Is this a good resolution to what may have been murder?

I just keep running this scenario in my mind from the victim's perspective, and its a sad thing.

(Internal Monologue)

"I'm a whittling my wood, cuz I like to do that, la la la la!"

~Starts to look over shoulder~

"Hm, Is someone talking to me?"

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

(End Scene)

Hm, perhaps a bit tasteless, but simply how I imagined it.

edited 31st May '11 9:16:55 PM by ViralLamb

Thanks for a law persons pwerspective Barkey.

To be honest that's how most officers will look at this. It's hard to explain to other folks how cops feel when this sort of thing happens..

We know when another officer has done wrong, and if asked we'll say so. But people get too wrapped up and emotionally invested sometimes which is part of why we stay silent much of the time.

When a cop fucks up, be it something small or something huge like this, I'm not angry, I'm disappointed. We don't really want to discuss it with civilians, we want to discuss it amongst ourselves. I'd like to talk to the officer from the OP video so I could go "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?! ARE YOU FUCKING BRAINDEAD?!"

But there's not really anything for me to discuss with civilians, they don't have the same perspective as cops do. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a reality. About the most I can donate to a conversation about that is the neutral and academic truth of if the officer was justified in the actions they took by the book. It's just sort of sobering for us, we'll all have personal opinions if we were also on scene or we knew the officer involved personally, but there doesn't seem to be much of a point to discussing it with a civilian because most of them want to turn one cops actions into a tirade about all cops, and unless you parrot their opinion they'll just get into a fight with you about it.

I'm at work right now and showed this video to a co-worker and his comments were "Motherfucker needs to go to jail bro... There's always one idiot in every department.."

edited 1st Jun '11 12:51:02 AM by Barkey

I must admit, you sound a bit like Savage Heathen sometimes Barkey. Not in terms of arguement but in the fact that you seem to think that everyone is against your particular point of view.

Most people I know do not dislike police, they tend to dislike shit like this and tend to REALLY dislike the ass covering that goes on with a lot of police behaviour (c.f. Jean Charles De Menezes). I mean it is all very well to say that Civilians "won't understand" but as a counter point "you should be able to understand not hiding people simply because you happen to know them".

edited 1st Jun '11 1:59:23 AM by JosefBugman

It's not that everyone is against it, it's just that when a cop does something wrong, the only people who really have any opinion on it tend to have a very negative one that applies to more than just the specific situation.

I ave a negative opinion of it and I am generally fond of the police. They are certainly better than the alternative.

To claim that anyone critising the polices failures in one area must have a larger dislike for them seems a bit odd to me.

It's terribly common. One cop screws up and does something stupid and suddenly we're living in 1984 and all cops are faceless evil deathsquad members who kill puppies for fun.

I live in a very small town(Given it shares a border with a large one, but I'm talking about city limits) and our police department has 40 people. LAPD has thousands of cops. If one cop in my town of about 40 cops fucked up, people would be screaming bloody murder that the entire PHPD was evil unless they knew a cop or were a cop.

That's not unique to cops. It happens with everything. Which celebrities do you remember the most? Chances are you remember the ones that get on the news a lot for being really screwed up. With the availability of information these days, the bad floats to the top for any given slice of humanity. And we all just have to live with it, for whatever slices we happen to belong to. For my part, it was certainly less annoying being an anime fan before the term 'weeaboo' surfaced.

Accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive!

This is old news but it contains an important point, perhaps the main take-away from this incident. It describes why Officer Birk isn't going to be prosecuted. From the article:

edited 1st Jun '11 11:22:25 AM by DeMarquis

I thought we already discussed that issue on the first few pages?

I dont remember anyone saying that they decided not to prosecute him.

The point is moot: You cannot reasonably believe that a dude who carries a knife, but that has neither attacked anybody nor made a move to attack, and who is not even fleeing, poses serious harm to the officer or third people if not immediately shot.

Seeing a dude with a knife who ain't doing anything (well, whittling), who doesn't charge or lunge at nobody, ordering them to stop and almost immediately afterwards shooting him three or four times in the back...

Well, it's pretty unreasonable. Odds are, the only belief the murderer had was an armed homeless dude who ain't doing anything! Cool, an excuse to murder! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Knives ain't guns. Unless the dude appears hostile and makes an attempt to clear distance towards you/other dude, you can't claim that you believed in good faith that he was attacking.

edited 1st Jun '11 11:32:59 AM by SavageHeathen

Don't see why they would need to, it was in the articles.

I did see where people disagreed with that decision, if not exactly much discussion on the particulars of the standard.

There's only so much leeway I'm willing to give when a human's life is at stake. Although it also goes the other way, when it comes to breaking the law to save somebody's life.

I admit I would feel more comfortable if the standard was that a police officer is only justified in shooting someone if they had a specific reason to believe that the victim was dangerous. But that apparently is not the legal standard. Blame the law.

That's the kind of crap we get when we give special protections to anybody.

Cops shouldn't be considered as a special category of people with an enhanced right to murder at will and whose murder is somehow more grievous than that of a common person.

The standards of behavior authorities should be subjected to should never be more lax than those the average person must submit to. Handing power together with reduced oversight and consequences for fucking up is a recipe for disaster. If cops who screwed up paid the consequences in full, we'd have much less cops screwing up.

edited 1st Jun '11 11:46:16 AM by SavageHeathen

Well in which case be prepared to see a lot higher officer turnover and higher taxes because of the Widows and orphans fund suddenly needing a lot more payments.

A higher officer turnover is more than a fair trade-off in exchange of less people being murdered by stupid or sociopathic police officers.

edited 1st Jun '11 11:47:44 AM by SavageHeathen

... This is an axiom for you, isn't it? In any case I am going to stop this right now before we get further off topic.

This dude was murdered. And the dude who did it will get off scot free... Or with a slap on the wrist. Cops always do: Lawmakers are quite willing to make sure they're not held accountable for their actions. Pretty much the worst consequence that ever happens to them is getting fired.

To consider minimizing officer turnover to be worth allowing loose cannon cops to kill people with no valid reason and little consequence is appalling.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:33:47 PM by SavageHeathen

No-it's exactly on topic. We cant answer the question in the thread title without discussing this. Should cops be held to lower standards than ordinary citizens, when it comes to causing harm and killing people? Pretty much every jurisdiction I am aware of has said "yes." I think the idea is that the duties of a police officer inherently require the public to be put at some risk- give a guy a gun and tell him to enforce the law and you are going to get incidents. The traditional justification for that has always been that the number of people cops inadvertently kill is less than the number that would be killed by criminals if you had a weaker or more constrained police force.

edited 1st Jun '11 1:58:41 PM by DeMarquis

I swear I've seen a case where a police officer was held liable in a situation where a regular civilian would not have been...will try to google it.