Quote:
Originally Posted by Bent Wookie
So now we are asking police to decide whether a knife is large enough to be lethal?? Really?!! Or have I misunderstood you.
What is your understanding of "apprehension procedures"?
We could discuss the violence in the US at length, but that might derail this thread... oh wait... nevermind.
|
There's a big difference between a guy wielding a small swiss army knife and a large butcher's knife. Yes, both can be lethal--but a hunting rifle and a machine gun are also both lethal, but there are varying degrees we're talking about here. A small swiss army knife and the guy is likely to wound people, a huge butcher's knife or larger and he could inflict some major damage, just as someone with a hunting rifle might be able to shoot a couple of people before being stopped, whereas someone with a machine gun could easily take out a good chunk of a crowd in the same amount of time. And an officer of the law who is expected to serve and protect his community should be able to assess the situation quickly and handle it as safely as possible, while leaving lethal force as an absolute last resort. My issue is that all too often in these cases lethal force is applied very quickly without much, if any, attempt at deescalating the situation first.
When police forces literally the rest of the globe over are capable of disarming without lethal force, is it really that unacceptable that I would like to see US police forces do the same? The biggest argument I've heard for increased violence/homicides/etc for police in the US is the inherent gun culture in the US--this guy didn't have a gun. Brown didn't have a gun. Eric Garner didn't have a gun, etc, etc.
Yes, gun culture and prevalence is an issue in this country, and I would love to see some common sense legislation to deal with it. But there are other countries that have relatively high gun ownership rates and these things don't happen there. Iceland ranks 15th in the world in gun ownership, yet they just had their first
ever homicide by a police officer. Britain hasn't had a homicide by a cop since 2012.
Again, if you can honestly look at the numbers, at the way that police in this country tend to treat its citizens as enemy combatants (hence the need for complete overkill with regards to military style weaponry), and then look at the rest of the world's industrialized nations and their police forces and say that the US has it all figured out, then I just don't think we can ever come to an agreement.
Just think of a few months ago when the nutjob was actively killing and targeting police officers in Canada--he was stopped peacefully and without killing the guy. In the US it'd likely be a foregone conclusion that deadly force would've been used to stop him.