive (maybe with some knife wounds but teenagers can recover from them--killing someone with a knife is hard). And keeping everybody alive would be the ultimate "protect and serve" success, wouldn't it?
"But seriously, yelling at the assailing girls and rushing them "
He did yell, but then it was only "hey hey hey" and then immediately went for the gun and started with the "get down yells".
There was no instruction for her to stop, drop the knife, or anything along those lines. Nothing even identifying himself as police (since the girl was already fighting by the time the got close, the odds are the girl never even noticed the police had arrived).
As for rushing her, this is to me the biggest sticking point showing how bad training is at the root of many of these type of incidents. As he was trying to draw his gun there was a moment where the girl was actually right in front of him, out of balance, and with her back to him. This was the ideal situation to rush her and tackle her down. But he never considered that because he was already thinking "I need to shoot" (hence his screams of "get down") as soon as he saw them fighting coming towards him. By the time he actually shot that was the only recourse he had left.
Ms. Bryant got a well-deserved case of lead poisoning. If you are about to stab someone and you are shot and killed, well, that sucks for you I guess.
The NPR story indicated Bryant was the one that called the police. If the girl in pink had the knife originally and dropped it when the police came and Bryant picked it up to attack her tormentors I suppose that further complicates matters.
If the cop didn’t shoot and the girl in pink was fatally stabbed would the cop have been congratulated for his restraint? Is the girl in pink sorry the cop shot? This seems like a really bad situation and I’m not sure there’s a right answer.
I don't think the girl in pink was holding a knife at any point. She was holding a small dog in her arms when the police arrived. Hard to knife fight someone while holding a dog.
True. Which really makes me wonder why Bryant was attacking her.
Again, fatally stabbing someone is hard. Victims of stabbings almost always survive. Kevin is absolutely right.
Why do things like this keep happening in America? It's an American culture problem. Americans worship violence. The right wing lionizes militia and qanon types like Kyle Rittenhouse. The left downplays riots, and the left further has seemingly zero interest in tackling violent gang culture in minority communities, which is what got Adam Toledo killed. Too many Americans seem to embrace violence as long as it is "their people" who are inflicting it.
+1
Are police trained to shoot to incapacitate (rather than kill)? How feasible is this? I'd imagine it's flatly not even something that can be considered when the target has a gun. But what about when the target has a knife?
My understanding is the answer is, "no". They never shoot to incapacitate. I agree in specific situations (maybe this one) that might be a good option. But I'm sure someone with law enforcement experience could give a litany of reasons why its not. Obviously, if you're shooting for a leg there's a lot more chance of missing then if you're aiming for the torso. If you miss, then you may have failed to protect the victim.
and a miss means a stray bullet might hit someone/thing else.
Don't unholster your gun unless you intend to use it. Don't fire it, unless you are willing to kill. People can still bleed to death when they are shot in a limb. This isn't tee-vee.
My understanding is the answer is, "no".
I'm sure you're right -- they're not trained how to incapacitate. Maybe they should be.
(Of course, training police better costs money, and that's the last thing the Defund Crowd wants to hear).
It would take years of training to be able to shoot that well in a crisis situation. It would be like saying every cop needs to be a martial arts black belt. I’m willing to bet this video will be used to train police in the future in crisis simulations.
From what I know, that's nice in theory but generally impractical. Imagine, for example, trying to hit someone who is moving in, say, a wrist or a hand, especially with only a second or two to decide and react. And a shot anywhere else risks hitting a major artery, which can be fatal very quickly.
I would guess they're trained NOT to try anything cute like that, but instead to treat deadly force as deadly, to use it only if you intend deadly force, and to use it AS deadly force.
From what I know, that's nice in theory but generally impractical. Imagine, for example, trying to hit someone who is moving in, say, a wrist or a hand....
Surely you'd go for the fleshly part of the leg, not a small target like a wrist or hand.
I think this argument is based on a flawed premise, that assailants bearing guns are less of a lethal threat than those carrying knives.
I haven't looked at these statistics since the 1970's, and things may have changed. But when I last engaged with this issue, I learned that in fact you are *more* likely to be killed by someone threatening you with a knife than by someone threatening you with a gun. You have to parse that statistic somewhat carefully. You are less likely to die if you are stabbed than you are if you are shot. But people threatening you with knives are more likely to stab you; those with a gun are more likely to hold their fire.
"But when I last engaged with this issue, I learned that in fact you are *more* likely to be killed by someone threatening you with a knife than by someone threatening you with a gun."
Depends. For example, that guy shooting from the hotel in Vegas would've killed a lot fewer people had he been throwing knives instead of firing bullets. Distance matters a lot more for surviving knife attacks than gun attacks... once you get beyond arms reach from a criminal armed with a knife, your chances of not being killed go up dramatically versus a criminal armed with a gun, because (1) most criminals aren't experts at throwing knives and (2) knives do a lot more damage when in somebody's hand that can really angle and twist them in a "murdery" way.
It's also easier to protect yourself from knives, again, assuming you have perhaps 10 or more feet between you and your assailant. They don't tend to go through doors, walls or furniture like bullets easily do. You can put up your arm to try to block it and it'll be less likely to pass through your arm and re-enter your chest or face if you do. If you are unlucky enough to get it in your torso, the handle on the knife usually prevents it from going any deeper than the length of the blade. The act of stabbing takes longer for the assailant to perform, limiting how many people in succession he/she can stab before the rest of the potential victims get the F out of there. All of these aspects of knives lead to a lot fewer successful murders (especially mass murders) in the countries that have gun control.
Relatedly, you're far more likely to commit suicide with a gun than a knife.
Kevin writes:
"Shooting Bryant was, in some sense, the lowest-risk response. It was 100% guaranteed to save the girl in pink from any injury whatsoever."
No. It was the lowest-risk response FOR THE POLICE OFFICER. I know policing is a tough job but I expect a bit more intestinal fortitude from the those who choose that profession. Currently, a police officer is justified in using lethal force whenever they feel threatened. That's way too low a bar.
What do you suggest the cop should have done? Engage in hand-to-hand combat?
"Engage in hand-to-hand combat?"
Don't they get training on this? If it's preposterous to suggest they use hand-to-hand techniques when there are no guns involved, why train in them then? Here the two girls fighting actually were already at his feet, which gave him the advantage momentarily, but instead he went for his gun, which allowed the one girl to get up and run towards the other one. By thinking gun first, he took out other non-lethal options from himself.
Watch the video again. The girl with the knife does not fall. She knocks another girl down and then turns on the girl in pink.
Nope. She pushes down the other girl, but then she actually runs toward the girl that went down, and thus toward the officer to continue tussling with her. As soon as the officer saw them approaching him in their fight he began reaching for his gun instead of trying to break them up or disarm the one with the knife. By the time he has his gun out (a full 3 seconds later) and turns back towards them, even the first girl who went down (the one whose head and hair you clearly see go down right in front of him with her head pointing away from the car) has had enough time to to move away from the officer so that now she is a few feet away from him and she is actually now facing in the opposite direction(head towards the car and feet towards officer), while the girl with the knife is getting up (you can see her use her right arm to push herself up as she tries to go around the girl on the floor).
He had the opportunity to intervene when the girl with the knife was focused on the other girl and was in a vulnerable position relative to him, but by deciding to draw his gun as soon as he sensed trouble, he took away the option of doing anything else but shoot. I'm not saying he should be punished in any way, simply saying that officers in the US are not properly trained to solve potentially dangerous situations without using guns, and that is what leads to so many shootings of people who should not have been shot. When their first instinct is to draw their gun more often than not shooting will be the only recourse they have left.
They have tasers, no? This seems readymade for the taser.
I don't much like cops carrying tasers; they seem to be at high risk to think they have the taser in hand when in fact they have the gun. But since they have tasers this is the situation for them.
I'm not an expert in tasers but I've seen numerous expers on tv the last day or so that have said you would never use a taser in this situation. Tasers are not a sure thing. They often don't "take" (the electrodes don't connect to the skin), it doesn't incapacitate the person, etc. That opinion was unanimous from what I saw.
If they are so useless and unreliable in the situation where it would make the most sense to use them, why carry them at all?
Right now it seems that cops get trained to use their gun in situations where non-lethal methods would be better, and they use their non-lethal methods (tasers, pepper spray, etc) in situations with simply talking down people would be better. And yet some people pretend there is nothing wrong with police departments at the institutional level.
Tasers make sense when its not a life or death situation. To get someone under control who is being unruly but not necessarily about to kill someone else.
The lowest risk response for the police officer would have been to retreat and wait for backup, and just let the stabbing happen. Even had he put the gun away and moved to engage in hand to hand combat, there is not enough time to stop the stabbing that way.
In the video it appears the situation escalated quickly and it doesn’t appear the officer was close enough to stop the stabbing without shooting. I don’t know what I’d have done it that situation. It’s easy to second guess after the fact. I agree the police shoot way too quickly in many cases but I don’t think there were any options here other than girl gets stabbed or you shoot.
A few points:
1. Have you actually watched the body-cam footage? Because it is by no means obvious from that whether a stabbing is going to take place. This still photo does not constitute proof that a reasonable person in these circumstances would think the woman in pink was about to be stabbed.
2. Police arrived on the scene 10 minutes after the 911 call indicating a fight involving at least one knife. This officer had a gun out in less than 3 seconds after getting out of the car, and had fired shots less than 10 seconds after arrival. If he'd seen bloody bodies on the ground and this woman brandishing a bloody knife, that might be a reasonable response to the situation. That wasn't the case. When called to a fight, the first move by police should be to de-escalate the situation. Drawing a gun doesn't do that. The knife-wielder could be hard of hearing, developmentally disabled, or otherwise unable to instantly respond to police orders. Lethal force is not, and must not be, the first resort of law enforcement.
3. Again, from the freeze-frame, the officer has a clear shot. If you watch the video, not only did he not have a clear shot, he was at serious risk of striking the woman in pink with one or more bullets. Shooting into a knife fight to "save a life" runs a meaningful risk of doing more injury to the person you want to protect than the knife might. One shot strikes the car immediately next to the woman in pink; about two inches to the officer's right and he's shot both women.
It's been a day and we still don't understand what happened yet. Why would someone call 911 to break up a fight involving a knife, and then be the one trying to stab someone with a knife when the police arrive? Why would she wait until the cops are pointing a gun AT HER to start stabbing? And why is the bar so low on police shooting to kill?
What? The girl in black had her left hand pinning the girl in pink against the car, and (in the next frame after the one here) had the knife upraised over her head ready to bring it down. In what world does that not obviously a stabbing in progress?
1. Yes I have, and yes it's obvious that she was about to be stabbed.
2. Have you watched the video? Hard to imagine why you'd make that argument if you had seen it.
3. I don't think the scene is what you make it out to be. Seemed like the best choice in difficult circumstances.
The issue in the US is that because every officer is armed, police officers are trained to resolve most issues where any type of escalation takes place with their guns, whether it is by drawing them at the first chance, or often shooting at soonest opportunity. That's not an option for many police forces around the world, thus they get trained and prepared to deal with dangerous situations without the need to shoot anyone.
There are no easy solutions and unlike what Kevin states, shooting is never 100% guaranteed to save anyone. Here the officer was justified to shoot at the time he shot, but then, what if he misses (which happens a lot) and ends up also shooting the girl in pink or any other person nearby (something that also happens with regular frequency when multiple shots are taken).
Could he have done something different? Probably not by the time he shot, since by then the girl in pink was about to get stabbed and he was too far away to do anything else, but then he had options before that. When he first approached the scene, the two girls that were fighting literally stumbled right in front of him, however instead of him trying to tackle, disarm,(or otherwise restrain the one with the knife when she was in a vulnerable position, he stood in place and went for his gun, which allowed the girl to get up and run towards the other girl and way from him, taking out any other options to solve things without the need to shoot.
+1
My only issue would be why four shots?
The way our system is structured, we'd have to go with "less lethal" rounds, at least for the first couple of shots. Teach officers to pause at two, re-evaluate, then continue firing with the regular bullets next up.
Yes this would have to be modeled and the feasibility studied. But even when a shooting is justified, nobody wants to kill a kid.
Would definitely need a feasibility study. I've seen a number of videos in which a criminal shrugs off one or two shots and keeps coming. Plus, no guarantee about lethality. The officer who shot Adam Toledo only fired once.
To a certain extent, police have gotten batter at reducing the number of shots. Twenty years ago, it was typical 20 shots were fired by each officer.
Sorry, no. Given the usual standards of police marksmanship, especially in sudden emergency as opposed to on the range, there was significant risk the girl in pink would be shot.
Americans, whether law enforcement or not, accept the use of lethal force from firearms as legitimate. The result is many Americans are shot, which is not surprising because so many Americans, just like the police, are armed and willing to use their weapons to kill. The firing of the weapon four times at the victim is an example of how easily lethal force can and is used to eliminate threats rather than efforts made deescalate them.
This particular case, where the perpetrator/victim is wielding a weapon which could be lethal, allows everyone to make the Manichean decision the perpetrator is evil and deserves to be killed for potentially stabbing another person. A police person from England or Norway would not have been in a position to make that decision and would have had to use other means to prevent the stabbing of someone. American police should be trained to not use their guns as default solutions, and ideally they should be disarmed to prevent this type of reflex. Baton, taser, shield used as a battering ram, or some other solution would have been more appropriate in this case but in America the default is to use a firearm, where the risk of death is high.
As a number of people have already pointed out, whether or not this was a life-or-death situation justifying use of deadly force, it's just nuts that the officer fires his weapon with so many bystanders close to the victim. He also gives no clear commands before firing -- "Get down?" Who's he shouting at? Ms. Bryant? Or the woman she's fighting with? Or other bystanders? If the latter, it seems he's made his mind up to shoot within mere seconds of stepping out of his car and is telling people to get down so he can take her out.
The eyewitnesses are all over the place on this one, with some claiming Ms. Bryant had dropped the knife before being shot, others saying she could have killed the other girl and it was justified, others claiming that she didn't hear the cop or that she had mental health problems, etc. Definitely not as clear-cut as other police shootings, but also deeply disturbing. As people have also pointed out, this virtually *never* happens in other countries. And people have knives in other countries, too! It's just that cops there are trained to deescalate and use non-lethal interventions whenever possible. Here, as always, it's shoot first ask questions later. Especially with POC.
Dude, picking up a knife and attempting to stab somebody rarely occurs when cops are around. In Europe they wouldn't be brazen enough to actually pick it up or attack. As Don King, the Trump lover would say, "only in America" .
Uhh, actually people outside the US do in fact sometimes stab others.
And they are in fact shot.
And most of the rest of the world seems to think this is just fine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54729957
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-police-in-gelsenkirchen-shoot-dead-knife-wielding-attacker/a-51895038
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/world/europe/streatham-police-shooting-uk.html
Should have just shot the knife out of her hand like they do on the TV. Pew! Pew!
lone ranger style
Does Ohio have a dastle doctrine. Was this the residence of the dead girl. Was it the residence of the girl in Pink. Was the dead girl simply exercising her 2nd ammendment rights. (I know, blacks, especially large blacks aren't entitled to 2nd amendment rights.)
"I know, blacks, especially large blacks aren't entitled to 2nd amendment rights."
Stop. Your suggestion that Americans are denied 2nd Amendment rights based upon skin color needs to meet a high burden of proof. You and I both know no such proof exists.
Google NFAC, then go back to eating crayons.
There's a Philando Castile on line one.
The police managed to take Kyle Rittenhouse into custody, and he was carrying much more than a knife.
Lolz, Rittenbaum threw down his gun and surrendered. Keep on politicizing this stuff. This isn't even news. How about reporting on a cop/white fatalities? Maybe Kevin should report are people tired of this story?
Rittenhouse wasn't carrying anything or attacking anyone when he was arrested.
Police also arrested Larynzo Johnson, black, who had just shot two Louisville cops.
It's almost like a suspects' behavior and not the color of their skin determines the police response.
A lot of the discussion above addresses the details of this incident, even though I think what Kevin wishes for, and what I definitely wish for, is a way to ease our culture and society in a direction that's less violent.
The police are definitely part of this, but only part.The American love affair with guns in particular, and violence in general is well documented. I imagine there are some who argue that it is part and parcel with American greatness and ascendency on the world stage.
I dunno about that, but it would be nice to shed fewer tears over situations such as these.
Yes ... until we, as a society and a nation, are willing to do something about 13-year-old kids roaming the streets with a gun at 2:30 in the morning, being groomed by a gang member, the tears we shed in moments like this seem to be somehow disingenuous.
To reiterate what I wrote earlier, this shooting had nothing to do with protecting the girl wearing pink; it was all about the police officer feeling safe:
"An Ohio police officer was caught on camera shouting “blue lives matter” to a group of shocked residents at the scene where another officer shot and killed a Black teenage girl in Columbus."
"... In a Facebook video taken in the aftermath of the shooting, upset residents can be seen talking about what happened when a nearby officer appears to yell to them: “Blue lives matter.” One of the residents can be seen reacting angrily, saying: “Blue lives matter? Crazy. That’s an insult, especially at this place right now.” Separately, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that another cop on the scene was wearing a “blue lives matter” face mask."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/columbus-cop-told-witnesses-blue-lives-matter-after-colleague-shot-teenage-black-girl-makiyah-bryant?ref=home
Nope. You never worked in law enforcement. This is SOP. They could have waited until she stabbed the girl in pink, she was still going down.
So some other cop yells blue lives matter and you think that infers something about the intent of the cop who fired the gun? That's some kind of ridiculous.
Qualified Immunity means the police will *always* maintain a "shoot first and ask questions later" policy. *How* they're trained is irrelevant.
You do realize this is a theological statement, not a fact-based statement, right?
Come back when you have numbers; until then your wild claims mean nothing to people who don't share your theology.
Uhm.
It's less theology (though I'm inclined to believe that Humanism would support my belief system, generally, as would several parables in the Bible) and more of an ontological notion based on long-standing behavioral science, often used in libertarian-derived microeconomic theory, of incentives/disincentives.
But hey, however you want to ascribe my beliefs, go for it. Doesn't change basic behavioral science studies and the published review in microeconomics of incentives/disincentives.
I would make the same claims about much of behavioral science and economics. They're theology based, and, when tested, are often found wanting.
I know counterfactuals are impossible to parse out reliably, but given the state of tensions between black American citizens and the police, I'm going in anyway.
Suppose the same cop had rolled up on a fight involving white girls. Would he have been so quick to draw and fire?
Maybe he would. There is a widely-held perception that police are quicker to use deadly force against black citizens than white ones. Even if this shooting is completely justified by the circumstances, our history still nourishes doubts that black citizens are treated with the same deference and respect as white ones.
Considering white's make up 50% of all police unarmed shootings in 2020, well???? The media just doesn't report it.
"There is a widely-held perception that police are quicker to use deadly force against black citizens than white ones."
It's not a perception. Just a day or two ago, Kevin had a chart up showing that blacks were many, many more times likely to be an unarmed vicitim of a police shooting during a traffic stop than white citizens.
By any reasonable international standard, American cops shoot more people than probably all other police agencies in the developed world combined. It's just fucking insane.
"It's not a perception. Just a day or two ago, Kevin had a chart up showing that blacks were many, many more times likely to be an unarmed vicitim of a police shooting during a traffic stop than white citizens."
Could it be that blacks resist arrest in ways that gravely endanger officers many many times more than whites? We know that blacks commit homicide at a rate many many times more than whites.
Lol....pathetic comment.
Do American police shoot so many people because the police are insane, or because so many Americans have so many guns and are insane themselves?
I go with both.
(Seriously, no other country on earth has a similar amount of gun ownership and violence worship as the United States. Maybe ISIS did during its brief heyday, but not a country.)
Well, the high prevalence of guns in the US certainly increases risk to cops. But it also seems to be the case that cops in the US are trained to escalate, rather than de-escalate. I can give a couple of examples from my own upper middle class white, previously OC life.
Wrong--it is a perception until you control for suspect's behavior.
Why are cops less likely to kill Asians than whites, do you think?
Is it possible that small subsets of different groups react differently to police? Given homicide rates, groups certainly act differently towards each other.
This incident gets at a point I've been trying to make for years -- are deaths at the hands of police officers necessary¹ or was there another way to handle an incident without the use of lethal force. Among the highly publicized deaths, the answer is almost always "No" the death was not necessary, there was another way to handle the incident. Usually, that will involve taking more time, which could be measured in anything from seconds to hours or even days.
This was an incident perfectly designed for the use use of maximum lethal force. A young woman was in imminent danger of being stabbed, so shooting the assailant ended the threat. But it could easily have killed the person the officer was trying to protect. We, as a country, need to rethink our approach to volatile situations so that the use of guns is low on the list of alternatives. That won't eliminate the use of guns -- as long as all police always carry guns they will be used.
It's doubtful the officer who shot the young woman could even imagine an alternative.
¹As opposed to justified.
Apparently, according to an article in today's Washington Post, I am guilty of "adultification bias" in referring to Ma'Khia Bryant as a "young woman" instead of calling her a girl. Since my point was to question the use of lethal force by the police, I'm not sure how that "bias" fits into the argument that by adultifying Ma'Khia I am, must be, could be excusing treatment of her as an adult, rather than as a child or teenager. And I can assure everyone than had the shooting victim been white or Hispanic I would still have referred to her as a young woman. Additionally, I am against the legal system trying anyone who is not an adult as an adult.
Odds are high these same people would say you were infantilizing her if you called her a girl.
"It's doubtful the officer who shot the young woman could even imagine an alternative."
Is it doubtful?
Have you asked the officer? Have you ever been in such a situation?
Everyone's a Monday morning quarterback, convinced they are not only weapons specialists who'd have figured out in a tenth of a second the optimal solution to this situation, but they're also psychics able to divine what went through the minds of the lesser mortals on the scene.
Whom do you prioritize?
Sure, the police could have tried an alternative that was lower risk to the stabber -- AT THE COST OF higher risk to the stabbee.
One can argue that other countries would have chosen that. One can argue that would have been a better choice. But it's not as cut-and-dry as Kevin suggests. If I'm the one the knife is aimed at, my vote is more protection for victims (and about-to-be victims) and if that conflicts with the stabber's constitutionally protected right to behave like a maniac and wave a knife around, so be it.
Most violent interactions are the result of a choice by the offender to be violent. We don't have to descend to the level of Mad Max to recognize that these situations are not symmetric, that one party in the interaction (and it's not the police, and it's not the girl in pink) has a rather different moral status than the others...
By all means let's continue to be angry about the (very rare) genuine shootings of non-violent individuals without a weapon. Let's be angry when dickheads with a weapon who, nonetheless did in fact drop the weapon and submit to being cuffed, are still killed.
But let's not start pretending that some massive cosmic injustice has taken place when it's the maniac wielding a weapon and refusing to drop it that get's taken down rather than some other individual unlucky enough to be part of the scene.
I usually don't like to propose technical fixes to complex social problems, but..
It seems to me that better non-lethal methods for dealing with violent individuals would be really valuable. The Taser is not bad, but if there were non-lethal devices with stopping power and range closer to that of a handgun, that would be something. I would hope that in this case, the vast majority of police officers would *not be equipped* with lethal firearms. There would probably still have to be a few, to be called in to help deal with the shooter barricaded in a home or that kind of thing, but most police would be armed with non lethal weapons only. A police officer can't use a weapon that he or she is not carrying.
I'd also love to see there being a more complex conversation about some of the other shootings. For instance, the 13-year-old kid who was shot at 2:30 a.m. It's a serious tragedy that he was killed, but ... why aren't any liberals or progressives discussing these facts: a 13-year-old kid running the streets with a gun, apparently using that gun to shoot at people, while with a 21-year-old who is apparently known for grooming kids for the gang life. And the 13-year-old already has two gang names. That right there is a tragedy in itself and, yet, nobody seems to want to talk about it.
Few police in the UK carry guns. As far as I know knives are as common there as in the US. This seems to work OK. That is, shoot on sight doesn't appear to be necessary to keep people from killing each other with knives (subject to comparative statistics on knife violence, which I don't have) Of course if lots of people had guns in the UK the situation would be different.
People often brandish weapons other than guns in conflicts, but don't always use them, and even if a knife is used it doesn't always lead to death. In gang fights the object is often just to "cut" the antagonist, not kill them. Multiple shots to the torso are very likely to lead to death.
Has anyone asked the girl in pink?
Or her parents? If the cop chose not to shoot the girl in black and the girl in pink ended up getting stabbed, can you imagine the outrage? The cop would probably be fired (or at least reprimanded) for failing to protect a victim. If I was the parent of the girl in pink that got stabbed I'd be hiring a lawyer.
If the officer hadn't intervened and the girl in pink died, not a single one of you would know either of their names. It simply would have been another unnoticed homicide in another big city. There wouldn't have been any protests or riots, no discussion, just another kid headed to an early grave.
How come Kevin and much of the left only care about black lives when they're taken by white cops? Why do they climb on their soapboxes, propose no real solutions, and treat those who die by the hand of a cop as the only black lives that matter?
The left??? Nope, you means liberals as in reform liberals. That said, this case is dead.
You are somewhat dense, aren't you?
Shooting in close proximity to others either meant to be protected without full information as to the nature of the incident is dangerous and most likely foolhardy.
Just change the setting to Afghanistan, the pink clad child to the Corporal of Marines, the knife wielder an insurgent, the body cam pilot a Lance Corporal. I would know that every shot put out has a possiblity to kill my comrade, maybe save her, maybe wound her.
Change it again. A wild animal attacking a family member. My hunting rifle would definitely go through my target...
Again, the President is being assaulted, the MP5 under my raincoat has good accuracy but, the President is right there...
It's bad tactics, it's bad judgment, it possibly murder...
An expandable baton, an arm...