Police shootings, vigilante shootings, and Black Lives Matter

This thread is highlights the dividing issues in America at the moment and up until a few days ago, I thought a serious incident (mass shooting event) was unlikely, now I can see it is probable, once that happens all bets are off. Judging by the hundreds of social media posts I read since last week and this thread I can see people can look at one clip and see 2 totally different things.

The clip where the woman was surrounded at the cafe/restaurant to raise her fist is mana from the heavens for the likes of Tucker Carlson. I wish there was something could be done to stop these idiots derailing any good will the Dems can gather. Should Nancy and Joe come out and disown them and let them split off to an even more fringe group but not be associated with Democrats main party? I don't know what can be done.

The Blake shooting was anything but a stonewall good or bad shoot. We need more information to know the whole story (I am not talking about what happened before). The police are badly trained, generally, not CAG operators they also don't have anything like basic hand to hand skills they should have so even a minor scuffle can turn into a life and death struggle for them. Taking this into account when someone has a weapon or looks like they do, it is a life or death decision for them. Blake ran back to the car while drawn on, and looked to reach for something, it is very very disingenuous to say he was getting his licence or a pack a cigarettes. He was clearly not of sound mind so we don't what he was thinking. Was the knife in his hand before or after he was shot? Did he say he was going to get his gun as was reported somewhere? if the cops believed he was getting a gun and had proof they believed that, then it was fine to use force. Either way it was excessive force with that amount of rounds.

The Kyle Rittenhouse incident isn't clean cut either. I seen it mainly reported that gunman went on the rampage shooting. This again feeds the fake news narrative the far right push. Clearly the guy has issues and is the quintessential bootlicker. He was carrying illegally, was reported to have been caught speeding while driving without a licence, so is no saint plus the photos of him on social media and the interviews on the night point to a very troubled teen. All of that said like Jacob Blake and even Floyd George and individuals who were shot, their back story is almost irrelevant to the issue. The initial shooting incident is the key, was his life in danger when he shot the guy in the head? It is reported he returned fire after a Molotov was thrown at him. I couldn't make that out from the video. If it was right to shoot then, then the follow up shooting were self defense, he was in fear of his life, one guy had a skate board and the guy who was shot in the arm was carrying handgun. If it wasn't it was a fugitive shooting people as he fled. I heard people talking about Castle doctrine and stand your ground laws etc, I am not sure of the laws in that state but he may get off with murder. To go around as it is being reported that he was spraying bullets at protesters is very unhelpful, the same way to say cops are randomly shooting black people. It only stokes up outrage.

AbusesToilets wrote: »

From information being released, he was armed, police attempted to restrain him, he resisted. Tazers were employed but ineffective, he refused to obey orders to stop, despite having guns drawn on him. Reached into the car. That's a justified shooting imo.

He wasn't armed, and the incident is there on video to show as much - if he were already armed, why would he be reaching for a knife in his car, which you allege?

The wider issue is when you remove this situation from isolation and apply it to all groups. Anti-lockdown protesters were extremely heavily armed, and without masks were screaming directly in the face of police officers, yet no attempts were made to restrain them. Had police done so, there likely would have been a lot of bloodshed across the nation at the time of these protests.

Yet with the BLM protests, we are seeing law enforcement gas even peaceful protesters in situations like Trump's church photo op, attack journalists, and treating protesters entirely differently to how they did for the anti-lockdown ones in cases where both parties are/were acting almost identically.

There is no denying that the anti-lockdown protests were met with preferential treatment when compared to the BLM protests.

One of numerous shining examples are the protests in Huntington Beach, where scenes were identical for each protests - or even less charged for the BLM ones - way back in May, right as the protests broke out. Anti lockdown protesters were allowed to carry on as they pleased, yet BLM protesters were broken up for 'illegal assembly'.

The problem with the US is that this issue is not exclusive to this years protests at all, and is instead a long, ongoing issue that many seem openly hostile to addressing. I don't think it is exclusively a race issue, but is more related to how much police (who in the US rarely work in the cities they serve) identify with the people in question or not, which is not how equal application of the law is supposed to work.

It's the type of situation that sees one person shot seven times for potentially reaching for a weapon in their car that they potentially could have used, while another is let walk away while already in possession of an assault rifle that they already have used to kill two people and shoot another, while people (that the police don't identify with) stand by screaming at them that he is the shooter, which even the shooter wasn't denying.

Gerry Hatrick wrote: »

The anti lockdowners where not going around looting, robbing and burning buildings down like the BLM/Antifa thugs.

Neither were the BLM ones in the video I posted. Neither were the ones who were gassed so Trump could hold a bible upside down. Neither were the journalists who were attacked at many protests, including peaceful ones. Neither were the likes of the elderly man who got left to bleed from his ears after police shoved him on the ground and walked away. Neither were so many of those who police escalated situations on.

GreeBo wrote: »

Sure, a bad outcome, like being arrested or charged.
A "bad outcome" shouldnt be death or paralysis.

Give me your worst case scenario for what could have happened if this cop hadnt shot him at the car door?

He uses his weapon against a cop, or the kids in the car. Or perhaps he drives off with them and gets into a wreck as the police would have to pursue.

What point do you feel lethal force is authorised? Should the police wait until he attacks them and causes injury?

Deleted User wrote: »

He got a gun and managed to shoot one of the cops.

Woman on RTE radio there saying a relation of hers is a cop in America and in the last 3 weeks in his area 7 cops have been shot. Maybe that's accurate maybe its not. But they do face significant dangers in their job. Which is why it's so important to comply with their directions.

I'm not sure what level of risk people expect the cops to tolerate. I'd imagine yourself and many others posting here wouldn't let a big strong man like that reach the door either.

But where is he getting this gun from? One of the cops or the car?

If its the car, then why not just shoot everyone at every traffic stop, in case they have a gun?

If its from the cop, then maybe dont stand so close to him until the situation is under control? Especially if you have your gun in your hand and there are multiple other officers around who are free to draw their weapons without fear of them being taken?

Well I guess that's the thing. "Regardless of the danger he was posing" is yet to be defined, what danger was he posing?

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The guy was being arrested and ordered to stop. He ran for the car door. It's not the same as a routine traffic stop.

Yes there are dodgy cops. The guy who knelt on George Floyd's neck was one. But are we going to have riotous mayhem everytime a black man is shot by cops now regardless of the danger he was posing. Its starting to look like that.

If the video becomes public there is going to be protests more than likely. Dozens of black men will be shot where no video evidence exists so likely won't make national headlines

There were protests in my home town when Gardaí beat up two local men minding their own business.

Police brutality in any form should be protested against.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

No danger then. Nothing to see here move along..

I didn't say that either, it's very tough to have a discussion when people are so extreme in their views and hysterical.

I asked you a simple question, how much danger was the suspect posing in this situation? Was lethal force (which was surely the intent considering the officer fired 7 bullets point blank) an appropriate response?

There are degrees of danger, I'm just asking you to define what you think the danger the man was posing going on the information the officers had at the time? There are times when lethal force is appropriate and times when it is not obviously, surely defining how much danger this particular suspect posed is a big part of whether the use of lethal force was acceptable.

Edit: would you have been critical of the police if they had gunned down the 17 year old who had just shot some people and was walking down the street with his assault rifle?

StringerBell wrote: »

I asked you a simple question, how much danger was the suspect posing in this situation? Was lethal force (which was surely the intent considering the officer fired 7 bullets point blank) an appropriate response?

To play devils advocate, how did the cops know there was no gun or knife in the car? According to the police Union (not trusted source) he had one of the cops in a headlock prior to this engagement and had at least 1 outstanding warrant for sexual assault so either way he was going into custody. I just read a cnn article and they were short of saying was he was dropping off flowers to sick children after helping a granny across the road. Complete whitewash. No wonder there is so much push back from the right. They see a criminal, a sex offender none the less, was shot trying to get a weapon, the narrative is set so they won't change their mind on that, justice was served, now all these lefties are burning down the city.

http://https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/25/us/who-is-jacob-blake-trnd/index.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/08/28/907316697/police-union-in-kenosha-wis-provide-account-of-jacob-blake-shooting?t=1598888089064

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You don't kill someone for something they have the potential to do. We don't live in the world of Minority Report.

How much "potential" could it take for someone to pick up a gun and turn and shoot? 1 second, 5 seconds, a minute? In the US there is always potential. I am not saying that if Jacob was white he would have been given the benefit of the doubt, but to say he couldn't have done nothing or there was no danger is laughable. I am sure you can scroll through liveleak enough and see dash cam footage of cops being shot or do some decent firearms training you would know there is next to no time to react. It is like people saying that they would just block a pro fighters punch. Walter Mitty stuff. The problems started before the video, the cops let it get out of control and Jacob was clearly not of sound mind, a recipe for disaster. Did he deserve to be shot, no probably not, but we are looking at hindsight arm chair quarterbacking. Unfortunately the cops don't wear body cams so that would have given a better insight to what happened.

everlast75 wrote: »

There seems to be an awful lot of video footage of cops shooting black people, or using excessive physical force and lots of examples of white people doing a lot more and not being met by such violent reactions.

This problem is compounded by an openly racist president stoking racial tensions. (if you disagree with this statement, I don't know what else to say to you).

The reality is that in a country where guns are so readily available, every call out for cops can be their last. That I understand, and it is one of the reasons why being able to have guns so accessible in the US remains a complete mystery to me and is insanely illogical.

Trump wants a race war. Conway said that the more violence there is, the better it is for him. He is retweeting videos of black men assaulting people which have nothing to do with BLM or what is going on in cities. He is encouraging convoys of MAGA followers with assault rifles to travel to any protests. He has already defended the 17 year old who shot two people dead.

It is only going to get worse. This is his only strategy for re-election.

You're only seeing a snapshot of all interactions though, with a deliberate aim to strengthen the narrative that police are overly violent towards black people. There's ~10 million police interactions per annum iirc, with ~1000 shootings. The vast majority of those are justified, good shoots. You see one questionable event and a city burns. Meanwhile 20 people get shot over a weekend in certain cities, and nothing.