Quote:
Originally Posted by Antithesis
But when you consider the possible outcomes that exist when a citizen runs up to a police officer, the range between '... and seeks assistance with something' and '... shoots you in the head' is really wide. When you consider the number of interactions police officers must have with the citizens they are paid to protect (rather than suspect as some seem to be arguing), getting shot in the head has to be a very extreme and very uncommon rarity. I'd far rather that police assumed a citizen approaching them be for benign reasons than have them all ready for such a phenomenally negative interaction. If that is what they are expecting, that is what they will see, and we will have far more cases of people being shot by the police.
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I agree with you. I think if this guy had just walked up to one of the cops to ask for directions, there wouldn't have been any problems. There would have been no assumptions about his intentions and his experience would have been the same as the other thousand people who walked by that night.
But this guy walked into the middle of them and started being an idiot. That's when the police would have to start figuring out what the guy is on or what he's about to do and assume that it's not good. If they had pulled their tazers out and blasted him at that point, then there would be a problem. They just treated the guy for what he was, an idiot who clearly isn't smart enough to realize that what he did was a bad idea.