[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Itse

Well said.

I also feel the discussion is mostly missing a significant issue of the US legal system.

In Europe you can't kill someone just in case they might do something, in the US you can.

It's not just cops. There's been plenty of civilian cases where completely harmless people got shot by someone who thought they might be a threat.

This is really the issue on many of these cases, and really I think a major reason why it's so disproportionately black men who get killed. It's not that cops go out to hunt black guys, at least not mostly. They just imagine dangerous things might happen because "black men are dangerous" and react to those imaginary/hypothetical threats with deadly force.

The idea that you can respond with deadly force to something before it has actually happened is completely insane, yet something many Americans keep arguing is somehow okay. It's much of what this discussion has been about in some ways: "how likely was it that the latest person shot might have done something bad if he hadn't been shot". Was someone a criminal,.were they doing something suspicious or something normal, etc. Was it reasonable to think a guy going into the car was going to do something dangerous.

None of that should matter. In countries with a reasonable legal system, you can't kill someone because you think they might do something. You have to wait until they actually try to do it, or actually do it.

This is really the issue. Most of these shootings are based on hypotheticals. If you react to something possibly happening with deadly force, of course you're going to kill a hell of a lot more people than if you always waited for something to actually happen.

That's also why most of these cops aren't convicted. It's not just a policing issue, although it's also that.

It's that Americans for some reason have decided that pre-emptive killings are not murder.

That's what needs to change, and that would require a culture change.

(I do think that the culture change should start with the police, as you could actually train them to not kill people just because it would be legal.)

I will add a slight caveat to this, I'm fine with the UK's approach, they will happily shoot someone who has already used a gun or even a knife even if they might not be an immediate mortal threat to the officer or public at that moment, ie the police arrive at the scene of a stabbing and the guy with the knife dripping with blood doesnt drop the knife when ordered, you can argue the police should take them into custody but you at least know the guy is a real threat, he has already stabbed someone.

What the police shouldnt be able to do is shoot someone because they think they might be a threat, if you allow the police to harm people based on their assumptions that is where bias takes over from reality and also makes the police trigger happy, which they are in the states, in the US the cops shoot people because they are non compliant, that is not a reason to kill someone