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TLDR: What is the "5 foot garden tool"? That's all I want to know!
So many details and blame thrown about, but suddenly vague on "gardening tool?" It was 5 feet of something. A rake? A scythe? A stick?
It sort of matters what is in your hands when you approach police; not that that's ever a good idea. Even with a disability, he could be dangerous.
I'm astounded by The Guardian. How does an article explain is such detail the events of an altercation and aftermath yet space so terribly on such basic information?
Maybe don't take a job of protecting and serving if a kid with a gardening tool is a bit too frightening for you to handle non-lethally.
Yeah, the kid didn't have something dangerous like an acorn.
Ha! That was a hoot of a story back then. Not for the dude in the back of course.
How should police have handled it?
The bodycam video shows the officer approaching with his gun holstered, drawing it while backing up, turning and trying to run away, while the kid quickly closes the distance and tries to strike the officer's face, head, and upper body with a long-handled tool.
How should the officer have handled this?
How would you have handled this?
If a random person were attacked in such a manner, is it possible that they could have lost an eye? Is it possible that they could have been permanently disfigured? Had their carotid artery severed and quickly bled out? Been knocked out?
Is it possible that a reasonable person could have reasonably believed this attacker posed a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm to an innocent person?
First of all, they got radios. He knew cop number 2 was a second behind him. So have the tactical patience to group properly.
Designate a lethal guy and a non lethal guy.
In the future, train actual hand to hand to trap an arm holding a weapon and neutralize it.
We don't pay police to kill us.
Ah. The Uvalde Gambit.
Uvalde was a shooter attacking children while police stood by. This is a completely different situation.
A taser?
Are you asking or telling? Are you telling me that it would have been more appropriate to use a tazer, or are you asking me if a tazer would have been a feasible option?
Are you trained and qualified to determine when and how to employ a tazer? Are you qualified to discuss the conditions under which a tazer can or should be employed?
Basically, do you actually know what you're talking about when you mention a tazer?
I'm not asking you. I'm phrasing it as a question because it's one of the most blatantly obvious answers to your question. A taser is better unquestionably when someone is coming after you with clearly not a gun. Yes. I'm not trained but I have enough common sense to realize that not killing someone who's chasing you with a clearly non lethal weapon is much better than killing them.
The weapon in question is a metal blade on a stick.
It is readily capable of destroying an eye. (Aka: "Grievous bodily harm") It is readily capable of severing the carotid artery. (Aka: "death") It is capable of causing a wide variety of similar permanently debilitating, disfiguring, or lethal injuries to the officer in a very short period of time.
The video shows that the kid was attempting to strike a retreating officer in the head or upper body. Any person in the officer's position would reasonably fear a significant possibility of death or grievous bodily harm from this attack.
I therefore reject your assertion that the weapon being employed against the officer can be reasonably described as "clearly non lethal".
How was that tool clearly non lethal? If fists are potentially lethal, then a long sturdy tool sure as hell is.
It would have been a better option than the gun.
Disagree?
How could a tazer have been employed in this situation?
By pulling it out of his holster instead of the gun.
<.< Well, y’see, a taser and a gun are very similar in these instances. You take it out, point it at the target, and pull the trigger.
Since there were two cops, that means there were two tasers. Funny how two guns were used though, as if they never even considered using their tasers?
Shoot the tazer darts at the boy while he's approaching instead of bullets?
Did you watch the video? Remember: each and every blow the kid lands with that weapon has the possibility of permanently maiming, disfiguring, or killing the officer.
Watching the video, the officer was able to draw his gun, but was not able to get it on target before the kid was within striking distance, and swinging his weapon at the officer's head or upper body. The video ends before we see who actually fired the shots.
That's the risk of being in a job that isn't even in the top 20 most dangerous jobs in America.
As you were told elsewhere, soldiers in war zones wouldn't act this way and their job is far more dangerous.
You're just encouraging police cowardice. Not that it needs to be encouraged.
I'm not trained in how to employ a tazer, but a cop probably should be.
It seems like there ought to be some way to safely help a teenager having a mental breakdown without killing them.
I have plenty of dangerous gardening tools in my shed.
The fact is, and point I was trying to make, we don't know what the tool was therefore, we can't draw conclusions about acceptable risk yet.
Protecting includes the family, the ones who called the police in the first place, from danger too.
Oh for Christ’s sake. What other countries does this happen in? Is the US so profoundly filled with dangerous gardening tools that they present a clear and present danger in the hands of a child facing armed and armored officers? I believe they have garden tools in places like England and New Zealand and such.
Maybe if we didn’t arm every cop like they’re supposed to take Baghdad and train them that their first job is coming home alive, huh?
Yo, no offence here, buut you people seem to forget all about the random Europe attacks with bladed instruments. Let alone all the attacks in the rest of the world that go unreported globally.
Melee weapon attacks are dangerous and often deadly. My country prohibits having anything that can be classified as a white weapon in your car due to how many fuckwits started hitting and stabbing each other in traffic.
You lot are really downplaying the risks involved just because cops were at the center of it.
No offense here either, but you seem to have fallen for the NRA-driven narrative that knife attacks are more common in Europe as if that balances out the enormous rate of gun crimes (including this one) in the US. Statistically, both the US and Europe have approximately the same rate of knife attacks - with some countries in Eastern Europe being a bit higher.
But let’s reason that through a bit more, just to be scientists. If an officer is willing to fire a gun at the literal drop of a hat, and that was somehow a deterrent to knife crimes, then we might hypothesize that the fact that in European countries officers use de-escalation first and engagement with pepper spray or tasers second would in fact see far higher rates of knife crimes. They don’t.
So logically speaking, I don’t think either the statistics nor the models support your hypothesis.
What a crap take. You know how many people young and old have been in a foreign country with a majority of the populace looking to kill them, have a thing called ROE Rules Of Engagement to guide when they should shoot to kill. Many time people with weapons, lethal weapons in their hand and those people would have to gauge whether or not they were a threat.
All police should have to adhere to a common ROE when engaging with the America/non American populace. If soldiers had to do it in a country where they were not welcome it should be a no brainier that the people sworn to "protect and serve" should have to do this bare minimum in our own country.
You did read the article including the part he was attacking his sister possibly with the garden tool or "piece of glass" while his other family was avoiding him and calling the cops? What is your threat assessment of that?
Anyways...
I don't know if the shooting was justified or not, and I've never made such statement and don't have an opinion one way or the other.
My post, if you read it again, is about The Guardians lack of information about the freaking tool.
That's all I want to know. What is the tool? JFC people.
Do you think that his family who called the cops wanted the cops to murder him?
Heard you the first time. Just leave it there then? Perhaps they hadn't been given that information yet.
Can you provide me with an example ROE and show me how the actions of the police here would have violated it?
Just for clarity, Here is the body cam video of the attack.
What ROE would have prohibited a member of the military deployed in a foreign nation from using lethal force in an equivalent scenario?
That's the beauty of it, police don't have to protect and serve in America. Courts made sure of that. Don't need to know the laws they're enforcing either. Just run an obstacle course and take a 40 hr course on killology - the idea that policing is the most dangerous job on the planet and everyone is trying to kill you at all times- and presto, they give you a gun, body armor, and protection from the legal and financial repercussions of your actions.
Plus, there's lots of networking opportunities with local white supremacist and christofascist organizations.
I can crack your skull with a single swing of a gardening hoe. It's hilariously unreasonable to expect police not to treat this as a lethal weapon. Look at the video; they're telling him to stop or they'll shoot and even turn around and start running away in order to avoid doing that.
Also the "kid" is a 15 year old adult sized man.
And I can crack your head with nothing in my hands. Are we just shooting anyone now?
A cop could trip on the sidewalk walking up to the door and crack his head open. This is such a stupid argument. These people are supposedly paid to deal with dangerous situations. Cop lovers always talk about how "they're putting their lives on the line" yet in reality, we see they're really putting everyone else's life on the line in every situation because apparently your life is worth more than everyone else's once you take a 6-week course at a local community college and put on a badge.
Shooting violent people that attack others with bladed long weapons is a justified use of force. No doubt there are better and worse ways of handling situations like this but if it's racist police murdering innocent people you're looking for then this isn't it.
If you watch the video it's reaching shears. Don't make this out like it's a sword. And he's holding it a hand on either end so he has no leverage to swing it. You could easily tackle him and render them useless.
Absolutely a fucked up panic shoot that will get swept under the rug with the rest. Cowards shouldn't have badges and they should face charges for playing judge dredd.
Near impossible to tell from the video but definitely looks more like a hoe to me. Also, the cop had around 4 seconds to figure out what to do and he's literally running away from the guy chasing and about to swing at him with it the moment they opened fire at him. It doesn't get much more legitimate from that.
Okay and still, what leverage does he have with his hands like that?
This officer also created the situation by not waiting just a couple seconds for his buddy. Instead we have two guys acting individually with just pistols.
There's certainly no other outcome expected from a couple guys panicking with guns
you know, educators and mental health workers are expected to manage situations like this without shooting students/patients/clients.
Too bad he wasn't a big white man with a knife! Then the cops would have tried to talk him down!
Aren't police carrying non-lethal stuff like tasers and trained in deescalation techniques that could be used to subdue someone without shooting them?
Edit: not 'desecration', although maybe they are
Some do carry batons, pepper spray, or tasers. All carry guns.
Some might be trained in deescalation. Some might be trained in "killology": https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/warrior-cop-class-dave-grossman-killology.html
Desecration is definitely not the right word but I'm having trouble inferring the one you meant to use. De-escalation perhaps?
Lol, yes!
FYI, tazers aren’t “non-lethal.”
They are less lethal, but like far less lethal.
From the body cam videos you can easily glean the size and shape of the tool in question and how the kid was handling it, but the clarity isn't enough to conclusively determine the specific tool.